Shannon Putman: Yellow and welcome to a brand new Putman podcast.
Pops, we could not be more excited to have you join us today.
I'm gonna get right into it and let you know that we are joined by the absolutely fantastic Chris Gumby, head of commercial at virtual speech, and I cannot wait for him to introduce himself.
So Chris, welcome.
Chris: Thank you so much, Shannon.
I really appreciate you inviting me on.
I've yeah, been listening along and yeah, was keen to come and talk to you
Shannon Putman: Yay.
I hope my voice wasn't too annoying.
I listened to myself back and I was like, oh,
Chris: Yeah, always.
No it wasn't, but I always have that effect of Yeah, myself as well.
I'm like, what it sound like, but no.
All good.
Shannon Putman: Well, Chris, welcome.
I guess that I just did a little teaser.
You're from virtual speech.
Would you go ahead and kind of introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about you.
Chris: Yeah, of course.
So, yeah, as you mentioned, I'm head of commercial work, virtual speech.
I joined a virtual speech team about three years ago now having already worked with them through a, another XR organization running an XR award show, membership association and.
Yeah, I met the virtual speech team there and when they started to scale up jumped over as quickly as I could to join up on there.
But apart from that, yeah, I've been working in that sort of VR world for what, five, six years now, which is not a lot of time actually in the grand scheme of quite a few of the people that I know you've had working in and talking to you so far.
Yeah.
Apart from that, we are a a soft and professional skills provider, and I run all, everything to do with our sales, our customer success, all of our client relationships and partnerships and all that good stuff as well.
Shannon Putman: Wonderful.
And I think Chris is selling him hisself short and virtual speech because virtual speech was one of actually the first softwares that I actually used with students.
So back in 2018 when I opened up the first VR lab.
In Kentucky at 500 West Gulbert.
Shout out Cochrane.
And we had the Oculus go is when we started using virtual speech for their digital backpack defense, and it was fantastic.
So I've been a fan of virtual speech for a long time and there's amazing features, unbelievable things about it that set you guys apart.
So, can you kind of give us a little bit of info about what virtual speech actually is and kind of the journey that.
You know, it's been on as this technology has progressed.
Chris: Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
No we've always appreciated and very kind words and always appreciated your support and advocacy and I think having.
It's actually been really nice.
I mean, like I say, I joined that journey later on in virtual speech, but knowing like the sort of core following and the history that I had when I joined but I mean it was founded, yeah, 20.
16, I believe by by our two co-founders.
And one thing that always really drew me to it and I'm still really passionate about now, was that it came from a core problem that our founders had.
So, Sophie Thompson, who's one of our founders who I know you, you know well, was had.
Severe social anxiety and and as with everybody, and I think a lot of people that come through either the sort of schooling systems or into work found that, you know, they couldn't avoid speaking in public or having these sorts of conversations or going through these sorts of experiences.
And really was lacking a place to be able to develop and practice their skills and help overcome her fear of public speaking.
And then Don Barnard, who's our other co-founder, was working with VR Tech at the time in Jaguar Land Rover the car company here in the uk.
And use that experience to sort of create a virtual space for Sophie to practice in.
And that was the reason it was founded, was just as a tool to help her overcome that fear.
And it really resonated with her.
It worked really well.
And you don't have to search far to see her doing keynotes and all that sort of stuff.
It's usually her that does a lot of the podcasts and things like that now for us.
And and those sorts of things too.
She's, it's, she's the best walking advert for virtual speech that there is.
And since then, we've gone from like, say those early days back in 2018, working with very early sort of like tech within the VR world as well to developing now a much more rounded, sort of full professional skills platform that uses VR and AI and all of those great buzzwords to help develop these skills in a, in hopefully a really meaningful way.
Shannon Putman: You're, you absolutely nailed it.
Sophie's amazing, wonderful.
Love her.
And being born out of a necessity, I think always.
Give some genuine, you know, authenticity to a product.
E especially because those involved in creating it actually have a vested interest in it.
And so many times I say we see people make products for people and it's disingenuous, you know, the hearing world loves to make products for deaf people and never ask deaf people if they need it or want it.
