Latest / Glovisor Podcast / How to Preserve Your Digital Legacy for Generations: Inside MyArkit with James Gebhardt (Ep 69)

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How to Preserve Your Digital Legacy for Generations: Inside MyArkit with James Gebhardt (Ep 69) · Glovisor Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: What if your most important memories can live on long
0:03
Speaker 1: after you're gone? Welcome to the Glowvisor Podcast, where we
0:08
Speaker 1: explore business growth, communication, and personal development through real conversations
0:12
Speaker 1: with people that make an impact. Our guest is the
0:15
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of MyArchit, a digital legacy platform created
0:21
Speaker 1: to help individuals and families preserve their photos, videos, stories,
0:26
Speaker 1: and personal memories for generations. Glowvisor welcomes James Gebhardt.
0:31
Speaker 2: Good morning.
0:32
Speaker 1: Now, Jim, what specific problems does your business solve and
0:37
Speaker 1: who do you help?
0:38
Speaker 2: The main problems I try to solve is just out
0:40
Speaker 2: of necessity. Back when I was back in about 97,
0:44
Speaker 2: I took a road trip back with my family back
0:47
Speaker 2: to my dad. He lives back in the middle of Iowa.
0:50
Speaker 2: And I set a camera down and did some basically
0:53
Speaker 2: interviewing with him about his life, about when he was
0:56
Speaker 2: a kid. Uh, he was drafted into the Korean war.
0:59
Speaker 2: He was there when they dropped and got there, but
1:01
Speaker 2: he was around there when they dropped the atomic bomb,
1:03
Speaker 2: big memories, big memories that come back. And what was
1:05
Speaker 2: it like? And what was things, what was the prices
1:08
Speaker 2: of things and all that kind of stuff. And it
1:10
Speaker 2: was great to get those memories. And then he passed
1:13
Speaker 2: away a couple of years after that. And then, so
1:15
Speaker 2: I thought, Hey, this is great. I'll make a DVD.
1:17
Speaker 2: I'll have that, you know? And then of course, where
1:21
Speaker 2: was that DVD? Like five years later, it's like, Oh,
1:23
Speaker 2: I got to find it. Where'd that go? And I
1:25
Speaker 2: found it. Kind of, and it's kind of scratch steps. Well,
1:28
Speaker 2: I'll just go ahead and burn another one. Well, then
1:31
Speaker 2: what computer was it on? I mean, what format? You know,
1:35
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff was really a pain trying
1:37
Speaker 2: to do another DVD. And so I also inherited half
1:40
Speaker 2: the family photo album that was generations of pictures, old pictures.
1:45
Speaker 2: Half the family photo album was actually lost when he
1:48
Speaker 2: passed away, you know, from moving and all that kind
1:50
Speaker 2: of stuff. So a lot of memories are lost. So,
1:53
Speaker 2: you know, my brain's a little slow. So I started thinking...
1:56
Speaker 2: How can you actually keep some of these memories? We
1:59
Speaker 2: keep everything digital nowadays. We don't have to put things
2:01
Speaker 2: into a photo album. We can digitize things and try
2:04
Speaker 2: to keep them for a longer time. And I looked
2:07
Speaker 2: around and it was just, you know, internet was starting
2:10
Speaker 2: to get pretty fast back then. And as years go by,
2:13
Speaker 2: it was getting better and better and better. And I
2:15
Speaker 2: started thinking and thinking and thinking. And I decided to
2:18
Speaker 2: come up with an idea of how you can actually
2:20
Speaker 2: take some of your best memories, which are going to
2:22
Speaker 2: be digital. You know, probably 99% of them maybe have
2:25
Speaker 2: a memory or something that's going to be on your
2:26
Speaker 2: phone or up in a cloud somewhere or on your laptop.
2:30
Speaker 2: And I figured let's create some place where we can
2:32
Speaker 2: actually save those digital memories, archive them. And so that's
2:39
Speaker 2: kind of where we kind of came up with a
2:40
Speaker 2: little bit of the name of my ARC it as
2:43
Speaker 2: an archiving your digital memories. And so you can take
2:48
Speaker 2: the best of what you actually, you know, experienced in life.
