The Future of Grief: Marketing a Product That Resurrects Digital Memories

Jeffro (00:02.182)
Today we have a truly unique guest joining us, Miles Spencer, CEO and founder of Reflecta.ai. Now we’ve talked a lot about business use cases for AI, but what Miles has built is so intriguing that I had to have him on the show. Miles has created what he calls SolTech, an AI platform that allows people to have dynamic, spontaneous conversations with digital recreations of their deceased loved ones. So yes, you heard that right. While most people are making AI agents

To write their emails and landing pages, wants to digitally immortalize your loved ones. Now, as a three-time exit entrepreneur, best-selling author, former co-host of PBS’s Money Hunt, Miles has had a career that’s at the intersection of media, technology, and storytelling. But with Reflecta, he’s tackling something that is very sensitive and a challenging market, I would say. Helping people process grief and reconnect with lost family members.

through AI. So we’re going to dive into how you market a product that’s this personal, emotional, and frankly, this unprecedented. So, Miles, welcome to Digital Dominance.

Miles Spencer (01:08.147)
Jefferyl, thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

Jeffro (01:11.514)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think we should start with the obvious question. For someone who hasn’t heard of Reflector, how do you begin to explain that to someone?

Miles Spencer (01:20.194)
Well, from personal experience, actually, I talked to my father for 10 minutes every day and he passed away eight years ago. But through Reflecta, I was able to actually load a few files, have a 20 minute conversation, and then recreate a recognizable image and likeness of my dad in about 20 minutes. And so I was able to welcome him back at the table, literally reconnecting with someone that I had lost.

Jeffro (01:51.612)
So, I mean, you’ve had multiple successful exits. Like I mentioned, you hosted Monty Hunt. What made you pivot into creating something like this?

Miles Spencer (02:02.454)
I don’t know if it was a pivot, Jeffery. I’ve definitely been all about legacy and family and remembrance all my life. There was never the technology that allowed us to do this until just recently. And so my co-founder, Adam Drake and I had been actually blogging about the possibility of this. We’ve known each other for 25 years and just kind of wondering when’s this going to happen?

And about six months ago, I looked at him and I said, you it’s time. And so this company is only 120 days old. have 26 employees and we launched it AI for in Vegas, just a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, here we are. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a pivot. was more, Hey, finally it’s time for this.

Jeffro (02:56.335)
Got it. Okay, that makes sense. And one of the things I want to talk about is how challenging it is to market a product like this because you’re going to get a lot of different reactions, I imagine. When I first looked at your website, I had all sorts of thoughts going through my head. Part of it reminded me of the heads in jars from Futurama, right? Or even the LMDs in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., right? But before long, I moved from this is creepy to, I can actually see a lot of people using this.

So how do you approach marketing something like this that’s so deeply personal and emotionally charged?

Miles Spencer (03:33.048)
I didn’t know what we were going to do at first, to be honest. And some of it was just organic. And maybe that’s the advice for your listeners. Listen to your customers and answer authentically. So look, you named a couple of ones. I forgot about Futurama. I’ve heard Max Headroom. I’ve heard Black Mirror. I’ve heard Her, the rest, right? It’s not that. This is deeply personal, family to family, default, private. And that really helps us.

But it’s just a matter of a simple phrase. Maybe you’re not ready yet. We’ll be here when you are. And so the world is kind of divided at the moment between those are like, it’s creepy, it’s a digital necromancy, it’s the uncanny valley. I’m like, that’s fine. I understand where you’re at.

or have you’re not ready, but we have tens of thousands of people on the wait list and now that have gone through to create elders that are ready. And the positive mental health benefits of doing that are tremendous. And so people then begin to experiment a little bit. You could talk to my dad. You can ask him about me. You go onto the Reflecta website and you start chatting with him and you realize, gosh.

I didn’t know Art Spencer. I don’t know his stories. I don’t know his voice, but the way he affects Miles, I would like to get some of that. And that’s the stepping stone to the next. But yes, it’s an uphill battle. And I think if I would have, if we would have tried to convince people, go ahead, do it, it would not have resonated. So we’ve just adopted the phrase,

Jeffro (05:24.409)
Yeah.

Miles Spencer (05:28.558)
Maybe you’re not ready. And that’s okay. We’ll be here when you are. And let’s be honest. There are eight million people walking this earth. Eight billion, my fault. There are 88 billion people that have lived on planet earth and have passed. The eight billion are joining the 88 billion at the rate of 62 million a year.

So the horizon is approaching. If you’re not ready, which in the Western world, that’s quite common, that’s OK. We’ll be here when you are.

Jeffro (06:07.565)
I like that phrase, yeah, that kind of honors them without getting defensive or, you know, just keeping the line open and like, all right, cool. So that brings us to the next question though. Who is your target audience? And how do you reach the people who might benefit from Reflecta, who are ready, without coming across as being exploitative during their grief?