And so virtual speech I is very different from that.
And so I feel.
It's a very well-rounded and thought out software.
And as you said, the features and nobody can avoid public speaking.
'cause you know, people are like, oh, well we don't have speech classes and stuff.
No, but you have to talk to people.
That's public speaking and I feel like I don't wanna be that person, but this generation of kids, like I. I don't, I think it's a big need.
Like when you're 25 and your parents still making your doctor's appointment for you, that's not good.
So what is it that I'm like, I know what I think, but what is it about you think virtual speech and VR in general, like why is it so effective for things like public speaking?
Chris: Yeah.
And you hit the nail on the head a lot there.
And one thing that we really noticed is, okay, it was built really for Sophie's need initially, but then as it's grown, we've recognized a lot that learners.
All differ in their abilities.
Like, well, not only their abilities, but confidence, experience their cultural background, their exposure to these sorts of events.
Increasingly more awareness around neurodiversity and those kind of things as well.
How people learn and how people I guess, adapt to these situations.
And then how they actually communicate is all vastly different.
And so virtual speech and a lot of the tools that we built were born in response to that kind of growing demand from.
Not only sort of l and d teams and businesses, but universities and students with, like you say, that generation now for like a realistic, flexible environment to build communication skills in.
And in terms of how we sort of settled on VR for that stuff we kind of talk about always being a learning company first, and we'd always use like the best technology that's available to do that.
And over the last nearly 10 years, like VR has just always been the best tool for doing that.
You'll hear a lot.
I think when people talk about the benefits of vr, they do it through the lens of things like working at heights and firefighter training 'cause it can simulate a dangerous environment safely and allow people to fail safely.
But on that lens we see that exactly the same as something like public speaking.
It might not be dangerous as such, you might not be risking your life, although I think it's, what is it, the second most common phobia in the world or something along those lines.
But you say that risk-free practice element is appealing and with practice as well, it's also something that is just really hard to practice.
So, so there's two main areas I guess that we have within a virtual speech.
There is that public speaking and presentation section to it.
You know, you can, no matter how proficient you feel you are, like if you're trying to practice a presentation or a speech, it's really hard to do that under realistic real life scenarios.
We sort of have used a few different analogies along the way and the, and I was talking to some of our team earlier and like the sort of sports analogy always kind of comes out well within it.
If any of you have like played sports before then you can learn the theory of it.
You can maybe run some drills, but unless you're like practicing pretty consistently under match circumstances and scenarios and replicating what that feels like, you're not gonna perform at that highest level.
So being able to replicate those.
Scenarios, speaking in front of an audience, not just in front of the mirror, having an audience throw questions at you having distractions happening.
All those things can help you prepare.
And then there's the more one-to-one side around lots and lots of skills which we're building out now, especially you mentioned sort of students and things like job interviews or disciplinary meetings for managers.
Negotiations and pitching all of these skills that, again, are really hard to practice and you don't get a dry run really.
And we work with a huge amount of careers departments and universities and things, and they're fantastic at starting to replicate those.
But doing that at scale is so hard.
And so that's another area that VR and the AI has enabled of, like just this flexible, realistic practice element that can also adapt to.
Each individual circumstance and each people's sort of proficiency level.
And we've got people that have never spoken in front of an audience.
And then we've got people practicing and preparing for TED Talks in, in the app, and it can kind of really tailor to each of those.
And yeah, VR is always the platform that's been the best to do that.
Shannon Putman: One of the things that I absolutely loved about virtual speech when I was using it with the students and their backpack, and again, for anybody who hasn't heard the story JCPS had a digital backpack that they've policy that they implemented and students in certain.
Grades have to create a backpack defense in a slideshow presentation and actually present it and defend it.
And I had five students practice with virtual speech and five without.
And the five that practiced with virtual speech passed on the first time with an average score of 17, the five that didn't.
Only one PR passed on the first time and the average score was 12.
And there were so many different reasons for that.
And some of the.
Features that were really stood out to me with virtual speech was a, the ability to listen to themselves after they were done.
'cause I think so many times we always hear ourselves differently and we might not catch our own tone and things like that.
