The Apex Podcast

Casual Tuesday: A First-Gen Entrepreneur's Journey, The Growing Trend of Pickleball, and Google's Medical AI Innovation

July 11, 2023 • Apex Communications Network

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You think you've got grit? Wait till you hear Andrew's journey of blazing the entrepreneurial trail as a first-gen business founder in our latest episode. Offering a fresh perspective on the challenges and victories that come with being the pioneer in your family to venture into the world of business. 

Speaking of firsts, we have an exciting discussion about RJ's newfound obsession - pickleball. This trending sport has more to it than meets the eye, with opportunities for financial growth and even collectors' items like the coveted Ben Johns rookie card.

But what's a game without injury risks? Especially when majority of the players are over 60. As we delve into the world of pickleball, we also touch upon the importance of using quality equipment to prevent injuries. Moving from sports to tech, we explore Google's latest innovation, Med Palm. This AI tool is not just a product of technological advancement, but a potential game-changer in bringing medical expertise to remote corners of the world. And let's not forget about its ability to flag potential treatment issues, raising a new wave of data-led healthcare.

We wrap up with a reflection on the lessons we've gleaned from our entrepreneurial journey: a series of 52 theses that has shaped our company's growth. From Ohio to the wider world, the advice we've received has been instrumental in our expansion. We hope our experiences inspire you just as much as they've empowered us. So tune in, as we continue this riveting conversation in our next episode. Prepare to be enlightened, entertained, and inspired.

Follow Us on Social:

Jan Almasy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-almasy-57063b34

RJ Holliday: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-j-holliday-jr-b470a6204/

James Warnken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswarnken

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Website: https://www.apexcommunicationsnetwork.com



Speaker 2:

Beyond alabaster dude, you'll learn something in one piece. No one really ever dies, ever Reason you'll. You'll think a character died Like ten years real time and then all of a sudden they just show back up.

Speaker 1:

Noted, all right. Well, good morning RJ what's going on? not a whole lot, brother, how was your weekend?

Speaker 2:

Very good, very, very, very good. We um, it's been what two weeks since we've been in here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, i think we've just been releasing, you know, interviews this past week I know it was fourth of July weekend and then we also released an episode With a guy named Andrew From company called first-gen entrepreneurs And Having some really, really fun good success with that episode. It's got like 200 something downloads already. So if you haven't listened to that one, go back in our. I think it's the most recent episode. It's called cultivating community and support for first-generation business owners. But basically, andrew, he started this community because he is the He's the first person in his family to ever start a business.

Speaker 1:

And he realized when he was talking to other entrepreneurs That many of them had at least one other person in their family that had started a business if not their direct parent Had started a company. And I was like, well, that tracks. I mean, that's, that's exactly, you know, a big reason for my motivation for starting a business. Because I had my dad to lean on. Yeah, and he kind of said he was like, well, exactly, you had somebody to lean on when I started the business. It felt like I. There was nobody in my inner circle that understood anything of what I was talking about whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

So he created this community called first-gen. You can find him on LinkedIn. I think it's first to Jen, like the number one st Jen g en dot biz. I'm pretty sure is there a website? Let me confirm that. Yeah, first gen dot biz. So if you are listening to this and you're, you know the first person in your family or your you know immediate Surroundings to ever start a business and you are feeling a little bit crazy because nobody understands what you're talking about when you, when you say you know starting a business is difficult or you know you feel stuck. That's a great community to to take a look at, andrew seems like a really, really great dude. So I would go back and listen to that episode, see if you buy with what he's got going on and, if you do, go check out his community well.

Speaker 2:

What are you That definitely hands out? Does the Try and think? outside of my aunt who has her doctor's office, i don't think anybody else has really started like a full, a full fledged business from from the ground up, and even the I Think even the medical side is a little bit different, because there's a lot that my aunt was able to draw from In terms of, you know, other family practice or, i guess, what's what's expected of her.

Speaker 1:

You know, i mean right well, i feel like it's different in the medical field because you're, or like, any practitioner. It could be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, you could be a dentist, you could be an occupational therapist, physical therapist, chiropractor you know any of those professional fields um, one of the tracks that they teach you about in school is opening your own clinic, you know, oh really i didn't know that yeah, or at least they like help prepare you for some of that.

Speaker 1:

Uh, and i don't know that for certain, but i would assume that there's at least some type of structure around that. Um, and to your point, you can, there's a lot of people you can look at and find to as examples where you know what i need a nurse, i need a front desk person, i need chairs and death scopes and everything like that right? yeah, there's not really a um. At least some of those professional fields have a roadmap of source.

