Here are the complete interview transcripts to our December 7th podcast interview with founder of The Genius Network, Joe Polish:
Joe Polish: Hello, this Joe Polish, founder of Genius Network.com and today I've got my good friend, Mr. Steve Krein on the line and we're going to talk about a thing that Steve's got going on called Organized Wisdom. And the website is OrganizedWisdom.com and Steve, can you hear me OK?
Steven Krein: Yes, perfect thanks, Joe.
Joe: OK, well I'm in Tempe, Arizona at my headquarters here, and I know you're in New York. At least I think you're in New York.
Steven: I am in New York.
Joe: OK, good. We've known each other for a long time. We've done interviews before in the past for Genius Network and you've always had amazing insight to share about your philosophies on business and growth and profitability from small companies all the way up to major league massive public companies and industry sectors and all of these various things that you have a an enormous amount of skill-set in and that you've been doing for most of your entrepreneurial career.
You've got this thing called Organized Wisdom and I'm just going to refer to it as, if someone listening knows absolutely nothing about it, because frankly at the time that we're doing this interview, I've purposely refrained from finding out anything about Organized Wisdom in any great detail.
Because I wanted to not only, be an interviewer today with you to, basically pull out of your brain what this is all about, but also just for the benefit of everyone that's listening to this right now, I will be learning as I'm simultaneously interviewing you. So I'm going to ask you questions that are from my own personal curiosity and things that I think would best help people understand this new innovation that you have created.
I know you have done extraordinarily well in business in your entrepreneurial career. I want to you to give a background, a thumbnail sketch of who Steve Krein is. And then go in to what is Organized Wisdom, and then I will hit you with some questions.
Steven: Perfect. Thanks Joe. I got started about 12 years ago in the online marketing space when I helped launch a Website for lawyers called Law Journal Extra. It was really one of the first websites and programs that lawyers had to interact online. That was in 1994.
That really led to me starting what I really used as my first business with real equity value. It's called Promotions.com and Webstakes.com, and I started it with one of my best friends from high school Dan Feldman. What Promotions.com and Webstakes.com was were two businesses very complimentary.
One was an online marketing technology and services company that helped consumer package goods companies create, run and really profit from sweepstakes and contests, and instant win games. On the flip side we had a sweepstakes Site called Webstakes.com that allowed advertisers to reach the people who were engaged with their brands. That helped us really reach a very large targeted audience.
At the end of the day, Promotions.com raised about $50 million of venture and strategic capital. We took the company public in 1999. In 2002, we sold the company to iVillage. But along the way, we reached a market cap of about $500 million dollars, grew our revenues from pretty much nothing to about $27 million in four years; and built a pretty large database of close to 20 million consumers.
So, I have extensive experience in the online marketing world and stayed on at iVillage for a little bit and then really started coaching entrepreneurs on how to create equity value in their businesses. Which really led to Organized Wisdom which is really what I want to focus on today.
Organized Wisdom is a health focused social networking and user generated health content Site. In other words, it's really a next generation of Web M.D., a health information Site for consumers.
Joe: You are going in to the elaboration on it. Because you said "Social Network." What exactly does that mean in laymen's terms?
Steven: Social networking as people know it today they often refer to things like My Space and Facebook as examples of very large scale social networks usually targeting a younger audience obviously as indicated by the success of these Sites. But it's really what's happening and has always happened with people connecting with each other for different purposes.
For the purpose we are looking at it, it's helping people connect with each other so they can make better health decisions by sharing valuable health experiences with each other.
Joe: Got you. OK. Why did you get interested in this? Because obviously I know you've come across a bazillion opportunities in your world, and there's a lot of different things that people can do, and what made you focus on this one?
Steven: Right after I sold Promotions.com to iVillage my wife and I were had been trying to conceive our first child. And I'll jump to the end which is we have two beautiful little girls right now, 3.5 and 1.5. But we were having infertility issues, and we had gone to see the best doctor in New York City to help us figure out what was wrong and what we needed to do to be able to conceive.
The net of the whole thing was, ultimately we were able to find a solution and get to the right treatments and doctors and figure it out, not by the doctor we were going to see, but by friends and family and people that we knew. As I started to just think about that and recognize that most people when they get sick or when they have challenges or any conditions, not only are they going to see a doctor, but they're actually reaching out to family and friends.
