Latest / Glovisor Podcast / How to Preserve Your Digital Legacy for Generations: Inside MyArkit with James Gebhardt (Ep 69)
Transcript
- Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: What if your most important memories can live on long after you're gone? Welcome to the Glovisor Podcast, where we explore business growth, communication, and personal development through real conversations with people that make an impact. Our guest is the founder and CEO of MyArkit a digital legacy platform created to help individuals and families preserve their photos, videos, stories, and personal memories for generations. Glovisor welcomes James Gebhardt james gebhardt: Good morning. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: James. Now, Jim, what specific problems does your business solve? And who do you help? james gebhardt: main problems I tried to solve is just back out of necessity. back when I was back when I was back about ninety seven, I took a road trip back with my family back to my dad who lives back in the middle of Iowa. And I set a camera down and did some basically interviewing with him about his life, about when he was a kid. he was drafted into the Korean War. He was there when they dropped not there, but he was around there when they dropped the atomic bomb. Big memories, big memories that come back and what was it like and what was things how what was the prices of things and all that kind of stuff. And it was great to get those memories. And then he passed away a couple of years after that. And then so I thought, Hey, this is great. I'll make a D V D. I'll have that, you know. And then of course, where was that D V D like five years later? It's like, I gotta find it. Where'd that go? And I found it kinda and it was kind of scratched up. So well I'll just go ahead and burn another one. well then what's computer was it on what I mean what format and what you know all that kind of stuff was really a pain trying to do another DVD. And so I also inherited half the family photo album that was generations of pictures, old pictures, half the family photo album was actually lost when he passed away, you know, from moving and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of memories are lost. So you know my brain's a little slow. So I started thinking, well what how can you actually keep some of these memory. We keep everything digital nowadays. We don't have to put things into a photo album. We can digitize things and try to keep them for a longer time. And I looked around and it was just, you know, internet was starting to get pretty fast back then. And you know, as years go by, it was getting better and better and better. And I started thinking and thinking and thinking and I decided to come up with an idea of how you can actually take some of your best memories, which are going to be digital. You know, probably ninety nine percent of them if you have a memory of something that's going to be on your phone or Up in a cloud somewhere or on your laptop. And I figured let's create some place where we can actually save those digital memories, archive them. Yeah. And so that's kind of where we kind of came up with a little bit of the name of my ark it as an archiving your digital memories. And so you can take the best of what you actually you know experienced in life and say people use genealogy all the time. They're looking back. They look back all through their, you know, their family trees and stuff like that. And they want to find out what what their great, great, great, great grandfather was like. Someday you're gonna be on somebody's family tree and they're gonna look at your life. What are they gonna find? Just when you lived, when you were born, when you passed away, when you got married. You know, let's give them something more to hash over. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now I I have tons of that stuff in my garage that's in in all different formats and and all that which I'm I'm sure it's gonna be a nightmare. So what do I have to do if if I join MyArkit Am I uploading all of this right online so I don't have to send it anywhere or how does that work? james gebhardt: It's very simple. I want to try to keep things very simple and very secure. So our first line of defense was we you upload one memory at a time. I had a discussion one time with my father in law. He says, I'm just gonna take all my photos and upload them. And I'm thinking to myself, that doesn't def it defeats the purpose. We want you to put memories to those pictures and to those videos or even writings, you know. You want to put memories to them. We can you can actually upload picture with us and put an audio message along with that picture telling what that picture's all about. You can write it, you can write it down a story, or you can tell a story. So our first line of defense is we use Amazon Web Services, AWS. So we want to try to use the big guys. You know, we don't want to try to have servers in our in our home or something like that. We want to use the big guys that are very professional about keeping these type of things. As we grow bigger, we're gonna backdoor out of that over to Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain is a huge global data allocation services that we're like 95% of the banks use you know Iron Mountain to data back up all their stuff. So we want to be super, super secure about what you upload. And you take one memory at a time, you put a good story to it, you can date it and all that kind of stuff, and then you arc it. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: So now what happens if one of these memories or or servers somewhere where the is stored at one of these companies, what happens if anything happens to one of those? Can I still recover my photos or or any of those memories? james gebhardt: Well, that's why we try to use where you try to use the multiple backup system. You you first what you should always always do is and why also do some seminars, teach up you should have probably about two or three backups of what you have already. You can back up on your computer, you have another hard drive you can back up onto. Sometimes people will back up into a normal cloud because their phone is backed up, and then then then you back up to us, which puts the you know the memory to their. And and you save it, you know, with the big guys. And it something could happen to AWS, which is that their probability of doing that is a lot better than you trying to, you know, keep your computer running at your house or making sure your your your your you know your your backup hard drive is always safe and you don't step on it. So, you know, it's never nothing's always super, super secure, but we try to make it ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent secure by double double backing up, triple backing up as much as you possibly can. