Owning the Hard Things with Mary Spio, founder of Ceek

In this conversation, Mary Spio shares her remarkable journey from Ghana to becoming a deep space engineer and the founder of Ceek, a platform that integrates VR, AI, and digital twins for various applications, including education and healthcare. She discusses her innovative work in digital cinema, the evolution of Ceek, and the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship. Mary emphasizes the need for community support and the potential of technology to create meaningful connections and experiences.

https://www.pentane.com/
https://www.growthmaverickspodcast.com/
https://www.ceek.com/



Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
05:08 Education and Early Career
08:01 Inspiration and Military Experience
11:17 Transition to Aerospace and Technology Development
13:56 Founding Seek and Digital Cinema Innovations
17:02 Seek's Evolution and Applications
19:58 AI Integration and Digital Twins
23:46 Personalization and User Experience
26:49 Blockchain and Data Ownership
29:41 Challenges and Resilience in Entrepreneurship
32:41 Conclusion and Future Vision

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:52)
Today's conversation is with Mary Spio. Mary has an absolutely fascinating history. Her journey started as a child. She was born in the United States, but spent much of her childhood in Ghana during a military coup and saw a documentary about the astronauts being on the moon when she was very young. And it quite literally dictated her life's journey, which got her through the U.S. Air Force being a satellite technician later working in

deep space engineering. She went on to work on big time classified projects, satellite projects with rockets and did some pioneering digital cinema stuff in Hollywood via Boeing. She's just done some absolutely fascinating, deeply complex things and then went on to found a company called Ceek It's C-E-E-K. I'll put links in the show notes and everything at the end. It's a VR, AR and AI platform that it started with concerts and education.

and has evolved into this full blown ecosystem that does a whole lot of very, very, very interesting things like giving nurses the ability to practice intubations without having to do it on live people, which is a thing I didn't even know happened. we get pretty into the weeds, partly because I love the complexity and also partly because I'm really personally interested.

in the sort of AI and digital twin revolution, the sort of the avatarization of information. This becomes really relevant for me at Pentane and how our future look on how we create an evolved product. And Mary is at the forefront of that with Ceek. obviously we spend a lot of time in the sort of resilience and entrepreneurship and Mary's

growing up in Ghana obviously had a massive role in that.

So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Mary Spio.

Adam Callinan (02:47)
I am excited to talk to you. did some digging, some obligatory pre-podcast digging into your background and there's a lot of directions we could take this, which is really, really cool. ⁓ Why don't we start with where, like where you're from,

Mary Spio (02:56)
⁓ cool.

Yeah, I'm actually from New York, But my parents are from Ghana,

My parents went, my dad went to Syracuse. So while he was there, that's when I was born, I guess, you know, some people might, I am not an anchor baby, but basically I was born in Syracuse while, ⁓ if I can be the face of anchor baby, sure. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (03:07)
⁓ cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's definitely not the direction I was going with that. ⁓

There's there's always, you know, even being first generation, which I am not, I'm like ninth generation or something. My family came from Ireland a bazillion years ago. There's ⁓ there's generally a fairly interesting, you know, take on on the US and entrepreneurship and what you kind of can't can't do versus some other places. But how did you say you grew up in New York?

Mary Spio (03:36)
How nice.

Adam Callinan (03:51)
And then where did you go to school? Because you got into some really interesting stuff. We'll obviously get to

Mary Spio (03:58)
Yeah, so ⁓ I was born in Syracuse, New York. My parents, we went back to Ghana. So I did my early schooling in Ghana and then I came back when I was 16. So at 16, I came back, I was living on my own in New York ⁓ and graduated high school, went in the Air Force. And then from there, went back to Syracuse University. I was actually telling my son the other day, he was asking about, know, applying to schools. said, he said, how many schools did you apply to? I said, one, I just applied to Syracuse. That was it.

He said, that wasn't very smart. What if you hadn't gotten in? But yeah, I went back to Syracuse University, and then from there I went to Georgia Tech for my graduate studies.