What I really had thought about was, God imagine if, not only could you search for expert health content on the Internet and see your doctor, but what if you could extend beyond your own personal network in the physical world and reach out to a much bigger network online and connect with people who have similar conditions and experiences, but have answers to questions that you don't even know, you have yet.
Which is really people who have been where you're going who could explain to you what works, what doesn't work and what they would do differently next time and recommend treatments or books or websites that they have found useful in the whole thing.
About a year ago, Unity Stoakes who was the Chief Marketing Officer of Promotions.com, and I've known him for probably nine years, and I started the company and have been working really at just trying to make a new Website that helps people make better health decisions, by tapping in to their social network.
Joe: OK, what is your mission with all of this? If we were to fast forward to the future, what would you like to see happen?
Steven: We want to be able to help people make better health decisions, and the vehicle we see to doing that is allow people to tap in to, in one place through a trusted brand like Organized Wisdom. Tap in to expert health content, user generated health content that comes from people with experience and Pharma created content.
The Pharmaceutical company and industry created content, so that people can collaborate with each other and then make the best health decision possible.
Joe: OK, let me also ask you a question, Steve, because I always like breaking down things to their simplest means possible. If I didn't have a Website in front of me, and I wanted to explain this to say, my brother, or my family or a friend, what would I say to that person to give them a nutshell understanding of what Organized Wisdom is and if there is something like this that even exists?
Steven: Well, I guess there are two sides of it. One is, if you were talking to someone who has a valuable experience to share. Somebody who just got finished with breast cancer treatment or somebody who is dealing with diabetes or somebody who is living with Celiac Disease or Lyme Disease, and they have simply learned the hard way, what works, and what doesn't work, and what places and people can help them, one level you can encourage them to go to Organized Wisdom and share their health experiences with other people.
We have actually designed and filed for a patent the process of turning an experience in to wisdom for other people, specifically around health. So, you can actually go got OrganizedWisdom.com and we walk you through, actually I walk you through with an audio on every page, the process of sharing what happened to you, what worked, what didn't work, what were your biggest lessons learned.
And then, what are the recommended people such as doctors or others health professionals. What are the places such as hospitals or treatment centers, or a product such as a particular drug or other medical product or Website or book that you would recommend. So, at one level I would want you to encourage people with valuable health experiences that are resources for other people to share their health experiences and organized wisdom.
On the flip side, for those people who are just diagnosed or just have symptoms, you can go today to OrganizedWisdom.com and find the exact same expert health information that you'll find on WebMD and Yeahhoo Health and MSN Health etc., but what you'll also find is a growing database of consumer experiences around these conditions.
So we've got about 6500 health conditions to choose from that might have wisdom from other people in it, and ultimately the idea that you can not only see what the experts say, but what other people who have the diseases or have had the disease or someone in their family has had it, what they've learned and then you get obviously just a much better picture of what you need to do to take the next step.
Joe: Gotcha. OK, so basically just to cover any other things you'd like to talk about in regards to you know, how does it work? Some one goes to the site and they can actually watch tutorials and videos. Is there anything else?
Steven: No, it's not videos; it's actually what we call wisdom cards. These wisdom cards contain all this information about the person's health experience, and it can be anonymously shared or could be shared with someone who actually puts in all their information. They can upload a picture. They can have links to their website, a bio about themselves. And then what happens is when people go read these wisdom cards about a particular health experience, they can rate it as helpful or not helpful, so it gets ranked among all the content that's shared. They can save it to a permanent profile in OrganizedWisdom that they continue going back to.
So they actually go to OrganizedWisdom.com/skrein, you'll find my wisdom profile. So what I've got on that page besides a picture of myself, my bio, and a link to my website, you'll also find the wisdom that I've created and that I've shared. You'll find wisdom that I've found valuable that other people have shared, and you'll also find expert content that I've saved for other people to use. So I've created also my own little health center where all the information that I've found useful, and all the information that I've shared in one place so that I can refer someone that I meet that might have infertility issues or have asthma to my wisdom profile so they can learn what I know about this disease or condition.
Joe: Interesting, OK. I mean that's quite fascinating because what it is, you know the thing that I'm getting from this and I've gotten from you in past conversations in regards to this, now actually sitting and talking about, and recording it so people can pretty much eavesdrop in on this conversation is that all kinds of information is available everywhere. There's data everywhere, there's tons of stuff if you scour the Internet.