2:51
Speaker 2: And people use genealogy all the time. They're looking back.
2:55
Speaker 2: They look back all through their, you know, their family
2:58
Speaker 2: trees and stuff like that. And they want to find
2:59
Speaker 2: out what their great, great, great, great grandfather was like.
3:02
Speaker 2: Someday you're going to be on somebody's family tree and
3:05
Speaker 2: they're going to look at your life. What are they
3:07
Speaker 2: going to find? Just when you lived, when you're born,
3:11
Speaker 2: when you passed away, when you got married, you know,
3:14
Speaker 2: let's give them something more to hash over.
3:16
Speaker 1: Now, I have tons of that stuff in my garage
3:19
Speaker 1: that's in all different formats and all that, which I'm
3:24
Speaker 1: sure it's going to be a nightmare. So what do
3:26
Speaker 1: I have to do if I join my ArcGate? Am
3:29
Speaker 1: I uploading all of this right online so I don't
3:34
Speaker 1: have to send it anywhere? Or how does that work?
3:37
Speaker 2: It's very simple. I want to try to keep things
3:39
Speaker 2: very simple and very secure. So our first line of
3:44
Speaker 2: defense was we upload one memory at a time. I
3:50
Speaker 2: had a discussion one time with my father-in-law. He says,
3:52
Speaker 2: I'm just going to take all my photos and upload them.
3:54
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking to myself, it defeats the purpose. We
3:59
Speaker 2: want you to put memories to those pictures and to
4:02
Speaker 2: those videos or even writings. You want to put memories
4:05
Speaker 2: to them. You can actually upload a picture with us
4:07
Speaker 2: and put an audio message along with that picture telling
4:10
Speaker 2: what that picture is all about. You can write it
4:13
Speaker 2: down a story or you can tell a story. So
4:16
Speaker 2: our first line of defense is we use Amazon Web Services, AWS.
4:20
Speaker 2: So we want to try to use the big guys.
4:22
Speaker 2: We don't want to try to have servers in our
4:24
Speaker 2: home or something like that. We want to use the
4:26
Speaker 2: big guys that are very professional about keeping these type
4:28
Speaker 2: of things. As we grow bigger, we're going to backdoor
4:31
Speaker 2: out of that over to Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain is
4:34
Speaker 2: a huge global data allocation services that we're like 95%
4:39
Speaker 2: of the banks use. you know, Iron Mountain to backup
4:44
Speaker 2: all their stuff. So we want to be super, super
4:47
Speaker 2: secure about what you upload. And you take one memory
4:50
Speaker 2: at a time, you put a good story to it,
4:52
Speaker 2: you can date it and all that kind of stuff,
4:54
Speaker 2: and then you arc it.
4:55
Speaker 1: So now what happens if one of these memories or
4:59
Speaker 1: servers somewhere where it's stored at one of these companies,
5:03
Speaker 1: what happens if anything happens to one of those? Can
5:07
Speaker 1: I still recover my photos or any of those memories?
5:11
Speaker 2: Well, that's why we try to use the multiple backup system. First,
5:16
Speaker 2: what you should always do is, and I also do
5:18
Speaker 2: some seminars, teach you probably about two or three backups
5:22
Speaker 2: of what you have already. You can back up on
5:24
Speaker 2: your computer. You have another hard drive you can back
5:27
Speaker 2: up onto. Sometimes people will back up into a normal
5:30
Speaker 2: cloud because their phone is backed up. And then you
5:33
Speaker 2: back up to us, which puts the memory to there,
5:36
Speaker 2: and you save it with the big guys. Something could
5:42
Speaker 2: happen to AWS, which is their probability of doing that
5:46
Speaker 2: is a lot better than you trying to, you know,
5:50
Speaker 2: keep your computer running at your house or making sure your, your, your, your,
5:54
Speaker 2: you know, your, your backup hard drive is always safe
5:57
Speaker 2: and you don't step on it. So, you know, it's never,
6:00
Speaker 2: nothing's always super, super secure, but we try to make
6:02
Speaker 2: it 99.9999% secure by double, double backing up, triple backing
6:06
Speaker 2: up as much as you possibly can. Yeah.
6:09
Speaker 1: Redundancy is the key, for sure.