Speaker 1:

But, like you know, i mean when we were starting this, none of us were. There's no like degree track, or i guess there are degree tracks for marketing and entrepreneurship and stuff, but there's not really not opening a firm. No no, there's not, really. Uh, there's not a playbook for how to open a consulting firm.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, um, at least not a direct one true that, but uh, as you asked, my weekend was actually very good. Last weekend was nice, with the fourth of july and everything like that, um, a lot of, not a lot of, not a lot of stuff going on, actually, surprisingly. Usually i feel like i have a lot more um graduation parties and stuff like that this time of year, but there wasn't really. And then, with fourth of july being in the middle of the week, most of the parties were like on, what was it?

Speaker 1:

the first or the second? yeah, the first or the second.

Speaker 2:

So it was all spread out, it wasn't. I didn't have like multiple places, i needed to be all at one time. So i went to you know one fourth of july day party on the first and then just had a nice relaxing day with the family on tuesday for for the actual fourth of july and then this this past weekend my grandpa actually turned 96 holy cow yeah, we had a big big party over at my aunt's house for him.

Speaker 2:

All the whole family showed up, so that was really nice. Um, and then if there weren't parties, i was uh, i was out playing my my new favorite sport of all time pickleball that's taking the world by storm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i can tell it's all over the place now people love it, and then a trickle down of that.

Speaker 2:

I've been watching wimbledon because it's all. It's also a racket sport, so i've been watching that.

Speaker 1:

But no, it's, it's um, it's being so crazy for those that, for people that are listening to this that might not know what pickleball is, like, what, what it all is pickleball so it's been around since like the mid-delay 80s, and the best way that i'm able to describe it to people is it's medium-sized tennis you can?

Speaker 2:

you can fit two full pickleball courts or possibly. I think i think something said like like perfect square footage wise, you can fit four pickleball courts inside one regulation tennis court, but that means that they would be edge to edge, so it's not. It's not technically playable, but square footage wise. On the size of a court it can fit inside. Four can fit inside of one tennis court that's about.

Speaker 1:

That's like with, with the doubles lanes included.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that would be like everything like side by side, which is obviously not how you're going to build a, build a park to do that, but it's primarily played doubles. But you can, you can play singles and you basically have a paddle that is, components wise, very similar to a ping pong paddle, but just on a larger scale, and you play with a wiffle ball. So if anybody's ever hit a wiffle ball around, you can. You can really crank into that thing and it really doesn't ever fly all that far, which is more than likely why it's on a much smaller court.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, it's, it's medium-sized tennis and it's a hell of a lot of fun so i can, you can you add spin to the wiffle ball, other stuff like that, yeah because, it's with are the paddles. Are the paddles like sticky, like a ping pong paddle, or how to?

Speaker 2:

so it's. It's different. It's similar in shape, just kind of blow blown up to like an actual paddle, like like full-sized paddle that in comparison to like a ping pong paddle. But the texture on the front of it is not like a ping pong paddle, where it's where it's sticky, where it's got like the foam or whatever yeah you can add spin to the ball and it just it usually depends on like what type kind of like graphite surface you have.

Speaker 2:

So i've seen i've seen wood paddles, which you can find in a lot of like starter sets and stuff off of like amazon which i do not recommend, but most of the paddles are like a graphite and carbon fiber like mixture and some and i've seen paddles where they're, they're pretty. It's like pretty smooth plastic on the front to more expensive ones that it's like it almost feel you could grind your nails down on on the front of it. It's like very weak sandpaper Which obviously adds a lot of control control to the ball, if that's, if that's the way that you like to play or whatever. But oh yeah, i've seen it started.

Speaker 2:

I was getting a whole bunch of like YouTube shorts of People playing pickleball and then I talked to Jenny about it and she ordered some paddles and then I was like, oh you know, i actually like My friend Xavier Smith. He had been playing for like a month because he had a park like right outside of His house and Perry and some older people Decided to like take him in and kind of teach him. So I Had asked him if he'd ever played before, because, if anybody knows Xavier, he's very outgoing.

Speaker 2:

He's playing pickleball three days a week. This week He's going to like two separate concerts and he's in like a, like a Wednesday night volleyball week, saying volleyball week like the. Way, way, way too much, if I'm being completely honest so.

