EmpathEQ:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast, where we explore scaling channel performance through training infrastructure. My guest today is Lucas Consoli. Lucas is the co-founder and chief product officer at EmpathEQ. EmpathEQ delivers emotionally authentic simulations that enable healthcare learners to practice complex interpersonal and professional skills.

 

Lucas, welcome to the podcast.

 

Lucas (00:24)

Thanks for having me, Jeff. Looking forward for this. It’s going to be a fun conversation.

 

Jeff Walter (00:26)

And, uh, me

 

too. This fun, fun stuff. always, you know, the thing I love about this the most is I always learn something. So, uh, you know, not only have been in learning professional development for 20 plus years, but I just learned love learning new things. And, and it’s, that’s my favorite thing, but

 

Lucas (00:46)

That’s

 

what keeps us moving and what keeps us young, ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (00:49)

Yeah,

 

a hundred percent. And the first thing I, and my list says my listeners know first thing I like this is like, so Lucas, you co-founded EmpathyQ. What led you, how’d you get there? You know, I always want, I’m always curious as to how people got where they’re at because it’s usually a very interesting journey. It’s, know, if, you asked your 12 year old self, where are you going to be at this point? They would have never said where you were at. So it’s always an interesting journey. So Lucas, how,

 

How’d you end up co-founding EmpathEQ?

 

Lucas (01:19)

I can give you a long story and take the whole hour here. Let’s try to summarize it a little bit. So as you can hear from my accent, I’m from the southern point of America, Argentina. It’s been a long journey until I came here to Cincinnati, Ohio. But I think it started, well, in college. I studied economics as a major.

 

Jeff Walter (01:33)

Ha ha ha.

 

Lucas (01:46)

because I thought I wanted to change the system. I thought that there was a lot of inequity and a lot of things that we could do differently. that mindset kept, you know, stayed with me through my professional life. My first job out of college was already a startup because I love these entrepreneurial…

 

muscle, right, to innovate, to change things. There’s a lot of course of, how you say, bad people also in the industry, necessarily, it’s not like all sunshine and rainbows. But I think I felt very passionate about, you know, just always building something new. I started…

 

Jeff Walter (02:22)

you

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (02:31)

without necessarily a north star on what skills I needed to develop or what I wanted to do on a day to day. But I knew that I wanted to work on something that could help other people. And so I went from industry to industry, usually following a kind of like a tech bubble of the moment, know, online classifieds, food delivery, micro mobility.

 

Jeff Walter (02:50)

Okay.

 

Lucas (02:56)

live streaming, you name it, I was there until I arrived in Germany, Berlin. And that’s where I was working for a micro mobility company, a startup. And I met my now wife who is from Dayton, Ohio. After that experience, I went ahead and I started my own company in the live streaming environment industry, just trying to create

 

Jeff Walter (02:59)

Ha

 

Okay.

 

Lucas (03:21)

⁓

 

platform where people would be

 

People that don’t have a chance to travel around would be able to experience the Coliseum, you know, without needing to be in Rome, stuff like in real life. And of course, COVID hit that moment. It was a tough market, but a lot of learnings, let’s say. So after two years, we had to shut down the company and I started, you know, questioning myself, you know, what am I doing? Why am I going from industry to industry?

 

By then I had like a lot of skills that I could use into something I felt more passionate about. And that’s where I ended up in education because I set myself to tackle what I feel are our generational challenges, which is our generations challenges, which are like mental health, social cohesion.

 

Jeff Walter (03:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (04:16)

sustainability and food security, like nutritional food, not like garbage food. And I felt like education kind of englobed all of these or all of these touched in like somehow into education. So I worked in education as a consultant, different startups. I’m not going to into details of that. when I last… Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (04:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

It’s interesting stuff. Yeah.

 

Lucas (04:43)

Well, there’s a lot there, like…

 

Jeff Walter (04:45)

Yeah, I’m listening to you and it’s a really interesting journey. So one the questions I want to ask you, did you go to school in Argentina or did you go to Europe or Germany? somehow you got from, I understand how you got from Germany to ⁓ Ohio. You fell in love and get married with a woman from Ohio.

 

But so, know, that, but did you go to school in Europe or down in Argentina?

 

Lucas (05:06)

⁓ Yeah.

 

I went to school in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, and my first two jobs were in Argentina, but they were like international companies, so headquarters in Argentina, but I worked in India, Indonesia, Colombia, all over Latin America. And the second company, its headquarters, they are Delivery Hero, one of the big competitors of DoorDash.

 

Jeff Walter (05:17)

Uh-huh.

 

wow.

 

Lucas (05:38)

and the headquarters are in Berlin. And one moment I just had a mental breakdown, let’s say, with my previous job. Yeah, was like I was a high achieving young guy that was overly stressed.

 

Jeff Walter (05:40)

Okay.