And so being able to hear.
How you actually speak, how you say things was a huge thing.
And when they put that headset on, nobody was looking at them.
You know, they could just get into the moment.
And when I say nobody was looking at them, I mean like their peers, you know, 'cause like some people, like talking in front of your peers is worse than talking in front of strangers.
So the features that you guys have.
Go above and beyond, you know, a lot of what I've seen out there.
And can you talk to me a little bit more about kind of how you guys thought of those and why it's so important that those are in virtual speech.
Chris: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
I think it's a really good point.
It always really pleasantly surprises me.
People are willing to kind of just put themselves out there.
Especially 'cause like when we said we're dealing with, a lot of the time people who aren't proficient in these skills maybe have a fear of speaking and then you know, you provide this safe practice space.
They could still be in a room in front of all their peers, but you put their headset on and put them in front of a virtual audience who's always staring at them, which if anything is maybe more intimidating.
And they'll dive right in and do that.
And that.
That use case you mentioned and the results from the backpack is amazing.
We've got lots of other sort of case studies that have seen that in just such a short amount of time.
But but yeah, in terms of some of the features and things we, we put in there, firstly, it's about sort of, I guess our learning team put it really well and I did a talk with them recently and they said about like putting that fine line between a kind of psychologically safe space to practice in.
While also being realistic enough to elicit that like emotional response.
So you could probably look at a screenshot of virtual speech and go, that's not photorealistic.
Like, they're not that intimidating, the avatars and those kind of things.
But if you stand in front of them in an immersive format, then you're gonna find that.
It has that emotional response within you to to replicate that.
And that's where a lot of the other features and things we've come with.
So, particularly in the implementation of AI features, AI is obviously very popular now.
We've continued to develop AI as generative ai and those kind of tools have become more popular in the last few years.
But even before then, we were using other kinds of artificial intelligence to simulate realistic, adaptable scenarios and provide core feedback.
So.
A few areas of feedback.
Things like actual statistics.
How well do you speak?
Are you using filler words?
Are you maintaining eye contact with your audience?
Is your body language good?
Are you easy to listen to?
Does your sentence structure make it easy to understand?
And then.
Giving feedback and the ability to sort of act on those as well as the tools to self-assess as well.
So watching yourself back, listening to yourself back that's a really important part of that kind of learning cycle.
And then having a really realistic atmosphere to do those in.
So, like I mentioned a few of them before, but things like questions and interruptions, if you were standing in front of an audience and presenting, I dunno.
Maybe a keynote or maybe it's just a work meeting.
You're presenting a new policy as a manager.
In life, people are gonna put their hands up and go, wait, I didn't understand what you just said there.
What does that mean?
Like, can you tell me more about those things and having those features in the app to, to challenge you and give you these sort of realistic scenarios or, you know, maybe you're a teacher practicing, giving a lecture and a student's gonna go.
Can you just, yeah.
Talk me through that.
What do you mean when you say X, Y, Z?
So yeah, all these features to kind of replicate the realistic scenarios and then give you the tools to feedback.
And then we've also now implemented the next stage of that like learning cycle.
So we've developed a learning cycle based off a lot of research and other learning cycles around there.
We've learning feedback.
And then also the next stage is kind of that like coaching element, like implementing that feedback to then go in and repeat.
And we now have a coach in app, so that will go through that scenario with you.
So after you've done.
A presentation or a job interview you can sit down with Hugh, who's our resident sort of mascot and our, who was our first AI avatar.
And is as much as a team, as I think any of us are, and talk through your experience and that's led by you, but like how did you feel that went?
What do you wanna work on?
Here's your feedback.
Do you think it's fair?
Do you think there was anything you disagree with?
Hey, you mentioned, you know, structuring answers or active listening is something you wanna work on.
Let's try and exercise for that now.
Great.
You've got that.
Go back in and try again.
And like, that full learning cycle I think is really important with continuously adding areas across all of those.
Shannon Putman: Absolutely.
And there's so many things that you mentioned that are so critical and especially when you're dealing with people.
People are unpredictable.
You know, the old school show kids say the darnedest things because they do.