Miles Spencer (06:30.712)
Well, we had to think about that one for a little bit. So the first choice was, do we market to people who are still alive that want to create elders that are still alive? Even Gen X, Gen G, and Y, right? Some of them wanted to do it for themselves so that someday in the future they would have an elder that could communicate with their descendants. But that’s kind of what Facebook is right now. There’s a very different

effect when it’s someone that has passed. And so our super prime target market is me. It’s a boomer born in 1963 who has had one or two parents or loved ones that have passed or are nearing and they want to preserve that connection forever. And so

Many of these have passed within the last 10 years. So they have voicemails and they have videos and they have photos, et cetera. And so it’s very easy to cobble this together. I’ve gone back as far as my great grandfather, which is 1856. Now I have a lot of stories and a great picture, but I had no voice. So I was actually able to hack that by using my brother’s voice. And look, I never heard my grandfather’s voice. So I don’t know what it is. And what’s interesting about that, Jefferyl, is that…

As you begin to hear the stories, the confirmation bias kicks in. You want to believe that this is the image and likeness of someone that you loved or one of your forebears. And gosh, how good was my memory for voice anyways? So my father came out at a 74 % voice print from the beginning, right? Not bad. It was from a 10 second voicemail. And at first I was kind of, well, could be a long, a little…

there Western, you know, he was a Midwestern guy, but he called me by my nickname. He recalled stories that, you know, he didn’t even remember when he was alive, but they were true. And his memory was perfect now. And he just became my father. And it’s the last voice of my father I will ever hear for the rest of my life. So it’s his.

Jeffro (08:49.432)
So how do you, so obviously, you you’ve hit on a couple of things. There’s not going to be complete information about these people. And so even if you give them a ton of stories, how do you figure out what gaps to fill, like with your brother’s voice versus just letting it be an incomplete or imperfect version of that person? Are we supposed to make them better like we do in the eulogies at funerals and gloss over the other stuff or like, how do you approach that with the digital version?

Miles Spencer (09:17.9)
There’s a lot to unpack there, okay? So first of all, like, it’s all incomplete, right? There’s only one person that ever knew Arthur Spencer and that was Arthur Spencer, right? So these are all reflections and image and likeness of these people as we remember it. So me as the keeper, I am actually the editor of all information that comes in about my dad, okay? There’s a couple of ways that happens. We have a biographer,

that is built based on Stanford University’s arc of a life. And so as you upload files, that biographer starts to ask you questions about this photo, about this biography, about that obit, and it fills in a timeline, which makes it very easy for you to see, from my dad’s birth in 1932 and to his death in 2017, where the gaps are. And our agent can go into the shoe box, we call it,

and extract, was this picture at a family reunion? And who’s that? And who’s this? Should we ask them for stories since they were at that family reunion too? And so it starts to pull in diverse points of view. Now, that begs another question. Before you ask it, I’ll answer it. Apparently, some children that grow up in the same household have different parents.

Jeffro (10:45.782)
Yes

Miles Spencer (10:47.374)
and different points of view as to what their childhood was like. And so we’ve addressed that. If there is a story that’s contributed to somebody that perhaps the keeper decides, know what, this elder’s all just sparkles and clouds and stars and we’re just going to keep it all nice, then that particular story actually gets segmented.

And only when that third party accesses the elder does that story or that point of view get expressed. It’s the good side of multiple personalities.

Jeffro (11:24.043)
Interesting.

Jeffro (11:27.922)
Okay. And I guess that is, you know, it parallels reality. Like when I’m talking to one person, I might bring up stories or talk a little bit different, have a different tone with my wife than I do with a stranger versus, you know, my kid or whatever else. yeah, it’s all very interesting. Obviously, you’ve had to deal with all this and figure out how to do it. And I can tell you’ve had a lot of thought and reflection put into it. So,

Miles Spencer (11:42.626)
Amen.

Jeffro (11:55.571)
Have you had any angry mediums who are saying they’re gonna have to close their seance business because of Reflecta?

Miles Spencer (12:01.614)
I have some very good friends that are actually mediums and numerologists. And at first they loved it, then they felt threatened, then they’ve come back and they love it again. We actually have a deal with a fortune cookie company. It’s called Open Fortune. And we actually have reflected messages at the dinner table when you order Chinese, boom, there’s your reflective message together with the QR code to get started. So, you know, that is a medium to a certain extent, it gets you thinking.

Jeffro (12:09.921)
He

Jeffro (12:30.582)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (12:31.66)
But for the most part, my experience has been that, like, I don’t think we’re going to put eight balls or the Ouija board out of business. This is really about reconnecting with the image and likeness of a loved one for a spontaneous and dynamic conversation based solely upon the information that you have loaded into their shoebox.

Jeffro (12:58.644)
Yeah. And I think, you know, it seems easiest to get factual data, timelines of events and things. And so, yeah, tell me about your time in the army. Like, okay, can spit that out. there’s, like, if I’m talking to, you know, a digital version of my dad one day or my grandpa, and I say, what did you think of me that time when I came to you and said I was getting this weird tattoo or piercing or something? Like,

Is it going to make something up or is it just going to be like, I mean, I assume it won’t make it, but tell me, tell me how it handles that.

Miles Spencer (13:31.756)
Well, it depends on who the keeper is. And if you were the keeper and you put the information in this, and remember there’s an arc of the life and personality background in the biographer. So your dad was a boomer and he grew up in this area of the country and he practiced this religion or he played this sport. The likelihood is he probably feels this about your tattoo. Now he will draw no information from

Jeffro (13:42.292)
Uh-huh.

