The Art and Science of Odessa Connect a Conversation with Founder Todd Smith

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Transcript

Erin: 0:35

Howdy folks. It's Erin again. And I have a guest today that is, I'm excited to talk to you because we're going to talk about the depth of what it takes to be successful. It's not about having an idea and all of a sudden becoming an instant success. We're going to talk about the work that it takes to become an instant success over a long time, right? So I have with me founder and CEO Todd Smith of Odessa Connect. And Odessa Connect is a television based communication platform that was built for people who struggle with small screen devices, apps, and passwords. Sounds a lot of good help for a lot of people that we know in our world. Todd, thank you for being here today.

Todd: 1:25

Thank you very much, Erin. We're very happy to be here.

Erin: 1:27

Yes, so tell me about how this all got started. How you could think that you could, correct me if I'm wrong, put cell phone type stuff on to a TV. Am I correct with that?

Todd: 1:45

Yes. we think of Odessa almost as a giant iPad in the living room, so we're we've enabled a lot of that same functionality. on a large screen. so clicker that looks like t talk about how we designed the physical interface. A just sit in our comfy cha click and look at photos We do video calls with th Dining menus and activity calendars and just a lot of the things that you might normally have to go to a small screen for, but now we take the TV and turn it into a two way communication portal and allow that person to interact with a clicker on a big screen.

Erin: 2:37

And so for those who are listening, he was holding up a remote control and a very simple remote control. Yes. It's got a TV button, a talk button and on and off button. buttons, channel buttons and volume buttons. And this is ultimately the crux of the conversation here because I heard, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I heard that it took you three years to perfect this remote control.

Todd: 3:07

That is correct. Unfortunately, And we have time to tell the story. So

Erin: 3:13

yes, this story is important. I want to say it. I want to preface it from this way, especially if you're a senior living leader or new entrepreneur, like I am like depth, understanding the product that you offer, understanding the roadblocks that could get in the way and understanding what people want. That takes time, and this is a perfect story that I really want to get deep into, because it really resonated with me, and we have these expectations we put on ourselves, or maybe that businesses give us, companies give us, to be successful immediately, but the ultimate success you want is sustainable long term success. And that takes time and Todd here took three years to create a remote control that is doing really well, but I can only imagine the thoughts and the feelings. at two at the year two mark. So tell us the story, tell us what you were thinking. Give us all the gory details. so somebody else can relate to you who's feeling the same way. I'm sure you did.

Todd: 4:25

Yeah, there were plenty of, nights staring at the ceiling going. What are we, what have we done? What are we going to do? Yeah. Um, it really started, I was with a company called signature healthcare, so we're in Louisville, usually when you say Louisville, people think of horses, Derby, urban, maybe the Louisville slugger baseball bat. And, all of that is true. And we claim all that, but, a lot of people don't realize it's a vortex of senior care. a lot of the national organizations are based here. One of those is called Signature Healthcare. And, I was with Signature Healthcare, for some years as director of communications. Signature owns and operates skilled nursing facilities. I would visit, the facilities and, as soon as you walk in the door, it hits you. Like the loneliness, the isolation, the boredom, the digital disconnection. it's just in the air, And, being a kind of a builder, a creative, this is probably relevant. My background is actually in the music business as an artist, as a songwriter, as a music producer. So I have this DNA as a. As a creator, as a builder, and, actually think about this a lot now and write about it, how the artist DNA and the entrepreneur DNA are very much the same, because the artist and the entrepreneur, they see. And inversely, like they see things that aren't there, and then they want to build them. they want to make them exist like what in your head. You wanted to build it. so that's a good backdrop for this thing. Um, we visit these buildings and see the problem that, we could say the people who built them. We're most in need of digital connection. We're actually the least connected, that's a problem in the universe and, builder, the entrepreneur, the artist wants to solve that. I started tinkering with it in my head and You know what? we could make an app or we could do something, to help fill this gap. And that thought, that was really the seed that became what is now Odessa. Okay. So it was a long journey and we can talk about how it went from that to this. But, that was the inspiration and the original vision. And, I ended up, building some prototypes and testing and talking to people and just noodling on it for a year or two. And, it started to take on mass and gravity and energy in my head. And it got to the point where, I, I had, I came into that, burn the ships entrepreneur. it's like I either have to just go all in and do this or I have to stop spending so much time on it nights and weekends. so I, I did the burn the ships thing. Like I left the, great real job and, struck out, into the wilderness and, put together a small team and got a, local Louisville family office as an investor partner. And we started, we didn't know exactly where we were going or what the ship looked like, or what the distant shore looked like, but we knew the direction, we knew the mission. and we just started testing and building. and trying things in local, assisted living facilities. So that's one advantage we have of being in Louisville is that we have ready access to, partners, test populations, customers, subject matter, experts, clinical experts. and we just started trying things and the early prototypes, as a, Epic fail, the day we took our first prototype into our first test building was like one of the worst days of my life because that was the rude awakening. like, I made all of the classic, first time founder mistakes, right? Like you way underestimate how long it's going to take. You way overestimate your abilities. You way underestimate the gap between, Really knowing the user and like where you are and I made all those classic mistakes. And so we take our prototypes in there and we're all proud of them. And they just totally bombed and the residents, they couldn't use it. They didn't like it. It wasn't work, just all the things. And, that was the first night of okay, this mountain is higher. this sea is bigger than we thought. so hold on.