Steven: In fact, there is so much expert health information online now, that it's become one level of commodity. I mean it's really so available that we actually partnered with a company called HealthWise which we've found just to be a terrific medical encyclopedia and drug database that is also available as the main foundation of content from WebMD, Yeahhoo Health, MSN Health, and WellHealth. We've really found that the expert content is a commodity, but what's lacking is truly valuable content from ordinary people that is put into a meaningful format so that people can digest it.
You can find out how helpful that information was to other people. So what we see is, we think the best health information is actually not even online yet, it's really walking around the streets of your town, and within your family and friends and people's heads because there's really been no valuable vehicle for sharing their health content until OrganizedWisdom. So that's really what we're trying to do, unleash this powerful force of user experiences in a way that's valuable for other people.
Joe: Yes, I guess at what point in the organization process does data and just stuff that's out there floating around in people's heads that's never been documented to books and things that've been written, or that've been written in articles or doctor's opinions or research of course. When does it go from the stage of being data to what you would define as wisdom? What needs to happen?
Steven: It's a good question because what we actually spent a lot of time in the design of the Wisdom Wizard which is actually the process of turning your experience into wisdom. For us it really is the full story that will give somebody enough information to take action, at least at the level of getting a better handle on what they need to do next which might be call a certain doctor, or look at another website, or read a book, or ask a doctor about a drug.
So for us it means giving the full picture which includes that pieces of what happened to them. And we give people about a paragraph or two, about 1000 characters, for each question that they need to answer to have a complete wisdom card. So it's what happened to them. Actually first they can pick from any of these 6500 health topics so somebody might take diabetes or breast cancer or Lyme disease or celiac disease or testicular cancer and once they choose a topic, they then go through this process of what happened to them. And we like them to describe either when they got diagnosed, or how they've been living wit hit, or what happened to them with this specific situation. We then ask them what worked with a particular situation so many people could have got the test, they were diagnosed early, or they had gone to a certain doctor for a period of time then they changed doctors and finally found out what they had or they changed a certain drug and they actually are on a better drug now.
So therefore what worked is very, very important. We back that up with what didn't work so people can learn at least some of things that people should avoid or be careful of as they're going down that path for that particular disease or condition. And then finally, what were their biggest lessons learned with that particular situation. And then, really get some recommendations from that person, so recommended people, places, products, ideas and actions. And then once that wisdom card is created, we consider it wisdom.
But what will make that wisdom stand the test of time Joe, is the ability for people to interact with that wisdom. Maybe share some comments about that wisdom, so somebody might have a differing opinion. We let people say was it helpful or not helpful, so they can actually click a button and say this was helpful or wasn't helpful which gives it a ranking and you can actually see this is the 14th out of 140 cards about this particular disease so you can see where it stands among the whole body of wisdom, so we're really tapping the wisdom of the crowds.
And then there's buttons on every one of these pages so you can share this wisdom with other people. With the click of a button you can email this wisdom to somebody, you can save it to that profile I told you about earlier. You can print it out and bring it to the doctor so you can talk about the wisdom. But, until wisdom becomes tangible as an actually thing like a wisdom card, it doesn't become as useful to other people because what ends up happening is just like the pass along of any information which is thinking it's watered down as it gets passed on.
So when someone tells you about a particular new doctor or new treatment or new drug, sometimes when you actually tell somebody else about that and they tell somebody else, by the time it gets to the particular person that is trying to figure out what you were talking about, sometimes it's not in a actual story. So by actually having a wisdom card, you've got permanent documentation of this experience that people can now interact with.
Joe: Right, very interesting. Now, can anyone participate in this?
Steven: Anybody can participate in this. We are you know, first of all it's free and it's supported by advertising. The idea is to make this really a place where people can go and find out everything they need to know about a particular disease again from experts, users, and the pharm industry, and get a better picture. Again, free access to this is key.
What we're finding is that people who are really getting into sharing their health experiences are what we call, and we've found out are "patient experts" people who, because of their particular disease or condition or illness, have become experts. They've figured out the doctors to go to. They've figured out the drugs to be on. They've figured out the websites that are great, the books that are perfect, the network and the team that you might want to assemble to actually deal with this particular issue. These patient experts are in some cases the best place to go as a first step after you've gone to OrganizedWisdom.
