172 | Using Technology to Help More People with Kat Houghton
Our guest today on the pod is Kat Houghton. Kat is a psychologist, a co-founder and a wilderness rites of passage guide. She spent 15 years working as a psychologist with children with autism and their families. For the past 11 years, she has been working in the intersection of digital technology and behavioral health.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Kat Houghton Awarepreneurs interview
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Kat Houghton
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The aware partners podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's guests in our topic, I've got one request, you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a rating and review. It helps tremendously. Thank you so much. Today, our topic is using technology to help more people. Our guest is Kat Houghton. And Kat is a psychologist, a coach and a wilderness rites of passage guide. She spent 15 years working with children with autism and their families. For the past 11 years, she has been working in the intersection of digital technology and behavioral change. Cat Welcome to the show. Thank you, Paul. Such an honor to be here with you and I love I think our listeners are gonna really resonate with the fact that you did this like deep incredible, like spelunking work with humans in their psychology and that level of things. When you're doing this incredible digital technology work and how you walk in both worlds. I'm so excited to introduce our listeners to you and your work. Before we get there cap, were called to wear printers. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or an awareness practice that you personally use to like resource yourself for this really important work. Yeah, oh, there's so many.
Kat Houghton 01:41
is a grounding practice that I've been doing for years that involves sending down roots into the earth like deep down into the earth and visualize them going through the soil and through the bedrock and through the ocean, inside the earth and right into the molten core of the Earth and drawing energy up from the earth into my body. And then sending up my branches up at the top of my head and up into the star nation and connecting with all the energy that's up there. And essentially creating a two way flow and coming up from the earth and coming down from the heavens and meeting in my heart. And I find if I do that for a couple of minutes, everything gets a whole lot better.
Paul Zelizer 02:23
What a beautiful practice and you live in a beautiful space to have that nature connection. I imagine that's part of your practice as well. Absolutely. Yeah, very grateful. So talk to us a little bit. This kind of, you know, part of cat is like psychology and depth psychology and wilderness as I don't know, resource and change, tool, change management and direction and change tool. And part of cat is like interested in technology doing this, like growing edge work in the realm of tech, psychology and human behavioral change. Like, how did you get interested in each of those threads? And then the intersection of the two, when did that start to get on your radar?
Kat Houghton 03:10
Yeah, well, the psychology piece piece has been there for really, as long as I can remember, I've always had a deep fascination with human beings, like always felt like I was in a role of an observer, even as a child, you know, to watch humans.
Kat Houghton 03:26
they're so fascinating. Why don't we do these things? And really, you know, had a lot of questions about how do we how do we put ourselves together? Why are we here? And who are we and how do we navigate the world. And so went into psychology as my undergraduate, and kept being kept being fascinated by those questions. And that's what led me to autism is when I first met my first child with autism, his name is Liam, he's now in his 20s, which is mind blowing, but he was four at the time. And love Thomas the Tank Engine. And I remember going to meet with him, his parents were interviewing me to see if I could come in and volunteer in their home based program they were doing for him. And had this profound experience of just falling in love with this child just absolutely loved him, I loved my time with him, I loved that I got to go in and play with like this, you know, whatever. 1920 this there was nowhere else in my life that I played in. I was studying psychology when I'm so I get to go in and play with this kid on his terms and go into his world and, and really started through that program. And this was many, many years of training, but it started with Liam, learning how to how to relate to other human beings how to hold another human being in my presence with love and respect and non judgment, which at the same time, I'm also building a meditation practice, right? So I'm learning how to do that. kind of on the cushion. And then in the playroom, getting to apply that in a really deep way with kids that are often very judged for their behavior and very misunderstood. And so really being able to practice all of that in a very real way helped me to embody that understanding of what what does it mean to be non judgmental, and to really, truly respect and love another human being? So through that work, did a really deep dive into into relationship and how are we in relationship to ourselves? How are you in relationship to others, I worked not only with the children, but with their parents, instead of training professionals to work with their kids in a very respectful, child centered play based way. And through doing that work, you know, as more years in started to see some of the more practical struggles that the parents were working with, I went through a lot of the emotional struggles with them, helping them with with their process, but also saw the very real practical struggles that they were going through. And one of those was being able to just make sense of what is happening in terms of the different treatments and therapies that parents were using, they're often using so many different types, really, from a sense of desperation, often, you know, I won't we'll try this. And we'll try this and nutrition therapy and physical therapy and all these different things. And really having a hard time knowing Well, something seems to be working, but we're not sure which part of it is or what's not working. So from seeing that, that need and that sort of confusion from parents realized that there was a lot better ways to collect data, and to be able to present those data to parents and to the care teams that were working with those families. so that people could start to understand what what what is working, what's not working, what, what symptoms is impacting which ones are not impacting. And so I first so that sort of led me into technology, because the only way I could see to do that was with software. You know, I literally had families who had pages full of notebooks, that huge binders where they're trying to keep track of things and then had to lug that around to the doctor's office into the nutritionist and had a terrible time trying to communicate that to professionals who didn't have a lot of time to hear the whole story. So the only way I could see that was was software. And so we started in 2008, I met what is now my business partner, Mark to minusca, who co founded elimite view with me. And he and I started talking about better ways to help parents keep track of what what they were seeing what their children all the different therapies and treatments they were trying. And we created our first web based platform in 2009, which was essentially we thought of it as a HIPAA compliant Facebook. So it was a place where people could parents could log in, quickly add in what they were seeing symptoms and observations for the day and what you treatments they'd started or which protocol of which treatment they were on and sort of keep all that organized. And then it would generate charts and graphs for them to share with their care team. And I would also help them figure out which developmental skills to be working on with their children. So once we started doing that, we really saw that there was there was, there's a whole sort of world right there, that intersection of behavioral change and technology that was much bigger than autism.
