Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Hello and welcome to the Bee Formless Flow Driven CEO Conversations, or where we are reshaping life leadership, business and brand from the inside out. And today I am welcoming to the show all the way from Florida, where it's Monday evening. Craig Gile. Welcome to the show, Craig.
Craig Gile: Hey Bee Pleasure to meet you, or pleasure to see you. and yeah, thanks for taking the time here on a currently nice evening in sunny Florida.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Is it still sunny? Like a because do you have daylight savings? Is that started or finished? I mean, I should say. Okay.
Craig Gile: we got another half an hour till sunset, I think. you know, the days are getting shorter here finally in in our summer.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: I know it's your winter, right? Or fall. that's right, that's right. Yep.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, we're we're heading into summer as well now. Like we're in spring. We're one one month in and it is a beautiful spring day here today. You can really notice the look I'm not wear I'm not wearing any sleeves. Like that's always a a good sign in you know, coming to the end of end of September. Although, you know, like I said, I've
Craig Gile: that's the tell? No sleeves.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: just come from back from New York last week and I was noticing the the change in season there coming into fall, so
Craig Gile: You see the leaves start to change already up there? Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes. Had a rainy New York day. I was like, sitting in the cafe thinking, gosh, this is, you know, different too. I'm coming out of this and here we are. So Craig,
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: it's it's such a privilege to talk to you and I want to say a big kind hello to all the listeners out there and we are continuing to have some really great diverse conversations and understanding from a founder, you know, their the critical inflection points that they're facing and then how they're shaping and shifting and what they're doing differently and This one is is also another action packed conversation. So Craig, let's get on into it. You're the founder,
Craig Gile: Let's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: president, and chairman of Arteria Technology. And it's the company behind Cool Mit, and you've got your beautiful branded logo on your t shirt. I'm all
Craig Gile: I do. Yes.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: about brand. I'm all about, you know, having getting your brand out there because as a founder, you and your business and your brand are you're so interconnected. So, you know, one tip for the the listeners out there is Bee proud.
Craig Gile: Actually just realized I have for the branding I I have behind me a box of the product that's getting
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: ready to go. I think it's gonna go to a customer in Canada. I gotta send it out tomorrow, but I just just remembered that was there.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, I love it. I love the branding too, by the way. It goes very well with what we're about to talk about. So, like I said, you are the founder, president, chairman of of Arteri Technology, the company behind Cool Meet. It's a patented palm cooling technology designed to improve human performance and help people manage the impact of heat. You had an important inflection point, Craig, and it emerged as you moved from a career spanning military aviation, glob global financial markets, including living and working in New York in Wall Street. And investment into entrepreneurship and bringing those very different experiences together to commercialise breakthrough thermoregulation science developed at Stanford. Today, Craig, you're focused on taking thermal regulation technology into the wider world, building awareness of a new approach to heat across sport, military, first responders, and physically demanding workplaces. And at the heart and soul of your work is a belief that innovation only creates meaningful impact when it moves beyond the science and into people's lives. And so f for you, Craig, that means turning an emerging technology. You're actually you're actually creating a new category into something that can help people perform, work, and live more safely in the heat. Started the company in twenty
Craig Gile: That is it. That is it. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: twenty one.
Craig Gile: we did, so let me tell you a bit about the path if that makes sense. So I'll
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes.
Craig Gile: start with, so throughout the course of human history, I think, wasn't there for the entire time, but I think people have been suffering from the impact of heat. And you know, things that we do now, like a misting fan or get in shade or even get in air conditioning, if you're overheated, those are not particularly effective about really addressing the situation. They'll kind of like limit how much you're keep raising in temperature, but they don't really do much to solve the problem. So these two Stanford biologists, Dr. Craig Heller and Dennis Gron, like literally made a discovery that kind of unlocks the key to that. and I'll get into how that technology actually works with the biology of your body here in a second. But you kind of ask about like the founder's story and the founder's path. And so as you kind of alluded to, Act O career was actually in the US Navy. I flew jets off an aircraft carrier in a previous life. As it happens, I just had a great reunion with some squadron mates of mine last week ago.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: This
Craig Gile: it was great. A lot of stories, many of them true, were bandied about for the entire weekend. so act one was flying jet what
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Top gun comes to mind for me, Craig. When you talk about top gun comes to mind for me, like you're probably rolling your eyes at me, but I feel like it's like aviation top gun, like
Craig Gile: If you you know, looking back, I didn't wasn't very impressed by myself and I'm still not. But what we did was some pretty cool stuff. And if you have watched Top Gun, I will say the first one was kind of crazy ridiculous, some of the you the Hollywoodization of it. Oddly enough, that actual strike in the second one of like going through the canyons and then doing this crazy pop up
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: delivery, that was actually something that we did. so that was actually pretty realistic, shockingly. the first
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: my god, are you serious?
