Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Business Growth, AI and Work-Life Balance, with Kirsten Lum
Kirsten Lum, CTO and co-founder of Storytellers.ai, brings a fresh perspective to the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship.
With a background as unique as starting with an English literature degree and transitioning into a leader in the tech industry, Kirsten's journey is nothing short of inspirational. Before co-founding Storytellers.ai, her experience spanned significant roles at Amazon, where she led data science, econometrics, software engineers, data scientists and business intelligence, witnessing firsthand the transformative power of machine learning and AI within small business segments.
Today, Kirsten joins "Peer Effect" to unfold her narrative and discuss the democratisation of AI and machine learning for startups and small businesses. We covered:
- Kirsten's unconventional path into data science and AI, and how these technologies are not just for the elite tech companies
- The value of leveraging your distinctive experiences to innovate and navigate the challenges of your industry.
- Tips and strategies for finding balance amidst the hustle of startup life to sustain creativity and productivity.
Discover more about Kirsten Lum’s work at Storytellers.ai or follow her on LinkedIn for more exciting insights.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
In the world of startups and small businesses, adopting cutting-edge technology often seems like a massive leap, but what if the power of AI and machine learning wasn't out of reach? If you've ever found yourself questioning the accessibility of such technologies, wondering how on earth you could possibly integrate into your business, then you're not alone, and it just so happens that our guest today went through the same thing. You're listening to Peer Effect, the podcast that fuels you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews with founders and experts who have made it happen. If it's your first time listening, my name is James Johnson and I coach Series A Plus founders to take back control so they can take their business further and live a great life. Today, we're joined by Kirsten Lum, cto and co-founder of Storytellersai.
Speaker 2:Today we're joined by Kirsten Lum, CTO and co-founder of Storytellersai. Storytellersai is both a consultancy and a platform organization that aims to bring machine learning and AI technology to the companies that maybe haven't even started using that technology yet. The background for it was I used to work in big tech.
Speaker 2:I was at Amazon for about six years.
Speaker 2:I led data science, econometrics, software engineers, data scientists, business intelligence all kind of like data roles at Amazon, and what I saw is that, as you know, amazon's all these tiny businesses under one big umbrella. It's like a bunch of startups all together, and what we saw is that each of these little startups, each of these small companies, could really use ML to transform the way that they were serving their customers. But if you're outside of this umbrella of Amazon, I could see how hard it would be to get the expertise or the funds. These people are expensive to hire and to pay, and so it would be so hard for a small organization to actually use machine learning in their day day, even if it would really help them serve their customers. So our thought was can we build technology and services that allow small organizations think, local government, higher education, small retailers or, you know, large retailers can to serve their people with these advanced techniques, and we've seen that these techniques have helped, you know, organizations of lots of different sizes to grow and to better serve their customers over time.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're coming to this with clearly a lot of experience in this field, which takes us nicely on to the first question, which is with this whole backstory, what is a unique piece of insight that you would like to share?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the topics that I talk about the most really is about how I got into being a data scientist, because a lot of founders that are CTOs or people that are data scientists who have the titles of like ML engineer are people with like PhDs in math and, you know, went to prestigious colleges for this purpose. But actually I started out my degree was in English literature, so it couldn't be as far apart. As you know. That's the farthest apart you can get from data science. You know ML engineering, you know, but I actually have an English degree and I had a long kind of winding journey to finding this career, as what I was really passionate about and I can give like a few of those highlights and what I really found through that journey is, number one, that there are a lot of ways that past experiences that may not seem like they're related can come into play and be an asset is as a founder, and especially in areas where you're serving people of diverse backgrounds. And then number two is that a lot of the things that may appear like they are out of reach or there's too big of a barrier to be able to achieve in that arena really come down to ability to be curious and humble and teachable, and that those actually I mean there's many ways that those skills actually are the most foundational to be able to achieve when I was growing up.