Paul Zelizer 08:25
I love cat, there's something I'm known for listeners to the show know that I have something called my spiritual highlighter, or I pull something out like that, you know, one of the reasons people listen to this podcast is they're trying to learn how to grow something and help more people and to earn a good income while doing it. And one things I just want to pull out is like, didn't even take a breath. And I love this. It's so integrated in your nervous system. Listen, listeners, please notice cat your time out, playing an autism and entering somebodies world and working with families a deep like awareness of the human psyche and being willing to go there. And then like barely even taking a breath talking about the need for technology and how that can help people and how integrated that is. And you're nervous so often that split the techies are like, I don't understand humans Just give me some software to write. And a lot of our listeners are more on the human end of the I want to help people but technology is this bad evil thing. And as you were talking about it, one of the things that really struck me is just how they're both your friend they are at least you're both you're on good terms with both of them the depth and we're going to talk about your wilderness rites of passage being with humans in such beautiful, complicated ways and how fascinated and curious and interested you are not and how technologies can help a Facebook you know, HIPAA compliant Facebook in 2009. You were so early to that conversation, that it's like almost ridiculous. And congratulations on being able to walk in both those worlds. And is that something you would say is an accurate description of how you approach your work?
Kat Houghton 10:09
Yeah, thank you for for noticing that. Yeah, I would say that both of those worlds are now friendly and familiar to me. But it's not always been the case. Like,
Paul Zelizer 10:20
I'm so glad you said that. Because so many of our audience are not in that place. So to talk to our audio, like, like, because this is our whole topic is about using technology to help more people and, and, you know, as a community, our listeners, we want to learn about how you work with people and stuff both ways, and you have a lot to offer there. But so many of our listeners are much more comfortable in that world, then this whole world of like, Yeah, I know, I theoretically should be able to use technology to help more people. But it's really uncomfortable. And I hate technology, like, what would you say to somebody who's a little dealing with some of that and isn't comfortable in both worlds?
Kat Houghton 10:58
Right, right. Yeah, two thoughts come to mind. One is Partnership, which I'll talk about. And the second one is understanding that it's a tool like anything else. So let me start there. Because I certainly had my own struggles with technology, like I grew up on a farm in Scotland. And I have since I moved to the States, which was 20 years ago, have lived up in various parts of the Appalachian Mountains. So like, I'm in the forest all day long, I live on a farm right now, like, I do not, like cities freak me out. I don't spend a lot of time around lights and cars and machines and things like that, they've, I've always been very drawn to being in the natural world. And that's where I feel recharged. And that's where I feel like I belong, and I'm part of part of something that's bigger than me. And technology, for me can have a very disconnecting effect that I start to feel like I'm in an artificial world, and I don't, I can't remember where I am and how to put my feet on the ground anymore. If I, if I let it get get the better of me, you know, I've spent too much time with it. So I've definitely been some reconciling for me, because at the same time, I'm also seeing the power of it and the the change that it can bring to people's lives when it's used intentionally. So for instance, someone and I'll come back to the partnership piece, but the the system that we developed this started as relate to autism, this online platform in 2009, is now being used for to support grant funded research studies across the world. So we have researchers who are looking at things like suicide prevention, or substance abuse recovery, or how to deliver mindfulness interventions through a phone app. And what I see as I watch these, the results of these studies come in is that it's incredibly powerful. That you know, people are walking around with these phones on them all day long. And there's so many things you can access through that phone. But if one of those things is that it pops up, a little notification pops up when your heart rate variability gets below what's optimal for you, because the phone knows what your baseline is. And so it knows for you this is this is a dip. So it pops up a little alert that says, hey, we noticed your heart rate variability that what's going on? Do you need some support? Would you like to do a guided meditation if so here's three you can choose from, you know, whatever it is for that particular person, that's going to be helpful, that there's, there's not somebody like a human being right there next to them saying, Hey, I'm here, let me help you. But there is the same sense of that, that this something they're being held in some way that somebody noticed something noticed that they're having a hard time right now. And they need a little extra support. And obviously, as therapists and coaches, we can't, we can't be there 24 hours a day, they don't want us to 24 hours a day, he wants that. But the phone is there. And so if we can create software that is sensitive to the changes that we all go through throughout the day, and one of the times that we most need support, and we need someone to reach out and say, Hey, what do you need right now is, is an incredibly powerful thing that I haven't yet found another way to achieve that. So seeing that, you know, and at the same time wanting to just be in the woods all the time, as left me, you know, I really had to reconcile those two things and and recognize that technology is is a tool and like anything else that can be used to create destruction and harm or it can be used to heal and to uplift. And so if you're intentional about what you want to do with it, then there's a I think there's a lot of good that can come from it. And at the same time so my other the other side of this question of this answer is being in partnership as being in collaboration. So yeah, I'm a psychologist. That's my that's where how I my friend, Mark, how I think about the oil is really from thinking about people and how to relate to people. I have no clue how to create software to write software. But my business partner does. He loves That this is like jam, he gets up in the morning and he drinks his giant pot of coffee and he starts coding and that that makes him happy. And so in partnership and collaboration with other people who really do get that side, but also want to be able to create something in the world that contributes to human healing and to social change is is then it becomes a very powerful partnership that we bring very different things we don't we don't actually have any overlapping skill set. So it seems like we're very different humans. But when we because we have a shared goal, we're able to bring those two things together to create something that that certainly in 2009 was very new. And even now there's there's very few of the companies doing this kind of work.