Erin: 8:56

How bad did you feel? was your heart to the ground and were you nauseous?

Todd: 9:03

that's coming. Only

Erin: 9:04

imagine

Todd: 9:05

that's coming. It wasn't because it was still pretty early. And, on a, on an adventure, you're full of adrenaline and optimism and stuff.

Erin: 9:13

Yes.

Todd: 9:14

so it wasn't that bad. it was like, oh shoot, but it was okay, so we just go back to the drawing board and we try some more stuff. but it got worse and worse over the next like six to eight months because we just weren't. Getting there, and the reason is because we hadn't made the critical Eureka discovery of the TV screen yet. we were trying, B. Y. O. D. Computers, tablets, mobile phone. We had this device agnostic paradigm because that's a digital user paradigm, right? Like B. Y. O. D. Whatever you have connects to the cloud. You're off, but and this is just the very first of many, Epiphanies along the way that there is a drastic difference between what I now call the analog world view or the analog paradigm and the digital paradigm. We all live and exist and work in the digital paradigm. And that comes with a whole lot of underlying assumptions and things that we take for granted that are not given. In the analog world someday, this will be a book, but for now, you're allowing me to pontificate. this was the first one was that BYOD doesn't work here. so then, because like we'd go in and we'd say, Hey, we're trying a new technology. Who wants to try it? Here's another problem. You don't use that word. Technology is a bad word. now we say, who wants to get pictures from the grandkids on your TV? everybody says yes to that question. Who wants to try a new, a really cool new technology? Everybody says no to that question. But see, here's another theme we had to get out of our perspective. from our perspective, it's a really cool technology. But that's a self centered perspective. get to know the user and then look at it from their perspective. this whole journey is about learning to meet the user where they are. So we were trying, computers in the corner bedroom with the dust cover on, windows 98 hadn't been powered up in six years, and tablets and phones and just, we weren't getting, engagement. We weren't getting usage and, or good feedback. And so then at that was the first kind of pretty dark moment, where you just sit back and go. This is not working like what's going on. Like we knew the problem was there, but the solution was eluding us. And, this was a great Eureka moment and I remember it forever. we were sitting in a coffee shop here in Louisville, me and one of our, clinical partners, Dr. Mark Rothman, who is. A real, rock star, awesome person and clinical geriatrician. And um, he was very instrumental in the early days of pulling in geriatric specialists to advise us on the design of the system. so we were sitting in a coffee shop and, he was looking over my shoulder. There was a TV over my shoulder and we're sitting around just going, what's going on, it's not working. What could we do different? And he goes, what about the TV? And that was like the clouds parted. And I was like, of course the TV, then we had a new path, to a trail to follow. And, we went back to the lab and we tried some prototypes and we. Hack some stuff together and took it in. And it was just like night and day, like the users got it right off the bat and flowing and, they were eager to use it and stuff. So we were like, okay, this is the trail. all right. So now we know our trail and we know the TV screen is. The right place to be for man. It makes sense, right? Like it's not a new device. It's not a strange techie device. everybody has one, all day long. So it's just makes a lot of sense in retrospect is obvious. But for some reason we see it. so then the next realization was okay. TV screen is the right screen, but how do we interact with the TV? like you have to have a physical interface, you have to have some kind of remote, and at first we didn't really think about it. We were like, oh, they'll just use their TV remote, but no, that you're, no, you, now you're in a different problem, right?