 

Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds

 

1. mean, you rattled off. mean, you just casually rattled off a whole bunch of companies, countries that you worked in. And, you know, I, I always believe that like early in your career when you get, you know, when, you’re on your own, it’s those first five, six, five, 10 years or so it’s, it’s proving to yourself that you could be of value, right? Like I can, I can get in and I can do it. And a lot of high achievers, you know,

 

Lucas (06:08)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (06:27)

that you get in there and it’s like you prove to yourself and then, and then you wake up one day and you’re like, okay, I know I can do this, but do I want to do what I’m doing right now? Right? Like is like I had to, I had the same, you know, very similar type. mean, not jumping all over the countries, but you know, was relatively high achiever and I woke up at 26 and I was like,

 

I want to be doing this. You know, I kind of like, you know, I got out, I got a job, I’m doing the right corporate thing. And, but you know, I’m a consultant doing software development and I was a program at the time and you know, is this what I want to be doing with my life? And you know, the answer was no.

 

Lucas (07:05)

I think it’s a very important question that you need to ask yourself every year, even, right?

 

Jeff Walter (07:10)

Yeah.

 

And so, yeah, I’m listening to it and it’s, it’s, it’s very interesting. And you have that like, I can do it. Now, what do I want to do? Right? That’s a different, that’s different than am I capable of getting in there and achieving, right? So it’s, it’s interesting.

 

Lucas (07:19)

Thanks for watching.

 

Yeah, I have a question

 

at 25, so similar age, but somehow we keep on losing track of that, know, side of that. And so I think you need to keep on asking that.

 

Jeff Walter (07:37)

Yeah.

 

Lucas (07:40)

And because like I was thinking about this yesterday, I think two days ago, I am I doing some things just because I really want to? am I doing then? Because of expectations that came, you know, that were pushed to me since I was young. Am I doing this because I’m really passionate about this or because, you know, I’m trying to prove myself to my father.

 

Jeff Walter (07:54)

Right.

 

⁓ Hey,

 

I’ve been around his son a few more times than you still try to prove things to my dad. but yet no, it’s but actually looking at that motivation. And it’s interesting because you talked about, you know, things that you that were important to you. And then and then you had all this great experience and then decided, OK, I think I can make an impact. You know.

 

Lucas (08:12)

Man.

 

Jeff Walter (08:32)

by helping educate people. And, and it’s, ⁓ and I’m a big believer in it. I believe, well, been in learning development for 20 years, but I really believe education is the key. It, you know, and, and, actually going forward into the, you know, back into your economics, I also, I heard something really interesting. I was at a conference a few weeks ago and there was a gentleman, presenting any kind of,

 

Lucas (08:36)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (08:58)

And he wasn’t presenting on economics. It was actually a conference about automotive training, automotive service technicians. Right. So you’re thinking, you’re not expecting to hear something like, you know, history of the worker. And he went through the history of the worker. he’s like, okay, you kind of have, ⁓ the farmer and the peasant. And then he goes, and then the industrial age hits and you had the industrial worker.

 

And that was the highly economic, you know, that was, you know, took the economy to the next level, right? The industrial worker. And they were a certain type of person, a certain type of skills and knowledges. And then that gave way to the knowledge worker, where the knowledge worker now, now that we had all these tools and whatnot, was able to create more economic value by being a knowledge worker than an industrial worker. And that’s what really got you, you know, strategic advantage in the marketplace, right? Whereas back in…

 

Henry Ford’s day, it was like, hey, we created an assembly line and we can take these people and leverage the industrial worker and for good economic use and everybody’s life standard went up. Anyway, he goes, then we got the knowledge worker and his hypothesis was, we’re at the end of the knowledge worker and we’re at the beginning of the learning worker. And he said, especially with AI coming in because

 

Lucas (10:14)

Mmm.

 

Jeff Walter (10:19)

What we’re finding is a lot of knowledge workers can be easily replaced with AI if all they are is using knowledge that they’ve acquired. And so the next…

 

Lucas (10:31)

Yeah.

 

The only thing that they are doing is just feeding in like an Excel sheet, you know, from…

 

Jeff Walter (10:37)

Exactly. Except instead

 

of, know, except when we think of the industrial worker, it was, okay, they’re, they’re putting the piston in the cylinder. They’re doing this, this physical mechanical thing over and over and over again. And what his point was like the knowledge worker is doing something similar. They’re, learning a body of knowledge, but then they’re applying that same knowledge over and over and over again. And that’s the part that’s going to be, automated.

 

just like robotics automated the factory worker and the farm worker. And that the next thing is, the next turn of the screw is the learning worker. And that’s the next jump in economic productivity because the rote application of knowledge will be automated. And so it’s the workers that can constantly learn.

 

Lucas (11:28)

Yeah,

 

I think I agree with the concept. don’t know if I would call it the learner worker or learning worker. It could be also, I think it has to do with the creativity. I think it has to do with you need someone that does what the AI cannot do, which is define a specific problem, define where we need to go and creatively.

 

Jeff Walter (11:39)

Hmm.

 

Lucas (11:53)

apply the tools, the AI to solve it. So it’s like, it’s that creation that I know, let’s say, entrepreneurship also that, you know, only humans can have. Like I talk with my AI agents all the time and sometimes they, they are great at doing research and bringing me information, right.