Paul Zelizer 15:44
love what you said they're caught and what would you What have you learned since he did psychology, you're working with these families? He said, Okay, it's time to think about technology. really early adapter 2008 2009, the world of technology for behavioral health. You know, I used to work for conference call wisdom 2.0. And, you know, I had a pretty good pulse. And you know, people like, oh, Deborah Roseman from heart math and other you know, very early explorations were on my radar for, you know, so that I can say, knowing this space pretty well. I know Mikey Siegel and the consciousness hacking folks fabulous community for anybody's interested in how to use technology in these kind of depth space where you'd see with a lot of kind of understanding of the space, you were really early. Yeah, you know, and, and doing some really groundbreaking work. And that was part of the reason I was excited to have you on the show. One of the questions having been in this intersection for a long time, cat, what would you say you were talking about? It can either be done well, and really help a lot of people. And you can do it not so well and potentially harm a lot of people. How, what what have you learned about using technology in a way that really is beneficial? What are some of those things that you would sort of cue somebody who's starting to say, Okay, yeah, I'm like, cat. I'm one of these people, you know, folks, and I'm barefoot right now, as we're recording this. I've lived on a farm, my daughter was raised on a farm. You know, a lot of our audience would recognize some of what your inner journey was like, Yeah, I don't always love this technology, stuff. But I am really getting a sense that it's time to, you know, look at how I can do this in a way that is helpful. What are some of the sort of clues or suggestions you'd have for somebody about how you can create something that really is helpful? And what are some things that might be in, you know, if you get down this road, you might be doing harm to somebody kind of tips?
Kat Houghton 17:50
Yeah, so there's a few things that that come to mind. The first thing is personalization, like making it as personal to that individual as possible. So there's certainly some I've seen some health programs out there, that are just sort of generic information that get pushed at people. And the engagement seems to be incredibly low, I don't necessarily think it's harmful, but there's very low engagement, you know, when you're just sort of push information, that's generic people, they have a very low attention span for that. So it's finding ways to personalize the information. So often, our our system is used by clinicians who are doing often some kind of hybrid clinical program. So they are doing sessions with the patients. And then alongside that, when the patients are not in the clinic, or busy, which is most of the time, they're home, that the app is there in support of the work that the clinician or therapist is doing with them. So that enables the clinician to be able to very personalized the messages that get popped up on the phone, and to make sure that they are relevant and motivating for that individual. So it can be very personalized, that that I found to be incredibly helpful. And at the same time making that interactive. So again, it's just not just a one way, you know, just pushing information out of people, but allowing them choice. So it doesn't have to be real time interactive. It's not that the therapist is on the other end waiting to respond to your message. But we do have that facility. But that doesn't allow you to scale very, very well. But interactive in the way that they can make choices within the app. So in that example I gave if the the heart rate monitor pops up and says hey, do you see your heart rate variability is dropped? Then it can be a series of questions to figure out is that is that actually accurate? Maybe this maybe it's not maybe they're just feeling fine. There's something wrong with the monitor. So check in if they are feeling a little bit stressed or overwhelmed. Then Is this a good time or the middle of a meeting and you want us to come back, you know, an hour later. So checking in with them, how's the housing is this a good time and if it is a good time, then what kind of Support do you need? Is it a meditation? Do you need to go take a walk or can pop up a map of the closest park? If you're, you know, in an urban environment? Do you need to call somebody, you need to get in touch with a group? What is it, and again, those choices will have come from their actual interaction with the clinician so that they're personalized for that individual. They're not just generic choices. And then the third thing is, is timing, which, which I've alluded to with the heart rate variability. That's one way in which we do that we also use different measures of stress, different measures of activity, you know, someone hasn't moved for 60 minutes, say, then we could the phone could prompt them and say, Hey, we noticed that you, you haven't gotten up and moved around in the last 60 minutes, how about taking a five minute walk around the block, or go find that closest flight of stairs or, you know, depending on what the goal of the program is. So finding the timing, which we often do eat a lot through the physiological data. So the body knows when the person needs support more than the conscious mind often often does. Especially when someone's in some kind of treatment program or recovery program, the body will give us a signal way before the conscious mind becomes available. If we need help the body sending signals that our algorithms can read and can then again, check in with the person. Or it might be their location, you know, if there's a specific location that we know is triggering for them, that can be programmed into the system. So if it looks like they're starting to head towards that, again, the phone can pop up and offer support or advice or encouragement, whatever's needed in that moment.