6:11
Speaker 2: Redundancy is the key. And one memory at a time
6:14
Speaker 2: is also the key because I had a cousin was
6:19
Speaker 2: with one of the big ones, social media ones, and
6:22
Speaker 2: somebody hacked his account because everything's at one place. They
6:25
Speaker 2: did something and boom, he lost everything all in one swoop.
6:29
Speaker 1: Now, a person signs up for MyArchit and they upload
6:32
Speaker 1: their memory. Then they pass away.
6:35
Speaker 2: How do their family members get access to it? You have,
6:38
Speaker 2: when you have a lifetime account, this is one of
6:40
Speaker 2: our services, is the lifetime account. You have what they
6:44
Speaker 2: call an administrator. You assign an administrator. They basically email
6:49
Speaker 2: them and say, like, my administrator is my wife. So
6:52
Speaker 2: she becomes my administrator. If I pass away, she clicks
6:56
Speaker 2: the administrator button, which goes over into my account, and
7:00
Speaker 2: then she clicks a button there that says I've passed away.
7:02
Speaker 2: In about 24 hours, that account becomes what they call
7:05
Speaker 2: a memorial account. And the way we have it programmed
7:08
Speaker 2: is everything I put in is locked. It cannot be deleted.
7:12
Speaker 2: You can add stuff to it. If she wants to
7:13
Speaker 2: add stuff more to it, she can. But everything I
7:15
Speaker 2: have right now is now clicked. It cannot be deleted.
7:19
Speaker 2: And it also becomes public. Anything that I had private
7:22
Speaker 2: saved becomes public. Because I do that because, let's say,
7:26
Speaker 2: my wife passes away or everybody in my family all
7:29
Speaker 2: of a sudden passes away. You know how lineage goes
7:32
Speaker 2: and things like that in different families. you would still
7:34
Speaker 2: like to have that information or those memories to be
7:38
Speaker 2: found someday. You just don't want to be able, only
7:42
Speaker 2: this person can see their memories. Well, that happens if
7:45
Speaker 2: that person passes away and now everything is up in
7:48
Speaker 2: the cloud and nobody can see it ever. We have
7:52
Speaker 2: it to where we'll lock everything in there and it
7:54
Speaker 2: becomes public.
7:56
Speaker 1: Now, when you say public, does it mean that it's
7:58
Speaker 1: accessible with people with the link or meaning that it
8:02
Speaker 1: can actually become a searchable memory?
8:05
Speaker 2: It can become a searchable memory. With myARCA.com, you don't
8:09
Speaker 2: have to be a member. A family member can be
8:12
Speaker 2: what they call a view-only member, where basically they just
8:17
Speaker 2: basically put a password in and put their email in. Boom.
8:21
Speaker 2: And they can do a view-only account. And now they
8:24
Speaker 2: do a search. And they can find, let's say they
8:27
Speaker 2: find my name, they click on it. Oh, there's, there's, there's,
8:29
Speaker 2: you know, his account, click on it. And now they
8:31
Speaker 2: can see my, my, my information, all my data I
8:34
Speaker 2: have in there. As with a person, if a person's
8:37
Speaker 2: still living, they have to have permission to go in there.
8:41
Speaker 2: And even if they have permission to go in there,
8:42
Speaker 2: the stuff that is, let's say it's private. I have
8:45
Speaker 2: it because every time you arc something, when you arc it,
8:48
Speaker 2: you either put it as public or private. So you
8:51
Speaker 2: get to choose what it wants to do with it. And, uh, so,
8:54
Speaker 2: but after you pass away, it's just like, you know,
8:58
Speaker 2: tell all the secrets, tell everybody where the, where the
9:00
Speaker 2: gold's buried, you know, wait, I know what happened to Elvis,
9:03
Speaker 2: you know, all that kind of stuff. You might as
9:05
Speaker 2: well just put it out there.
9:06
Speaker 1: This sounds like it's, it's, it was a big project
9:08
Speaker 1: to put together. How long did this process take you?