So if God forbid I got Lyme disease or somebody I knew got Lyme disease, there's actually a woman who's filled out a wisdom card, who's actually literally spelled out that each step you take is critical in the process of getting diagnosed and treating Lyme disease. I would go to her before I'd go to a doctor first. Ultimately she's going to send you to a doctor, but she can help you navigate to the right doctor, to the right labs for your blood test, to the right lifestyle choices that you need to make to live with Lyme disease.
So these patient experts become almost as influential in many cases as health professionals. Now that being said, you're not going to go to them for treatment, what you're going to go to them for is wisdom. The navigation of the medical system, the way to go to find the right doctors and labs and drugs and things like that. So ultimately Organized Wisdom becomes a resource for people to help each other make better health decisions.
Joe: And that's wonderful, there's obviously so much value just in that process, which it is, you've just created an innovative process that could tremendously help enormous amounts of people. Now, a doctor as an example, would a doctor interact with Organized Wisdom differently than someone just looking for wisdom from other individuals.
Steven: Actually, what we're already setup for is the ability for a doctor to create a wisdom card or multiple wisdom cards and wisdom profiles. So in the case of a physician when you go to a doctor right now many times they will either hand you paper materials for you to read when you get diagnosed with a particular disease or condition, or they might send you to the web to look up stuff. And what we found is and easy way for a doctor to create a wisdom profile, an Organized Wisdom, and actually collect some of that expert information, that they would lead people to anyway. And then perhaps even share some of their own wisdom, not advice, and there's a big difference between advice and wisdom, this is what doctors learned as an example someone should ask themselves before they come ask the doctor or before they walk in the door. Certain things they might want to think about or find out so that they actually share just what their lessons are in dealing with a particular condition or disease. We actually see wisdom cards created by physicians and wisdom profiles as a result of when you register in Organized Wisdom, and everybody gets a profile. As a great way to give people simple way again of sharing health information, and because we've got this expert doctor reviewed content available on the site the doctors can actually create their own little health center and send their patients to those profiles to get access to the information that they want to give to their patients. Also, this is kind of interesting, we allow doctors as everyone else can to participate in the community so they can rank other wisdom cards and they will be able to comment on wisdom cards and they can share their advice. But the whole idea here is just to be able to collaborate together, so its doctors collaborating, and consumers or patients collaborating, and patient experts and caregivers, and we just see this as the most untapped resource for health information. While the Internet is the first place people go many times, friends and family are the other and we just think that unleashing your own network into a new environment, a new easy way to share information, can be so valuable and go so far towards this whole movement around where people are in charge of their health more and more everyday. We just want to give them some tools to make better health decisions.
Joe: Gotcha, very fascinating, this interview of course is for me to find out from you what this is all about, how it actually works. You are also looking for people to actually participate on an ongoing basis, because the more they do the more wisdom is compiled and created and made available for people. So right now what type of health stories are you looking for people to share?
Steven: We're looking for everyone to share any health stories. Obviously there are those conditions and illnesses that affect the largest group of people. Things like depression, diabetes, and cancer, whether its beast cancer, lung cancer, or brain caner, testicular cancer. Very chronic conditions that people will have sylillec disease or things that are now being and more and more people are being diagnosed with Lyme disease. And therefore because we've got 6500 health topics we're looking for anybody who has had any experience. One of the statements people make to me, "well I don't really have any wisdom to share," what I did was create the interview that anybody can go through, this wisdom wizard process which if you just click on the share wisdom button or create a wisdom card button on Organized Wisdom you can actually go through this process. I've crated the interview process to make sure that people realize that everybody has wisdom to share. I actually recorded audio using our friend Alex's software the audio generator so that every page of the wisdom wizard has me walking them through the questions to create their health experience transformation into wisdom. I want everybody to take a look at Organized Wisdom and literally just think about any condition or illness or situation that they have or maybe somebody in their family's had where they wish somebody had told them what they know now. And I've met very few people, in fact I don't think there's anybody that I've met and spoken to that doesn't have some wisdom that will help out the next person or next family that gets diagnosed with a particular disease or illness or condition. I just want to unleash this wisdom and help people unleash this wisdom and encourage everybody to go to organizedwisdom.com and at least try sharing their health experience.