Erin: 13:43

Yeah.

Todd: 13:44

It's a lot of buttons. Yeah. and are we just another app on a smart TV? New problem. We came to the, daunting conclusion that we had to build hardware. Now, this is a, a lot of VCs, like as soon as they, as soon as you tell them you're doing hardware, it's like immediate hard pass,

Erin: 14:04

right. And a VC is a venture capitalist, correct?

Todd: 14:08

Yes.

Erin: 14:08

Yes.

Todd: 14:09

lots of investors are just like immediate hard pass if you're doing hardware because it's expensive. And the saying goes, hardware is hard, apps easy to iterate and update. And, so it's the path of least resistance. So most entrepreneurs and VCs just want to do an app because those barriers are so low, but that's also the bad news, because the barriers are so low. a bunch of noise and glut, in that space, hardware is hard. the mountain is higher. There's a lot of bodies on the way up, But we decided that we had to do that. And, like I said, I'm a musician. I'm not a hardware engineer. But, we, we figured out how to do it. We got, put a team together and hired some advisors and consultants, and we built, a box and a remote control that allowed us to really control that user experience. from the minute you wake up and turn your TV on to how you go back and forth between your Odessa content and your TV, how you navigate, how you switch. we had to give the user very easy pathways to all that. And the only way to do that was to build hardware, to build a box and build a remote. so when we say it took three years. that's all of that is it took that much time to go through all those hoops and come to all those conclusions and then come out the other end of it with this,

Erin: 15:45

right? I think it's, I love how you liken it to a creative because I used to really get down on myself because I wasn't. Artistic, right? Which I assumed was creative, but I am creative with other things, not art. And when you do education or when you start a business or when you're leading a team, there is art. There is a creative component to that. And I really love how you tie that back together, because if you don't have that, if you don't allow the art part in. You lose so much

Todd: 16:31

and

Erin: 16:32

you gave yourself permission to bring that aspect in and it really worked for you.

Todd: 16:37

Yes. And I think that's a great point, Erin. problem solving is artistic, it's creative, it's making something new that didn't exist before, you know. so art and creativity is all around us, hidden in subtle ways, but I really think it's the, it's the, Magic sparkle that makes things happen, when you see like stuff that was designed from a more, engineering or technical standpoint, it doesn't have that sparkle, I'm nothing against engineers, if you need button a to perform function B, you need an engineer, but if you want it to look and feel a certain way and engage a user, you need an artist, To make it, user friendly.

Erin: 17:22

Yeah, problem solving is an art form. And so many people run away from it. So many people ignore it and people don't realize that is you have to walk through the problems in order to actually find the success that you want. And the control is really pretty. It's orange. It's got all kinds of colors. I'm sure there was some color psychology. Chosen for the colors.

Todd: 17:48

Yes. the truth is we chose the color just based on the aesthetics of it and the fact that it You know, so different than all the other remotes on the coffee table. You can't lose it. It sticks out from across the room and it's fun. It's bright, but it also happens to be, the last color to go. If you have macular degeneration or vision impairment, orange is the last to go. So it's a happy coincidence there.

Erin: 18:18

Yeah. So what have you seen as you've gotten through the hard parts? and the banging your head against the wall. And now you're changing people's lives one TV at a time. What do you see as your original goal and the goals and the outcomes that you're seeing today? Are they the same? Are they different? are there new things that you didn't even think about that are happening,

Todd: 18:47

yes, definitely that,

Erin: 18:50

all of that.