 

Jeff Walter (12:05)

Yeah.

 

Lucas (12:15)

but they don’t necessarily know what to do with this. If it was not already a red post that someone had written about it, and so they are like, okay, I can mine this and I can replicate that. They’re just like replicating things that are already, that have been already produced or documented in the internet.

 

Jeff Walter (12:18)

Right, right.

 

Yeah, it’s funny you say that because as I’ve been using it personally and others of my colleagues have been using it personally, the way I think of the AI agents, they go, you know, it’s like you’re a professor and you have a really good grad assistant. And they can get anything and put it together really quickly.

 

but they’re a grad assistant and they’re really a kiss up. They w they’re, they’re a sycophant, right? They’d be like, everything I do is perfect. Right. I’m like, so, and once, once I started thinking of it, like I’ve got this really good assistant that can go do something and assemble things, like you said, and they’re just a big suck up. Then I’m like, okay, don’t, don’t listen to them too much. And again, you get into, like you said, the creativity, but then being able to get all that and then go, Oh, wow.

 

Lucas (13:06)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (13:29)

I’m seeing these things and we can do this creative or approach a different way. I think you’re spot on there. I think it’s really cool. So, so, so all that led you to starting empath EQ and why entrepreneurship?

 

Lucas (13:35)

Yeah.

 

Why entrepreneurship? Just I think because I like to create

 

teams, I like to create new products. I like that discovery mode of things. in all of my, if I see all of my track record in other people’s companies, I was always on a new project, like on a new product launch. It kind of like, I grew naturally into those positions and all my bosses could see that very…

 

Swiss Army knife kind of skills that I have. I’m not great at anything. Just good at lot of things. I’m putting all of that together, you know? And I’m a good translator between engineering and product, product and marketing, marketing and strategy. I can understand all points of view and be able to talk with everyone, right? So I think that’s why entrepreneurship, just because I like

 

Jeff Walter (14:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Hahaha!

 

Lucas (14:40)

the developing new things. And in some moment I was like, I think I can do it better than others. So a little bit of ego there as well.

 

Jeff Walter (14:48)

Ha ha ha.

 

Yeah, well, also, find, you know, it’s interesting because I studied entrepreneurship. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, but it was my focus of study. And if you look at the big five personality traits, entrepreneurs tend to be very high in industriousness and very high in openness. And openness is being able to kind of

 

do exactly what you say, look at a bunch of things and think of ways to combine the ideas. There are all these disparate ideas across all these different subjects. And somehow you’re able, you mix and mash them in unique and interesting ways that solve new problems. And then you have the conscientiousness and the industriousness to be able to actually turn that into something rather than just being a dreamer. it’s a, and so I would.

 

Lucas (15:36)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (15:49)

You know, this listening to I go I bet you’re very high in conscientiousness and very high in openness

 

Lucas (15:53)

I would say also like I described as a visionary or like an operator kind of entrepreneur. I’m more on the operator side. I am not this, I don’t know, the imagination that Mark Zuckerberg had, you know, to create Facebook. And I’m not putting as a very positive example necessarily, but he was a great visionary. Anyway, he had an idea that never existed. Maybe I’m more…

 

Jeff Walter (15:58)

Yeah.

 

Right.

 

Yeah.

 

Lucas (16:19)

the, okay, there’s an idea that maybe someone had and I know how to bring it back.

 

Jeff Walter (16:24)

Yeah, it’s the

 

jack of all trades, master of none, but you’re able to combine them in a way that’s unique and then create something where one plus one equals three. Right? Like it’s like, and

 

Lucas (16:33)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (16:36)

And then you feel like, mean, that’s how I am. So I’m listening to you. I’m like, I understand that. cause at the one hand, I like, ⁓ back in, in grad school, was like, you referred to as a master of the obvious because each of the elements was, know, yeah, of course that’s what you do this and in marketing, that’s what you do on here. But then you, you put them in together in a certain way and it’s like, that’s, that’s novel. That’s, that’s actually solving a problem that, that wasn’t being solved. And it’s like,

 

Yeah, I didn’t really think of anything new. just kind of took stuff that was here and arranged it in a different way. I don’t, but you know, okay, I’ll take it.

 

Lucas (17:09)

Yeah, I think that’s what…

 

Also, a good example is how Empathique U came to be. I was here in Cincinnati, new in town, just networking with VCs to see if there was something interesting, if there were some interesting people. One of the VCs put me in contact with my co-founders, Alex and John, who were also consulting in education.

 

Jeff Walter (17:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (17:36)

And they had this idea, right? They had the idea of EmpathyQ. I didn’t come up with it. And they didn’t also come up with it necessarily out of nowhere. They were consulting for other companies that wanted to sell products to nursing schools. And they couldn’t, right? Because they were not a novel product. It was not a new product. It was not solving something new.