Speaker 2:If you told me that I would call myself a scientist when I was a kid, that would have been like almost insulting to me as a kid, because I was like writing and doing art and theater and music. I did a lot of music all the way through like high school and I swore off math. I lived in a fairly rural place and so the idea that I would work and love math in the future was just so foreign to me and I even didn't really know that I wanted to go to college. I had, you know, I was really thinking about like maybe I'll be an artist, like that's actually what I want to be. Is I want to be an artist? But you know, I really did like hear the feedback of a lot of parents, like my parents and my teachers are like you really should probably go and get a degree, it's probably important for you to do, and so I decided you know, one of the things I love doing is learning languages. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go to college to learn Japanese, and so I actually ended up. I went to community college for a while, ended up at the university of Washington, which is the best college in Washington state for learning Japanese, and I bombed out so, like I'd been learning Japanese for like three years, my first course in like the university to go to for Japanese, I like I mean almost failed in D minus.
Speaker 2:And it really was this crisis of like what do I do with this reality, this thing, this one thing that I thought I could go to college do, and in that crisis, this is. You know, those serendipitous moments are so important where just opening yourself up to experiences, where you might get like the spark. I was on a bus just going through downtown Seattle. I ended up at the Seattle Public Library, which, if you've never seen it, I highly encourage you to like look up a picture of this building. It is gorgeous. This is beautiful modern building. It's so many stories. You can go all the way to the top. It's like a tower at the top that you can look down over this massive library. And in that moment I was like I'm going to be a librarian, that's what I'm going to be. It like. For me, it felt like it threaded through this, like the writing and the reading and all that, like that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to be a librarian but turns out library science is actually a master's, and then go back and get my master's become a librarian.
Speaker 2:Well, in between, after I got my English degree and I was on my path to become a librarian, the reality is that you still need to live in that time period and, like one of the things I was, I was working at that time. I was working in a freezer in Whole Foods. So Whole Foods if you ever buy those like cups of cut fruit, those are made by someone in a freezer in the back of the store, and so that's what I was doing in Seattle. So there's like wake up before the sun is up, go work in a freezer all day and then the sun goes down before I go home. It was miserable, miserable, and so I was so motivated to get out of this scenario.
Speaker 2:I ended up talking to one of my friends you should just join the startup that I'm at. You know you should apply. I applied to that job, no reason I should have gotten that job, but I got through the hiring process, and it was at that startup that I first encountered businesses. Like I came from a super rural place, and so this was the first time that I actually really saw a business running from the inside. How do you build a product? How do you help people know about that product? How do you get customer feedback for that product All that you know system. It just like really gripped me. Like that was the moment where I became an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:I feel like was the was when I started working at this startup and my the boss of that startup, the GM for that startup, was the one who saw that I had some talent for doing this. Like, despite all odds, you wouldn't have thought from my background that this would be something that I would have any talent at, but he saw that and he really did mentor me in like learning about this whole world of entrepreneurship that I'd never been exposed to before. Well, turns out, after working together for like 11 months, he and I were like this really works, this partnership really works, and that is my now husband is the GM of that company. So, yes, that's right. So, by the way side tip, you know, if you find someone who's a great mentor, has great advice, is really helping you with your life. I do recommend marrying them. That is a great move, but you know, check with it, make sure that HR and everyone knows.
Speaker 1:I mean if your husband on the podcast his piece of advice might be hire your wife by the sounds of it, yeah, exactly that's what it's actually turned out very well.
Speaker 2:We can talk about that too of like how fun it is to work with your spouse. But, yes, at that point I was like, ok, I need to leave the startup. It's not a great environment to be in a small company where you're dating the you know the GM. So ended up at Expedia where I learned and this really comes down to Wingy's gift Wingy's, my husband, his gift for like how you break down what you need to be able to do to be in a role into the things you need to learn and show the experience that you can do those things. That's one of the best things about being like a founder and a self-taught person is like you don't know what you don't know. You don't know how hard it is to do those things. No one's told you how hard it is. So you just try like you try these things. That like, in hindsight, like that was nuts, like that was nuts to try and do that. But now, like I'm so glad that I didn't know what cliff I was leaping off of, and that cliff for me there was learning Python. I was, I was working on this process there as an analyst, was all in Excel and I mean, I'm sure everyone's had that experience of like horrible Excel spreadsheets that you're just like wrangling constantly. It's just a nightmare. And I was so tired of this process. One of my mentors was like that sounds like something that should be a Python script. I was like of this process. One of my mentors was like that sounds like something that should be a Python script. I was like, sure, sounds good. So on nights and weekends I like turned it into a Python script. It went from taking 30 hours a week, three people, 10 hours a week to do to eight seconds and I was like that was where I was hooked. That was where I was like okay, this is like the tool that can change so much and so, but even still, I think about like all those experiences.