9:12
Speaker 2: Oh, just thinking about it probably took, Oh, because back
9:18
Speaker 2: when you start thinking about it, um, five, six, seven
9:23
Speaker 2: years just because technology wasn't there yet. Because you're thinking about,
9:27
Speaker 2: you know, uploading. I always used to say you can
9:30
Speaker 2: download with a dump truck, but you're uploading with a teaspoon.
9:34
Speaker 2: So we now have a lot faster upload times and
9:38
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So when people are doing, you know,
9:39
Speaker 2: their little, you know, five minute videos, five, 10 minute videos,
9:42
Speaker 2: things like that, they can upload in a pretty decent time.
9:45
Speaker 2: Back 10 years ago, it was 10, 15 years ago.
9:49
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it was unthinkable. It took forever. I
9:52
Speaker 2: can still remember the old, you know, the dial tone
9:55
Speaker 2: when you're doing a upload the first, I remember the first,
10:00
Speaker 2: this is a good memory. First Harry Potter movie came out.
10:03
Speaker 2: They had the movie trailer to that. And we downloaded
10:06
Speaker 2: it on my old iMac and it was about the size,
10:09
Speaker 2: about this big on the screen. But it took about
10:12
Speaker 2: two hours to download about 10 megabytes, something like that.
10:16
Speaker 2: It was ridiculous. And then right in the middle of it,
10:18
Speaker 2: somebody called. So I had to do it again. But
10:22
Speaker 2: we had the whole family huddled around because we wanted
10:24
Speaker 2: to see what the Harry Potter, you know, Sorcerer's Stone
10:27
Speaker 2: trailer looked like.
10:28
Speaker 1: When you decided to start my market, you looked around
10:33
Speaker 1: the market and you couldn't find anything anywhere near it?
10:37
Speaker 1: Or were you just, did you find something and say, okay,
10:40
Speaker 1: I can make it better?
10:42
Speaker 2: Both. I'd say both. Excuse me. There were some social
10:47
Speaker 2: media sites out there. Most social media sites, if you
10:50
Speaker 2: upload to them, you put your two cents worth of
10:54
Speaker 2: opinion in there, but they don't keep your stuff. If
10:56
Speaker 2: they're not making money off you, you will be deleted.
11:00
Speaker 2: Other social media stuff, like when my cousin was on,
11:03
Speaker 2: they said, oh, we'll keep your stuff. We hope. So
11:07
Speaker 2: I didn't trust them either. And then at other sites,
11:12
Speaker 2: there were some sites that have come and gone. Other
11:15
Speaker 2: places were really expensive. Oh, you want to keep 10 gigabytes,
11:18
Speaker 2: 100 gigabytes of memory? It was almost $ 1, 000. It's a
11:24
Speaker 2: lot cheaper nowadays. And then it became also just besides
11:31
Speaker 2: your saving a memory, picture, video, your writings or whatever
11:37
Speaker 2: like that, how to share it, how to add to it,
11:40
Speaker 2: how to edit it. A lot of these places we
11:43
Speaker 2: have now, there's been an explosion nowadays about people, oh,
11:47
Speaker 2: come and get your, like a book made or something
11:50
Speaker 2: like that, or a picture with a QR code. You
11:53
Speaker 2: click on that, you can hear them. But that deletes
11:56
Speaker 2: some of the things where you want to add to it.
12:00
Speaker 2: We want to be able to have people, I'm going
12:01
Speaker 2: to add to that. Boom, you click into it, you
12:04
Speaker 2: add to it, you can change a little bit of information. Oh,
12:06
Speaker 2: it wasn't that year, it was this year. Oh, yeah,
12:08
Speaker 2: I remember it. So I want to be able to
12:09
Speaker 2: have an ongoing, that's what we call a lifetime account.
12:13
Speaker 2: Ongoing thing where you're actually adding, changing, maybe even deleting stuff.
12:19
Speaker 2: But a lot of places like that do not do that.
12:23
Speaker 2: And so we wanted to have something that was, I
12:24
Speaker 2: think we're one of the top tier companies doing this anywhere.
12:31
Speaker 2: Probably if there's a top three companies out there, we're
12:35
Speaker 2: probably one of the top three.
12:36
Speaker 1: So it sounds to me like it's lifetime. and beyond
12:39
Speaker 1: because then it goes public and everyone has access to it.