 

But all the nursing schools kept on telling them, hey, we have a huge problem on how to train the new generations on communication, on empathy, the escalation, the so-called soft skills. Because they have systems to…

 

Jeff Walter (18:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (18:14)

to train hard skills, like how to put an IV, how to do a diagnosis or whatever. But they don’t train anything on what is 80 % of their professional life, which is relating to people, relating to another colleague, relating to a family member, relating to the patient that they have in front. So my colleagues, Jordan and Alex, they were like, oh, this is a huge problem. Everyone’s telling us about this.

 

Jeff Walter (18:29)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (18:41)

And they came up with the idea of, hey, there’s this.

 

concept of simulations in nursing schools and medical school that you train with a standardized patient, so an actor on the other side, these simulated scenarios. There’s a huge bottleneck there because you need an actor per student, more or less. It’s very costly to scale and not standardized at all because there’s no rubric how to standardize really communication. How do you assess if someone was

 

Jeff Walter (18:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (19:14)

even if you have the same actor assessing all the students, which is already not scalable, there’s going to be biases. It’s going to be… It’s not going be a standard, let’s say. So they have the idea of how, okay, let’s scale this using technology. And that’s when I met them and I came up with the idea on how to…

 

Jeff Walter (19:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (19:35)

Do it. Yeah, great vision. Now let’s make it happen. All right. And so, yeah, we put together technologies that are existing, but a lot of what we are doing, that’s not, it’s at the edge of the new wave of AI, the new wave of video generation. And we are creating technology that has not been used before. So it’s very interesting.

 

Jeff Walter (19:37)

Ha

 

That’s so, so let’s go boring to, so now that we’re into empath EQ. So if I understand you at it’s a company that provides simulation training for the healthcare industry to develop a soft skills, I guess, more particularly patient interaction skills is that.

 

Lucas (20:23)

Yes, but it’s not only with patients. We also have scenarios to practice your communication skills with other nurses. There’s a huge concept of nurses eat their own. Also, that’s a big thing, how to interact with a leader, a boss, another clinician, and how to interact with family members of the patients. Those are the main dimensions, patient, family member of patient, colleague,

 

Jeff Walter (20:27)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Okay.

 

and boss are doctors, which are, yeah, it’s very interesting. And what kind of skills, what kind of soft skills are they learning? Or is the simulation teaching them?

 

Lucas (20:55)

Yeah, yeah.

 

So it’s crafted depending on where in the curriculum you’re going to be experiencing the simulations. So it is more curriculum-based or course-based. the course is about, they’re talking about ethics. You’re going to be like maybe having an ethical conundrum in which you will have to deal with, I know, a…

 

Jeff Walter (21:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (21:29)

Another lesson a teenager maybe wants to make a decision on their own health while the parents wants to do a different thing, right? Okay. How do you have that conversation? ⁓ Another one could be misinformation. So like a pregnant adolescent or teenager or

 

Jeff Walter (21:38)

Right.

 

Lucas (21:47)

say a young girl that doesn’t want to vaccinate her kids or his new kid, her new kid, right? Because she feels that it would cause autism. So how do you also go about educating them without triggering them? So it depends on where in the course, but usually we’re talking about education, de-escalation, how to empathize and communicate.

 

Jeff Walter (22:04)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (22:15)

in a warm manner. And I’m missing a few, but yeah, we can go into the course, kids, if you want, but yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (22:24)

Yeah. No,

 

no, that well, and you said curriculum. is this something that like who are your your clients? Are they the medical providers? Are they the schools like the nursing schools or who are the

 

Lucas (22:41)

Right now we’re in the stage of, we call it like spray and pray. Firing bullets were before we know where to fire the cannon. So we have all of them. we, our hypothesis is that we have a better chance with higher education because this is where like everything was born. And this is where like we have.

 

Jeff Walter (22:46)

Yeah.

 

Okay.

 

Lucas (23:03)

a lot of clients, you know, giving us good feedback. We have a lot of research ongoing there, but also health systems, also hospitals, and also even like telehealth insurance companies. So, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (23:14)

Interesting.

 

Yeah, very interesting.

 

So basically is the session, what’s the session look like? ⁓ I’m gonna learn, let’s say it’s one of your, I need to be able to communicate difficult information to a family member, right? So there would be a simulation based on that where I need to communicate something very difficult.

 

Lucas (23:25)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (23:38)

you know, like say diagnosis of a terminal illness, let’s say. You know, that’s a difficult thing to communicate.

 

Lucas (23:42)

Yeah.

 

So, the setup is very simple. It’s very, it just replicates what is happening today in live simulations. So you have what’s called a pre-brief and all the background information of the case, what’s happening, all the information that a nurse could have in real life. And you have it there and you have to kind of like do an evaluation of the case. And once you’re ready.

 

Jeff Walter (23:54)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (24:08)

You could play and you go into the experience. In this case, it be that you have a… It’s like a Zoom call today because it’s on the laptop, but the idea is that it feels as real as possible. We do it on laptop and not VR because in this way, any student can do it at any moment from anywhere that they want. They don’t need to schedule the VR headset or whatever.

 

Jeff Walter (24:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Right.