Speaker 2:And then after that I went to Amazon and that's where my real data science journey began, with like learning, machine learning, that same concept of like not in a in the best way possible, not knowing what you don't know, not being too risk averse, really taking those risks and building the skills. Where you're seeing you're doubling down on the things that you're seeing bear fruit Like, and I was just seeing it every time I would go into a new organization. It's like if I can help them with data, they will. They will give me more work than I can do every time, and that's what job security is. You know, like where there's you can see there's way more work than you can ever do and your skills are in high demand. Like just double down, double down, double down. And that's how I got into ml and ai.
Speaker 2:And but even still, I think about, like my english degree, one of the main things that I ended up doing when I was in in these roles with ai is explaining to people what these machine learning algorithms were doing. And all of that was just my communication skills being able to write well I mean, think about it, amazon, I'm writing six page papers all the time. Being able to write well, being able to speak well, being able to reason well, put together an argument to describe why something is true. That's all stuff that I learned in my English degree and I really think was part of the reason why I would take on a responsibility and immediately get the next responsibility to, as I doubled down on this, on this path.
Speaker 2:Additive, it's multiplicative when you have past experiences that very few people in your industry do. It can be multiplicative in your ability to serve. For me being able to serve small businesses because I have the communication skills to speak to them in a way that they understand, not the way that the math PhDs were speaking to them, which, frankly, was a lot of times out of reach for them to understand. So that's a big one. Don't discount all your past experiences as being assets for you as you move into various parts of your growth with your organization.
Speaker 1:So, to summarize this, what you're saying, kirsten, is that your historic skills are actually really important, but we should also be very deliberate about the new skills that we pick up, based on where the real area of need is that we see in the businesses or the environments that we're in.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and it can be a source of creativity in your organization that maybe is untapped. I think about people who started out in biology and ended up learning engineering and then suddenly combine those two things to make a product that no one has ever seen, two things to make a product that no one has ever seen. Or I see this a lot with people with engineering skills but also a lot of historical job experience in like education, like who better to build products that teachers will actually use than a former teacher, and that kind of thing is where I see real breakthrough products. I see those happening where people have this unique combination of experience that almost no one else has the skill, experience, whatever that is a personal history.
Speaker 2:You know people who have been homeless or have gone through immigration and understand how hard it is. Those are the people that can really understand how to solve a problem and a need for a very large group of people. So I use that as inspiration all the time for how I, you know, go through my work in my organization. Serving people in my organization is using those skills, those experiences and actually using them as an asset.
Speaker 1:What about an external influencer, if there's someone that you would sort of add to the network, someone that you would sort of add to the network.
Speaker 2:who? Who's really interesting you at the moment? Yeah, I have been really interested in genetic analysis recently. I feel like most of us have this, especially if you're a founder of a company which is a really demanding job and we get really tired because we're doing a lot of work, and sometimes it feels like, on one hand, you feel like, oh, this is normal for me to be this tired, but a lot of people I find are coming to the place where they're like this doesn't feel normal anymore. This like brain fog, this fatigue, you know, maybe it's like irritability, inability to sleep, all of these different like symptoms that we sort of associate with being in a high stress job actually could possibly be like this indicator that there's something up with your. You know the way that your body works.
Speaker 2:And, in particular, there's someone that is really interesting in this space. His name is Chris Masterjohn and some people like he's. He's the kind of person that's like huberman lab adjacent is how I kind of describe it which I'm also really interested in. All of that, you know, sort of world um, but and then there's another um gentleman who does it's called tenex health solutions, I think, and actually that's how my husband and I found this individual is kind of following the thread through a lot of these leaders in the space of like. How is our genes and, in particular, the way that our, our genetic code influences the way that we process the nutrients that we're taking in? How does that sort of form a basis for a lot of different components of what we would describe as health physical health or mental health?