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah, redundancy is the key for sure. james gebhardt: Yep. Redundancy is the key. And one memory at a time is also the key because I had a cousin was with one of the big ones, social media ones, and somebody hacked his account because everything's at one place. They did something and boom, he lost everything all in one swoop. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now a person signs up for MyArkit and they upload their memory, then they pass away. How do their family members get access to it? james gebhardt: You have when you have a lifetime account. This is one of our services, is the lifetime account. you have what they call an administrator. You assign administrator. Basically, you email them and say, like, my administrator is my wife. So she becomes my administrator. If I pass away, she clicks the administrator button, which goes over into my account, and then she clicks a button there that says, I've passed away. In about 24 hours, that account becomes what they call memorial account. And the way we have it programmed it is everything I put in is locked. It cannot be deleted. You can add stuff to it. If she wants to add stuff more to it, she can. But everything I have right now is now clicked, cannot be deleted. And it also becomes public. Anything that I had private saved becomes public. Because I do that because let's say my wife passes away, or everybody in my family all of a sudden passes away. You know how lineage goes and things like that in different families. You would still like to have that information or those memories to be found someday. You know, you just don't want to be able only this person can see their memories. Well that happens if that person passes away and now everything is up in the cloud and nobody can see it ever. You know, we have it to where we'll lock everything in there and it becomes public. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, when you say public, does it mean that it's accessible with people with the link or meaning that it can actually become a searchable memory? james gebhardt: It can become a searchable member. If you're with Myarkit dot com, you don't have to be a member. You can be like a family member can be what they call a view-only member, where basically they would just basically you know put a a password in and then and put their email in. Boom, they'd be and they can do a a view-only account. And now they do a search and they can find, like say they find my name, they click on it. there's there's there's you know his account. Click on it, and now they can see my my my information, all my data I have in. As with Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Well james gebhardt: person if a person's still living, they have to have permission to go in there. And even if they have permission to go in there, the stuff that is let's say it's private, I have it you cause every time you arc something, when you arc it, you either put it as public or private. So you get to choose what it wants to do with it. And so but after you pass away it's just like You know, tell all the secrets. Tell everybody where the where the gold's buried. You know, we I know what happened to Elvis, you know, all that kind of stuff. You s you might as well just put it out there. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: this sounds like it's it's it was a big project to put together. How long did this process take you? james gebhardt: just thinking about it probably took ha because back when you start thinking about it, five, six, seven years just because technology wasn't there yet. Because you're thinking about, you know, uploading. W I always used to say you can download with a dump truck, but you're uploading with a teaspoon. So we we now we have a lot faster upload times and stuff like that. So when people are doing, you know, their little you know, five minute videos, five ten minute videos, things like that, they can upload them in in pretty decent time. Back ten years ago, it was 10, 15 years ago. my gosh, it wouldn't it was unthinkable. It took forever. I can still remember the old, you know, the dial tone when you're doing upload. The the first I Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: yeah. james gebhardt: remember the first this is a good memory. First Harry Potter movie came out, they had the movie trailer to that. And we downloaded it on my old iMac and it was about the size about this big on the screen. But it took about two hours to download about 10 megabytes, something like that. It was ridiculous. And then right in the middle of it somebody called. So I had to do it again. But we we had the whole family huddled around because we wanted to see what the Harry Potter, you know, Sorcerer's Stone trailer looked like. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: When you decided to start my market, you looked around the market and and you couldn't find anything anywhere near it or were you just did you find something and say, Okay, I can make it better? james gebhardt: both. I'd say both. excuse me. there are some social media sites out there. Most social media sites if you upload to you know, you you know, you put your ten your two cents worth of opinion in there, but they don't keep your stuff. If they're not making money off you, they're gonna you you're you will be deleted. other social media stuff, like what my cousin was on, they said, we'll we'll keep your stuff. We hope. So I didn't trust them either. And then other sites, there were some sites that come and gone. Other places were really expensive. So you want to keep 10 gigabytes, 100 gigabytes of memories kind of it was it was like almost a thousand bucks. it's it's a lot cheaper nowadays, but and then it became also just besides your saving a memory, picture, video, your writings or whatever like that, how to share it. How to add to it, how to you know edit it. A lot of these places we have now, there's been an explosion nowadays about people will be come and get your you know, like a book made or something like that, or or a picture with a QR code. You click on that, you can hear them, but that delete some of the things the way you want to add to it. We want to be able to be able to have people, I'm gonna add to that. Boom. You click into it, you add to it, you can change a little bit of information. It's it wasn't that year, it was this year, yeah, I remember. So I want to be able to have an ongoing, that's what we call a lifetime account. Ongoing thing where you're actually adding, changing, maybe even deleting stuff. But lots of places like that do not do that. And so we wanted to have something that was I think we're one of the top tier companies doing this anywhere. Probably if there's a top top three companies out there, we're probably the one of the top three. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: So it's estimated like his lifetime and beyond because w then it goes public and everyone has access to it. james gebhardt: then yeah, let let let the dogs bark. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: you get the opportunity to work with many different people. do you have a success story of someone who's utilized your service? james gebhardt: one of the best ones I could think of is if you're familiar with the Seattle area, there was a gentleman who was a Seatt Seattle pirate of Seattle Seafair Seafair Days, I think that's what it's called. And he was diagnosed with I think it was stage four cancer. And I I we gave him a free account and I sat him down and I explained to him hey, this is how you do it. And I know he he probably didn't have more than six months to live. And I remember he had a great party. He had a great party at his place. He had he had hundreds of people there. We had a guy that was a what was he? Jimi Hendrix impersonator kind of guy. Just was really, really great. And but just showed him how to just put his his you know, you you just talk to people. You find out what he did, what he liked. you know, w what lifelike type of thing. And he just be just there you go. You know, and I just knew he, you know, he he'd be able to have that for his family then. Instead of in my case, let's say a a a non-success story was I made videos of my brother. no, I made videos of my dad and videos of my mom. And I was within about a week of going down and visiting my brother and he passed away. And I have no videos of my brother. I have some I got some pictures I have when I inherited his stuff and Going through his pictures, which means nothing. My brother could tell a story. He could, he he got this look on his face. And he'd start telling the story and you're just mesmerized. And it it's just I'd be laughing, just laughing my butt off. And I don't have him on video at all. And that's one thing I I I really miss. That's why I tell people, Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah. james gebhardt: yeah, don't miss, don't miss the times you got. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: That's true. Now, if someone signed up for a market account today, how soon can they start uploading and sharing their stories? james gebhardt: What we do for people, it's kind of like test driving a car. You go to myarkit, myarkit.com, and you'll see where it says 30-day free trial. So you just click on that, basically just put in, like I said, you put in your your email and whatever passcode you want. And now you have a lifetime account for 30 days. After that 30 days, it'll ask you, do you want to go ahead and actually continue? If you don't want to continue with it, it reverts to a view-only account, like we talked about. basically you just boom, we click on that and you're ready to go and start putting stuff in there. You can see how you're you can upload a little video. we usually try to go into 10 minutes just because of bandwidth and stuff. photo photos, how you add extra folders, you can, you know, different folders. My first video, one of the first ones I did, I did a a folder of cars. You know how guys are, we always like our cars. And it I did about a 10 minute video of my first car. of you know, where you found it, how we did it and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but you can make folders of weddings and pets and all that kind of stuff and you figure out how to do that and how to contact people they want to go ahead and, you know, put the families together type of thing. And so you can do it immediately. And if it if it's still thinking about it, it'll convert to a view only account. You can go into that later on, click on a button, hit upgrade, and then do it. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: what is the single most important takeaway you want listeners to remember from today's conversation? james gebhardt: don't wait. You have your your your parents, grandparents, brother, sister, sit them down and just have fun getting some memories from them. Because someday they're not gonna be here. If you if you wanna use a different format, like I said, there's different booklets, other ways, there's a bunch of other different companies doing things, but the biggest thing first is you gotta have the ingredients, you gotta have the creations I call them, the collection and the creations. Once you got that, you can go and, you know, make what you want to do with it, do with it. But you you won't have that time again if you actually miss some of those important times where you've missed the little opportunity to get something from great grandma or grandma. I got a great one the other day where my I had a picture of my daughter who lives over in Germany right now. They're in the military over there and their kids, my grandkids, they found an old recipe from my mom. This is a recipe why I had when I was a kid. So that was my grandkids eating grandma's great grandma's yeah, great grandma's beef stew recipe and loving it because she you she was able to save it. So it was like one of those little things she passed on. It was just a simple thing, a beef stew recipe. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah that's awesome. Now, Jim, where can people connect with you and find out a little bit more about MyArkit and and more about your process? james gebhardt: just go to myarkit.com, Y A R K I T dot com. And if you want to contact us, we're also on Facebook, X, and Instagram. you can any one of those MyArcet, just look it up and you can always throw us a message like that. if you have we also are looking at and also within that we also have events. I remember we talked a little bit about events earlier, events.myarkit.com. You can always go in the regular My Archite hit events and find out what that's about. Because I always thought that's a very important aspect of what we do. But yeah, they can go in there, ask questions if you want to. Big one also, go into my arkit hit help. We actually have a really big support site, a separate website called LifeSaver You. You click on that and I'll show it'll show you a bunch of videos on how to how to set something up, how to How to set up an event, how to maybe do an interview, some interview questions, things like that. We wanna try to help people as much as possible. And yeah, just hit the help and cruise through that too. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and the value you shared. james gebhardt: thank very much. It's Matter Glass. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Thanks everyone for listening. 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