 

Lucas (24:34)

And so, exactly. You go into the experience. So it’s like a Zoom call, you enter, and you have a conversation in real time with an avatar, let’s say, or an AI actor. We don’t use the word avatar because avatars look like these 90 video games. It’s like a cartoon? Yeah. No, it’s like literally this, you and me, right? Like you’re having…

 

Jeff Walter (24:36)

You don’t need a $400 headset.

 

you

 

it’s a cartoon. Yeah, yeah, right, right.

 

Lucas (25:03)

real person on the other side, the AI actor that

 

Jeff Walter (25:04)

So an AI actor. Okay.

 

Lucas (25:08)

reacts to you in real time. So there’s no like, okay, I want to pause right now and think about my answer and then give it to you. No, it’s real time. You need to be ready, right? We give you some prompts to help you, you know, think about what you should be saying.

 

You can also react to those. We give you some captions also to just to read if you need. But you go through the simulation, you interact and say five, seven minutes, 10 minutes, whatever long the interaction is. And at the end of it, you have a debrief. So you think about how everything went.

 

Jeff Walter (25:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (25:44)

And meanwhile, in the meantime, on the background, we are creating a report. And so afterwards, you read the report and we assess you on your visual presence. If you were looking at the camera, if you’re paying attention or you were looking down, you were looking sideways, you were not really, you know, ⁓ showing empathy with your face.

 

You were not congruent with your face and your words, right? Like maybe I was laughing when I said, oh yeah, your kid is going to die. Okay, you weirdo, what’s happening? Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (26:14)

All

 

right. So I just want to stop for, you know, you said something really interesting and, and, and it hit me. I’ve talked to a number of people about, you know, ⁓ you know, AI simulation and that, and, you, said something in passing that I think was really important. and that is time, you know, like, you know, like, ⁓ if you’re, if you’re doing a chat bot type thing,

 

and you’re typing, there’s no sense of time, right? Which is fine when you’re doing the normal things you’re trying to do, but in a training situation, it’s really interesting. The AI actor can get impatient with you when you’re sitting there going, what’s the right way to say this? it’s like, right, exactly.

 

I’ve talked to other people about the advantages of, of an, of an AI actor. And usually it got the things like you tend to hear are, it reduces friction if it’s easier for the person to relate. but I never heard, ⁓ time and that, you know, that, that the response time becomes because you’re doing it in real time.

 

Lucas (27:16)

Mmm.

 

Jeff Walter (27:22)

as a factor. So anyway, that was just interesting. just want to circle back around that for a second because it’s usually a more and more as they can relate better. It reduces the friction of the back and forth using speech. But the time thing is an important thing.

 

Lucas (27:36)

These are a things I

 

think we think are important here. And again, it’s a hypothesis. Research is ongoing. So we don’t have like the answer yet. But we think that the…

 

visual aspect of the avatar is very important. It has to be as realistic as possible, but it has to be congruent to the situation. So it has to be able to respond to what you’re saying and how you’re saying things. And it has to be timely. As you say, time is important.

 

Jeff Walter (27:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (28:09)

Yeah, those are the important things, right? What I think is that the difference between this and a real actor is that a student is able to do this as many times as they can.

 

in the comfort of their house without needing to be exposed to either, you know, other students or a professor or like having that stage fright. So it does reduce that friction in the sense that it’s an easier step than a live actor maybe. because, and you can do it a hundred times, right? So in, it’s like a preparation for the next step, which might be doing it live with an actor.

 

or going directly to the hospital floor in a residency format and dealing with a real case, right? Because that’s high stakes already for a new nurse.

 

Jeff Walter (29:04)

Yeah, just different type of question. So we talked about nursing and we talked about health care. Are these scenarios and these simulations, is that a library of?

 

library of simulations that empath EQ is creating or or or can a client create their own? So, you know, like there’s two things going on here, right? There’s the technology to be able to do these simulation and and then ⁓ score it against some type of rubric.

 

Right. And then there’s actually creating the simulation and they both have value. And it sounds like you guys are doing both. You’re creating the simulations and all of the, you know, I mean, it’s not easy to create a rubric and to create a, a simulate, you know, to, to think of what the right simulation is. Now you’re going off of, Hey, historically they’ve done this in actor. So we can kind of take that as a template.

 

But is the vision for, as you guys go forward, that you have this library of simulations and the technology to deliver it, or that the client would be able to start with that or maybe even create their own simulations? How does that work?

 

Lucas (30:16)

It’s a great question.

 

The vision, the hope is that we get to a place where anyone could create their scenarios by just prompting them, right? Or describing them. Because of where we’re at with technology, that’s not yet possible. So we are very much involved in the creation of the scenarios.

 

Jeff Walter (30:28)

All right.

 

Okay.

 

Lucas (30:40)

we are doing them with the clients, right? So these are scenarios that are available for everyone, but they are specifically sometimes created for like a specific course, right? Which luckily it’s quite standardized across different nursing schools. So you can always reuse them.

 

Jeff Walter (30:50)

Yeah.