Todd: 18:51

Yes, we, I keep using this sort of explorer analogy, but, originally the goal and the mission objective was just to. build some kind of digital tool for the residents to help them better engage with their families and, stay more connected, reduce isolation. But in the process of, building that solution, we, we stumbled onto a whole new continent. Essentially, and now we're standing on the shore of this continent going, wow, we didn't even know, all this territory was here because if you think about it, what we've done is opened up a portal into the living room, and we've solved content delivery to people who are 80, 90, a hundred years old, who, you know, a lot of people just write them off. a lot of people, I even had a VC tell me once, I saved the sketch. I still have the sketch. he drew an age curve and he drew a line and wrote the number 65, like age 65, and then draw drew a steep decline after that. And he's everybody on this side of the line is not worth building for. It's not worth investing in. It's not worth spending time on. It's not, like literally, casting aside an entire population of. millions of people. and, that's indicative of, that's starting to change a little bit, that very kind of ageist, mentality that, that, certainly technology historically has had an entertainment and, consumer culture and everything like, oh, they're, those people are all, they're not buying stuff. They're on their way out, But it's hello, no, anyway, you got along the rant there, So we did the hard part already. we figured out how to get into, create a portal into the living room, engage that user. willingly, they want to get in, they pick up their orange remote. It's fun. It's not intimidating. They get pictures from the grandkids. They do video calls. They see stuff on their TV. that's the hard part, right? once you. Once you establish that first colony, in the new country, now you just build more colonies, So now we're looking at all sorts of things, bringing through that portal. the most exciting to me is the next thing we're really working on is entertainment and games and, content programming because of course, circling back to my, background in music, that's, very much aligned with what I've done for many years. but there's also now a rapidly emerging body of work and research around, media as medicine, music, gaming, video games, Immersive digital experiences as, as actually like nonclinical interventions to clinical issues, anxiety, depression, loneliness, isolate, like using these media, to mitigate and address these clinical issues. And there's hard data now, that it improves clinical outcomes in many cases, better than a pill or some other clinical intervention. So that's very exciting to me because it's like the planets have drifted into alignment and planets move at a galactical, pace, but they're lined up now. we have delivery solved into the home. We have, growing awareness of the importance of media as medicine. And, we, that's really paved the way for all the groundwork that we've Now we can just start pushing, optimized content and programming to the Odessa users. So very exciting.

Erin: 22:47

And so people use Odessa as we wrap it up and really define. Okay. We know it's on the TV. We know we can look at pictures. We know it's for people who struggle with. small screens, small devices, apps and passwords. What do, who, anyone can get this in their home or is this for senior living operators? Is this, you know, how do we make sure or know how to get this or who uses it and or what? Yes, for pictures, but. What else?

Todd: 23:26

Yes. Great question. so, several parts to that answer. Senior living, is the foundation of our business. that's where we started. So that would be just working with a senior living operator or community, to provide this for their residents. and we also have, a lot of community tools that the, Staff can use, you can make your calendars. You can manage your digital signage screens. You can message the residents and the families. We have a family app. So there's a whole suite of, modules and applications that work together for a senior living operator. and then. the next sort of circle out from there is a health care provider. So if you're a physician or a home health group or health plan, the pace organization and something like that, you can use Odessa to engage your patients, these may be people who are bed bound, maybe they live. an hour away from the clinic. They can't drive. They can't get in easily. It takes you two hours to get there. Perfect candidate for Odessa on the tv in that person's home because now we can check in with them. We can check on them we can do vitals, like remote patient monitoring. That's one of our features so we have a whole host of healthcare specific features in that bucket in that market And then for a consumer or an individual family like you mentioned We haven't done a whole lot of that, but now we're starting to, we would get inquiries on the website, Hey, my mom is not in a facility, but can we get one of these? And we really weren't set up to do that, but we are now. we actually have a new site launching in about two weeks and it's going to have an order page and where a person can, just order one for themselves or for their family.

Erin: 25:26

That's great.

Todd: 25:27

Yeah,

Erin: 25:27

so we solve the problem or you solve the problem. Odessa connect solves the problem of engaging the disengaged in technology. to where it can easily you don't have to have, because let's face it. It is hard to have technology devices inside senior living. It just is and you can leave them in another residence room. It can get lost. It can get thrown away. It can walk away. There's lots of things that can happen. It can get washed in the washing machine. there's lots of things that happen inside of senior living. And so when you bring engagement to a TV, you do actually make engagement easier and more consistent. And then you spent a long time trying to figure out the remote control and now makes it user friendly and actually brings a little joy when you see all the bright colors, knowing that you can be engaged with family, and so it is, the technology digital age is, It's hard to navigate and hard to, motivate some people. But like you said, the outcome is I get to talk more to my loved ones. I don't necessarily have to press the button to have somebody call in and help me set up the iPad because that can be challenging. Now I just have to use the same remote control. And if I lose the remote control, I can probably find it quicker because it's neon orange,

Todd: 27:00

right? Exactly. All of that is true. absolutely. we wanted to, I have an article, on my linkedin called design for feeling, and so we want to design the user experience to create a feeling of, Autonomy, independence, joy, delight, connection. we want the user to feel all those things when they use our system, right? Because think about trying like an iPad, for example, it's I, I need help. Somebody has to come in and launch something and sign me into something. And there's a feeling of dependence, not independence. And lack of autonomy. we really want to beef up on the digital autonomy as our physical autonomy is starting to wane and we're losing physical independence. We want to try to counteract that with as much digital independence as we can. And we have to do that with very intentional, UX design, that's optimized for this user.