Adam Callinan (04:35)
And what were your graduate studies?

Mary Spio (04:37)
It was in space communication. So I'm a deep space engineer. I've worked building satellites, moving satellites, building rockets and all that good stuff. Yeah, so it was in space engineering. But my undergrad was in electrical engineering and computer science.

Adam Callinan (04:55)
I am a very self-proclaimed nerd. I come from the math, the maths and the sciences as well, more on the biology, ⁓ molecular cellular biology side, but I do nerd out big time on, in the world of quantum mechanics and I spend a lot of time, I have young kids as well. I'm not sure if you're kids or not, that's an assumption. My young kids and I spend a lot of time talking about space and all of these magical unknown things.

Mary Spio (04:59)
You

Adam Callinan (05:25)
How did you end up there? Did you always want to do that?

Mary Spio (05:28)
You know, it's interesting because I was the reason when I came back to the US, I was very inspired by a documentary that I'd seen on space.

So I kinda, ⁓ you know, cause I talk about the fact that growing up, this was like during a very tough time in, you know, the country's history where there was like a military coup, right? So soldiers in the streets, all this, but during this time we would watch TV and I'd seen a documentary on space, which really inspired me because to me, you know, America then became that symbol of possibility, right? Like these guys are just walking on the moon, right? We're worried about, you know, tomorrow. And so,

So I became very fascinated by space and just followed that path. So when I went in the military, I actually tested very high for the sciences. So in the Air Force, I became a satellite technician. so from there, I just continued to pursue studies in space engineering. ⁓ there was a book that I was reading on satellite communications, which was written by Dr. Cephis.

⁓ And he was at Georgia Tech at the time. And so I wrote to him about wanting to work for him. He was actually he's since worked on mission to Jupiter ⁓ and he was also ⁓ leading ⁓ some studies and work for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. So I joined his team. We built, you know, probes to send into space searching for intelligent life forms. We sent music patterns and stuff like that into space. I can't tell you whether, you know.

what the results were, but that was all very interesting to me, yeah.

Adam Callinan (07:06)
You

fascinating. I appreciate that you can't talk about the results. I'm sure lots would love to go down that that fun rabbit hole. What was, do you remember what that documentary was? Was it a it a gone in documentary or was it a now you know a big documentary?

Mary Spio (07:27)
No, it was a big documentary. was a documentary about the moon landing. So I'm not sure who did it, but it was talking about, we come in peace for all mankind and all that. I was like, wow, this is really cool. Yeah, so I don't remember the documentary.

Adam Callinan (07:44)
And

roughly how old were you when you had that?

Mary Spio (07:49)
⁓ When

I saw the documentary, I was probably maybe eight years old or maybe even younger. Yeah, but it was a turning point in my life for sure because I felt like, wow, there is a world out there where there are no limits ⁓ and I want to be part of that because I've always felt like ⁓ I was meant for something more and just follow that inner knowing basically.

Adam Callinan (08:19)
Yeah, I mean, what a magical thing to be exposed to at the right time, right? At that young impressionable dealing, you know, dealing with probably some interestingly difficult stuff in a place like Ghana at that time. Yeah. So, so you were back in the US living out your own in New York at the age of 16. I mean, were you like legitimately in an apartment by yourself at the age of 16 or were you?

Mary Spio (08:24)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Have that time,

Adam Callinan (08:48)
with family or a friend or.

Mary Spio (08:50)
No, I mean, where I was living, ⁓ I had a room, right? And so there were other immigrants living there. And so, yeah, but I had a room.

Adam Callinan (08:59)
but you're obviously incredibly independent at a relatively young age.

Mary Spio (09:03)
When I first came, had a family that I lived with that my parents knew. And then after graduating high school is when I went to New York and then while I was waiting to go in the military, because I went in the military at 17. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (09:17)
Okay.

Okay, got it. So you.

