Episode Transcript
<p><!--block-->Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and we've touched upon meditation a few times before on the show. But never like this. Today we are here with a guest who has intersected technology and meditation to make it customized and easy, and we're gonna get into that.<br><br>We are here with Walker Ferguson. He is a student athlete and he wanted to combine. Sports and mental health. Oftentimes people do sports to help their mental health, but athletes have their own challenges as well. And if they're already doing sports, what else can they do to help their mental health? And meditation is one of those answers.<br><br>So, Mr. Ferguson, would you please go ahead and introduce yourself for us? Yeah. I appreciate you having me on the show, Mr. Whiskey. Uh, my name is Walker Ferguson. I'm from Richmond, Virginia Originally. Um, and then I played football at Wake Forest just wrapped up my senior season where I majored in economics and monitoring communications.<br><br>And in January of 2024, my best friend and partner Hampton came to me with an idea who started a meditation app named to send meditations using artificial intelligence, um, to give more of a personalized field of meditation. So that's kinda what I've been doing now, and that's what I'm passionate about.<br><br>That's what I wanna do after school. And, um, yeah, that's a little bit about me, right? So before we get into the app and the awesome customization of it. Let's go into meditation itself and can you kind of dive into the benefits of it? You know, for us, especially for many of us who haven't heard of meditation or a lot of people tend to associate it with just religious, you know, benefits, but it is just a physical and mental practice that anyone can do.<br><br>So could you get into that for us please? Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. Um, taking the big guys back a little bit, um, sophomore year and a big reason why, you know. We formulated the app was Hampton and I both either lived either in the past, it was just depression, or the future is just anxiety. But we never really lived in the present moment and meditation, mindfulness that allowed us to be in the present moment.<br><br>You know, learning how to breathe. We started just learning how to breathe, like box breathing, breathing in for seven seconds, holding for four, breathing out for four, and then repeating, learning how to box, breathe. And we've learned like the power of the breath, how you literally tap in with your consciousness, how you're present in every moment.<br><br>And that brought us out, learning how to breathe, that became like a superpower for us and brought us out us from really dark times in our lives. So then that kind of formulated and, um, I'm a Christian Guy myself, so I would read the word, I'd meditate on scripture and I'd develop a cultivate, a further my deep relationship with Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.<br><br>Hampton kind of took the approach of, he likes body scans, he loves Marcus Aelius. He's really big into the stoicism in that form of meditation. Mm-hmm. And like I said, you know, like you said, you know, meditation's not just. You know, for Christianity, it's not just for stoicism, it's not just for Buddhism.<br><br>It's a practice being mindful, living present, being in the present moment, living a happy, healthy life and you know, every day. And you know, I would encourage anybody that's getting into meditation to just, you know, be mindful when you wake up in the morning. You know, just like look around and just be like, wow, like the sun now doesn't, it's shining right?<br><br>Like there's so many things we take for granted, you know, there's so many. Blessings in our life. Cultivation of gratitude's, huge. Like when I wake up every morning now, like I write down two things I'm grateful for, to start my day with gratitude and just living in the present moment and putting yourself in that moment, whether that's through breathing, whether that's through, you know, visualization aspects, whether that's through, you know, reading.<br><br>There's so many different forms of meditation. But I would encourage anybody to just learn to breathe and learn to live in the present, because that's where, you know, that's where life's found. Yeah, for sure. I know that we've talked a lot about how there's so many different ways to meditate or even if you're religious, just to do centering prayer and spend time in silence, and it really is great because it's something that you can really.<br><br>Do anywhere, anytime, once you really master it and it can have huge benefits. And so you've made it mobile with this app that we can have on our phone that uses AI to help customize it and personalize it. So what does that look like in terms of personalization? Yeah. For, yeah, that's a great question. Um, to backtrack a little bit, so when me and Hampton were going through some of the things we were going through and learning how to meditate.<br><br>We were blessed enough to have a free subscription to Calm through Wake Forest football. So we were able to use that app and we liked the fact that Calm gave base meditations, base sleep stories, and they helped us, you know, become more mindful, but nothing felt, and to feel like calm, like a deep sense of like, connectedness with myself.