 

Lucas (30:59)

But yeah, let’s say today there’s not that flexibility of user generated content is all generated by us with the help of the other user.

 

Jeff Walter (31:08)

Yeah,

 

well, it’s an interesting thought because I was just talking to gentleman yesterday and we were talking about just course creation in general and it was…

 

And it was interesting because any, you know, if you just go to back to like, you know, standard score and stuff that’s available today, it’s like, anybody can create a course.

 

But anybody can create a lousy course. And there is a lot of adult learning theory that a good course designer would put into. And so it’s an interesting thing of…

 

Lucas (31:30)

Yeah.

 

We.

 

We have two

 

challenges because that’s one challenge, Like the idea, like the design of the scenario of the learning objectives of the rubric, right? Which we have to put a lot of thought into. That’s not necessarily the biggest bottom leg because say in the worst case scenario, it’s the client using it for themselves. if they, they, and most of these people

 

Jeff Walter (31:50)

All right.

 

Right.

 

Lucas (32:16)

have lot of experience, so they would do a good enough job. And we can also review it with them and help them. The bottleneck today is on the technical side of creating the simulations, because they’re not created on the fly. I cannot today just craft a scenario, a rubric, and say, okay, let’s put it in a machine and create these

 

Jeff Walter (32:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (32:42)

this scenario with my face. Not as easy because today imagine generating five seconds of a video, totally gen AI takes a minute, right? So if I want that to be real time answering to you, you will be back and like answering, you know, multiple choice. Hey, how are you doing? Minute later, good.

 

Jeff Walter (32:54)

Hahaha!

 

That’s

 

Lucas (33:05)

So

 

Jeff Walter (33:06)

right.

 

Lucas (33:06)

that’s a bottleneck. We need to create our secret sources in that creation of like real interactive experience and delivering real time, but the creation is not real time.

 

Jeff Walter (33:13)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, well, and I think it also goes back to what you said earlier, and it’s the quality of the simulation. And the higher the quality, the more learning that can occur, which means you have to be really knowledgeable of how to create a simulation. And that’s not, you know, that, well, that’s a rare talent right now, and not something that the person running the program.

 

Lucas (33:34)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (33:43)

That’s what I know. So that’s really, it’s interesting. So where do you see you guys, what’s next step or what are the big challenges you guys are facing?

 

Lucas (33:53)

Well, challenges a lot. So next steps, we have a lot of validation from potential clients, a lot of validation today from thought leaders that they are saying this is problem, this is a great solution for it, it seems like it. And we have some research ongoing to…

 

quantitatively prove that this is the efficacy of this tool. But we also have commercial realities, so we cannot wait for those results and we just want to basically land some commercial agreements to prove that people can want to pay for a solution like this. So that’s the next step. So early stages of…

 

not just having these partners in crime, advisors and counsel, which is great. We are in cahoots with the biggest universities locally, also from the East Coast. We have some in the West Coast as well. Very big universities. Now we want to also push them to…

 

to create a commercial relationship long term. I say, let’s get into.

 

Jeff Walter (35:05)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (35:06)

like yearly contracts, bi-yearly contracts, whatever. So that’s the biggest next step. And of course, challenges, it’s keeping up with the technology, keep evolving the technology. Like as we go, industry keeps evolving. We all hear about how AI is moving super fast. AI is moving really fast. And…

 

Jeff Walter (35:18)

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas (35:28)

Again, we are at the edge of AI video generation. So we are still early to do what we want in our perfect vision. So we need to stay very on top of what’s happening. So to stay up to date and everything. I think it’s challenge that everyone has. I think it’s particularly our product.

 

Jeff Walter (35:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Lucas (35:55)

And really I square the beat on that. So yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (35:58)

Yeah,

 

you know, it’s interesting. A year ago, was at a conference, the ATMC, the Automotive Technical Managers Conference, and NAPA, NAPA Auto Parts, those guys, they started going down that, they were gone down path with virtual reality, training for hard skills, like how to do a brake job and all that kind of stuff.

 

Lucas (36:17)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (36:19)

And it was interesting, I saw them about 15 months ago at a conference, and I forget the vendor that they’re working with, but then I saw them again like a month ago, and they kind of gave an update at the conference.

 

And it was really interesting because it’s the kind of things that you’re talking about. In this case, it’s with the headsets and the VR and it’s a hard skills simulation. But the interesting thing, and this might just from some food for thought, they got it going and it’s kind of cutting edge and that. And then they started hitting some, and they got early adopters, but then they hit some.

 

resistance, let’s say, you know, because people don’t like change. And, but the thing about it is like, it’s, it’s kind of like what you’re, they had the same problem that you’re addressing in healthcare. They had in automotive tech service, which is you can bring a person into a vehicle and do a brake job, but it’s hard to scale.

 

Lucas (37:20)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (37:21)

Right? Like one job, you know, like, you you have a lot, you know, it’s just, it’s, hard to scale because you’ve got human coaches and you have, you know, a $50,000 or $20,000 simulation. Right? I mean, I mean, not simulation, but like, you know, I’ve got a vehicle here. They’re not cheap. Um, and, and the person has to actually get there. Right. And, uh, anyway, long story short, they rolled it out the first year and they were kind of like where you guys are now, right? Where you’ve.