Mary Spio (09:21)
Yeah, my parents

had to sign for me to go in because you're supposed to be 18. So the whole process, yeah.

Adam Callinan (09:24)
Yeah,

Amazing. So you go through that, you come out on the other end of the military, and then from there, did you do your graduate studies before the military or after? Okay.

Mary Spio (09:38)
No, it was after. I went, so right after

high school, I went into the Air Force and then after the Air Force, because in the Air Force I was studying, I was a satellite technician. So I was part of the ADVANT team. We would go into ⁓ different war zones and set up the communications so that the troops could communicate on a secure lines via satellite. So that's what I was doing. So afterwards I wanted to continue. ⁓

Adam Callinan (09:42)
Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Mary Spio (10:06)
to work in satellite communications. And I worked on cryptographic programming and so on.

Adam Callinan (10:13)
And then from there you went, so you trying to create the timeline here so we can eventually end up where you are today, which is also super interesting. So what happened after that experience at Georgia Tech? Did you go work in a, professionally work in a lab or did you go into a private enterprise or how'd that go?

Mary Spio (10:21)
Yes.

So what's interesting is actually while I was at Georgia Tech, so during my undergraduate, I was working for a company and then I was working for the Aerospace Corporation, which is the US military's arm that does all the research. ⁓ And part of the work that I was doing while I was at Georgia Tech, they were able to set up like a lab station for me to continue to work. So I would go to classes during the day and at nighttime I would be working on very top secret. ⁓

projects, you know, in my dorm room. So a lot of the guys liked me, right? Because they could come and play games on their video games on my computer, which was super fast and all the stuff that they had set up. I don't know if, you know, that was, but so after that I went to work for Aerospace Corporation ⁓ and then from Aerospace Corporation I went to work for ⁓ Intel Sat. Intel Sat I worked as a...

broadcast television engineer, so I was building television networks. So if you had content and you wanted to build a TV network like CNN or HBO actually, which were all clients, CNN, HBO, AT &T, and so on, so building satellite networks for their services. And then I had developed some technology for...

⁓ delivering content over space, which was digital technology, because a lot of times people, at that time people were focused on analog technologies. So the Boeing company approached me about ⁓ acquiring that technology, and so from there I went to work for Boeing as head of satellite communications. They acquired that technology, and that was a digital cinema technology which allowed

movies to be broadcast over satellite versus having to send the reels, which was a tremendous cost savings. Because back then, if you were distributing movies to 30,000 theaters and it had five screens, that was 150,000 reels, right? It wasn't very good for the environment. Plus it was expensive, prone to piracy. And then also it was fraught with a lot of dishonesty, right? The movie theaters could play multiple times. There was no accountability.

Adam Callinan (12:27)
Yeah, but...

Mary Spio (12:50)
So being able to create a technology that allowed a single broadcast that would cost, let's say, three to 400,000 versus spending 30 million on FedEx costs and replacements and the telecine process was a huge breakthrough for the movie industry. Our first client was Lucas Films. And then from there, we worked with 20th Century Fox and all the different movie companies. Actually, a few years back when the Oscars started honoring ⁓

know, technology, the people behind the scenes, right, in the movies. I saw that Sempty, for example, you know, did a shout out, which was very, cool.

Adam Callinan (13:27)
That is amazing how.

So that technology, your current company, Ceek, am I saying that right? Pronouncing that correctly. How did you leverage, let's actually just talk about Ceek. What does Ceek do relative to that digital movie experience? Yeah.

Mary Spio (13:32)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Distribution, yeah. So

basically from Boeing Digital Cinema, so we created the satellite distribution. So it was kind of like having a big FTP in the sky, right? You can now send your movies digitally. After that, I thought that that would open up the space for independent filmmakers, but it didn't because there is still the NATO process of releasing movie, the National Association of Theater Owners, the other NATO, which doesn't allow a lot of the

Adam Callinan (14:10)
Yeah.