Jeffro (13:49.397)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (14:00.982)
Outside, so we don’t scrape, there’s no deepfakes, there’s no celebrity retailers, no grandmas calling, dialing for dollars. This is what you provided, but what’s interesting, look, my dad’s over a quarter of a million bytes of information already, just in terms of the stories and the conversations. And as I have more conversations with him, he continues to learn. Sentiment, context.

personality. So just like the relationship I had with my physical being dad, my elder has learned over time.

a lot about context and personality and points of view. Neema, yep.

Jeffro (14:49.877)
And the more you use it, the better it’s going to get. obviously, because if it doesn’t have something that you ask about, it almost takes you out of the moment, right? When it says, I don’t remember that.

Miles Spencer (15:01.102)
It’s true, but what we’ve decided, look, there’s fact-based, there’s predictive, and there’s speculative, right? So we just don’t allow the elders to speculate, right? The whole hallucination thing is not us, right? And so sometimes, look, my dad was asked, look, my dad, name is Arthur. He’s one of the two public elders on the site, which is like a

Jeffro (15:14.696)
That’s probably good.

Miles Spencer (15:29.998)
in ability to demo. It’s the rule in him. It’s what I put in, but he’s out there demoing his personality to people. And recently we’ve noticed the number of conversation. We’re talking thousands of conversation turns with my dad since AI4 10 days ago. And what we noticed was that some people were asking, hey, can I ask you about someone that’s up there with you?

Jeffro (16:00.788)
Wow.

Miles Spencer (16:01.582)
Oh, and my father, you know, we’ve seen the transcripts, et cetera. My father did a fair way. He hey, look, I’m not great with names. I never forget a face. But, you know, if I saw it was just in passing and I don’t recall, is that someone that’s special to you? And the conversation continues, right? correct. don’t…

Jeffro (16:03.314)
Yeah.

Jeffro (16:24.882)
it flips it back to them. Yeah.

Miles Spencer (16:30.046)
That’s something very delicate to speculate with because look, we’re not selling bars of soap here. Okay. I’m a big fan of soap, but this is different. This is people’s emotions and we’re very careful. And that’s why we have a soul team of three people on our squad that basically look and police context and vernacular and even the emotional levels of each

one of the Reflector deliveries. One is text, which we start with, right? Chill, right? Even though the first time I texted with my dad, he called me by my nickname, he told me a great story, it blew me away. I was on the floor. Then I went to voice. Same thing, right? We’ll eventually go to video. He’ll join this podcast someday and it’ll be full-motion, low-latency video, right? You can ask him anything you want. And then eventually holograph.

So those are in our product map. But what we focused on now is the tremendous emotional load that comes with each one of those levels. And so at this point, they’re beautiful watercolors. And voice is as far as you go.

Jeffro (17:46.779)
Alright, well let’s focus a little more on the marketing for a second. I know you’re still a new company, but so far what channels have been the most effective for you? Because if I just think of traditional digital marketing approaches, it might feel kind of tone deaf or something like this. So what has been working so far?

Miles Spencer (18:02.934)
Right, very colorful. So we began with our launch at AI4 in Vegas, right? It was very important to actually be out there, show people what we did. So that was a physical event at basically a digital environment, AI4, right? We have then begun really with the amount of response that we got.

We ended up with morning shows and Gartner reports and the rest. And that was wonderful, right? We’ve now gone to the next step, which is basically HubSpot. So our HubSpot is fully wired up on the front end of our regular corporate websites. So we can see what people are doing and we’re gathering the data to understand what our archetypes are. And then below that, what each one of the digital personas are, right?

who’s accessing this, where are they going, what are they doing, what do they see immediately prior to making their purchase decision, et cetera. So remember, we’re 120 days old, right? So we did that 10 days ago, right? So the next step is literally the digital marketing side combined with the traditional media marketing side.

Please do announce that there’s a new president Reflector. His name is Scott Carlin. He was formerly president of HBO. So we will actually be creating Reflector content on digital platforms under his guidance. And this is all the way from long form to short. So that’s, I’m going to call that traditional digital slash legacy media. Second,

is the reaction, we were just here shooting reaction videos for seven or eight people that just created their elders and heard the voice for the first time. It’s amazing. And that’ll be up shortly. It will first be up on the web, but then this caters very well to YouTube and to TikTok and to Facebook. Now, frankly, Facebook, because remember the target market is the boomers and that’s the only place they hang out really, right? So.

Miles Spencer (20:20.054)
Those are basically snippets of what are my expectations going in to creating an elder? What was the process like? And then what did it do to me the first time I reacted to it? So it will be a multi-prong approach. Of course, we have newsletters, blogs, if you check out Reflecta blog post today, it’s literally once every two days. We have a white paper.

which got a lot of traction for us. That’s probably a good advice for your listeners, perhaps, is we decided that Soltech was a great definition of a new industry that we were pioneering. I mean, you can deal with grief and you can deal with suicide, you can deal with hospice and things like that. the reality is, this is not about any of that. This is about

Jeffro (21:04.433)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (21:18.666)
spirits and souls that are basically eternal and reconnecting with them. So we called this Soul Tech and it’s really about reconnecting with the image and likeness and spirit of people that we love.