Speaker 2:

Like two weeks ago we went out on a Wednesday. I really liked it. I like talked to my friends That like Brock and Jordan and Louise and all them for like a week, trying to get them to go out with, like go to a court, like after we lifted, and it went from me not being able to get them out there to us having a 20-person pickleball group chat. Holy crap, dude, in a week and a half. And that's not even everybody that's in there because it's iPhone only. So there's some that like like Brock's not in there because he has got the green bubbles?

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, i have.

Speaker 2:

I wake up. I wake up every morning to text message Hey, we're playing on going out at 8 am. Hey, we're gonna go at 5 pm. Tonight, with the Sun goes down a little bit, we went to the courts at Stadium Park next to Hall of Fame Village and those lines are always like Packed with people from.

Speaker 2:

It was all you. It was pretty, was all us Like, like almost got to the point where we were running the old, older people like just out of there or whatever It was. It was nuts, it was absolutely crazy. So now, like we I have to be conscious because I'm not trying to Be like the roaming pack of pickleball players, that bully, the bully, the elderly out of their favorite sports. But yeah, like Saturday morning eight, saturday morning at 8 am We had 14 people out out there playing It's Stadium Park until about 12 30 in the afternoon.

Speaker 2:

Wow so I've got an iPhone. Yeah, I can.

Speaker 1:

I'll get you.

Speaker 2:

I'll get you in there if you're interested. Where did you? where did?

Speaker 1:

you buy these paddles at, oh, i'll do like Dix or so. You said Amazon's not the move.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, because a lot of the like the cheap put it this way We have enough people that have enough paddles that you can just come Say I have, i have five paddles I, i, jenny bought, jenny bought a four pack. It was like wood ones and I didn't like it. So then we were supposed to go play at at Jackson a couple. Yeah, i, literally. He just speak of the devil. He just messaged in the group message Going home was this say He says anyone playing today at 5, 30 C, it's all, it's holy cow man, These, some of these paddles are like 300 bucks.

Speaker 1:

Oh dude.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's, there's ones that have a cut out.

Speaker 2:

Down at the like where the paddle meets the handle and whatnot for. So you get less swing with like swing resistance in. But I will tell you I got my paddle because Obviously I lift him. I'm a little, you know, heavy-handed, i would say so I wanted to heavier paddle And I spent about 80 to $100 on mine from Dix, dix out of like a lot of good selection single paddles And the in the back of golf galaxy by like some of their tennis stuff and whatever. It makes a huge, huge difference in the way that they're made and the stuff that they're made out of.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, even the ones that are at Dix or like 50, 60 bucks.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, dude, But I will tell you, after playing with a like a wood one, and going to one of those, you, you won't want to, you won't ever want to go back.

Speaker 1:

I might, i might, have to get my dad into this when he gets back. I feel like this would be a great way for him to stay active. It was, tennis is a little bit too tiring at this point. I mean, he's like creeping up on 70, you know.

Speaker 2:

Well, okay, so two things. It was funny the. What was the other day? I was at my parents and my. I accidentally pump, like pop my trunk instead of like starting my car or whatever, and I go out to leave and the two of them are playing in the driveway. They saw the paddles in the back and my mom is just laughing her absolute ass off having a blast in the driveway And I'm like, okay, i see the, i see the appeal now and then, funny enough, the. The. Is it the CDC? Or who puts out like health and insurance?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah.

Speaker 2:

They put out a statement that there has been a 500 million dollar increase in pickleball insurance claims in the last year. Nine out of ten pickleball related injuries are people over the age of 60 years old. Okay, maybe not well, no, it is, it's, it's, oh, it's, it's, it's low cardio and stuff like that. But you get more. Obviously, if you get more people out there doing it, you're just going to get more injuries in general.

Speaker 1:

You know what I mean right, right, yeah Well, yeah, that's true. I mean, it wasn't really on the scene and now it's on the national scene, so of course it's gonna, it's gonna spike and then level out.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, dude, The, the impact of the stuff has been crazy. So, like Brock's brother, xavier, he does like He flips a lot of stuff. So like he'll buy shoes and in re-sell he'll buy sports cards. So Ben Johns is the. What many would consider like the, like the number one male pickleball player in the scene is he's incredible at the game. The I think it's the, ppa is the name of the league, the professional pickleball Association or something like that made a rookie card for him.