Mary Spio (14:13)
independence and so being that the independence still couldn't have access, I created an online video platform which was ⁓ web-based. So that was kind of like the media evolution going from satellite distribution to a web-based distribution and then that web-based application ⁓ I was able to initially was supposed to be for independent filmmakers but as we approached advertisers they wanted to use the platform themselves. So Coca-Cola was actually

Yeah, first client, they wanted to use that. So at that time, Coca-Cola was using YouTube and on their main page, you could have Pepsi commercials, you could have, I think there was a specific incident of a cat being lit or something that was not very child-friendly. So they were using our ⁓ online video platform ⁓ and it grew and grew ⁓ at one point, it 50 million users just based on the type of enterprise. ⁓

clients that were using it, people like Coca-Cola, people like Sprite. ⁓

you know, MS communication, all the radio stations, you know, were using it. So after that was acquired and I started kind of looking at, ⁓ what is it that, you know, I want to do at the time? Facebook was working on a lot of projects that I felt were, you know, quite interesting. So I went up there as part of a program ⁓ and, you know, when I went there, they were at that time evaluating Oculus. ⁓ And I tried that on. It took me back

to the beginning, right? I put the headset on. didn't have to wonder what it felt like to be on the moon. I was standing on the moon. And I knew that, you know, wow, there so many things that can be done with this. And I wanted to use that because I was so impacted by the documentary that I saw. I felt like if a TV program can change my whole life's trajectory, imagine what this can do for someone, you know, anywhere out in the world that puts this thing on and they can

and experience all kinds of stuff. so ⁓ because I wasn't, my background wasn't focused as much on gaming, I wanted to use this for education. I wanted to use this for concerts and other things that I was familiar with. so that's how Ceek was born. Ceek was originally born out of, as a VR platform that would open the aperture of possibility for people. Like you put this on and you could be, no matter where you are in the world.

you could actually experience something that would excite you to go on your own personal journey. And it's evolved from there. Today we're not just VR, it's mobile, TV, AR. ⁓

you know, web browser. Today it's really evolved into more of a social platform. So it's a multi, ⁓ you know, multi platform, ⁓ multi format social media platform. So you can experience the content, you know, on your mobile phone, just as you would Instagram or anybody else. ⁓ And then also you can put on your VR headset and be able to experience it. And because of the flexibility of being able to use Ceek in VR or with a wearable or

just on your phone, we've continued to see a lot of interesting usages. For example, Baptist Health, you know, we teamed with them to create a nursing residency program, which the nursing residency focuses on getting nurses. ⁓

closing the confidence gap. Because a lot of times in any career, if you can get people to stay for at least a year, then you have a chance of getting them to stay even longer. And a lot of times it's not a competence gap, but rather confidence gap. So if they can rehearse and practice ⁓ using VR, then they're going to feel more confident. ⁓ And especially when you think about health care, there are certain procedures like intubation.

a patient where you're putting a tube down their throat. A lot of times you cannot practice that. That has to be done, you know, live. So what some organizations do is they practice on low-income people, they practice on Alzheimer's, elderly people with Alzheimer's, or on homeless. But who wants their lungs perforated for $50? Not me, definitely.

Adam Callinan (18:36)
Yeah.

Ahem.

Wow, yeah

that's terrible.

Mary Spio (18:55)
Yeah, so having a VR

where you can actually practice as much as you want without harm to human or anybody's lungs, that's a huge win.

Adam Callinan (19:09)
Yeah. I mean, that's what an amazing use case. Obviously from a medical standpoint, that translates far outside of intubation, right? I mean, that you apply that to almost anything inside of a medical setting, practical medical setting.

Mary Spio (19:18)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. In

fact, we've had a lot of ⁓ requests, like we created a sepsis diagnosis before COVID, right? And then during COVID that was, that just went through the roof because they had to really use it. And we've had different organizations that want to use it for, for example, active user, active ⁓ shooter, you know, scenarios where the schools can use it to train people, God forbid, in case of that. ⁓ And then also

Adam Callinan (19:45)
Sure.