<br><br>But nothing felt, you know, tailored for me for what I was going through, right? Everything had to, I had to figure out on my own learning how to breathe and how to visualize, right? So Hampton comes to me in January, 2023 and he's like, what? I know what we're gonna do. And he said. We're gonna create an app, um, using AI to give people personalized meditation, sleep stories, and what we call meditation plans.<br><br>So essentially the app, you know, you open it up, you take a personalization quiz where we get some base information about you. It's like your name, your date of birth, and your meditation experience. Are you intermediate? Are you a beginner? Are you advanced? And then what do you want the app to be used for?<br><br>Right? Is it to gain a cultivation of attitude? Is it to achieve goals? Is it to improve focus? Is it to de-stress, like reduce anxiety? So from there, once we know a little bit about you, you're prompted to a big screen with a big button that says Create meditation. So from there you'd hit Create Meditation, and there's a little query box, like just like on chat GBT, or you can type in something.<br><br>You can type in literally anything you wanna meditate on. I could say, I'm about to go on Mr. Whiskeys podcast right now. I'm a little nervous. Could you gimme a meditation to help me calm down and perform at my best? From there, I would literally hit next. There's a slider, so it goes 5, 10, 15, 25. You get the gist all the way up to 30.<br><br>So you select the length of your meditation and then you select the background noise and you select the voice. And then once you select that, the meditation generates within five seconds while the background noise is playing. And then you have your own personalized meditation, you know, for you to meditate on.<br><br>Right? Which is cool 'cause it's able to give you a meditation for what you're going through because you know, as we all know, like nobody knows what you're going through, people. It's like there's all these like emotions that are suppressed and inside of you that you really, most people don't under, no one knows what's going on 'cause they're not inside you.<br><br>But being able to tap in, have a resource for you, you know, on the spot to help you get through whatever you're going through is essential. And the cool part about the personalization quiz too, at the beginning for the meditation feature is if you don't have anything on the top of your mind, right? And you're just like exploring the app based on the prompts you gave it in the meditation quiz at the beginning, sorry, not meditation quiz.<br><br>Just the quiz you took at the beginning. Um, you get suggestions, right? So it'll be like, try one of these. So you can try out one of those meditations and then if you like that one, you can start it, say it, your favorites and our algorithm will give you better suggestions based on what you like and what you don't like.<br><br>Similarly, for the sleep stories, it's the same process. They're personalized like bedtime stories. So you select a genre, a theme, a setting, and then you can make yourself the character of the story. And there's also a surprise when button, if you just want a random story, but it's the same process. You can create your own story, you can.<br><br>Select the length, whether that's 5, 10, 15, 20 on the slider, a voice, a background. Then it creates your own personalized bedtime story for you go to sleep. And then what I love the most in the app too, which has really helped me as an athlete and visualize my success, is the meditation plans. So there's a feature in the send that I really love that we call meditation plans, but essentially you can put in a specific goal.<br><br>So I could say I want to become a starting wide receiver. On the Wake Forest football team, my senior year, I'm gonna do X, X, and X to achieve my goal. From there, once you put that into the app, it takes five to 10 minutes, but it'll actually generate a meditation plan for you to see yourself achieving that goal.<br><br>And it's broken up into either into a short plan, which is 12 days or a long plan, which is 20 days. It's broken up into different facets. 'cause as we know, everything starts in the mind and you can actually see yourself achieving that goal, right? Broken up into phases. But it's not just for achievement.<br><br>You can do one for relationships, for reduction of anxiety, like whatever that goal may be. And it's broken up different categories. So that's a feature I really like about the app. And you know, to answer your question as a whole, the big difference is that personalization piece and the personalization piece is.<br><br>The ad meets you where you're at. You know, it learns from you. You give it the information, you give it what you want to meditate on and it actually meets you where you're at. And you know, no other app does that right now. They don't have that personalization aspect and, and that's what we're really excited about.<br><br>And you know, for us too, with Hampton and I, our mission, it was never to make or create a billion dollar company. It was, you know, how can we change a billion lives? How can we help people live more happier, healthier, mindful lives? You know, one breath at a time. So, you know, that's a little bit about the app and the personalization aspect.