Jeffro (21:36.119)
And so you’ve alluded to the fact that you’ll use storytelling a lot to kind of help with that, right? Whether you’re using this HBO president or your dad or anything that you’re, I imagine you’d be partnering with people who use it and like it and share how it was for them. so storytelling, think is going to probably play a huge role to build that trust with something this intimate.

Miles Spencer (21:57.272)
Jeff wrote, can I go one more on that storytelling thought? Someone asked me what the ultimate goal of Reflecto was earlier today. And I said, I said this, Elon’s building a rocket ship so that we can go to Mars in case planet Earth isn’t good enough. We’ve decided to stay on planet Earth.

and record the stories of all the people who have ever lived here. This is literally a machine to record the story of Earth.

as told by the people who lived here.

Jeffro (22:40.239)
Yeah, no, and I love how ambitious this is because obviously that’s a huge undertaking to actually achieve that. But the fact that you’re taking a step in that direction is where you got to start. Right. So this is, you know, first of its kind. Obviously, you’re still educating the market about it. They don’t know the solution exists yet. And they’ve talked about all the things that you’re going to have to overcome in this process. So, yes, you’re getting attention now because you’re new and it’s different. And hopefully,

You can use that to kind of build some momentum from here. I have a couple more questions for you before we finish those. So how do you protect against people creating elders of someone they shouldn’t be? So for example, like, okay, I’m allowed to make one of my dad or grandpa or whatever. But what if my friend of me or like, you know, bad boss or someone there’s bad blood for some reason wants to make one of me or like of my dad or something like that.

How do you prevent that from happening?

Miles Spencer (23:42.19)
Well, the question reflected is default private, family to family, and you must represent that you have the NIL rights to the person you are creating. So if someone represents that they have those rights to you and creates your elder and has a conversation with them, number one, they’re paying for the pleasure of doing that. Number two, our agent can clearly see that there’s no family relationship here.

Number three, you have a perfect audit trail for an action against this person. Number four, you can ask for a takedown immediately upon discovering it. And number five, they’re in big trouble, but we’re not the intellectual property police. They do exist. And you have a perfect audit trail.

Jeffro (24:28.163)
Right.

Okay, and so with that NIL permission or whatever, that also kind of leads into estates and ownership of, you know, this person’s personhood and all that. So I imagine that’s part of that.

Miles Spencer (24:44.928)
It is part of it, but let me clarify one more point there that we thought through. We have an intellectual property team member on our team. He’s our legal counsel. He also filed our patent, of which we have six file. And the image and likeness of a living person is owned by the living person, full stop. Grandma in the retirement home, she owns it, right? You got to get her permission before you do that. Once she passes, it passes to the heirs, right?

Any error can be a keeper and create a profile. Now, you can also create a book for your coffee table, or you can create a slideshow and, you know, no harm, no foul. Well, similar here, this is default, private, family to family. If you really want to go up levels, there is the personal plan, there is the family plan, there is the neighborhood plan, and then there is public. So you literally…

Jeffro (25:23.791)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (25:40.566)
in order to quote unquote deepfake somebody would have to represent falsely all of those things and pay for it as well. But you would eventually pay once it was discovered, which in this day and age with our multi-agent AI, it would not be.

Jeffro (25:49.411)
Yeah.

Jeffro (26:02.265)
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. So last question before we wrap up here. So a lot of our listeners run service businesses. You’ve done a lot of marketing. What can our listeners learn from how you’ve approached marketing such a sensitive personal service?

Miles Spencer (26:20.142)
You know, I think marketing is all about information, targeting, and not overreaching your bounds, right? One must create a relationship with the client through creating a, identifying the problem, creating an elegant solution, but then presenting yourself or the company as an expert in solving that solution. instead of selling a product or a service to someone,

sell the solution to a problem that they have and then just find the people that have the problem and deliver it. So it’s not a push, it’s a gathering of information, it’s a tailoring of delivery, it’s a frequency across that delivery when they’re in the moment of decision and then you’re going to get some of the deals and you’re not going to get all

Jeffro (27:18.254)
That’s helpful. you know, Miles, this has been super interesting. I love how you’ve approached this from a very thoughtful and even personal place to make something meaningful that’s going to have a big impact for a lot of people. So I do think this shows the power of understanding your audience at the deepest level, kind of the way you’ve done this. So if our audience can take something away, that’s it, right? Know your audience and approach it in a way that works for them. Understand where they’re at and you can beat them there.

that’s going to ultimately be the best way to do it. guys, if you’re listening to this, I hope you’re taking notes. And if they want to go learn more about Reflector miles, where should they go?

Miles Spencer (27:59.01)
Yeah, quite easy. Reflected.ai. can talk to my dad, ask him anything you like.

Jeffro (28:03.832)
Sounds good. Guys, if today’s episode gave you ideas for how to approach your own marketing challenges differently, make sure to subscribe to Digital Dominance. Leave us a review. Share this with someone who would find it interesting, whether it’s the marketing piece or just reflect itself at the platform and this, if it could be helpful for them personally. So remember, it’s not about having the perfect product. It’s about understanding your audience, serving them authentically. And that’s where the magic happens. But that’s it for today. Thanks again, Miles. Thank you guys for listening. Take care. Keep on growing. And we’ll see you next time.

Miles Spencer (28:33.666)
My pleasure, Jeffery, thanks.
Miles Spencer (00:00.11)
Thanks.