Mary Spio (19:53)
hospitals can use it to train multiple because it's a multi-user platform they can actually coordinate and it's almost like a video game experience but we have so many different applications. Even outside of the VR we have a current ⁓ user of the platform that we're customizing it for aviation. They're using it for electric aviation.

And ⁓ just a few years back, most mobile phones were not coming with barometers, magnetometers, accelerometers. And so you couldn't really simulate altitude and acceleration and all of that. But now with the new phones, given the capabilities, we're able to do at scale because you can't fit a million people in one single airplane. But with our platform, you can actually train. And so that's something that we're actively customizing for.

specific, you know, and the best way to think about these customizations, it's kind of like if I'm on Facebook, right, and a brand has specific needs, but our platform, because of the flexibility of it, it's more the interest is coming from creators that want to be able to engage deeply with their fans in multiple ways and also from organizations that are looking to upscale ⁓ at scale.

Adam Callinan (21:18)
Is ⁓ there a hardware component to this or is it entirely software?

Mary Spio (21:23)
There's a hardware component, however, ⁓

It's completely independent, right? So if you have an Oculus, you can use it with an Oculus. Whatever device that you have, can use it. The hardware component is your mobile phone. So you just download the app and you can use your mobile phone. We have our own VR headset, which is mobile for Android and iOS, but it's completely optional because you can still engage with it without being in VR. It's completely standalone. ⁓ You decide how

how deep you want that ⁓ experience to be, how immersive you want that experience to be. If you just want to hold your phone and turn it around, you could do that. If you want to throw on an Oculus headset or Apple Vision Pro, you could do that. We were one of the launch partners with Apple Vision Pro, actually.

Adam Callinan (22:14)
Very cool.

How do you look at AI and AI video content creation in this space?

Mary Spio (23:04)
Yeah, and so we have AI completely integrated. We also have your AI digital twin. So everything that you do on the platform, creates a knowledge base. So I could talk to Adam, right? I could talk to Adam about, I want to start a podcast or whatever problem you're having. An example being for, because we have a lot of music content, for example, if you have someone that's being bullied at school, they search for bullying. They can come up with Taylor Swift's digital ⁓

until Swift could talk to this person about being the tall girl as well and guide her through the process and then even recommend other videos that are on the platform. So it's this customization, personalization of experiences, that relational depth that you're able to have thanks to our AI integration. So that's what the Ceek AI Digital Twin does. It trains on real expertise. So there is a lot of specificity. So if I'm searching, whatever I'm

searching for. I'm searching for because we have doing weight celebrity sports academy on there with like the bronze coach has been on there. And, you know, so if I'm an athlete that's dealing with an ACL injury and I'm searching Google, I may get a generic information that says maybe you're supposed to heal in a month, but then you're like, you know, it's been three months. And this is an actual scenario that I've seen, you know, live on the platform. But now you can have access to multiple people that have dealt with specific

Adam Callinan (24:10)
Thanks.

Mary Spio (24:33)
injuries, you know from a former pro athlete to Maybe an orthopedic surgeon you can have that full 360 Opinions that would help you with your process. So maybe one person's digital twin is just helping you with that mental You know resilience as you're going through it. Maybe another personal trainer is You you're getting on there and they're doing a one-on-one coaching with the platform showing you the type of exercises that you could do to strengthen

and ⁓ yourself as you heal. So we have been able to integrate the AI to really personalize ⁓ the experience. And we're doing things that simply were impossible without AI. we are an AI first. If you go back as far as even...

Adam Callinan (25:20)
Yeah.

Mary Spio (25:26)
Five, six years ago, we were talking about using AI for a predictive technology, which is what allows you to be able to go into a virtual environment and then have a time of day. It's a very reactive environment. So if I'm in Tibet at 9 PM, can actually, when I go in there, it's dark. That's all based on our AI foundation. So we're just now expanding it ⁓ for uses that make sense now.