Paul Zelizer 21:41
Great suggestions, cat, thanks so much. I'm thinking without disclosing anything that's not mine to disclose in where printers where printers, we have a community of over 300 social entrepreneurs and somebody who's maybe a little bit more like you and the cat. I don't know if you know this, I've my original training was in community mental health, I got a master's degree from Lesley University and an awareness based counseling program. Anyway, somebody like you and me, hired a company or was talking about hiring a company to build a platform to do kind of along the lines that we're talking about, and it came off the rails fast. Let's just say it did not end well. It was expensive and painful and Ouch. As somebody who's been in this space for a long time, well, that partnership that you described, it just brought a smile to my face, I could see you barefoot on a farm and drinking pots of coffee, in my mind in a very urban setting, right? That sounds like a fabulous partnership. And as somebody who's not a techie, but has found a partnership with somebody who is a techie, and is created something that's really helped a lot of people, how might you suggest somebody who's not that familiar with technology, and is leaning in and saying, you know, it's time for me to go in this direction, so I can help more people, but it's not my wheelhouse. And I might not even know the terrain that well to even know what I'm looking for. What would you say to our listeners who are like, Alright, yeah, it's time, but I don't want to be in one of those, you know, dreaded. I tried to go to tech, and it did not end well. conversation.
Kat Houghton 23:25
Yeah, I mean, I think you said it, like, I think the most important thing is recognizing what you don't know. And that being Okay, and then searching for the people who do. I've had numerous conversations over the years with mostly researchers, and some companies, but mostly researchers who have done exactly that have tried to, you know, hired a development team and tried to build an app to do essentially what our system does. And as you said, it's, it's painful, painful, and is expensive. Because there's a lot of there's a lot of nuances that have to be have to be thought through. And if you haven't come across the problems before, you're not gonna very unlikely that you're going to be able to foresee them we didn't write, we had to struggle through that. So we've been doing in 11 years now and you know, now much better at sort of seeing the problems that are likely to be coming down the pipeline. So I'd really encourage anyone in that position to look to seek out partnership to look for companies that have already built something and there are now numerous digital health platforms out there. There's a I think there are a few that therapists or counselors could could use, that somebody has already created something for, at least from which you can build from so that you're not building it from scratch. I can't tell you how many projects that we get because people have tried to build something and it just didn't work. And now they just want to you know, try and try and get it done. So it's and it's really looking for that that good fit, looking For a company that feels like they're in alignment with your values and what you're trying to create in the world, as well as obviously having the technical expertise to be able to deliver what you need to deliver and being clear about what you need to deliver is that is the next step. Because not everybody needs the, you know, just in time intervention, where you're constantly monitoring people for things like suicide, prevention and substance abuse, those are highly relevant, but for other things not not necessary. So there's certainly simpler systems out there that allow you to just just be able to keep better tabs on your on your clients and your patients as they're going about their daily life, and not just to rely on the times that you're with them. But partnerships, like I can't underline how important that is of finding like minded companies and like minded people that that want to build something that can be reused multiple times. You know, that's the other thing. There's so much resources go into building these systems. And if it's just used one time, it's basically a waste as far as I can see, you know, why not? Why not? let other people use it and really capitalize on that work that's been done.