Speaker 2:So, personally, what we're finding is there's a few services that you can use to get genomic sequencing to identify these really important variants in what is called the methylation cycle your body's ability to methylate nutrients and using that to actually pinpoint what supplements may help to increase your methylation rate and which the effect of that.
Speaker 2:A lot of people describe the effect of that as having more energy. Some people experience like weight loss. If they've been struggling with weight loss or they experience, you know, relief in some of their symptoms of like their pre-diabetic or you know other symptoms like that, and so Chris Masterjohn has a lot of really great videos like on YouTube where he describes I've been like geeking out about like the science behind it, like you know, what are the genes that are that make up the part of your genome that cover this process, what are the different variants you can have in those genes? And if you have variant A, that means you likely need a higher dose of B12 because of the way that your methylation process happens. So it's like taking that that thing that to me has always felt like sort of high level and like everyone takes a lot of supplements, and it feels like very general and like not personalized and it helps you to actually personally identify, you know, some of the things that might improve your health.
Speaker 1:And, following this, have you found that it's had an actual impact on you?
Speaker 2:So the two things that I've found really helpful tool-wise is there's a company called sequencingcom and they will do a full genome sequence, which is like your whole genetic code. They'll sequence the whole thing. And then there's another company called it's called the Genova Methylation Panel. It's really targeted to the genes responsible for methylation and what we found you know it's my husband and I are doing this he's really led a lot of the charge with finding these services and and getting us in good, doing the blood work and all of that is that if you've ever had the experience where you've had an ailment for a long time and you go in and you're you, you finally find someone who's given you a different answer to like what could be causing it. Besides, like get enough exercise and get enough sleep and like eat healthy Right, like that, what you always get, it's like a more specific answer. And then it also connects dots between symptoms that you never would have thought of before.
Speaker 2:So a lot of folks are, um, for instance, like if you have symptoms of ADHD, like that can be related to some of these genetic markers, that it's actually methylation in your body that gives you the symptoms of ADHD and that's actually how you're going to get that specific nutrient that helps you to, you know, relieve the symptom that's been around for so long.
Speaker 2:So, you know, we, we've noticed changes in terms of like, even blood markers for various health conditions and things like that. Just in being able to target that part, you're basically your body's ability to make energy and like, make that system, like, tune that system up. So, yes, totally, I'm personally totally a fan of like exercise, eating healthy, you know, and getting plenty of sleep, but also there's, there's a way, a fan of like exercise, eating healthy, you know, and getting plenty of sleep, but also there's, there's a way that you can access, like here's how your your, your. This is the code that your body is running on, and this is what you know, personally, may work better for you than than the general advice that we constantly get.
Speaker 1:So it's almost like it's going. Okay, you're gonna run a car, make sure it's got sort of fuel and water in it and you keep the tires pumped up to going. Actually, here's a bit of a deeper diagnostic about how to tweak the engine and just go a bit more specific as opposed to just general.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, there's all those things that you would generally do for any car for maintenance but, like your particular car, turns out that it has this problem in the engine and you need a different fuel mix because of this problem. And if you use a wrong fuel mix, like your car is going to run like crap, but if you use this other mix you actually your car is going to run fine.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I think a lot of founders are beginning to come around the idea that looking after themselves is a is a business need, not just a personal sort of luxury, and this feels like a real sort of targeted next level way of looking at things. And I've never heard of the word methylate before today, so that's also a win.
Speaker 2:I mean, I really the rabbit hole goes so deep and it's so interesting and everyone that we've talked to about this it like they start to in their mind they're like, oh my gosh, like, yeah, that is connecting these dots. That people it like they, they start to in their mind like, oh my gosh, like, yeah, that I've it's connecting these dots. That people are like, that people just have sort of assumed they just have to live with. You know, I'm getting older or like I'm under a lot of stress and I just have to live with feeling this way. But actually maybe there's, you know, an opportunity to alleviate some of that.