Adam Callinan (25:55)
Can any user, Joe Smith off the street go in and create their own avatar and become that, if they're a tennis coach, come in and be a tennis coach avatar now?

Mary Spio (26:03)
Okay.

Yeah, I you just go to seag.com and the avatar doesn't even have to be 360. It can just be on the website. And a lot of the features that the AI features, the AI digital twin features that we have on the website, ⁓ we are currently the process of raising capital. And then once that's done, we are updating a lot of the features on the mobile app as well. But anyone can create a digital twin that trains on who they are. And you can customize it as much as you want.

⁓ as much as you want your digital twin. Or you can just let it study from your posts that are on the site. Yeah, anyone can do that. Just go to seag.com.

Adam Callinan (26:46)
That's

an entirely selfish question. Can you create that digital twin and then link the data that that digital twin pulls from to a database via API or MCP?

Mary Spio (26:49)
Mm-hmm.

You will be able to do that currently we're not able to link because we're still in the early process But eventually you'd be able to link all aspects so you'd be able to link your calendar So when you come I was actually just testing it the other day So when somebody comes to your digital twin and says hey Adam, you know, what are you up to? Say hey, I'm in a meeting right now, but feel free that are that and then it will also be able to access your entire digital footprint, you know ⁓ as well as you can have specific so

So in this case, maybe you have some pictures, some private pictures of yourself, you know, ⁓ that speak to when you climbed some mountain somewhere that you only want to share with people that are subscribing to your profile. ⁓ It can have it to where it can show them those pictures as they're interacting with you. ⁓ And so those will not be stuff that's publicly available. ⁓ yeah, your knowledge base can keep growing, but it's all very specific to

you. And the best part is it's all secured on the blockchain so you own your footprint and you can eventually even license that to you know you can license that to a school that maybe wants to you know teach people about whatever subjects that you cover to a school even to AI itself to train because currently most of the AI platforms just scrape from online ⁓ to train their models but the danger of that is not

you have memes and misinformation that's training on itself. So it's kind of like making a copy of a copy of a copy of a faulty copy to begin with. So having the ability to verify this information and license it on your own terms, I think is really important, ⁓ which also, you know, kind of takes me into part of I'm super, super, super ⁓ passionate about ensuring that as we build the next wave

of the web that we're not ⁓ contributing all this content to platforms for free. You look at all these massive companies, they've really operated on free content from you and I, our data, which is the most valuable resource today. We don't own that. The people who create that data don't own it. So being able to own that data is very important because you see creators that are spending thousands and thousands to create content, but they

They cannot even earn enough from these platforms to pay for the content that they're creating. And I understand, you know, I'm not saying that it's unfair. I'm just saying that that structure is fundamentally broken and we cannot build on that for the next, this new era of AI, for the new economy.

Adam Callinan (29:49)
I'm glad you brought up the blockchain because that's exactly where I was going to go next. It's just such a natural progression with ownership and the direction that all those things.

Mary Spio (29:53)
Okay.

Adam Callinan (29:58)
I can see, I mean, even within my own company, Pentane, there's this long-term, longish term vision direction that I have for that business and being able to take the data, which our clients, it's their data, they do whatever they want with it. But being able to make that data talk and being able to link an avatar, maybe it's me, maybe it's somebody else that's not important at this point, to be able to create an environment where they can actually communicate with their data. Because our clients, our typical customer is an early stage.

Mary Spio (30:20)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (30:27)
brand, it's a generally early stage e-commerce brand. So there, know, some are operating at 200,000 a year, some are at 5 million a year, generally on the smaller end of that. And creating a way for them to engage with that data without having to go and like look at a dashboard and try to parse through it ⁓ is the direction that we are naturally moving the company and our forward looking systems. Right now, I mean, I've set up and we're starting to play with like Delphi. I don't know if it's Delphi or Delphi.