Speaker 2:

In a limited batch Xavier bought one. Bought one because Someone had tipped him off and said like you look at, like Michael Jordan's who, they produced like 10 times the amount of cards that the, the Ben Johns PPA rookie card they made for him And with the rate that it's growing, it's looking to surpass other sports And it's just basically speculation. Saying that his rookie card could like last year alone, i think, a LeBron or not a LeBron, michael Jordan or LeBron, i forget what he said sold for like $350,000 his rookie and there's like there's a hundred thousand of them Like that were produced at the time of his rookie season. There's only like five thousand Ben Johns cards. So before Xavier had ever even played pickleball He had one of his, his rookie card, like future investment. Oh yeah, i'm like.

Speaker 1:

I just pulled up an article from resell calendar And the title this is the title of the article is the Ben Johns pickleball rookie card a future Holy Grail.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly crazy.

Speaker 1:

It's like you can buy. Let's hear you can currently buy a Ben Johns rookie card in good condition can currently be purchased for around 20 to 30 dollars. Autographed copies You're going as high as couple a hundred bucks. As of this writing, the most recent sale for Michael Jordan rookie card is Is around the hundred and fifty thousand dollar range in perfect. In perfect condition with cards in poor condition generally selling around the two thousand dollar mark. And Then they're comparing it with like Mike trout and Tom Brady And they have like a chart on the growth of the sport and it's like surpassing Basketball and football as far as total number of players year over year. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it's just been. It's. It's been crazy. I didn't like. We've met a couple people at the court who just like joined in on our games. That I've literally never talked to before, and now They're in the group message asking people to go and play. It's just it's. It's expanded into an entire like.

Speaker 1:

They have a community now. Yeah, exactly and I think that's really cool and I did that on accident. I love that. That's why we pay you to big.

Speaker 2:

So if anybody listening to this is is interested in playing or more information, we're. We're usually out there like Mondays, mondays, wednesday, monday nights, wednesday nights and then like Saturday mornings.

Speaker 1:

Yes, if you're in the can area, you want to hang out. place the pickleball, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

We've been we've been.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like Jackson. So we've been at Jackson, we've gone to Botlar Park, we've been to Perry Park. Stadium Park has 10 courts like the most, which is usually why we go there, because we're not trying to like Take over an entire facility. But, like I was talking to Andrew Haas Over the weekend and whatnot, and he said that because I had thought at Jackson they took over one of the tennis courts to build the the eight Pickleball courts that they have there, and I was wrong. They actually just extended it and added those on and I guess it's already in the budget for either later this year or Next year to add even more.

Speaker 2:

Wow because dude Jackson is slaying below and all hours. As soon as it stopped raining on Saturday, people were out there. Like seven of the eight courts were being used.

Speaker 1:

Holy cow, yeah, holy cow, that's cool. That's cool. There's actually a guy in the area named John. We talked probably about a year and a half ago about he wants to. He was launching a pickleball app Social app for pickleball, really. Yeah, i'm forgetting what the name of it is off the top of my head right now, but I'll have to. I'll have to go and see if I can find the name of that app again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if he uh if, if he's looking for People to use it, i might know a couple people right, right, yeah, here it is.

Speaker 1:

It's called Oh it's literally just called PB, the PB social app, pickleball social app. It looks like they haven't posted since March. I don't know if this is. If it's up to date, i'll have to reach out to him and see if he's still working on that idea.

Speaker 1:

Yeah that's cool. I Well, i don't have anything, as, like you know, drastically rapidly growing as pickleball On my side of the house I am. I've got a cool newsletter that I subscribe to you, though that I think would be super valuable for people. So I actually got this from James, and if you're this is your first time listening and you don't know who James is, james is our Lead, our chief operations officer, lead developer and also the, the Head of our digital accessibility division here at apex, and he's super, super in the tech and also doesn't have a whole lot of time Because he's super busy all the time, and so he and I always are sharing resources, trying to keep each other up to date on what's going on in the world and everything like that. We found he found this newsletter called TLDR dot tech. So if you just go to your URL browser and you just type in TLDR dot tech, it'll pull up a subscription option. It's a once a daily email and they take approximately three to five minutes To scan, but it's linked to like larger articles and other stuff like that, and you can subscribe to Updates about AI, updates about marketing technology, updates about Economics, updates about a whole bunch of different things, and then every day they send you these like summary sheets. So I signed up for it And I think I signed up for, like you know, things inside of the marketing and advertising space, things inside of the AI space, and then startups and programming or the four categories that I selected. And Here's just an example of one of the articles that they forwarded to me this morning that I thought was super, super cool.