<br><br>Right. And what's so great about that is we've talked before on the show about how, especially for beginners and people even who have been doing it for quite a while, meditation can be still very difficult, as in, in nowadays more than ever, in a world full of distractions. Uh, but one of our most distracting places is our own mind.<br><br>You know, we've got so many thoughts, whether positive or negative. And so to have that anchor, that voice that. You can pick as well to find one you like that anchors you, that keeps you guided through the meditation, so you're not just falling asleep or not just wandering and and losing focus. It's so important to have that anchor there.<br><br>And I have to ask, did you have any experience with AI engineering before this or did you and your partner kind of put together your heads like, all right, we need to learn how to make an ai now how do we do that? You know? Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. So, um. To backtrack a little bit, I can't take credit whatsoever for building the app.<br><br>I'm an X's and nose guy. I take care of things legally with H Hamptons the same way. And we hop on podcasts and talk to like-minded individuals and good people like yourself. But we have a team that, um, of Gordon Graham Bush and Colin Grayden, who are our first two developers this summer, and they're both com sci students.<br><br>One just got a great job and one's a junior. Or gonna be a junior next year. And they both did an unbelievable job. But the MVP this summer, they're com sci guys. They do all the coding. Right. Everything. I didn't, I didn't touch it. Yeah. Um, but it's actually a funny story how, you know, Colin got involved. So to backtrack a little bit, you know, when Hampton and I knew this is what we wanted to do, we wrote everything down on our division board.<br><br>We're like, okay, so we need to find some developers, right? So it is funny, but Hampton and I, um, both were not like graded Spanish students when he was at Wake. 'cause he transferred to Georgetown after sophomore year. And, uh, we took, we ended up taking like Spanish together and we just like, we're getting destroyed 'cause we're just not very good Spanish, I guess.<br><br>Right. And Hampton actually had to retake it because his credits didn't transfer and he transferred to Georgetown 'cause he transferred there for football. And, um, Colin, the head developer came back to school. He worked at Merrill Lynch for a little bit and then he came back because he was, his love was comm side.<br><br>He was comm side degree and they both had to take Spanish. So, uh, they're both in a freshman year Spanish class. And they're both like old looking dudes, you know. You know how freshmen like, right. Yeah. So they sit right next to each other and they just formed this like beautiful relationship. And then, uh, you know, the Hampton's like, oh, look, you're a haw guy, right?<br><br>So after like a month, he's like, Colin, he pitched him the idea and showed him the vision. Colin's like, oh, I can't do it. You know, I have an internship lined up this summer, you know, and then like a week later, Colin's like, dude, life's about taking risks. He's like, this is what I want to do. He's like, I wanna build this with you.<br><br>Awesome. So then he ended up finding, uh. Uh, Gordon, who's actually in the, because like I said, Colin's the head of the com computer science club at Georgetown. And Gordon, um, was in the club as well. So those two guys, we just formed a beautiful relationship and they built it over the summer and they're like, well, we took care of all the logistics.<br><br>They built it. And then in September we did our beta testing, we had an MVP out, and then we realized, you know, the app isn't like a professional app yet, it looks like. Just like an MVP, right. You know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. We found a, uh, so we, I was like doing some LinkedIn searching and, um, I found this unbelievable girl out, um, in Washington named Avi.<br><br>She did four years undergrad at India and then got her master's at Washington, and she's a wizard with Figma and like the front app and development designing. And she designed like a beautiful app and it looks great now, and she's only continuing to refine it in four weeks. It's gonna look even better.<br><br>But, and then Jesse Reed, you know, Colin, one of Colin's best friends. You know, they just met, formulated a relationship playing Xbox. You know, it's funny how life works and he, uh, he ended up, um, coming in and helping us out and doing all the grunt work and fixing the screening resolution. So the app looks good on all every iPhone, you know, 'cause right now we're just on iOS and a month from the Google Play Store, but.<br><br>You know, to answer your question, I'm not a Compsci guy at all. We have a team of unbelievable people, and I'm a firm believer in it's the who before the what. And you gotta get the right people on the bus. And when you get the right people on the bus, the bus will hold where you wanna be. And you know, we've got so lucky and I'm so grateful for all of them.