Mary Spio (30:34)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (30:57)
⁓ to create, cause I have a lot of content around being an entrepreneur and writing articles and doing blogs and doing podcasts and all this stuff. So we've fed all of that in there and it like talking to myself and the system is super creepy, but awesome at the same time. Cause it's like way smarter than I am. Cause it has this like wealth of data, but the challenge that I have, and I see it as a stepwise progression. The challenges right now, it's just, you're interacting with. You know, with this modeled system, I want to be able to connect.

Mary Spio (31:02)
Mmm.

Right, right.

Adam Callinan (31:26)
the data that exists in a given company to that modeled system so that modeled system can give them information in the way that I would portray it about what's happening in their specific situation.

Mary Spio (31:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that's the next step for us is the API integrations. know, especially actually that's something that one of our aviation clients was also asking about because as they're doing training, there are things that are happening in the marketplace. you know, one example that I saw recently was it's an update that they're doing on a specific, you know, type of jet where multiple companies have reported to them the same

issue with a battery pack. Being able to extract that independently of them having to come and input that type of information ⁓ is extremely important. It can just pull from all these different APIs so they can update their current systems and then the knowledge base automatically updates it.

Adam Callinan (32:28)
Yeah,

that's such an amazing and important leap to be able to that dynamic communication function with the hard data, with that critical information that sits in the back somewhere in a database. It's very cool.

Mary Spio (32:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And for us too, I think a big part of the successes that we've had, right, whether it's getting funding from Metta or partnership with Microsoft or Apple, a big part of it has been our ability to integrate all these fragmented systems because that's the bottleneck, right? A partner like Universal Music, they partnered with us because they wanted the ability, they had a whole department that was focusing on building their VR experience.

or their AR experiences and then they have to build for Meta and HTC and after a while they were like, you know what, we're just not even going to do it.

But with Ceek, they're able to upload to one platform, and then they're able to monetize across all these different devices. And then we continue to do the integrations, like now with the digital twin, and so on and so forth. So they can focus on what they do in their business, their core business, which is making hit music or whatever it is. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (33:50)
So switching gears a little bit, ⁓ part of something that we'll always cover in this podcast that is really important to me because I've had to make some really big changes in my life to deal with all these like super fun ups and downs in the last 20 years of entrepreneurship. How do you look at, I mean, you're raising money, you're doing huge partnerships with big legacy ⁓

Mary Spio (33:54)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (34:20)
you know, some legacy, some probably not enterprise. How do you deal with these crazy ups and downs? Are there things that you have that either come from your upbringing or that you have built into your life to help you withstand these huge swings?

Mary Spio (34:35)
Yeah, I feel like there are, and it's tough, right? It's really tough because I feel like I'm building and flying the plane at the same time. Sometimes I have to go back and talk to myself. So I'm glad I have a digital twin that can talk to me and pull me out of like, hey, listen, you might be down because this is taking longer than it's been, but also look at where you've been. Look at some of the things that you've been able to accomplish.

Adam Callinan (34:45)
Yeah.

You

Mary Spio (35:05)
⁓ I'm trying to convince other people that it's possible, right? So just having something bigger than myself that we're working on here ⁓ and just, but it's tough, you know, it's not easy. And I think that those principles that I'm able to just fall back on ⁓ and ⁓ a big part of that, I think that the first one is just depersonalizing the problem, right? Because

if you start to look at it as a me problem, rather than everybody goes through this or, you know, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it, right? ⁓ And so that's one aspect that also helps me kind of push through looking at and the whole idea of the digital twin, in addition to being able to learn is also having someone you can instantly connect to.

because it's very isolating when you're going through a specific situation, right? So having the ability to instantly connect to someone who's been there who says, you know what, it took me a thousand emails to land my series A, right? Because you're just reading announcement after announcement after announcement after announcement, 500 million a year, or you've even talked to a specific.

and they're saying, no, we're not investing in this. And then you're seeing them invest in something that's not even close. And so when you're seeing all these ups and downs, it's easy to think, my God, woe is me. But having the ability to connect to multiple people who've been there, and to me, that's the power of the digital twins that we're building at Ceek. And we want that to be a hub of the world's most kindest people, right? People who've raised their hand and said, yes, I want to be a part of this.