And so being able to try and prepare as much as possible for those is, is critical.
And I know everybody tends to be afraid.
Or, you know, of ai, and of course we obviously have to, you know, approach all of that cautiously.
But in this instance especially with educators, you know, they worry about being replaced.
And so, you know, when you say, well, we've got an AI coach that can go over the speech with 'em, what do you say to those educators that are like, well, that's my job.
It, you know, and then put up a, you know, a kind of a roadblock to vr.
How do you know, talk to them and reassure them that they're not actually being replaced?
Chris: Yeah, no, it's a fantastic question and one that that is on a lot of people's minds, especially with the ai, you know, AI replacing jobs and all of that kind of aspect to it.
And I'll use a, like a real case to, I think, answer that 'cause.
We work with a university in Illinois, a rural university who have implemented virtual speech over the last year or so across a huge number of different aspects of the university.
One of the main areas for it was career services and so.
Their careers team were, you know, do some fantastic work and they run through the full kind of like experience of a student who, hey, I wanna prepare for a job interview.
So historically the careers team would go out and prepare for that job interview, do a research, try and simulate the, that the best they can.
And then what they were finding was that was taking up so much of their time.
They weren't able to do all of the other stuff that went around that, that role play and everything to do with it.
And we see the same in things like industry and business as well, like especially around that role play front.
If you've, I'm, I've done a fair amount of terrible manager training over the years, or sales training, and typically role plays suck.
Like I ask this question a lot when I do like presentations for companies like, you know, how many of you have done role plays, a part you training and how many of you actually enjoyed them or learned something from them?
And typically that's a big drop off then in, in how many people sort of got value from them.
So taking that like Aurora, kind of scenario.
They implemented AI into their career center for interview practice as an optional tool.
So you could either come and practice an interview in VR using virtual speech or with one of their careers coaches.
And now they've found that since implementing this, over 70% of requests for interviews are asking to use VR over the traditional format.
And it's then in return freed up a huge amount of time for the career staff to focus on.
Continuing to develop those skills.
So, you know, the coaching element of it the coaching in app is also fantastic and allows students to go through that stuff.
But it's, it also isn't replacing the need for more in-depth work or frees up help for all the stuff outside of that interview in terms of like the application and the CVS and those sorts of stuff too.
So one of the main things we are seeing when we go into businesses or schools or those sorts of things is that we're not trying to replace the work that.
Humans are doing.
And in the same way where we've always had self-reflection as a huge part of the app, you can't replace that.
We have tools in there that are really important for sharing recordings not only with yourself, but with your teachers or your careers guidance and those sorts of things.
'cause that feedback loop is so important.
But it's about taking the roadblocks that they would have in doing these things at scale.
And they're able to do it with a huge amount more students now, because they don't have to spend ages researching every single.
Job interview because AI has all that power immediately to hand for better or worse.
But in this situation it works pretty well.
Shannon Putman: That was a truly phenomenal answer by the way.
That was perfect.
You're exactly right.
Like it's, that's exactly what I say, so I'm glad somebody else is saying it because, you know, people tend not to believe, you know, like, oh, well you're just trying to sell it to me, but.
Also, I think that can be another great feature of the AI coach in that sometimes, you know, you don't wanna listen to your teacher or like your mom, you know, like big up to Robin.
She's almost always right.
But you think I'm gonna admit that to her?
Absolutely not.
You know, so Exactly.
Dang it.
And she does listen.
She supports you girl.
I love her.
But, this episode's never getting published now?
Chris: Yes.
Shannon Putman: You know, so sometimes they'll take advice from that AI coach as opposed to, you know, especially because they don't have any, you know, previous experiences with that coach, or they don't have any emotional attachment either way.
You know, teachers and students are both human, so sometimes they can.
Miff each other off.
And so if you bring that into it, you know, then that's gonna affect the learning and stuff like that.
And so, A, that aspect and then B, the idea that it allows you to have some help, you know, and be able to work with other students on other things, like you said.
And so that ability to kind of multiply.
Yourself as the educator is huge.
And the other feature that I don't know if we've actually mentioned that I always loved was the real time input.