Joe: One thing I absolutely agree with is that everybody has wisdom, it's just that a lot of times they've never seen a process that extracts it out of them or gives them a way to actually put it into some sort of organized fashion. It all starts with the right questions, and like you mentioned earlier, you have this whole process of asking people questions and they respond, and the responding and the organizing process, that's where wisdom is created.
Steven: The neat part is Joe, it takes five minutes. In five minutes your experience can be transformed into health wisdom. Think about that, and we're trying to make it simpler and faster too. But we wanted to make sure there is enough context in the story, we didn't just want to give people a blank piece of paper to share. So in less than five minutes you can impact somebody's life, maybe save a life, and help people learn something that they would have had to go through the experience themselves to actually get that wisdom, so five minutes of your time to create a wisdom card and impact people. I think that everybody should at least go and try it out.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. What about safety, is the site safe to use?
Steven: The basic idea is this site can be shared, people can share their health experience anonymously, you don't need to actually put your name and personal information in there. In fact we don't collect any really personally identifiable information, you can put your first and last name in if you want, you don't have to. You can upload a picture if you'd like and if you're comfortable. The basic idea is that these stories can be shared anonymously and from the sharing side privacy is very important we have a very strict privacy policy, we don't sell information that we do have, and obviously because everything is published on the open website so that anybody can search this information. Just be cautions that what you're sharing is going to be available to everybody so keep that in mind. On the user side because everything is ranked and rated there's also a reporting function. So if there's ever a wisdom card that's created that somebody either thinks is wrong or is potentially harmful it could be reported to us and we take it down. For the most part what you have is wisdom of crowds process where the best stuff goes to the top the worst stuff goes to the bottom, and the bad truly harmful stuff can be pulled out. But because it's and open community platform we haven't seen any wisdom cards come up at all that are anything but helpful. And again the process that we take people through, because of the questions we ask, lead people to be helpful with what they have to say not just complaining. The old ad is as our friend Dan Sullivan always says is that "you can either create or complain but you can't do both." We've taken that notion that we want people to create wisdom for other people, not just get online and complain, and I think that's what you find in a lot of message boards and chat rooms, people complaining. We don't want that in Organized Wisdom, what we really what is valuable, useful wisdom, for other people to benefit from.
Joe: Yeah, that's a good point, it's actually a great point, and speaking of Dan Sullivan, he talks a lot about the power of questions. And I remember him talking about the Thomas Edison quote, "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes figuring out the right question to ask myself, and five minutes on the answer." When people are out there looking for answers its nice to figure out the right question, and what you're doing with Organized Wisdom here is presenting people with questions that lead to the creation not the complaining about the problem but the solution to a problem in the form of what you are referring to as wisdom and made available in a way so that anyone can access it, that is just so powerful. Question, you've already touched on it a little bit and I obviously see the difference to a large degree, I just want to make this available for people out there, a more elaborate explanation. What's the difference from your site and WebMD?
Steven: First of all WebMD is the granddaddy of the space and everybody loves WebMD from the perspective of the medical encyclopedia if you want to find out expert health information, you go to WebMD. It's actually the benchmark that we use as our own view of expert content, which is why we license the same content they have. But, what we really believe is important to integrate into that, which they don't do and we are intent on doing, and it's already available on OrganizedWisdom. It's this idea of integrating trustworthy, credible, user-generated health content that's in a meaningful format for other people to use. And again, I want to stress meaningful format, because you're not going to find, necessarily, the same content that you'll find in a message board or a chat room that you'll find on WebMD or other sites, because, again, it's not just calling together statements -or posts - about a particular illness. You're talking about really contextually-relevant wisdom. So, user-generated health content is a big piece.
Pharma-contributed content integrated in that to really - this three-way or triad approach to health information by giving people access to more points.
And then, the idea of embedding social networking into it so that people can connect with their friends and family, or perhaps the groups that they are a part of, so that you end up with a large network of people that are within your trusted circle that you can depend on when it comes to really finding the right information. So, I'd say that the simplest way of saying it is user-generated health content and social networking capabilities on top of expert health content - and that is something that is very different that WebMD or any other health site out there. And we're really just getting started. We think there is a long way to go towards continuing to help people to make better health decisions. We're very focused - and as I mentioned filing that patent for the process of helping people share their health experiences in a meaningful way. And not just making it a posting or one-point about a health experience, but very contextually-relevant, useful, helpful wisdom that could be valuable to someone's process of making that health decision.