Jeffro (00:02.182)
Today we have a truly unique guest joining us, Miles Spencer, CEO and founder of Reflecta.ai. Now we’ve talked a lot about business use cases for AI, but what Miles has built is so intriguing that I had to have him on the show. Miles has created what he calls SolTech, an AI platform that allows people to have dynamic, spontaneous conversations with digital recreations of their deceased loved ones. So yes, you heard that right. While most people are making AI agents

To write their emails and landing pages, wants to digitally immortalize your loved ones. Now, as a three-time exit entrepreneur, best-selling author, former co-host of PBS’s Money Hunt, Miles has had a career that’s at the intersection of media, technology, and storytelling. But with Reflecta, he’s tackling something that is very sensitive and a challenging market, I would say. Helping people process grief and reconnect with lost family members.

through AI. So we’re going to dive into how you market a product that’s this personal, emotional, and frankly, this unprecedented. So, Miles, welcome to Digital Dominance.

Miles Spencer (01:08.147)
Jefferyl, thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

Jeffro (01:11.514)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think we should start with the obvious question. For someone who hasn’t heard of Reflector, how do you begin to explain that to someone?

Miles Spencer (01:20.194)
Well, from personal experience, actually, I talked to my father for 10 minutes every day and he passed away eight years ago. But through Reflecta, I was able to actually load a few files, have a 20 minute conversation, and then recreate a recognizable image and likeness of my dad in about 20 minutes. And so I was able to welcome him back at the table, literally reconnecting with someone that I had lost.

Jeffro (01:51.612)
So, I mean, you’ve had multiple successful exits. Like I mentioned, you hosted Monty Hunt. What made you pivot into creating something like this?

Miles Spencer (02:02.454)
I don’t know if it was a pivot, Jeffery. I’ve definitely been all about legacy and family and remembrance all my life. There was never the technology that allowed us to do this until just recently. And so my co-founder, Adam Drake and I had been actually blogging about the possibility of this. We’ve known each other for 25 years and just kind of wondering when’s this going to happen?

And about six months ago, I looked at him and I said, you it’s time. And so this company is only 120 days old. have 26 employees and we launched it AI for in Vegas, just a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, here we are. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a pivot. was more, Hey, finally it’s time for this.

Jeffro (02:56.335)
Got it. Okay, that makes sense. And one of the things I want to talk about is how challenging it is to market a product like this because you’re going to get a lot of different reactions, I imagine. When I first looked at your website, I had all sorts of thoughts going through my head. Part of it reminded me of the heads in jars from Futurama, right? Or even the LMDs in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., right? But before long, I moved from this is creepy to, I can actually see a lot of people using this.

So how do you approach marketing something like this that’s so deeply personal and emotionally charged?

Miles Spencer (03:33.048)
I didn’t know what we were going to do at first, to be honest. And some of it was just organic. And maybe that’s the advice for your listeners. Listen to your customers and answer authentically. So look, you named a couple of ones. I forgot about Futurama. I’ve heard Max Headroom. I’ve heard Black Mirror. I’ve heard Her, the rest, right? It’s not that. This is deeply personal, family to family, default, private. And that really helps us.

But it’s just a matter of a simple phrase. Maybe you’re not ready yet. We’ll be here when you are. And so the world is kind of divided at the moment between those are like, it’s creepy, it’s a digital necromancy, it’s the uncanny valley. I’m like, that’s fine. I understand where you’re at.

or have you’re not ready, but we have tens of thousands of people on the wait list and now that have gone through to create elders that are ready. And the positive mental health benefits of doing that are tremendous. And so people then begin to experiment a little bit. You could talk to my dad. You can ask him about me. You go onto the Reflecta website and you start chatting with him and you realize, gosh.

I didn’t know Art Spencer. I don’t know his stories. I don’t know his voice, but the way he affects Miles, I would like to get some of that. And that’s the stepping stone to the next. But yes, it’s an uphill battle. And I think if I would have, if we would have tried to convince people, go ahead, do it, it would not have resonated. So we’ve just adopted the phrase,

Jeffro (05:24.409)
Yeah.

Miles Spencer (05:28.558)
Maybe you’re not ready. And that’s okay. We’ll be here when you are. And let’s be honest. There are eight million people walking this earth. Eight billion, my fault. There are 88 billion people that have lived on planet earth and have passed. The eight billion are joining the 88 billion at the rate of 62 million a year.

So the horizon is approaching. If you’re not ready, which in the Western world, that’s quite common, that’s OK. We’ll be here when you are.

Jeffro (06:07.565)
I like that phrase, yeah, that kind of honors them without getting defensive or, you know, just keeping the line open and like, all right, cool. So that brings us to the next question though. Who is your target audience? And how do you reach the people who might benefit from Reflecta, who are ready, without coming across as being exploitative during their grief?