Paul Zelizer 26:10
Yeah, beautiful. I love it. So can again, just highlighting the two things I heard you say? One is that values fit? Hmm. Somebody can be a fabulous techie. And just like not understand quite where you're coming from, and that can help steer things off the rails. Yeah. Right. And the other thing you're saying seems so important. Somebody who knows the space if it's a, you know, behavioral health app or digital health app, like somebody who's building a platform to match people up with the right kind of car insurance. Dealing with HIPAA and somebody who's suicidal is not the same thing. So you know, like somebody who understands that the terrain you're trying to go in with your technology does. It's huge. I can't recommend enough to talk to some people who know your space, not just people who know how to build a platform. Mm hmm. Yeah. I'm so glad you're here and listeners, go talk to cat. That's part of the reason she's here. Well, let's do this. Let's take a quick break. Here. We're from our sponsor, we come back want to hear more about what it looks like on the ground. Now, cat. If you're somebody who has a business like this, you want to help more people, you want to have more impact, and you want to earn a good living doing it. One of the best ways I know how to do that is through podcasting. And that can be either side of the map. Right now cat is in a guest seat, Paul's in the host seat. But that you know, they're both really, really, really valuable. And let me tell you why I think itself. The average podcast episode is 43 minutes long. 43 minutes long. So we're not talking about 13 words on Instagram or a 17 second Facebook ad video, these kind of depth and richness and nuanced conversations. With all the social context and the human psychology and the various multi layered aspects of the work that so many of our listeners do, there's room for that you can get into the nuances in a good podcast, you have time to explore some of the corners and nooks and crannies and the various things that synchronize to get the results that you get with your clients or the people who use your services or your product. podcasting is unlike anything else out there, in what Seth Godin calls an attention economy. Our podcast listeners love deep dive. They love innovation they're looking for what's the next thing that can help somebody they're out of the box thinkers, they make more money, and they tend to be leaders in their social groups than at work. So if you could use a little help thinking about how can you use podcasting to help grow this kind of a venture? Good. Take a look at the podcast success team that aware printers has and join a community of folks who are learning how to do this again on both sides in the mic. You can find out more aware printers.com forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody in the podcast success team helped sponsor this podcast. So cat Talk to us a little bit, you know, the way your company looks now and the way it looked in 2009? They're probably not, you know, there's some differences I would expect What's it look like now?
Kat Houghton 29:19
Yeah, well, now it looks like there's a lot more people it was just me and Mark literally at the beginning, trying to figure this all out. We now have a team of about eight, we've just hired another person. And and we are in the process of really shifting actually our focus. So we have spent the last 11 years as I said, working primarily supporting grant funded research projects across the world, mostly in the US, but also in Canada and South America and Europe and Asia, and have seen and through that, I've been able to really develop our platform into a world class therapy delivery program platform. So there's been a lot of work that's gone into that. And now we're at a point where we're pivoting more into commercial partnerships, so that we can scale this even more. Right? So my initial first sort of prompting of how do we where where this company came from was being able to reach a lot more parents and families than I was able to do just working one on one. And now we've gotten to a point where we have we've gone through the research and the validation of the platform and figuring out all the little features that make this work and, and are now at a point where we're, we're moving into partnerships that allow us to really scale that on a much in a much bigger way. So for instance, one of the most recent partnerships we just signed is with a company called Sai tech, who are out of Israel. And they are doing they are creating a platform to support psychedelic assisted therapy, which is not a new thing. But it is a very rapidly growing field. As people as more and more of these different plants are being researched and understood for their therapeutic value, are being now prescribed by doctors in different parts of the world. So we're working with cytec, to create, again, an adjunct to that. So people will still go into a clinic and work with a psychiatrist or psychotherapist in order to, to receive the medicine, but then when they go home, they'll be able to go home with one of our apps that helps support them through the next three to six months, so that they have a lot more support than they otherwise would. And it makes it a lot more accessible. And because it's just a lot cheaper than continuing every week to go back to the to the psychiatrist. And so they can they get to be part of a community of other people that are going through a similar healing journey. So those kind of partnerships are really exciting to us, because it allows us to get this technology out into the commercial world out of academia, where it's, it's, it's been growing and changing, but into a place where it can actually be used to support the general population.
Paul Zelizer 32:03
Congratulations on that innovative work. You're doing that through. Thank you. So I'll come back to this part of your work in just a second. But I want to pause for a little bit and acknowledge there's a whole body of work that you're doing. And I think our listeners will love this. You are a wilderness guide. You take people into the wilderness and important moments in their lives and create really powerful experiences. Talk to us about like, like, how did you get into that work? And then I want to ask you a follow up question. How does that fit in to, like the kind of Gestalt of cats life and cats work?