Speaker 1:

Google's actually developing an AI chatbot for medical use That is already being tested at the Mayo Clinic. They're calling it Med Palm And basically it's an AI tool designed to kind of be like a sounding board for nurses, physicians and nurses. I'll just look like that to like plug in details about a patient's diagnosis and then the AI like leverages all of the previous scientific knowledge that's plugged into that AI and Then it takes all of those variables that you input from the patient and then gives you potential treatment options For all of those different variables that you put in. And they're saying that you know It's in the early stages right now. So obviously it's it's still got a lot of kings and stuff in it, but they're basically Saying that it's gonna be crazy effective for, like countries where you may have, like internet access or data access, and, for those of you that aren't familiar with, you know how data actually works in like third world countries.

Speaker 1:

When I was in Uganda, there was a good amount of people that had phones with data, you know. So just because you're in a third world country doesn't mean you have don't have access to data, but you may not have access to a trained physician, right? so imagine all these nurses in third world countries that you know May not be able to lean on the the knowledge of a physician, could take lab values from patients and then have, like an AI assisted physician to help them diagnose and Treat if there's not a physician within location or if you're in the hospital and You're, you know, had dealing with a really, really complicated case and like the ICU, you know we only have so much computing power as humans and a lot of times physicians are. You know They have, they have to see 20 or 30 patients on a floor and that's just the one floor that they manage. You know they may be doing that on multiple units throughout the day. So picture not just, you know, 50 variables for one patient, but 50 variables multiplied by 60 patients that you're seeing. So if you could take all those variables and plug it in and then just get immediate feedback and then kind of bounce back and forth with this AI, you there's like there they're saying that in the future there's less opportunity for slips and the AI will be able to catch on to trends and data and And account for a bunch of different variables. Let's say, you know, one of the most common mistakes that I used to catch as a nurse is Physicians would see you know a disease process or something and prescribe a medication But neglect to see inside of the patient's chart that they had a previous issue with that medication. Well, in a previous hospital stay with, the AI would catch that and flag that for the position and say, hey, you know, this is a, this is not a potential treatment option. Even though this is effective, this is not a potential treatment option for this patient because of this issue. Yeah, so I'm really, really curious to see Where that continues to go. But that's an example of something that TLVR would send you And I'm finding it super, super valuable because I as well don't have a whole lot of time, like this week.

Speaker 1:

I'm, you know, full of meetings. We're recording podcasts. I've got three podcasts and recording. This week I'm building two presentations, because I'm speaking to a group of Air Force startups next week And then I'm speaking to another networking group the week after that. So I've got a lot of prep work to do. So I can't listen to, you know, two hour-long podcasts anymore, unfortunately. I just I have to focus on creating things.

Speaker 2:

So this TL hours in the day.

Speaker 1:

No, there's never is. But this TL VR lets me feel like I'm keeping up with the times without sacrificing a whole lot of my hours in the day. So, definitely, highly, highly recommend that newsletter. I'll make sure that I link to that in the description Of this episode, but that's something that I found really really valuable. Nice, i mean honestly really that's kind of all I got. That's a good recap. Yeah, it's a good. That's all I got for this morning. I hope everybody is listening.

Speaker 2:

Had a great 4th of July weekend.

Speaker 1:

And has a good week coming up. We're already, you know, 10 days into the third quarter. Oh yeah, just kind of wild We'll be. We'll be back to our our list next week, but we just want to give everybody an update.

Speaker 2:

Since we, since we missed last week's yeah, so next week we'll be back onto the 52 theses and To give you a little bit of a sneak peek into the ideas that we're going to address in next week's episode is.

Speaker 1:

Here are the three points that we're going to go over. So the first one is if you have to pull rank, you've already lost respect. I Sometimes, if things start to get harder, it means you're headed in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

There you go, and the moment you gain complete control is the moment you realize you actually don't have any control. So those will be the three, the three points that RJ and I kind of dive into next week. So if you're curious about those, i would recommend going back and listening to some of the earlier three things, or not? that's my newsletter. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back to some of the earlier three things, or not? That's my newsletter. Three things I learned last week.

Speaker 1:

Go back and listen to some of the 52 theses episodes So you can get an idea of what we're doing. But we're working through a list of Statements and, you know it, pieces of advice that RJ and I have received over the years, yes, and and kind of giving our perspective and why they're important to us and and how we choose to apply those on a daily basis. Now that we're, you know, leading a company with, with multiple staff and and growing outside of you know the state of Ohio and Everything like that. So would love to have you hang out with us next week when we, when we rejoin that we'll talk to you guys then.

Speaker 1:

All right later. everybody Have a great week You.