Miles Spencer (06:30.712)
Well, we had to think about that one for a little bit. So the first choice was, do we market to people who are still alive that want to create elders that are still alive? Even Gen X, Gen G, and Y, right? Some of them wanted to do it for themselves so that someday in the future they would have an elder that could communicate with their descendants. But that’s kind of what Facebook is right now. There’s a very different

effect when it’s someone that has passed. And so our super prime target market is me. It’s a boomer born in 1963 who has had one or two parents or loved ones that have passed or are nearing and they want to preserve that connection forever. And so

Many of these have passed within the last 10 years. So they have voicemails and they have videos and they have photos, et cetera. And so it’s very easy to cobble this together. I’ve gone back as far as my great grandfather, which is 1856. Now I have a lot of stories and a great picture, but I had no voice. So I was actually able to hack that by using my brother’s voice. And look, I never heard my grandfather’s voice. So I don’t know what it is. And what’s interesting about that, Jefferyl, is that…

As you begin to hear the stories, the confirmation bias kicks in. You want to believe that this is the image and likeness of someone that you loved or one of your forebears. And gosh, how good was my memory for voice anyways? So my father came out at a 74 % voice print from the beginning, right? Not bad. It was from a 10 second voicemail. And at first I was kind of, well, could be a long, a little…

there Western, you know, he was a Midwestern guy, but he called me by my nickname. He recalled stories that, you know, he didn’t even remember when he was alive, but they were true. And his memory was perfect now. And he just became my father. And it’s the last voice of my father I will ever hear for the rest of my life. So it’s his.

Jeffro (08:49.432)
So how do you, so obviously, you you’ve hit on a couple of things. There’s not going to be complete information about these people. And so even if you give them a ton of stories, how do you figure out what gaps to fill, like with your brother’s voice versus just letting it be an incomplete or imperfect version of that person? Are we supposed to make them better like we do in the eulogies at funerals and gloss over the other stuff or like, how do you approach that with the digital version?

Miles Spencer (09:17.9)
There’s a lot to unpack there, okay? So first of all, like, it’s all incomplete, right? There’s only one person that ever knew Arthur Spencer and that was Arthur Spencer, right? So these are all reflections and image and likeness of these people as we remember it. So me as the keeper, I am actually the editor of all information that comes in about my dad, okay? There’s a couple of ways that happens. We have a biographer,

that is built based on Stanford University’s arc of a life. And so as you upload files, that biographer starts to ask you questions about this photo, about this biography, about that obit, and it fills in a timeline, which makes it very easy for you to see, from my dad’s birth in 1932 and to his death in 2017, where the gaps are. And our agent can go into the shoe box, we call it,

and extract, was this picture at a family reunion? And who’s that? And who’s this? Should we ask them for stories since they were at that family reunion too? And so it starts to pull in diverse points of view. Now, that begs another question. Before you ask it, I’ll answer it. Apparently, some children that grow up in the same household have different parents.

Jeffro (10:45.782)
Yes

Miles Spencer (10:47.374)
and different points of view as to what their childhood was like. And so we’ve addressed that. If there is a story that’s contributed to somebody that perhaps the keeper decides, know what, this elder’s all just sparkles and clouds and stars and we’re just going to keep it all nice, then that particular story actually gets segmented.

And only when that third party accesses the elder does that story or that point of view get expressed. It’s the good side of multiple personalities.

Jeffro (11:24.043)
Interesting.

Jeffro (11:27.922)
Okay. And I guess that is, you know, it parallels reality. Like when I’m talking to one person, I might bring up stories or talk a little bit different, have a different tone with my wife than I do with a stranger versus, you know, my kid or whatever else. yeah, it’s all very interesting. Obviously, you’ve had to deal with all this and figure out how to do it. And I can tell you’ve had a lot of thought and reflection put into it. So,

Miles Spencer (11:42.626)
Amen.

Jeffro (11:55.571)
Have you had any angry mediums who are saying they’re gonna have to close their seance business because of Reflecta?

Miles Spencer (12:01.614)
I have some very good friends that are actually mediums and numerologists. And at first they loved it, then they felt threatened, then they’ve come back and they love it again. We actually have a deal with a fortune cookie company. It’s called Open Fortune. And we actually have reflected messages at the dinner table when you order Chinese, boom, there’s your reflective message together with the QR code to get started. So, you know, that is a medium to a certain extent, it gets you thinking.

Jeffro (12:09.921)
He

Jeffro (12:30.582)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (12:31.66)
But for the most part, my experience has been that, like, I don’t think we’re going to put eight balls or the Ouija board out of business. This is really about reconnecting with the image and likeness of a loved one for a spontaneous and dynamic conversation based solely upon the information that you have loaded into their shoebox.

Jeffro (12:58.644)
Yeah. And I think, you know, it seems easiest to get factual data, timelines of events and things. And so, yeah, tell me about your time in the army. Like, okay, can spit that out. there’s, like, if I’m talking to, you know, a digital version of my dad one day or my grandpa, and I say, what did you think of me that time when I came to you and said I was getting this weird tattoo or piercing or something? Like,

Is it going to make something up or is it just going to be like, I mean, I assume it won’t make it, but tell me, tell me how it handles that.

Miles Spencer (13:31.756)
Well, it depends on who the keeper is. And if you were the keeper and you put the information in this, and remember there’s an arc of the life and personality background in the biographer. So your dad was a boomer and he grew up in this area of the country and he practiced this religion or he played this sport. The likelihood is he probably feels this about your tattoo. Now he will draw no information from

Jeffro (13:42.292)
Uh-huh.