Kat Houghton 32:40
Yeah, the last question I don't have an answer to other than it does. It's just their presence. But yes, I do real wellness rites of passage. So I work with a team of people, lead people are in life transitions, whatever that is, they're going through a divorce, somebody died, they're graduating, they're changing their job, whatever life transition they're in, we use a very ancient ceremony of the will that can be called the boldness fast. Some people call it a vision quest, there's all sorts of names for it. But essentially going out on your own for four days and four nights into the wilderness and fasting, so not eating. And, and just sinking into that experience, and what comes from that experience. So we take people out. And we usually do an 11 day program around that. So this does work at the beginning, that helps people to get ready for that experience. And a lot of we do a lot of Shadow Work. So helping them to get acquainted with their shadow the parts of themselves, they tend to ignore or deny. Because once you're out there, and you've set up your little tarp, and you arrange your few little things that you took with you and you've set down, there's not a lot else to do. But sit with your shadow, it's going to show up and be very present. So we give them some preparation on how to do that. And then obviously, when they come back in from that experience, we help them integrate that into the story of their life and who they are and who they're becoming. So they can step back out into the world with it with a new version of themselves are sort of refreshed, updated version of themselves.
Paul Zelizer 34:22
Any suggestions got so many of our listeners. And first of all, if anybody has not thought about wilderness as a healing agent, in these times, I did my first wilderness solo in 1988 as part of wilderness leadership training program, the Colorado Outward Bound school like just the yes cat. And thank you for that work. And if anybody is listening and isn't somehow thinking about nature as a resource, and these incredibly poignant times, please reconsider exploring that in some way. We're just, it just makes such a difference. Such a difference in you times, wherever you live, there's some way to find a tree, or a blade of grass or something that can help you bring more of that into your world. So thank you for speaking to the importance of that and doing that sacred work. We'll put a link in the show notes for all these various aspects of cats work. So many of our listeners have that inclination, right, that there isn't just one thing, so you're like a psychologist, and you're started this tech company, and you're a wilderness guide. And all of it has, at least from where I sit, a desire to help more people in deep and powerful and meaningful and lasting ways. And that's a through line that I think our listeners will resonate with, I certainly resonate with it very, very much. Any suggestions? When, when is it useful or helpful, or it serves the greater vision that you have for your life? And when does like doing certain things kind of diffuse and make it less helpful to your, what you're on the planet to do? And when does it scatter? And yeah, get get in the way of somebody, you know, helping the most people in the most poignant way, having multiple interest? And when does it kind of synchronize in some sort of cohesive whole? Any thoughts on that? as somebody who's been walking in multiple worlds for many, many years?
Kat Houghton 36:28
It's a great question, Paul. And honestly, it's one that that comes up almost daily for me, because I do have I just have this natural inclination to want to put my fingers in all sorts of different pies, you know, I'm like, Oh, what's that over there? Oh, let me go chase them. And I just get excited about all these different ways to be in the world. And I, to me, it comes back to trust, like, I trust that my soul is guiding me, like, I know that we're all here on purpose. None of us are here, by accident, I came into this life in this body with a mission. And it is a lifelong process of really understanding and remembering what that is, and then deciding how to express that it can be expressed in 1000 different ways. And so playing with that throughout my life with how do I handle? How do I feel I want to express it right now, in this moment. You know, in each of these things, you know, like the software company, I've been doing it for 11 years, and I was doing other things parallel to that, but it was a really deep, I just went deep into that. Probably mainly because it was also feeding me in terms of bringing me income. So it made sense to go to stick with that for such a long time. And then, but at the same time, as always exploring these other avenues, other ways of knowing myself, other ways of knowing others, and other ways of being connected, connected with the planet connected with spirit. So there's definitely days where I, you know, I'm like, oh, why do I have so many things going on, this is too much. And then there's other days where I'm just so grateful that I have allowed myself that, that I haven't stuck myself in one box, that I have allowed myself the freedom to explore and to play, you know, I see I don't get to play in the play room anymore. I don't that's not part of my life. And I there's ways in which I really missed that. And so playing in life, like finding, finding what calls me and following it, you know, like you do with a child like, oh, let's go to Beth over here. And, you know, if you've spent any time in nature with a three year old, like that kind of feel like what my life is like, just like, Ooh, I'm gonna look at this. And I feel deeply grateful to have the luxury to be able to do that. And to have given myself the freedom to to explore I think that that's really important.
Paul Zelizer 38:58
I love that answer cap. So one of the reason people listen to were printers is to understand you're talking about income, like just how social entrepreneurs can live a good life in our audience, not trying to buy a private jet plane or like some mansion on the hill but live live well while doing good in the world. One of the key things people always ask me, Paul, make sure you ask him about revenue streams, how do people find them that really like Okay, we got it, cat, you're doing really deep work? We'd love that. Right? Talk to us a little bit about like, if we put our social entrepreneur glasses on the tech work that you're doing, what are the revenue streams there? You see some of that's changing and, you know, like, like tech, is that the majority of where revenues coming into that part of your work? Or is it still mostly working with organizations that are grant funding?