12:43
Speaker 2: Oh, then yeah, let, let, let the dogs bark. You
12:48
Speaker 2: get the.
12:48
Speaker 1: Opportunity to work with many different people. Uh, do you
12:51
Speaker 1: have a success story of someone who's utilized your service?
12:55
Speaker 2: Oh, one of the best ones I could think of is, um,
12:58
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with the, uh, Seattle area, there was
13:01
Speaker 2: a gentleman who was a, uh, uh, Seattle, uh, Seattle pirate, uh, um, Seattle,
13:08
Speaker 2: Seafair Days, I think that's what it's called. And he
13:13
Speaker 2: was diagnosed with, I think it was stage four cancer.
13:17
Speaker 2: And we gave him a free account and I sat
13:20
Speaker 2: him down and I explained to him, this is how
13:22
Speaker 2: you do it. And I know he probably didn't have
13:26
Speaker 2: more than six months to live. I remember he had
13:29
Speaker 2: a great party. He had a great party at his place.
13:31
Speaker 2: He had hundreds of people there. He had a guy
13:34
Speaker 2: that was a, what was he a? uh, Jimi Hendrix
13:37
Speaker 2: impersonator kind of guy. Just really, really great. And, uh,
13:42
Speaker 2: but just showed him how to just put his, you know,
13:45
Speaker 2: you just talk to people. You find out, um, what
13:49
Speaker 2: he did, what he liked, um, you know, what life
13:54
Speaker 2: like type of thing. And he just, he just, there
13:57
Speaker 2: you go. You know, and I just know he, you know,
13:59
Speaker 2: he'd be able to have that for his family then.
14:01
Speaker 2: Instead of, in my case, let's say a non-success story,
14:06
Speaker 2: was I made videos of my brother. No, I made
14:10
Speaker 2: videos of my dad and videos of my mom. And
14:12
Speaker 2: it's been about a week of going down and visiting
14:14
Speaker 2: my brother, and he passed away. And I have no
14:17
Speaker 2: videos of my brother. I got some pictures I have
14:20
Speaker 2: when I inherited his stuff and going through his pictures,
14:23
Speaker 2: which means nothing. My brother could tell a story. He
14:28
Speaker 2: got this look on his face, and he'd start telling
14:31
Speaker 2: a story, and you're just mesmerized. And I'd be laughing,
14:36
Speaker 2: just laughing my butt off. And I don't have him
14:38
Speaker 2: on video at all. And that's one thing I really miss.
14:42
Speaker 2: That's what I tell people. Yeah, don't miss the times
14:45
Speaker 2: you got. That's true.
14:47
Speaker 1: Now, if someone signed up for a market account today,
14:50
Speaker 1: how soon can they start uploading and sharing their stories?
14:53
Speaker 2: What we do for people, kind of like test driving
14:56
Speaker 2: a car. You go to myarkit.com and you'll see where
15:01
Speaker 2: it says 30-day free trial. So you just click on that,
15:04
Speaker 2: basically just put it, like I said, you put in
15:06
Speaker 2: your email and whatever passcode you want. And now you
15:11
Speaker 2: have a lifetime account for 30 days. After that 30 days,
15:14
Speaker 2: it'll ask you, do you want to go ahead and
15:16
Speaker 2: actually continue? If you don't want to continue with it,
15:20
Speaker 2: it reverts to a view only account, like we talked about. Basically,
15:25
Speaker 2: you just, boom, we click on that and you're ready
15:28
Speaker 2: to go and start putting stuff in there. You can
15:29
Speaker 2: see how you can upload a little video, We usually
15:32
Speaker 2: try to go under 10 minutes just because of bandwidth
15:34
Speaker 2: and stuff. Photos, how you add extra folders, you know,
15:40
Speaker 2: different folders. My first video, one of my first ones
15:43
Speaker 2: I did, I did a folder of cars. You know
15:46
Speaker 2: how guys are. We always like our cars. And I
15:49
Speaker 2: did about a 10 minute video of my first car.