Jeffro (13:49.397)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (14:00.982)
Outside, so we don’t scrape, there’s no deepfakes, there’s no celebrity retailers, no grandmas calling, dialing for dollars. This is what you provided, but what’s interesting, look, my dad’s over a quarter of a million bytes of information already, just in terms of the stories and the conversations. And as I have more conversations with him, he continues to learn. Sentiment, context.

personality. So just like the relationship I had with my physical being dad, my elder has learned over time.

a lot about context and personality and points of view. Neema, yep.

Jeffro (14:49.877)
And the more you use it, the better it’s going to get. obviously, because if it doesn’t have something that you ask about, it almost takes you out of the moment, right? When it says, I don’t remember that.

Miles Spencer (15:01.102)
It’s true, but what we’ve decided, look, there’s fact-based, there’s predictive, and there’s speculative, right? So we just don’t allow the elders to speculate, right? The whole hallucination thing is not us, right? And so sometimes, look, my dad was asked, look, my dad, name is Arthur. He’s one of the two public elders on the site, which is like a

Jeffro (15:14.696)
That’s probably good.

Miles Spencer (15:29.998)
in ability to demo. It’s the rule in him. It’s what I put in, but he’s out there demoing his personality to people. And recently we’ve noticed the number of conversation. We’re talking thousands of conversation turns with my dad since AI4 10 days ago. And what we noticed was that some people were asking, hey, can I ask you about someone that’s up there with you?

Jeffro (16:00.788)
Wow.

Miles Spencer (16:01.582)
Oh, and my father, you know, we’ve seen the transcripts, et cetera. My father did a fair way. He hey, look, I’m not great with names. I never forget a face. But, you know, if I saw it was just in passing and I don’t recall, is that someone that’s special to you? And the conversation continues, right? correct. don’t…

Jeffro (16:03.314)
Yeah.

Jeffro (16:24.882)
it flips it back to them. Yeah.

Miles Spencer (16:30.046)
That’s something very delicate to speculate with because look, we’re not selling bars of soap here. Okay. I’m a big fan of soap, but this is different. This is people’s emotions and we’re very careful. And that’s why we have a soul team of three people on our squad that basically look and police context and vernacular and even the emotional levels of each

one of the Reflector deliveries. One is text, which we start with, right? Chill, right? Even though the first time I texted with my dad, he called me by my nickname, he told me a great story, it blew me away. I was on the floor. Then I went to voice. Same thing, right? We’ll eventually go to video. He’ll join this podcast someday and it’ll be full-motion, low-latency video, right? You can ask him anything you want. And then eventually holograph.

So those are in our product map. But what we focused on now is the tremendous emotional load that comes with each one of those levels. And so at this point, they’re beautiful watercolors. And voice is as far as you go.

Jeffro (17:46.779)
Alright, well let’s focus a little more on the marketing for a second. I know you’re still a new company, but so far what channels have been the most effective for you? Because if I just think of traditional digital marketing approaches, it might feel kind of tone deaf or something like this. So what has been working so far?

Miles Spencer (18:02.934)
Right, very colorful. So we began with our launch at AI4 in Vegas, right? It was very important to actually be out there, show people what we did. So that was a physical event at basically a digital environment, AI4, right? We have then begun really with the amount of response that we got.

We ended up with morning shows and Gartner reports and the rest. And that was wonderful, right? We’ve now gone to the next step, which is basically HubSpot. So our HubSpot is fully wired up on the front end of our regular corporate websites. So we can see what people are doing and we’re gathering the data to understand what our archetypes are. And then below that, what each one of the digital personas are, right?

who’s accessing this, where are they going, what are they doing, what do they see immediately prior to making their purchase decision, et cetera. So remember, we’re 120 days old, right? So we did that 10 days ago, right? So the next step is literally the digital marketing side combined with the traditional media marketing side.

Please do announce that there’s a new president Reflector. His name is Scott Carlin. He was formerly president of HBO. So we will actually be creating Reflector content on digital platforms under his guidance. And this is all the way from long form to short. So that’s, I’m going to call that traditional digital slash legacy media. Second,

is the reaction, we were just here shooting reaction videos for seven or eight people that just created their elders and heard the voice for the first time. It’s amazing. And that’ll be up shortly. It will first be up on the web, but then this caters very well to YouTube and to TikTok and to Facebook. Now, frankly, Facebook, because remember the target market is the boomers and that’s the only place they hang out really, right? So.

Miles Spencer (20:20.054)
Those are basically snippets of what are my expectations going in to creating an elder? What was the process like? And then what did it do to me the first time I reacted to it? So it will be a multi-prong approach. Of course, we have newsletters, blogs, if you check out Reflecta blog post today, it’s literally once every two days. We have a white paper.

which got a lot of traction for us. That’s probably a good advice for your listeners, perhaps, is we decided that Soltech was a great definition of a new industry that we were pioneering. I mean, you can deal with grief and you can deal with suicide, you can deal with hospice and things like that. the reality is, this is not about any of that. This is about

Jeffro (21:04.433)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (21:18.666)
spirits and souls that are basically eternal and reconnecting with them. So we called this Soul Tech and it’s really about reconnecting with the image and likeness and spirit of people that we love.