Speaker 2:And, to your point, it's like the business health and the health of the founders and the people that work in it is a flywheel, like the. If the business is taking too much from you physically, eventually that's going to break down. And so, like finding anything you can especially because it is high stress, you know, finding anything that really supports the long term ability to be alert, to feel healthy, to have motivation. It's a huge, it's a no-brainer investment in my opinion.
Speaker 1:And, let's be honest, all founders like to find a secret cheat code. It's kind of hardwired into us. There must be an easier, quicker way of doing it. So, chris Masterjohn, dive down the rabbit hole for the sort of external influence. And the final key question. This is so what's a sort of a life hack or tip that you'd recommend to other founders to really sort of improve their effectiveness?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is going to feel like advice that probably you've heard a bunch of times before on the business, so that I can actually regenerate my energy in order to work on the business has been the most important thing that I've been working on recently in terms of, I think, my, my health, especially if you have some like neuro atypical things, like I tend to think of myself, as you know, in some ways neuro atypical One of the things that I struggle with is, like I have so much to do and mechanisms for, like you know, task lists and things like that are really critical to me.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that I do constantly is I'm running through my checklist of things that I need to do constantly.
Speaker 2:Like 20% of my mental power is just running through the checklist of things that I need to do on any given day and I didn't realize how much doing that was draining my energy and kind of putting me into a state of paralysis, like you can imagine.
Speaker 2:You have so much to do, you eventually get to the place where you just like your, your nervous system kind of quits and it's like can't make a choice. So I'm just gonna, you know, hang out. I'm not my, my brain's just gonna, you know, kind of shut off, and I saw someone say describe it as like reboot in mode is sometimes, when it feels like shut down, reboot in safe mode, which is not super helpful when you need to be on and you need to be making decisions and things like that. And so the ability to recognize, entering that state of like I'm starting to hit, fight or flight and I need to sort of have a way of calming my nervous system down so that in the near term, um, it helps you feel better, but in the long term, it helps you to be more productive, which really is what we're aiming for, right? If we're honest, it's like how do I just get through this again?
Speaker 2:be, productive and and that for me, like number one for me was sauna.
Speaker 2:So we put a sauna in our house and so it's above, it's like 180 is where I start to feel like really good, and the heat like kind of turns off my brain's ability to just like process, process, process, because you're dealing with this very intense heat biggest health hack besides the stuff I just talked about with all the genetics up having a mechanism that actually turns off that processing part of my brain so that I can get some rest in order to come back refreshed and continue when it's like every day making all of these decisions Like sauna for me has been the number one tool for that, and there's some great research about like reduces all cause mortality, helps with a whole bunch of different symptoms of various things, and so that's my like.
Speaker 2:I guess that's my double tip Number one have some sort of mechanism that allows you to do that, and it takes trial and error trying a bunch of things. Other thing for me is writing music, because it turns on a different part of my brain that needs all the resources, and therefore the part of my brain that's trying to cycle all my tasks. It just has to kind of quiet down for a little bit, but iterating through, finding that thing that allows you to like mentally take a break and then being really consistent about it so that you do get 20 minutes a day where you're not in that mode. You really need to build it in, make it a habit and iterate through and find the thing that gets you that relief.
Speaker 1:And is there a time element to that, in terms of time of the day that you find it most effective, or do you think it's just find a time where you can get at least 20 minutes to switch your brain off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mostly the latter and this is again comes from like I'm I'm a mom of two young kids and so like that is like its own thing, right, like I love the stories of founders that are like I get up at five and I like do my cold shower and I do my meditation and I do this thing. It's just not going to be. That's not what I aspire to and aspiring to that would be negative, right. Like I wouldn't hit this aspiration that I would get. So mornings for me are like kids wake up. I wake up with the kids. We're up at 630, we're doing breakfast, we're getting ready for the day, we're reading books together.