You know, so when I'm watching somebody give a speech, you know, like I might think that they're looking at a specific area, but they might not actually be.
And so, you know, when you're in virtual speech.
You get, you know, you find that one person that's like nodding and so you just stare at them.
It can give you that real time input to like shift your gaze.
And then only the user in the headset gets that.
So it's not like I'm like waving in the back and other people see.
So, you know, those features kind of take it to that next level.
That I think is what's such a boon for vr.
You know, so.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Putman: How do you guys a as a company utilize those type of features in say, like the business world, you know, like not in education, like, are you finding that they're reacting the same kind of way and or are they, are there different things that they look for?
Chris: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think in education there's probably an assumption that people are at, like the earliest stage of their skillset with these sorts of skills.
Like we said, we're working with students, we're, you know, we're seeing, we've got the.
What I've heard it referred to as like the COVID generation of students and stuff like that coming through, like social skills are down.
Like I I'm an engineering student right by trade and I, so I can sort of, I'm one of them and can admit, but like I know a lot of my peers where some of the smartest people I've ever met have had zero social skills.
But so you're coming through those systems and there's a, there's kind of an assumption of like that lower skillset for lack of a better way of putting it, the difference, I guess then when you get into enterprise and where we've actually seen a lot of uptake is that the skillset varies a huge amount more.
If you're a business who's looking to implement something like this at scale you may have fresh graduates that are coming in and we've worked with things like consulting firms that go great, we've got all these really skilled graduates, but they can't present to clients all the way through to then.
New managers who have never had to have those difficult conversations before, but then right up to C-suites and executives who deliver presentations all the time.
But still know that like, that sort of like sports analogy, you have to kind of keep those muscles warm and keep your skills up and practice those things.
So that is one of the powers of of VR and AI with this sort of adaptability.
And you said about some of the features in there, like that live guidance.
If you're brand new to these things, you can get a lot of help.
When you're doing this might be the first presentation you've given.
It'll give you hints along the way.
It'll give you guidance for that.
We've got, we focus on like the simulation practice side.
We've also got a huge catalog of learning and e-learning and exercises that go into these.
So use the eye contact example.
There's a whole.
Course as part of our essential public speaking and exercises that specifically go into training you how to maintain eye contact with an audience.
So you can go into as much detail as you want with that if you're the other end.
I mentioned before, we have people that have.
Trained for TED Talks using the app.
They kind of know what they're doing, they just wanna practice it.
They might turn all those aids and help off and just go for it.
And have, you know, as many distractions and stuff for up as they can, their microphone, having feedback.
I mean, you can get the audience to heckle you if you really want to.
I know we had to tone that down a lot from when we first in first implemented it because the AI was a little bit mean.
But yeah, so I think that's one thing that has really.
Important.
And we're taking a lot of the best techniques from traditional learning.
Again, trying to overcome the shortfalls that businesses have, which are typically around flexibility, scaling workforces are getting a lot more remote and distributed and people have different learning needs.
And so to replace.
An annual management training where you've gotta go and do a few awkward role plays once a year or even enhance something like that with consistent tool that can provide practice can have a really clear learning structure and a learning path and can adapt to your needs is really important.
And an overall company's a really responding and I think.
You'll probably know better than anyone that, like the cool factor of VR gets you through the door and it gets people interested, but if it doesn't give you results, people aren't gonna keep using it.
And we've now seen organizations sticking with it and not only sticking with it, but scaling into the second and third, fourth years of using virtual speech and moving into different parts of the business and finding new things that, because the results tend to be speaking for themselves and and people are genuinely improving with every.
Every session, just like you, you said with the sort of digital backpack project.
Shannon Putman: Absolutely.
And it's good to know because, you know, the whole thing that we talk about with education is preparing our students for life after school, preparing for life after school, no matter what that is.
And so having the ability to customize, you know, the environment and what you need, you know, so maybe for somebody, their big thing is to go into a bank and open up a checking account and they've never done that.
So they wanna practice that so they can do that.
And the ability to.
To do that through virtual speech is unique and incredibly exciting.
And so, as we're, you know, coming towards the end, I, is there anything that you know, you.