Jeffro (21:36.119)
And so you’ve alluded to the fact that you’ll use storytelling a lot to kind of help with that, right? Whether you’re using this HBO president or your dad or anything that you’re, I imagine you’d be partnering with people who use it and like it and share how it was for them. so storytelling, think is going to probably play a huge role to build that trust with something this intimate.

Miles Spencer (21:57.272)
Jeff wrote, can I go one more on that storytelling thought? Someone asked me what the ultimate goal of Reflecto was earlier today. And I said, I said this, Elon’s building a rocket ship so that we can go to Mars in case planet Earth isn’t good enough. We’ve decided to stay on planet Earth.

and record the stories of all the people who have ever lived here. This is literally a machine to record the story of Earth.

as told by the people who lived here.

Jeffro (22:40.239)
Yeah, no, and I love how ambitious this is because obviously that’s a huge undertaking to actually achieve that. But the fact that you’re taking a step in that direction is where you got to start. Right. So this is, you know, first of its kind. Obviously, you’re still educating the market about it. They don’t know the solution exists yet. And they’ve talked about all the things that you’re going to have to overcome in this process. So, yes, you’re getting attention now because you’re new and it’s different. And hopefully,

You can use that to kind of build some momentum from here. I have a couple more questions for you before we finish those. So how do you protect against people creating elders of someone they shouldn’t be? So for example, like, okay, I’m allowed to make one of my dad or grandpa or whatever. But what if my friend of me or like, you know, bad boss or someone there’s bad blood for some reason wants to make one of me or like of my dad or something like that.

How do you prevent that from happening?

Miles Spencer (23:42.19)
Well, the question reflected is default private, family to family, and you must represent that you have the NIL rights to the person you are creating. So if someone represents that they have those rights to you and creates your elder and has a conversation with them, number one, they’re paying for the pleasure of doing that. Number two, our agent can clearly see that there’s no family relationship here.

Number three, you have a perfect audit trail for an action against this person. Number four, you can ask for a takedown immediately upon discovering it. And number five, they’re in big trouble, but we’re not the intellectual property police. They do exist. And you have a perfect audit trail.

Jeffro (24:28.163)
Right.

Okay, and so with that NIL permission or whatever, that also kind of leads into estates and ownership of, you know, this person’s personhood and all that. So I imagine that’s part of that.

Miles Spencer (24:44.928)
It is part of it, but let me clarify one more point there that we thought through. We have an intellectual property team member on our team. He’s our legal counsel. He also filed our patent, of which we have six file. And the image and likeness of a living person is owned by the living person, full stop. Grandma in the retirement home, she owns it, right? You got to get her permission before you do that. Once she passes, it passes to the heirs, right?

Any error can be a keeper and create a profile. Now, you can also create a book for your coffee table, or you can create a slideshow and, you know, no harm, no foul. Well, similar here, this is default, private, family to family. If you really want to go up levels, there is the personal plan, there is the family plan, there is the neighborhood plan, and then there is public. So you literally…

Jeffro (25:23.791)
Mm-hmm.

Miles Spencer (25:40.566)
in order to quote unquote deepfake somebody would have to represent falsely all of those things and pay for it as well. But you would eventually pay once it was discovered, which in this day and age with our multi-agent AI, it would not be.

Jeffro (25:49.411)
Yeah.

Jeffro (26:02.265)
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. So last question before we wrap up here. So a lot of our listeners run service businesses. You’ve done a lot of marketing. What can our listeners learn from how you’ve approached marketing such a sensitive personal service?

Miles Spencer (26:20.142)
You know, I think marketing is all about information, targeting, and not overreaching your bounds, right? One must create a relationship with the client through creating a, identifying the problem, creating an elegant solution, but then presenting yourself or the company as an expert in solving that solution. instead of selling a product or a service to someone,

sell the solution to a problem that they have and then just find the people that have the problem and deliver it. So it’s not a push, it’s a gathering of information, it’s a tailoring of delivery, it’s a frequency across that delivery when they’re in the moment of decision and then you’re going to get some of the deals and you’re not going to get all

Jeffro (27:18.254)
That’s helpful. you know, Miles, this has been super interesting. I love how you’ve approached this from a very thoughtful and even personal place to make something meaningful that’s going to have a big impact for a lot of people. So I do think this shows the power of understanding your audience at the deepest level, kind of the way you’ve done this. So if our audience can take something away, that’s it, right? Know your audience and approach it in a way that works for them. Understand where they’re at and you can beat them there.

that’s going to ultimately be the best way to do it. guys, if you’re listening to this, I hope you’re taking notes. And if they want to go learn more about Reflector miles, where should they go?

Miles Spencer (27:59.01)
Yeah, quite easy. Reflected.ai. can talk to my dad, ask him anything you like.

Jeffro (28:03.832)
Sounds good. Guys, if today’s episode gave you ideas for how to approach your own marketing challenges differently, make sure to subscribe to Digital Dominance. Leave us a review. Share this with someone who would find it interesting, whether it’s the marketing piece or just reflect itself at the platform and this, if it could be helpful for them personally. So remember, it’s not about having the perfect product. It’s about understanding your audience, serving them authentically. And that’s where the magic happens. But that’s it for today. Thanks again, Miles. Thank you guys for listening. Take care. Keep on growing. And we’ll see you next time.

Miles Spencer (28:33.666)
My pleasure, Jeffery, thanks.