Erin: 28:05

And I will add this thinking about. How you were really just describing digital independence with physical dependence. One of the ways to think about this and for you to think about in the future. we protect our residents and our older adults by giving them digital independence that can protect them because I have seen people lose their fortune. I have seen. And their fortune could only be a hundred thousand dollars. It could be 50, 000, but they just gave it away. They bought a cruise that they can't get their money back, or they're talking to people from a different country. And lots of things happen.

Todd: 28:52

Yeah.

Erin: 28:53

This product is actually a safe way for them to have digital independence because it removes the negative consequences of making bad choices. And there is power to that. because the scams are just getting better and better

Todd: 29:16

out of control.

Erin: 29:18

Yes. there's that element that's really important as well.

Todd: 29:22

Definitely appreciate that. That is true. it's a very private, it's a, we think of it like a walled garden, like nobody can get in unless the person wants them in there. family care team staff. Otherwise, no spam, no fraud, no robo caught. Nothing like that can get through. So

Erin: 29:40

yeah,

Todd: 29:40

good point.

Erin: 29:41

That's important. thank you. This was really great. for me as an entrepreneur and then Even as a senior living leader, to be able to listen to your story and Odessa Connect story and know the depth of getting something right takes time and not everybody has three years, right? But six months can feel like three years. and to me, the creativity side, allow yourself to feel free to be creative because when you do allow yourself that quiet time, like you said, staring at the wall, whatever, then you can solve the problems. Don't get frustrated because of all the problems. Just solve them one at a time.

Todd: 30:34

Love that take away, because the creativity, it needs that, time to incubate, you, it has to have that sort of just wandering and thinking and exploring, time and space or it can't. get out.

Erin: 30:50

Yeah. And the root of the problem, too.

Todd: 30:53

You can

Erin: 30:53

have a really great idea and you're just missing that small little piece that was in front of you the entire time. And so you sought support, you brought people in y'all are just, spit balling things. And then all of a sudden, it's What about the TV? And that was it. You

Todd: 31:10

just got to stay alive long enough to get to that moment, and so many startups, don't make it that long. the runway runs out, the ramp runs out, people get frustrated, bored off on other things. So easy to, not make it to that point. critical point,

Erin: 31:33

or listen to the wrong people too.

Todd: 31:35

really

Erin: 31:36

how many people were telling you that maybe you should stop?

Todd: 31:41

Tons. Most investors, the thing about hardware, it's like, you can't build a remote control. You never done that before. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, thank you. I'm going to do it. fortunately my investors were so patient. And you can imagine we're a year and a half into this and nothing's worked yet. We spent all this money, all this time. And then I show up one day and say, we need to build a remote control and I don't know how to do it. So that was not a good day. But here we are.

Erin: 32:12

Yeah, pays off, it's a great, it's a great story of perseverance and really knowing, and then whose voice do you listen to? How do you dial those down? Staying true to you, listening to your intuition. there's so much here and I just appreciate you sharing that with us and motivating. I didn't understand how closely linked entrepreneurship and senior living leadership is until I became on the other side, because we just aren't taught to think that way. And I think that it does open us up, expands our minds to think about things differently, by listening to stories and. And paralleling them, yeah, we all the time. I hear that all the time. I hear all the negative voices all the time. Who am I going to listen to? Why am I going to listen to them? all those things. So I appreciate you sharing your story and creating a product that will change the lives of people that can't see as well that want to be connected that are isolated that, need protection from people who want to take everything they have. It's very. Important and I'm glad you're doing it.

Todd: 33:26

thank you Erin. I really do appreciate that.

Erin: 33:28

You're welcome And so if they need it, so what is the website for them to contact someone or learn more about Odessa connect?

Todd: 33:36

it's just odessa connect. tv

33:39

If you go to the show notes of this podcast episode, there is a QR code that you can scan to get your Odessa Connect for your loved one.

Erin: 33:49

All right. thank you so much And if this is something that you're interested in You Or if you, thought this story was inspiring, just like I did, share this episode with one other person and, help impact their lives in a positive way too. And as always, aspire for more, for you.