Any advice that you have for any educators that are, you know, looking to get into vr, EE especially along public speaking and you know, those soft skills as we call 'em.
I think they've got a new term now but I'm gonna call it soft
Chris: Yeah, I know, yeah, I know that everyone's definition of soft and professional skills and all those things are very, like, very, quite a lot.
And yeah, we, I tend to kind of say if it involves speaking to or at people, we've probably got it covered.
Like, we've been there too.
But yeah, I think if you are looking to.
Start with this sort of technology, like one don't be scared about the impact you can have in replacing.
'cause I think a lot of the time it's there to enhance or augment what you're doing already and kind of overcome some of the barriers that there are to delivering a service like that to hundreds of students, to people working in different locations, to people of all different learning needs and that kind of stuff on there.
But really I think, and this is.
You know, when we think about other immersive companies and like how they can sort of succeed on there, and then you sort of flip that and look for the teaching stuff is they'll need to see a return on their investment.
Like as, as mercenary as that poss probably sounds, if you're gonna invest a lot of money it's cheaper and more accessible than it's kind of ever been, but it's still a lot of money.
You know, we have.
Very heavy discounts and stuff for education and those kind of things as well.
But it's still an investment, especially when you're looking at it at scale.
It needs to be sort of like worth that.
And I think one thing I would say is is try it try it with students.
Run a pilot, figure out what it is you want to see from that as well.
And assess it kind of on its own merits We.
We are seeing people and especially educators and those kind of things, trying to assess this technology now, and loads of people are more and more open to it.
When I first joined virtual speech, the conversation was always trying to persuade people to use vr.
Now, it's now people are more open to it.
People such as yourself and your consulting help a lot more with that and making it accessible to people for sure.
And we, so we appreciate you guys sort of flying the flag for that.
But.
It's still difficult to I guess implement on its own and people don't know how to assess it, I guess, properly.
So what are you actually, what's the problem you're hoping to achieve?
And don't necessarily compare it on an implementation level and stuff to typical software or existing learning methods.
'cause it's this whole own thing.
And so I think if you go in open-minded with some kind of.
Pilot and some way to, and some sort of goal, I guess, of what you're trying to achieve within that, whether that's an improvement in public speaking scores or satisfaction of students or confidence levels or just engagement, whatever it is.
Um.
And see if it works and prove that.
And then I guess have a goal to scale it.
I know that's not always easy with funding and those kind of things too.
That's a whole different ballgame conversation, which we could talk about for a long time, I'm sure.
But yeah, that would be my advice is try it, see what you wanna do, and then figure out how it can scale.
'cause that's where the beauty of it comes in, I think.
Shannon Putman: Wonderful advice right there and to kind of add onto it as well.
Last little note, there are a bunch of lessons and materials that students can do outside of the headset with virtual speech as well, correct?
Chris: Yeah.
Yeah.
So, now actually pretty much everything you can do in a headset you can do outside of a headset now.
So, we always built for VR and we have now.
So we still develop for VR first, but we have a full web version full of the all of the experiences, role play public speaking.
You'll lose an element of the immersiveness of that, but there is still a huge amount of value and scalability that can then be had.
We hear it a lot from an accessibility point of view as well.
So while we'd always recommend they go sort of hand in hand then yes, you can just do it through a web browser.
Also, I, you know, I say about the sort of trying things out.
We still, especially if you maybe have a headset as an educator, there is still a free version of virtual speech.
It's, you know, it's stripped back.
There's a few things missing, but like, and there's free versions of a lot of other apps and things out there as well.
Like, just download it, give it a go and try these things.
So yeah, don't, yeah, don't let those things scare you about scaling and those sorts of stuff too.
We we have thought of that and we've come across it quite a lot and helped a lot of universities and companies scale it out.
Shannon Putman: Awesome.
And I'm going to obviously put all the info and all the links and all that great stuff.
But if anybody wanted to you know, learn more about virtual speech and anything like that, besides obviously talking to Ment XR Consulting what would you suggest they do?
Chris: Yeah, of course.
So yeah, as I said, you know, you know, as, as good as any of us, so they can definitely chat to yourself about these things.