Joe: Right, right. Well, now, you've mentioned also that you can save a life, you can help other people, you can find all kinds of valuable wisdom for yourself. Just to go a little bit deeper, why should I or anyone be sharing my health wisdom?
Steven: Well, I'll just ask you Joe, point blank. Have you ever had any health condition or experience that you either just got diagnosed with or you were trying to figure out and you didn't reach out to your friends and family?
Joe: Yes.
Steven: You have where you didn't reach out?
Joe: Oh, no. Where I've actually been in the situation where I have reached out, yes, I absolutely have. When I get into any health condition, I certainly go and ask for help. When someone else is in a situation, if there's any way, shape, or form I can help them, point them in the right direction, I do that. So, sorry, I may have misunderstood how you stated it. But, certainly, I want to do everything I can to help other people when I am in any sort of crisis.
Steven: You know, it's funny. We could even look at Bill Phillips who wrote "Body for Life." And what Bill did was he shared his wisdom with people about sharing something that I think everybody's looking for which is how to loose weight, and stay in shape, and eat right. And I know that you follow "Body for Life." I follow "Body for Life." but when I was trying to loose weight and I asked people I knew who struggled with weight themselves what they had done. And somebody said something like, "I'm on a program called "Body For Life." there's a book that Bill Phillips wrote." And I can go buy that book, and I can go start that program. I've tapped into two things: I've tapped into your wisdom of what worked for you, and I've tapped into Bill's wisdom about what he's found has worked for millions of people. And that very situation happens with real serious conditions besides just loosing some weight or eating right. It could be breast cancer or testicular cancer that is life threatening. From my standpoint, when you get sick, what to do, and at least be able to use all the points together to make the best decision. Wouldn't that be valuable? Why not contribute to other people's experiences the same way that you would want to tap into their wisdom.
Joe: That's one the reasons I even worked with Bill Philips, and still do on time to time to this day, is because it is not just the financial motivation, it's just anything that you can do to help humanity, and that you can help people be healthier, from my standpoint, why wouldn't you? I mean, it makes me happy on any level that I can do anything, even in my business world with what I do, which is typically, help entrepreneurs with their marketing and advertising challenges, my whole goal is to reduce human suffering. Anything that you can give someone access to that will help them do that, that's what makes the world a happier place. That's what makes the world go "round. So I think it's a great thing.
Steven: It's funny, what we've found is, I think the early adopters of Organized Wisdom are, people who really have found Organized Wisdom is a great outlet for their health wisdom already are those people who already know what they are helping people with now. So it is that resource within a social network in the real world, so either it is somebody who is heading up a foundation, or whether it is somebody who is always answering people's questions about the disease that seem to know exactly what they can share wisdom about, that are already sharing wisdom; and I think that what people are going to learn over the next, I'd say, 12 to 24 months, is user-generated content in general is a huge movement online. People are learning about blogging, and sharing their videos and things like that.
As people see the value, and see examples of other people sharing their health experiences, I think what we really want to see happen, and what we will really push for, is this movement towards people being first to jump at the opportunity to share their health experiences with other people, so that, my goodness, so that the next person who gets diagnosed, that next son or daughter or husband or wife or person who gets diagnosed, has more than just expert health information, and more than just the doctor's opinion to lean on when they are trying to figure out what to do.
Joe: Just to paint a picture for all of the listeners here, because I imagine this interview will be listened to by thousands, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people, for the listener, who would I personally help by sharing my wisdom? All the people out there that fill out a wisdom card, go ahead and participate in this, could you paint a picture of who are the type of people, how will it help and affect the world by sharing wisdom?
Steven: Eighty percent of the people who use the Internet use it to search for health information, and our content, because of the way we have developed the system, because of its user-generated content, automatically will come up in the search engines like Google and Yahhoo! And MSN. So not only will anybody searching for health information have, now, access to your wisdom, but think about the fact of going into a Google search and looking up some condition or illness or symptom, and finding a story, a story that inspires you to either ask certain questions to your doctor, or read a book, or ask about a drug. Think about this reaching 80 percent of the people--that's actually probably a little greater than 80 percent of the people--who use the Internet, who use it to search for health information. So literally, you are talking...