Kat Houghton 39:49
Huh? Yeah, at this point, it's still mostly grant funded universities. So but I think it like as I think back to 2009, and when we started this, like, our original vision was to create a platform that would just would be used by parents. And which we started to do. And then realize, firstly realized there was a much bigger audience, when we once we stripped out the autism content, we realized we had a platform that can be applied to all sorts of different populations and therapeutic issues. So it's so not not boxing ourselves into Okay, we just do autism just submitted been my background, you know, being able to see beyond that, that there was a lot of other applications for what we had built. So diversifying in that way, was important. But also like, really, for us, it was really kind of reading the market, because as you said, we were really early 2009, nobody else was doing this. And it was really hard to find a market for it, especially commercially, because it just didn't really exist. Like just to give a little bit of context in 2009, most hospitals didn't even have an electronic health record that like that was just starting to be rolled out, they didn't have them. And so it was really hard to find a market for what we had already built and what we knew we were going to develop it into. So that's kind of what led us to research because the researchers were ahead of that curve, you know, that they were looking for, not with their technology. But when they're thinking they were, they knew that there was a need for this kind of platform. Some of the researchers I speak to tell me that even like four or five years ago, they were using pages and notebooks to get this kind of data from people like the patient would go off and ask the person to get their notebook and write it down. You know, so obviously, using an app like ours is making that a whole lot easier for everybody. So that Yeah, so that was our particular experience, because we were so ahead, which is, you know, often people think, Oh, that's great, you're ahead of the market. But it was really challenging to begin with, for many years, because there was no market, it was very hard to find, like, where do we sell this. So coming to researches, made a lot of sense, because they were moving ahead. And then you have all the challenges of working with grant funded organizations, you know, the typical grant cycle is nine to 12 months. So if they get the grant, we're not going to get paid until 12 months from now, and there's a 50% chance they won't even get the grant, and they'll have to reapply. So there's a lot of unknowns. And you know, making cash flow work was was really challenging in those early years. But as we've sort of stayed in the market, one of the advantages of being early in the market, obviously, is that we've seen it develop and we keep up with all the other players that are coming in and what they're doing. And so we can, it's easier to predict where it's going and who's going to be ready for what, at what stage. And now, you know, as we're moving into, so for instance, that their partnership with cytec, they're also ahead of their curve, psychedelic assisted therapy hasn't really dropped yet, it will do in the next two to three years as some of these substances come through FDA clinical trials, but they're foreseeing that and are positioning themselves along with our platform, to be ready to catch the influx of people that are going to come into that, which you can only do when you I don't know if they can only do it, it's a lot easier to do that when you've already been in the industry for a while. So Sai tech have been in the cannabis industry for the last 10 years so that they're seeing that wave move. So I think, you know, as I'm thinking through this with you that the part of it is really being open to the evolution of your offering, that probably what you start out with is not going to be what it is five years or 10 years from now it's going to evolve, it's going to essentially have to evolve in conversation with your clients and with your partners. So that you think you're always offering something that's needed in the world.
Paul Zelizer 43:53
And in the wilderness rites of passage is that like you do one every six months. And it's kind of exciting and fun way to stay in that world or is it like a very significant part of your personal revenue.
Kat Houghton 44:07
It's not a significant part of my personal revenue. It's a significant part of my personal being in the planet. So we do we do about three a year. But I'm also involved in training other guides. So that's that's takes more time with more sessions each year, six sessions a year, and training guides to be able to do it and get this work out there. But that that's not something that I really look upon as a revenue stream and a little bit of revenue that comes from that that's really a sole sole work. It's just like,
Paul Zelizer 44:44
Can I be part of this? We're at a time can have like these confluence of crises, whether it's COVID-19 buyer mental crisis, social unrest, data, police brutality and other things. Big it's like economic crisis in our lifetime, you know, just a few things. How is that the social context of what's happening in the larger world impacting you personally and the work that you're doing?
Kat Houghton 45:13
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think what I certainly took took personally, that, you know, being aware of all these things, I mean, these, none of these things are new, right? I mean, maybe COVID is new. But we've all been here. This is we're becoming more and more and more aware of them. And that definitely has an impact on on all of us. I think one of the biggest things for me is being able to access grief. And to be able to do that in community in relationship with others. The thing you'd asked me early on, I didn't answer the thing that got me into the wilderness rites of passage work was actually the death of my partner in a motorcycle accident in 2018. And I don't, I'd already had experience with wellness rites of passage, but that it was that event that grief that just took a hold of me for months and months, that that drew me back so deeply into that work, because it was one of the only things that I knew I could do that would, that was like a guidepost in that darkness that I was in that that helped me to, to move through that grief. And, you know, for me, as I look at the world, and the state, that it's in that that's the predominant feeling is one of grief. And that when I allow myself to feel that, and I particularly when I do that in community, and I have a really strong group, that I'm so grateful for here, friends and lover and people, and that, that can hold me in that we can hold each other, and that, that that's where the seeds of hope that I find them, it's like, somehow, the deeper I go into the grief and allow that to be present and acknowledge it and honor it, that those seeds of hope and of new ways of thinking and new ways of being emerge from an and I think that's, that's something that we've lost as a culture and as part of the rites of passage work for me is, is reclaiming our relationship with grief. And apprenticing ourselves to grief and, and really learning what we can from being willing to feel the discomfort and the pain, and not wallowing in it. And like not that not being my 24 hour day experience by any means. But being willing to go there, then brings everything else so much more alive. And vital.