Craig Gile: part of that movie, him going Mach ten, is just ridiculous. I'm not even sure why they have to be so ridiculous in Hollywood, but we can we'll save that for another day day.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. That bit going through did you actually do that? Like going through like that? Because that whole going through those mountains or whatever, I was at the edge of my seat going, Holy shit, these people are about to cry like it was so I felt like I was in it.
Craig Gile: We there was a famous actually canyon in Oman that we used to train when we were out at sea going through that and and they called it Star Wars Canyon. I actually never really watched those movies, but apparently there's a scene where they're kinda going through these canyons and that's what it was. Like literally it probably had to be four or five hundred feet high, and then we'd get down in in the middle of them and kind of d go down for a few minutes 'cause there's a pretty long canyon, then go out to the ocean. Anyway. so that was a pretty cool act one of my career with some great folks. I had the pleasure to serve with. And then I decided I was at the time engaged to be married to at the time my lovely girlfriend, then my lovely fiance and my current lovely wife, or my bride that I still call her. so we we were going to get married. I didn't want to be going to sea for you know raising kids and going to sea all the time and I had a great experience but I decided to get out of the Navy, go to business school. I went to the the Wharton School of Business and I got my MBA and like most Wharton students I majored in finance and like most important finance majors, I went to Wall Street. So that was Act Two of my career. That was the New York phase. Went there and worked for a number of years for banks and hedge funds. I was a trader, so went back into a kind of dynamic work environment and a trading floor. did work with some Aussies. A bunch of aussies were part of our gold desk when I traded the commodities part. And they were good good mates. they were not afraid to go out and have a a beer or two after work. and So that was Act Two, great time, you know, dy again, like I said, exciting, dynamic job. kind of fit my personality to some degree, I guess. You know, the challenge and the the the fast paced, quick decisions nature
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I'd say
Craig Gile: of that was similar to the the squadron of the the airplane experience.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: and then so act three has been this kind of startup entrepreneurial side. And with that we moved to Florida, but as part of act three was actually the connection was with from act one. Which was through my Navy network, I met the gentleman who had funded this technology originally for the US military. There's a D R D arm in the U.S. It's called DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. It's famous for it's been around since the 1950s. It literally sprung up in reaction to the Soviet Union beating us to space in the 1950s. So its mandate since then has been to invest in revolutionary science and technology first to win the Cold War and now to I in theory keep us ahead of the world in science technology. So a lot of military stuff has come out of it. But as importantly, they do have a an eye towards having civilian technology come out of it. So famously for DARPA, things like the internet, GPS, email, robotics, even the RNA vaccines were all originally DARPA projects. So they're very early then revolutionary ideas that they invest in. That makes sense? Any questions on that?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, it makes complete sense. What k what is coming up for me though is like you've had three acts, aviation Finance and then obviously what you're doing now from a revolutionary science perspective and i there's something really interesting and there's a weave in terms of just this high performance required in everything you're doing. And you said there was a commonality between Act One and Act Two. I actually think Act Three sorry, Act One and Act Three there's the com common association, but I actually think Act Two brings it together because you have to be commercial to
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: to actually make a business y succeed as a start up, right? You can't you can't just have an idea without n understanding the commercial realities to it as well.
Craig Gile: Yeah, so you know there's a lot of things you need to to figure out if you do have a viable startup. And and again from my investor
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: side, I realize that it can't be, you know, there's a lot of things that have to come into play to be a successful business. And frankly, the way I look at myself running this startup, I have in my investor hat on as well. Like, does this make sense? Have I de-risked all the things that need to be risked? So that the for a startup, you know, you have to a few things have to be accomplished or de-risked. One is let's say it's technology. Presumably, does this technology work? Right? That's the first thing that has to happen. So for us, these Stanford scientists, and I'll get into it a bit more, proved out that this is a uniquely different solution to solve a big problem. Is there a market for it? Is there a sizable enough market for it to be a worthwhile investment? For us, you know, frankly, every person on this planet could presumably have a thermoregulation problem, being cooling, overheated, or too cold. This is the best way to address it. That so there's clearly a very large market for that. you want to have some kind of competitive moat in some ways, it can be a patent like we're have and have have filed, or different intellectual property, or even just like being first to market and executing well can be build a competitive moat. And then another risk you want to have is make sure have the right team to push it forward, the right strategy. So you know, like I said, you can't one shouldn't go into a startup just like, I have a great idea, I think it's gonna work, and all my friends like. it and it's it makes perfect sense. You have to think, I think, pretty thoroughly through all the different things that you need to make sure that's something's set up to be successful. And then, you know, frankly, it all comes down to execution. So you can have the best ide you have a a very average idea and great e execution and you can be very successful. You can have the best idea in the world and not good execution and it's not going to work.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: agree. The other part for me that comes up is this pivoting under pressure as well. Like, you know, like again, all your ex experience in aviation, you know, markets that no doubt crashed at times and, you know, changed on a daily basis. Like as a as an entrepreneur, y there's y it's y you do need to pivot when you're under pressure, it's being strategic around how you pivot. Like you've just called out what's required as a start up. There's also like at times where, for example, and I'm sure we'll get into it with CoolMeet, where sure you've got the technology there, it's it's a patent technology, it's come out of Stanford, but you've no doubt had moments where the product is not necessarily market fit, right, or something's something's not working and that you need to pivot and you're
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: under this immense pressure. And so it's how do you remain strategic versus just blowing it all up, for example. Or knowing when to pivot without holding on for too long to something, knowing that it you you do need to pivot as well.