Joe: Hold on a minute there. I never knew that. You are saying 80 percent of everyone that is online, using Google, using search engines, 80 percent or possibly more are there looking for health information.
Steven: "Do use the Internet to find health information." In fact, the two biggest influencers to people asking their doctors about a drug, number one is the Internet, and number two are their friends and family. Literally. Those are the two highest percentages for driving influential discussion between a doctor and a patient. And I think it is about 82 percent of the people, and there is data from both Jupiter and eMarketer, and a number of the other research firms that support this, 80 percent of the people using the Internet to look for health information--they're called health-seekers--they are specifically looking for something, answers to their questions, and they are using the Internet to do it.
And they are going to come across this health wisdom because Organized Wisdom, while it is a destination site for health information, its information is found in the search engines already, and you will find your story, if you actually do share it on Organized Wisdom, coming up on the search engine when certain things are searched that are around the actual topic and wisdom that you have shared.
Joe: Gotcha. Well, I purposely did not do any research on this further from the time we actually had scheduled this interview because I wanted to show up and in a lot of ways play the dumb interviewer here, that I didn't know anything. And so I recently went online as I'm standing here talking to you and I looked at your wisdom card. I actually went to organizedwisdom.com/skrein and I looked at your thing here and there's everything from the Rob's cure for the Common Headache to about asthma to about having a summer cold or a cough.
And so you're dealing with all kinds of things here from the simplest health conditions to severe fatal conditions. And there's obviously so much value here, and I've known you for many years and I've always seen you do fascinating things. This, I've got to say, is one of the most interesting and useful web sites that I have probably ever seen. The whole concept of it is fascinating. So I'd like to ask you about what are your future plans? How's the site going to get better, that sort of stuff?
Steven: Well I mean our goal is to be the most trusted brand for consumers when it relates to finding health information. And we really see the notion of helping people connect with each other and share their health experiences, and endless in terms of both helping people do it better and helping people do it faster and helping people find it better and faster. So we are beginning to roll out in the beginning of the year a number of features which will just continue on that notion of tools to help people share better health information with each other. Tools to help people better connect with each other and share that information, and tools that make it easier to find that information.
So again, just going down that notion, it's unlimited social networking, user-generated health content together with expert health content and pharmaceutical industry contributed content just means that as a consumer, the future is very bright for the Internet being even a more useful source of health information than it ever has been before. Because our vision is three, four, five years from now when you go online you'll be able to find not only that information from what the experts say, but you'll be able to find the people who've been where you're going.
And whether it's just about giving you some confidence to go down a certain path or ask your doctor a certain question could be the meaning of the difference between life and death. And I just see this as just no better way of helping the world than enabling people to share their health experiences with each other and help people find those experiences and use them.
Joe: I think it's wonderful. I think what you've done here is fabulous and I cannot imagine this not becoming something that is used as the benchmark for so many different things in all areas of health. So from my standpoint I'm definitely going to go and set up my own profile and my wisdom card. You've already talked about how people can do that, but I'd like you to just kind of put the simple steps together as we bring our interview to a close here. Any famous last words, final things, recommendations for people to do so that they can really get involved in this.
Steven: Well go to organizedwisdom.com. You can do a search for expert health information and obviously that's the stuff you'll find everywhere online, but it's available at Organized Wisdom. But there's a button for searching wisdom cards so you can search for health wisdom cards. And obviously we're very early in getting started, but there's a lot of great already wisdom cards created and we really would urge people to look around a little bit, then actually click on the share wisdom button and begin the process.
And there's actually a little green play button on every one of those pages after you click share wisdom. And I personally will walk you through the process and hold your hand from choosing a health topic to answering each and every one of those questions. And there's not that many of them, and it takes less than five minutes, but I'll walk you through the creation of a wisdom card. You can publish it.
We're finding a lot of interesting things happening once people create wisdom cards. We're finding people are starting to join foundations or associations that are recommended in wisdom cards. We're hearing from doctors that they're getting referrals from wisdom cards. We're finding people asking their doctors about particular drugs that are in wisdom cards. That people are now visiting blogs and web sites from people who create wisdom cards.