But otherwise we are on all the sort of socials and stuff as virtual speech, virtual speech.com.
Has a lot of resources you know, and we've actually got a an ebook that's just come out on things like VR and generative AI for learning.
So those sorts of resources there, like if you're brand new to these worlds and wanna know what impact it can have, like those, there's free resources that we've put out there for those kind of things.
I'm always happy to speak.
You can find me on LinkedIn and things, or just chris@virtualspeech.com and always happy to.
Show you or connect you to some of our team that can show you through these things and and answer any questions you've got as well.
So, but definitely check out some of the resources we've got on our website.
Shannon Putman: Beautiful.
Thank you.
And they mean that too.
They've always been nothing but helpful.
I'll randomly message them and you guys always are right on it and get back.
And sometimes my, I have the randomest questions and they've always been able to answer them.
So that's a tate to you for sure.
Chris: I appreciate that.
Yeah, we've there's no, no stupid questions.
We always say someone's gonna prove me wrong one day, but yeah, no stupid questions.
Shannon Putman: All right.
Well, Chris, this has been absolutely fantastic.
I've had a wonderful time.
I can't thank you enough
Chris: Thank
Shannon Putman: for joining me and gracing the pop.
And you know, I know it sounds like you're gonna get away without the closing countdown, but you are not.
And so as we wrap up, I'm gonna ask you, okay, if you could live in three fictional places.
Where would they be?
And it can be from literature, it can be from entertainment, it can be from Greek mythology, whatever.
What three fictional places would you live?
Chris: Wow, this is the yeah, this is a great, like VR question, isn't it?
Like everyone always says that you can go to any world, you can do any of these things.
Three fictional places.
Greek mythology, when you said that, I was immediately like, that would be really cool.
But I don't think I'd be in any way important enough to, for that just to not be brutal.
So I'm
Shannon Putman: That's a key factor though, when thinking about, you know.
Chris: Yeah.
What would, as a, probably a peasant in these times, what would I benefit from?
So I'll go purely, probably just fictional and probably showcase my.
Or like my nerdy fantasies from when I was younger, I'd like give the the Star Wars universe a go the Pokemon Universe a go and to live in a world where like Marvel superheros are real.
Just all those things that you are younger and you go, ah, I wish that stuff was real.
Again, I probably haven't thought it through 'cause I wouldn't be a Jedi or I'd probably, you know, get killed by a super villain or something.
But yeah, that would make 12-year-old me very happy.
Any of those, I think.
Shannon Putman: And I think you're allowed to dream.
So you wouldn't necessarily be a peasant.
You could be one of those Greek
Chris: Yeah, I should, yeah, I should back myself, I think.
Shannon Putman: Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
I always said never land.
'cause I never wanted to grow up.
Chris: yeah.
That's a state of mind though, isn't it?
Growing up you get, you can get older, but you don't have to grow up, isn't it?
That's the one.
Shannon Putman: what they say.
But man, Peter Pan didn't have to worry about taxes and health insurance and that kinda
Chris: Yeah.
Yeah.
Peter Pan didn't have this many grays that I've got either like,
Shannon Putman: Shees.
I think he had it right.
Man.
Jeez.
Chris: yeah, that's a good one.
Shannon Putman: But no, Chris, seriously, this was fantastic.
Thank you so much.
I've had a great time and I cannot wait for more people to be trying virtual speech and and just, you know, becoming great communicators, which is something we need.
Chris: Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me on and giving me a chance to talk about it and yeah, we're really excited by what people are doing and it, everything that we're doing so far is being guided by just what people are trying in it and feedback we get, and it's sort of grown beyond what we'd ever sort of thought.
So, yeah, keep it coming, everyone.
Shannon Putman: Absolutely.
Virtual speech, Putman Consulting stamp of approval.
That is for sure.
Chris: Nice.
I appreciate
Shannon Putman: engage You guys are the two softwares that I've been using the longest, so that's
Chris: Amazing.
Yeah, no, we appreciate your the amount of time you've been using it.
So yeah.
Thank you so much.
Shannon Putman: Thank you.
Chris: Okay.