Speaker 2:That's like my morning routine, because that's so important to me. And so I do think it is like finding the time that works for you, not necessarily thinking because there's a lot of templates for that and they're all very stoic and very like severe, right. Like these are like you, when you hear from founders in these spaces, they're often doing very severe things to themselves, but thinking about what is sustainable, what's something that actually makes me feel better afterwards. And for me that's middle of the day. You know little one goes down for a nap, then I've got time to go and do sauna for 20 minutes and that actually works in my schedule, because then we're doing bedtime at night. So that's what it is. Middle of the day, do my sauna.
Speaker 1:And that gives me that break to where I can really do this otherwise marathon in the beginning of the day and the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Do you find you need to turn your brain off before going to sleep as well? I think I'm I'm less susceptible to that than other people that I know. I know some people who are really susceptible to that. Where they're, when they're falling asleep, it's like just thoughts, like they can't. They've got racing thoughts as they're falling asleep.
Speaker 2:I feel very fortunate that, I think because of like the sleeplessness that you go through with early, like when you have newborns, I can sleep when I want to sleep regularly. The question is, how quality is that sleep? Because even if you can get to sleep, there's the quality of the sleep that you're able to get when you are sleeping. That's where I was suffering. So, even though I wasn't staying up I don't I don't struggle with insomnia or anything like that but when I was sleeping, you look at my health metrics, it's like, oh, you're not getting like quality sleep and that's where some of these, the habits you do during the day allow you to have, allow your body to understand it's time for sleep.
Speaker 2:This is the task that I'm doing. I'm not going to do something else. Like that's what I felt like. Is that like, even though I was sleeping, my mind was still saying I'm trying to work on some other task at the same time. So a lot of that to your point, like routine. Another you know side note thing that's helped with sleep is red light therapy, so that one seems to be something that folks are finding a lot. It helps a lot with being able to fall asleep. But having a routine and really iterating through making it sustainable, not like aspirational, like what is my sustainable practice throughout the day, that gives me rest so that when I am awake I'm awake, and when I'm working I'm working, but when I'm not working I'm not working.
Speaker 1:You know, because that's when the regeneration will happen I thought I mean I do something some middle of the day. I try and exercise because I find it it resets my day but also gives me a bit of a break. But I do find reading in the evening. I could be quite careful what I read oh like I like reading before bed.
Speaker 1:But if I read something, if I read something businessy, it obviously triggers all sorts of work thoughts. If I read something historical, it tends to trigger work thoughts with bizarre reads, right. So I found that pretty much the only thing I can read before bed is something like completely mindless, like something involving uh, wizards. Or recently I've discovered lit rpg which is just, yes, it just occupies that kind of slightly mathematical, yes, cybrane, but doesn't trigger. I don't really go.
Speaker 2:Oh, this, this is giving me a work thought which actually then allows me to sleep and gives my brain half an hour, 45 minutes of just nothing Exactly Like figuring out what that thing is for you to like, wow, this really gives me relief. And then when you find it, you just double down and make it part of your routine. I sometimes I go through these periods of just feeling tired and then I remember that thought of like there are things I can do to help myself to not feel tired. And I need to stop and I need to do those things, you know, and not try and push through.
Speaker 2:Not trying, you know, to your point like, well, I still need to read this white paper before I go to bed. So I'm just gonna go ahead and read this white paper like nope time before bed because I'm gonna go to sleep. I go to bed. So I'm just going to go ahead and read this white paper Like nope time before bed because I'm going to go to sleep. I need to actually read this much more fluffy thing, which itself will be more productive because I will sleep better and tomorrow I'll have a much sharper mind to read that white paper. It'll go much better.
Speaker 1:And that's a wrap on today's episode featuring Kirsten Lum Reflecting on our conversation. We discussed the importance of leveraging AI and machine learning, not just for the tech giants, but for smaller businesses seeking to enhance their customer service and operational efficiency. We also explored how your unique background can be a powerful asset in navigating solutions within your business. Kirsten emphasized the significance of curiosity and how this is also true for recognizing the interplay between one's health, well-being and productivity. I'm your host, james Johnson, reminding you that every founder's journey is rich with lessons waiting to be uncovered. Join me next Wednesday for the next episode of Peer Effect for more revelations and expert advice for founders. See you then.