So because we've just built this so that it's open-ended, and people can not only share, but this information comes up in the normal search engines. We're finding this to be a terrific driver of interest around the different things that people are sharing, so go to OrganizedWisdom.com, share some wisdom, look at other people's wisdom, do some searches.
If you set up your profile, by the way - you know, register, and you can just do that by clicking on login and it's four or five little fields to fill out, once you do that, you can save everything you find. So if you find some useful wisdom cards, or if you find some helpful expert health content, you find some wisdom that you've found valuable, you end up saving that - it's available for you to share with other people.
And here's the neat part - because you can't do this anywhere else - you can save this for other people to use, and yourself, to actually go back to and refer to, and just that simple process of actually having a little home base for all of your health information and wisdom, and you can obviously keep it private if you'd like, but we're finding people be very open about sharing it, because just that notion about just that notion of helping other people is just so impactful.
Joe: Well yeah, I mean, I'm sitting there looking at it from the standpoint of helping other people, just about anything you would want to share, but say for instance you go and hire a personal trainer, and you want your personal trainer to have a little background about your health history. I mean, you've got it documented now - here you go, you show it to this particular person.
I mean there's so much value in just that simple process, not only - even if it never gets shared with anyone else, but the fact that you've set up the website this way, it absolutely is available to anyone that could benefit from it, so it's very good, I mean--
Steven: Yeah, I mean, if you go - the other profiles - Unity, who's my business partner in this, has set up his wisdom cards are actually really great. Some of them are the top-ranked wisdom cards in Google and Yahhoo! That he's done on actually preventing and lowering the time that a cold affects you. Actually, preventing a cold using Listerine is one of the top cards in Google - I mean one of the top results in Google when you search on Listerine, and cold, and things like that.
But Unity Stoakes's profile is at OrganizedWidsom.com/ustoakes. So Joe if you're there online now, take a look at it - he's got some great wisdom cards, and simple things about how his family dealt with his grandmother having Alzheimer's disease, and, as I mentioned, using Listerine to prevent a common cold, and wisdom teeth wisdom for when you get your wisdom teeth pulled.
There's some really interesting wisdom already shared, and we just can't wait for it to continue to grow and evolve, and as more people share, we just want to go along for the ride, and, again, give them those tools to make better wisdom cards, and more useful wisdom cards, and help people.
Joe: Wonderful. Well, thank you, Steve - thanks for taking the time to answer these question, to explain this, this is fascinating to me. As you know, I interview all kinds of very bright, very smart individuals. I founded GeniusNetwork.com because I believe that if asked the right question, all kinds of people have genius inside of them, and I like, obviously, sharing that with as many people as possible, because that's what makes people more intelligent, and gives them, as our friend Dan Sullivan says, direction, confidence, and capability in our lives.
And for anyone in any health-related situation, this will provide enormous direction, confidence, and capabilities, and I think what you've created here is absolutely genius, and of course my small contribution here would be to ask you questions so that people that are not aware of it can understand it. And I can't imagine anybody after listening to this interview not wanting to go to OrganizedWisdom.com and checking it out, and using it as a resource for as long as it exists, which I think will far surpass the time me and you are here on the planet. This is fabulous so - anything else you want to share?
Steven: No, I mean one of the emails I got yesterday was from a woman who had shared her experience with epilepsy, and she had always been thinking about it as this negative experience that she's got to live with, but she told me how therapeutic it was to actually go through the process of going through the experience and how she deals with her epileptic seizures into wisdom for other people to use, and she actually felt good about it.
And again, we hear that all the time - people really finding it also therapeutic to share this negative experience that they might have had with other people, turning it into really positive things for others. So I just end with every day I've just got a big smile on my face - with one person a day, if that's all I help, or if it's hundreds or thousands or millions of people. Just that notion of Organized Wisdom being a part of someone's experience in figuring out what's wrong or what to do next. You know, that to me is - that's everything.
Joe: Great, wonderful. Well, Steve it was nice talking with you, always, and to the listeners, go check out OrganizedWisdom.com, and it's pretty self-explanatory. Once you get there there's all kinds of things available, so to all of the listeners have a wonderful day, and again Steve, thanks for taking the time to explain this.
Steven: Joe, thank you, it was great. I really appreciate it. Take care.
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