 

Lucas (37:34)

Yay.

 

Jeff Walter (37:51)

You’re, you’re, building this, you’re getting the, all the content in, you’re creating all the simulations for the different types of skills you’re trying to develop. And they had early adopters and then to, to actually scale it through the organization. They ended up doing side by side comparisons and they videotaped it. So they would have, you know, a break system here, you know,

 

Lucas (38:09)

Thank

 

Jeff Walter (38:16)

And then they would, and right next door over here, they’d have a guy with the goggles on and they would, they would show them go, go, go through the same thing. It’s like, this is how I do this over here. Meanwhile, you can see the video that the guy is seeing it’s and it was, was to your point earlier, it was more cartoony of a simulation. It wasn’t as gritty as the, you know, but it was interesting. They, did this side by side and then, ⁓ and then, and then kind of, you know, tested the,

 

the participants and were able to show that they were able to get similar results in terms of the quality of the education. But the difference being the traditional method was I need this $10,000 piece of equipment and I need the learner to actually be physically in front of it. And over here I needed a $400 pair of glasses or goggles.

 

Lucas (38:56)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (39:14)

And so it had the scalability thing. as you guys go forward, you don’t want to the carpet before the horse. But it was a very powerful, they found that to be a very powerful thing from an adoption standpoint.

 

Lucas (39:27)

Showing it.

 

Yeah. No, you gave me some ideas there. Our challenge is not necessarily the one to adopt it. They see that they have no solution for it, but.

 

different from the example that you were saying, they are not now training necessarily the students in this, right? Like they’re not training students in soft skills necessarily. They do sometimes some professors here and there, whatever, but there is not this, this course that they have to go through. So the creativity relies right now on us on creating this curriculum.

 

Jeff Walter (39:52)

Great.

 

Well, it’s the scalability because they had the same problem. Like you said, hey, this happens sometimes with actors. Some students, sometimes. But they have a set of scenarios, right? The problem is you want all students all the time.

 

Lucas (40:15)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (40:26)

And so they had that same challenge of some of their people were lucky enough to physically go to the training center to be in front of that physical simulation, to do it physically, but it was only handful of people, you know, and, and, and, and so anyway, just, just food for thought. It was just really interesting to see the evolution of that. And, ⁓ and they wanted to prove themselves that they were being,

 

Lucas (40:41)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (40:54)

It had the same efficacy. And it’s really cool.

 

Lucas (40:56)

Totally, totally, yeah. Yeah, we are doing similar things.

 

Of course, we cannot videotape people today just because of FERPA, you know, things, but I think we could do something around it. Yeah, you gave me some idea. Thank you.

 

Jeff Walter (41:08)

Yeah, it’s, yeah, yeah,

 

no problem. It’s, well, it’s fascinating because it’s, you know, it’s fascinating because it’s, you know, adoption of new techniques and new ways of doing things. It’s, you know, you still make, you know, it’s, it’s hard. It’s, hard. Yeah. We all, you know, and so it’s a challenge. Yeah, no, it’s and, ⁓

 

Lucas (41:25)

Yeah. That’s a challenge. That’s, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (41:32)

And there are early adopters and there’s early majority and late majority on adoption of anything. but it’s really cool. That’s really cool. Very interesting, sir. You know, so, and, ⁓

 

Lucas (41:40)

No, I think it’s

 

very interesting problem, very salient, right? Think about it, like today nursing, there’s already a shortage of nurses. Like they will tell you, it depends on what you define as a nurse and the definition, whatever it is, anything between 60 to 120,000 nurses are already in shortage in the U.S. only. And it’s increasing because every…

 

every new cohort of graduating students, 52 % of them change careers after two years. So it’s crazy. Of course, this is not just because of lack of training on soft skills, but a big component of it is. And today we feel that nursing, I think today is the second or third, you know,

 

Jeff Walter (42:16)

Yeah.

 

Lucas (42:32)

it’s a job position in the US, but it will be soon enough. It will be like the number one, because it’s one of the only ones that is growing and it will not decrease because of AI, right? The AI is going to replace the nurse. And so, yeah, it’s super relevant today.

 

Jeff Walter (42:34)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, well, I think it was about a month or so ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article that nursing is the new entry into the middle class. Like, like, you know, it used to be the factory job or the the corporate job. And they’re basically making this basically saying exactly said there’s a tremendous need, it’s not going to be replaced. And it it, you know, pays well, you know, pays well. Yeah.

 

Lucas (43:13)

It plays well. On financial level, plays super well.

 

Jeff Walter (43:16)

Yeah, and now that you have a number of gradations from the CNA to the LP to the RN to the nurse practitioner, you also have a whole.

 

Lucas (43:27)

career path.

 

Jeff Walter (43:27)

know, career path.