<br><br>Yeah. And how new is the website? Is the website relatively new as well? Yeah, so the, yeah, the website's, I wanna say a month, just over a month old. That's what I thought because when, when we were first recording together, there was no website and then, uh, we obviously we had to reschedule and uh, I found out that y'all have a website now, which is, is perfect because now I can put that in the link for everyone to check out directly too.<br><br>So I appreciate that. Yes, sir. Yeah, it's been great. Yeah, lot of progress. Really fast. Yeah. And, and that's what I want to ask you about. You know, you've got the website up, you're trying to expand as far as the app store availability. What else do you see with the future of this app, whether that's more AI voices, more options?<br><br>Do you see it expanding in any way? Or do you think it's kind of at the ideal state right now? Oh, it's definitely expanding. Uh, one of our values at Ascend is innovation, and we always wanna change and adapt and get better. Yeah. Um, you know, right now we're in our, you know. Soft launch per se. So we're kind of just going organically for the next couple months until May.<br><br>Um, you know, just gaining users, you know, hopping on podcasts like yours, reaching out to like-minded individuals, like connecting in LinkedIn and Facebook groups and just getting the word out to as many people as we possibly can, organically without, through, without fundraising. And then in May, we wanna do our seed round of fundraising and we wanna refine the app.<br><br>We'd like to add in human voices. So actually hire, you know, voice actors and get them to speak, you know, for a couple hours and get all the words implemented. Once those words are done, we wanna implement those words into the AI and make those voices, you know, 'cause that's the one thing we're kind of lacking right now is, you know, the voices are decent, you know, they get the job done, but they're not human.<br><br>You know, they're, they're almost human, but they're not voice actors. Once we raised that, when they do the voice actors had premium voices in there. They are actually humans. It's gonna make the meditation sessions and the sleep stories just much more elevated as well. Um, and then from there, you know, once the product's as good as we possibly can get it, we wanna hire a marketing company and really get it out to as many people as we possibly can, um, around that may timeframe.<br><br>Um, but as for the future, you know, Hampton and I have so many ideas and ways to expand the app, to add new features. Um, you know, I'm not gonna share any right now, just 'cause Yeah, of course, of course. We're know exactly what I wanna do, but just know there's a lot, there's a lot in store. Yeah, for sure. And then before we close off here, what about you yourself graduating college now?<br><br>Like what is that looking like in term with that as well? Yeah, no, that's another good question. You know, I kinda, you know, I was always just like a football player, right? And just going to school, I never really like thought about, you know, like what's, you know, was like under school, right? Right. But you know, I'm a firm believer in like life's all about relationships.<br><br>You know, I've met so many good people along the way and so many people have invested in me. Yeah. Mm. You know, we got accepted to a startup accelerator, Winston-Salem, um, to help grow Ascend. So, you know, I also got into UVA for grad school as well. Um, just contemplating whether I wanna do that while I grow.<br><br>Ascend. Well, we grow, ascend, but, you know, for the first two years of college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. You know, I had a big, you know, self discovery period, um, you know, junior year, and then now I'm senior, obviously. Um, and, you know, I do wanna go to the entrepreneurship route. You know, I'm, I'm always hungry to explore.<br><br>I'm eager to learn more and, you know, make the world a better place. You know, as much as I can. So, you know, I don't know what my future holds and one of the, uh, but I know who hold, I know the author and I know. So, uh, one of the, one of the, uh, coolest things I ever heard from one of our team chaplains at Wake was never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.<br><br>And, you know, I trust him. So I have peace in that. And so my future, like to answer briefly, is just to grow, ascend, and to change as many lives as I possibly can. Amen. Yeah, that, that's awesome. So ladies and gentlemen, whether you want to improve your sleep, your focus, your concentration, maybe your goals are studying, speaking or athletics, definitely check out Ascend meditations.<br><br>We're gonna have the link and description below for the website where you can find out more information and it will be available on the app store for y'all to download and check out as well. And then. Mr. Ferguson will have your LinkedIn in description for anyone who wants to get in contact with you as well.<br><br>But I wanna thank you for what you're doing and for your work. You know, a lot of people have been very fearful and wary of AI thinking that it's evil, uh, but there are plenty of great applications we can do with it and applying it to things that people wouldn't traditionally think of, such as meditation.<br><br>So I appreciate what you do and your, you know, sharing your time here today. Yeah. No, I appreciate you and you have a great show and I appreciate you having on.<br><br><br></p>