people can learn from my experiences. So those who are about to take a path can, you know, can, their path, you can light their path forward, you know. I mean, they pay for that valuable access, but having that, that to me is, you know, a powerful part of it. ⁓ Cause if you look at, even with women, ⁓ you know, I saw a stat from the CDC that says one in three young women.

do not see today, they don't see the future, they don't see a tomorrow for themselves, and they have seriously tried to harm themselves. One in three women, that's an epidemic, right? ⁓ And it's not because of, it's, ⁓ 90 % of these cases are stemming from economic uncertainty, a search for purpose, and other non-medical factors. Non-medical factors.

Adam Callinan (37:38)
Yeah.

Mary Spio (37:53)
You know, so this is not even clinical. It's rather it's infrastructure breakdown. It's a missing infrastructure. The fact that they don't have anyone that they can connect to at that point of need. And so, you know, that's what I talk about, kind of flying the plane while I'm building it because I'm eating my own food, right? I'm connecting to these people that are kind of helping me process the challenges as I go.

And then at the same time, I'm helping other people by saying, hey, listen, it's not easy because on social media, you get to see the highlights, right? Here, you're able to share, people see the highlights, but you're also able to share the lowlights and the process that brought you to where you are today, which is what I think a lot of people are missing. Cause when they're doing the comparison, they're comparing their day seven, you just said 20 years of experience. Someone is looking at you.

on their day 20 and they're comparing themselves to what you've been able to achieve, not knowing that it's been a 20 year journey. And so that's what we're able to do with the digital twins that say, hey, you know what? Don't compare your day 20 to my year 20 because then you wouldn't even know how well you're doing. And so, you know, a lot of the processes that have helped me is also what I've codified.

and to seek to help other people so they don't have to go through this long process that I've been through.

Adam Callinan (39:24)
There's so much value in just being able, know, just flat out, just being able to talk to someone. I mean, I heard Sam Altman on an interview recently that was talking about the percent of, of chat GPT users that are straight up using it for therapy was, it was crazy. I'm not going to make the number up, but it was double digits. It was 10, 20, 30%. It was this massive number that has a daily active user that's

Mary Spio (39:38)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Adam Callinan (39:49)
Millions, mean hundreds of millions. This is like these insane numbers. So clearly there is a need there being able to connect a face To it and an experience base. That's a whole nother level

Mary Spio (39:58)
Yes. Yes.

Yes. And to make sure that you know where the information is coming from. Because as excited as we are about the ability for you to connect instantly, we want to make sure that people are talking to ⁓ AI that's trained on real people's experiences ⁓ and not misinformation.

Adam Callinan (40:24)
That, yeah, this has been incredible. Where do you want people to, we've mentioned the website a couple of times. I'll make sure these things all get in the show notes, but where do you want people to find you and to find Ceek

Mary Spio (40:34)
Definitely sign up on Ceek.com, create an account. It's so easy. You can just use Ceek.ai to even create the content, right? Of course, you're driving that content. You can use Ceek.ai to create music in your own voice. We make it as easy as possible for you to create content that you can monetize, and you have the process from A to Z. So Ceek.com, I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter, ⁓ probably LinkedIn. I love to connect with people on LinkedIn or on Ceek.com.

Adam Callinan (41:03)
Awesome.

Yeah. Again, we'll, put all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Mary, for being here. This has been a really, really interesting conversation and yeah, keep doing what you're doing. It sounds like you're on an amazing path to do something really, really important and impactful.

Mary Spio (41:14)
Thank you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And like I said, we're on WeFunder now. So if you believe in our vision of using AI to benefit everyone, not just a select few, please show your support, share the word with everyone so that we can build a better world.

Adam Callinan (41:38)
Awesome. Thanks, Mary.

Mary Spio (41:40)
Thank you.