 

And then also the nurses also, you know, then they also end up becoming shift leaders and managers. And so it’s, well, my mom was a nurse, so I’m kind of partial. But it’s interesting. You know, I was gonna bring up one other thing. I was talking to somebody else.

 

Again, different application, not in healthcare, on AI-generated simulations where you end up with a rubric and you get a score and all that. And was interesting and it was built for training. One of the things that they started doing with some of their clients is they started using it in the recruiting.

 

You know, actually, I’m sorry, it wasn’t healthcare. I think it had to do with assisted living. so it was trying to, tremendous amount of turnover, right? At the aid level, not the nurse level, but more at the aid level. And so they started using it to try to identify people that were more…

 

similar to those that would stay, almost as an assessment tool, as opposed to a training tool, to assess whether not they were the type of person that would stay for the long run. Does that make sense?

 

Lucas (44:16)

to the ones in space.

 

Yeah.

 

So

 

yeah, totally, makes sense. I’m curious if you remember afterwards the name to look into them because we also have that assessment portion of it, right? Like we are assessing people in order to give you feedback, right? So how… ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (44:43)

Right, it’s the rubric.

 

Lucas (44:44)

Yeah, our product goes the extra step of giving you feedback and teaching you. But that assessment portion of it, we have it. It’s just like, as you say, we need to define the rubric that you want to assess against. And then we just point it to the correct framework and that’s it. Yeah, interesting.

 

Jeff Walter (44:49)

All right.

 

Yeah. And

 

some of the things in the rubric and some of the things you can bake into the rubric. mean, there’s some things in the rubric where you can, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a learnable thing. And then there are other things like, you know, say attitude or, or that it’s just part of the person’s base personality. And, and, and they’re not, it’s a trait that’s not necessarily easily changed. so they

 

Lucas (45:26)

It’s not easy.

 

I believe that everything can change, but yes, it’s not easy. The behavior is difficult to change, right? And the only way to change behavior is by exposure and addition.

 

Jeff Walter (45:37)

It well,

 

and, and, and, I agree with you. think we all are works in progress and we can all improve and change the questions, whether or not it’s up to the, whether or not an employer can change them. Like there are certain things that like it’s only you and you have to change yourself if you want to. And, but anyway, it’s just an interesting thing. I, I not heard of. There’s a first time I’ve heard of that.

 

Lucas (45:50)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (46:02)

And I’m not talking about what you hear in recruiting in terms of, you know, resume reviewers and all that type of stuff. was, it was usually the tool they were using for training and flipping it around for candidates. Once they got past the certain to sit there and go, is it, is, are they the right type of candidate? Because the rubric is giving us information that we don’t usually get from a interview. Right.

 

Lucas (46:09)

No, just maybe.

 

Yeah.

 

Interview. Yeah, or even

 

if you don’t want to interview all of the candidates, right? Like it takes time to interview one. So.

 

Jeff Walter (46:30)

Yeah, that’s true. That’s

 

true. So it’s another interesting use case that I hadn’t thought of until they, so I just figured I’d share that with you. But it’s interesting because it’s a hope, and the hope there is better alignment, right? Like, it’s not, you want a candidate that’s, hey, this is the reality here, this is what you’re going to deal with. And are you of the type of person that that is, you know,

 

aligns with your value with what you want, or are you going to get frustrated or not enjoy this and ⁓ it’s not aligned with where you’re at and you’re going to leave in a month or two. Like that doesn’t help anybody. Right. So it’s interesting. It’s man, it’s fun stuff. Hey, I see we’re coming up on time here. Yeah. So we’ll wrap this thing up.

 

Lucas (47:03)

Yeah.

 

down there.

 

Yeah, I’ve been receiving a bunch of Slack messages, many of them. was like, gosh.

 

Jeff Walter (47:22)

Before we go, there anything else you’d like to share with anybody, with everybody?

 

Lucas (47:28)

Stay curious what is happening today with AI. Stay curious on how we can help nurses and how EmpathiQ might be one of those user-effective solutions. And I hope that we bring value. And of course, if anyone has experience both in healthcare,

 

in education and AI video simulations, in behavioral science and behavioral learning. Yeah, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear what you think about the product.

 

Jeff Walter (48:04)

Yeah, well, and on that note, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get a hold of you and EmpathEQ?

 

Lucas (48:10)

Email lucas at empath eq.ai

 

Jeff Walter (48:15)

Lucas at empath eq.ai. I’ll make sure we put that in the show notes.

 

My guest today has been Lucas Consoli. Lucas from MPath EQ. Lucas, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you sharing it.

 

Lucas (48:23)

Yeah.

 

Sure, thank you for having me. It was great talking through this. And I’m also excited for the next conversation. Let’s see, you know, in a couple of months or a year, you know, an update on what’s happening.

 

Jeff Walter (48:41)

Oh, let me know and you come back, we’ll get an update. This stuff moves quickly. So I think would be six to 12 months, we’ll have a fun conversation. So Lucas, again, thank you. And to all our listeners out there, thank you for listening and we’ll catch you around next time.

 

Lucas (48:50)

Yeah.