Paul Zelizer 47:41
I'm sorry, you had that experience of losing your partner, everything you've just said I so resonate with what you're saying how community and wilderness holding each other in these times. Yeah, thank you. First of all, there's a part of me that wants like, congratulate you. And thank you for they kind of might feel funny, I hope this lands as a compliment, being kind of a grandmother in the space, you know, and just as somebody who's been out this, you know, an elder in not necessarily in years, but in wisdom and time in the saddle. And thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. And and for all that work. Because Yeah, again, like, I know where the conversation was in 2008 2009, and what you built and what you've done. Just just remarkable. And thank you for sharing everything you've learned, as somebody who's had a front row seat to the development of, you know, deep transformational work and how technology can help scale help you help more people like what's on your radar. Now, what do you what are you seeing, you talked a little bit about how you all are pivoting to more commercial applications a little bit away from some of the research base work, or at least not not being the only or most of your revenue? Is there anything else that's kind of on your radar as somebody who's got, you know, being able to look at trends and see what might be coming because you can read the data from that experience place that somebody who's just coming into the space might not even know what to look for what's what are you looking at going forward?
Kat Houghton 49:18
Hmm. Yeah, I think I think we've touched on a lot of that is the is the rollout of this technology that has been sort of this very, very small, you know, just tucked away in little research programs that really nobody knows about other than the academics. It's being able to roll that out into into something that becomes just sort of just normal, you know, like now it's all normal that we carry around a cell phone and it wasn't 10 years ago, that there will be that on that phone. There is some kind of wealth health coach or wellness coach or maybe even a wealth coach. But so you know, like a Digital coach that is interactive that learns it's smart, you know learns from your pans it learns from how you move about throughout your day it learns from the answers you give to a question, it learns from the the tone of voice that it hears, as you're talking into the microphone, it learns from your facial expression, when you take pictures of yourself, it's constantly learning information about who you are, and how you're feeling and what's going on for you that day without necessarily having to ask, and then from that information, the algorithms are able to then offer invitations into certain experiences, that that may be helpful in that moment. And so taking a lot of that burden, taking that burden off of psychiatrists and clinicians, and doing running that automatically on the phones, but then also creating this sense of, as I said before, of sort of being held for the patient that they're being witnessed that they're being observed. They're not just alone in this journey, and the upbringing to like, but I do really believe that one of the biggest ways that we change as individuals, and that we change as a culture is through bringing the unseen into the light. So bringing what we're not currently aware of, or only lemonly aware of up into consciousness, and so that we can examine it. And that's what I see this technology is is doing is by, you know, as we were talking about, like the body knows before the conscious mind knows like bringing that information to the to the patient or the client so that they can they can to can become consciously aware of it before they otherwise would have done. And I see that process of just bringing things out into the light and examining them takes away the power that they hold over you so that we can start to change some of the early structures and behavioral patterns that we have created both as individuals and as a culture.
Paul Zelizer 51:59
Okay, they can hang out with you all day. I don't want to do that to you or our listeners. But I love what you're saying. If there was something that you were hoping we'd get to in this interview, or something, you want to leave our listeners as first starting to say goodbye, what would that be?
Kat Houghton 52:16
Yeah, I think we've covered it. I think the key thing here for me is partnership is it's easy to hang out with people that kind of have the same interests and going in the same direction. And that's great. And there's a lot of reward and faithfulness and that but reaching across different lines, whatever those are, you know, so Mark and I working together all this time being having had such different backgrounds and such different ways of being in the world has been more rewarding and challenging at times, but but more rewarding than I could ever have imagined. So I think it's Yeah, encouraging people to reach out to different different spheres, different worlds out there and see who's there and see who has similar goals and a shared vision and, and co creating something together.
Paul Zelizer 53:05
God, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Kat Houghton 53:08
So welcome. Thanks for the invitation.
Paul Zelizer 53:11
So that's all the time we have for today's episode. Before we go. Just a quick reminder, we now drop episodes twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, early in the morning. We love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for a show, please go to the website, go to our contact form. Take a look at our guidelines and let us know your thoughts. Growing portion of our guests and topics come from our listeners. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care and these poignant times and thank you for all the positive impact you're having in our
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