15:52
Speaker 2: You know, where I found it, how I redid it
15:54
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but you can
15:56
Speaker 2: make folders of weddings and pets and all that kind
15:59
Speaker 2: of stuff. And you figure out how to do that
16:00
Speaker 2: and how to contact people they want to go ahead and,
16:04
Speaker 2: you know, put the families together type of thing. And
16:06
Speaker 2: so you can do it immediately. And if you're still
16:10
Speaker 2: thinking about it, it'll convert to a view only account.
16:12
Speaker 2: You can go into that later on, click on a button,
16:15
Speaker 2: hit upgrade, and then do it.
16:16
Speaker 1: What is the single most important takeaway you want listeners
16:20
Speaker 1: to remember from today's conversation?
16:22
Speaker 2: Don't wait. You have your parents, grandparents, brother, sister, Sit
16:30
Speaker 2: them down and just have fun getting some memories from
16:33
Speaker 2: them because someday they're not going to be here. If
16:38
Speaker 2: you want to use a different format, like I said,
16:39
Speaker 2: there's different booklets, other ways, there's a bunch of other
16:42
Speaker 2: different companies doing things. But the biggest thing first is
16:45
Speaker 2: you got to have the ingredients. You got to have
16:46
Speaker 2: the creations, I call them, the collection and the creations.
16:51
Speaker 2: Once you got that, you can go and make what
16:53
Speaker 2: you want to do with it. But you won't have
16:57
Speaker 2: that time again if you actually missed some of those
16:59
Speaker 2: important times where you've missed a little opportunity to get
17:02
Speaker 2: something from great grandma or grandma. I got a great
17:04
Speaker 2: one the other day where my, um, I had a
17:06
Speaker 2: picture of, uh, my daughter who lives over in Germany
17:10
Speaker 2: right now. They're in the military over there and their kids,
17:12
Speaker 2: my grandkids, they found an old recipe from my mom.
17:16
Speaker 2: And this is a recipe why I had when I
17:17
Speaker 2: was a kid. So that was my grandkids eating grandma's
17:22
Speaker 2: great grandma's. Yeah. Great grandma. Uh, beef stew recipe and
17:28
Speaker 2: loving it because she was able to save it. So
17:32
Speaker 2: it was like one of those little things she passed on.
17:33
Speaker 2: It was just a simple thing, a beef stew recipe. Yeah,
17:37
Speaker 2: that's awesome.
17:39
Speaker 1: Now, Jim, where can people connect with you and find
17:43
Speaker 1: out a little bit more about MyArchit and more about
17:46
Speaker 1: your process?
17:47
Speaker 2: Oh, just go to MyArchit.com, M-Y-A-R-K-I-T.com. And if you want
17:52
Speaker 2: to contact us, we're also on Facebook. Facebook, X, and Instagram.
18:01
Speaker 2: Any one of those, MyArchit, just look it up and
18:03
Speaker 2: you can always throw us a message like that. We
18:06
Speaker 2: also are looking at, and also within that, we also
18:10
Speaker 2: have events. I remember we talked a little bit about
18:12
Speaker 2: events earlier. Events.MyArchit.com. You can always go into regular MyArchit
18:18
Speaker 2: and hit events and find out what that's about. I
18:20
Speaker 2: always thought that's a very important aspect of what we do.
18:23
Speaker 2: But yeah, they can go in there. Ask questions if
18:26
Speaker 2: you want to. A big one also, go into my
18:28
Speaker 2: arc and hit help. We actually have a really big
18:32
Speaker 2: support site, a separate website called Lifesaver U. You click
18:37
Speaker 2: onto that and it'll show you a bunch of videos
18:40
Speaker 2: on how to set something up, how to set up
18:43
Speaker 2: an event, how to maybe do an interview, some interview questions,
18:47
Speaker 2: things like that. We want to try to help people
18:49
Speaker 2: as much as possible. And yeah, just hit the help
18:51
Speaker 2: and cruise through that too.
18:53
Speaker 1: Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining us. We
18:55
Speaker 1: really appreciate your time and the value you shared.
18:58
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you very much. It's a pleasure.
18:59
Speaker 1: Thanks, everyone, for listening. If this episode inspired you, make
19:03
Speaker 1: sure you share it with someone. And don't forget to
19:05
Speaker 1: follow the Globalizer podcast for more conversations that make an impact.
19:09
Speaker 2: Till the next time.