Craig Gile: Yes, that's a good question. And it does come up with the the path that we have taken so far.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, so tell us about that, yeah.
Craig Gile: so I'll just talk about the science for like one second to so people know like like how it works.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, go for it. Yeah.
Craig Gile: So these Dr. Heller and Gron at Stanford Basically discovered that there are parts of our bodies, as we're mammals, with a mammalian adaptation, where the naturally hairless palms of hands, soles of feet, and this part of the face, which is called the glabrous part of the skin, has a different arterial structure. So the way it's different has what I call arteriovenous anastomoses or AVAs. So when you overheat, these AVAs open up to form a wider shunt, more rapid blood flow from arteries to veins to the atmosphere. So how your body naturally works that way. they discovered basically that's how our bodies work to radiate heat. You know, as an example, I always tell people like you might notice if you're hot in the middle of the night under the covers, you might find your foot naturally out of the covers. That's you're actually naturally using
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, I was about to ask you that.
Craig Gile: that adaptation to kind of bring cool-in from that part of your body. So Heller and Grom make this discovery. They think they can create technology to accelerate what your body wants to do. They get the ultimately five million dollars over three years from DARPA to create this technology. And And you know, long story short, they do in fact prove they can accelerate how your body wants to naturally radiate heat. The way it works is and I won't get into too much detail unless you really want to, but the technology, the the necessary components for it to work are you need to have the heat not only just something cold in your hand, has to take heat and have somewhere to go. So there's a convective heat transfer that happens with our technology. So basically it takes the heat away, it flows through the system, and the heat goes away, gets rechilled, comes back. constant flow of water going across your hand that allows cold but air out of your hand, goes away, allows cold blood to flow to your heart, including from the inside out. And that's why it's by orders of magnitude more effective about getting heat out of your body and bringing your core temperature down. Which then has a multitude of benefits. So there's nothing no good side to your core temperature rising, frankly. it's a very pretty narrow range in terms of the your operating range of of that temperature. it's was that th hundred and two degrees, hundred and two and a half. Fahrenheit was what thirty nine Celsius is where you start to have degradation performance hundred and four maybe what forty, forty one is where you start to have like heat stroke type of issues. so so your body extends that very narrow range. So Heller and Gron proved they can cool somebody down quickly, which was their mandate for the military. Their military is looking for a solution for soldiers in an extreme environments like the Middle East. And so yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Craig, can we just pause this? Sorry, can we just pause it for a second to understand just a little bit more around overheating, especially from a military perspective?
Craig Gile: Sure.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: They've come up with this way to cool people down, especially like from a military perspective. You've called out a couple of things where you've said, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you stick your foot out or you pull your hands out under your Duna cover or your duvet. Is there point is it like is there moments in terms of when we as humans overheat, like in from a military perspective, is it because of being under pressure, in the firing line so to speak, or is it that they're
Craig Gile: Okay.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: the what their uniform that they're wearing, like what's causing like I guess what w what problem did these scientists see from a military perspective and the need to cool them down?
Craig Gile: So here are the things that create have the body overheat or creates heat inside the body. One is ph physical exertion.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes, yeah.
Craig Gile: So if you're working out hard, if if you can be hockey players here in the States, if you're a basketball player in an air conditioned gym, if you're starting to sweat, your body has overcome its ability to naturally dissipate that heat, right? So you physical exertion is how you can overheat your body. In the weight room, you can physically you know heat up your muscles. hot ambient temperature will also accelerate heating up your your body. And then wearing PPE or some kind of like uniform That is going to kind of contain the heat in your body, all those things will contribute to your body overheating. Now you do bring up an interesting thing. And there is a c direct correlation between your body's core temperature and your heart rate. Part of that is just like the the demands on your heart for to basically kind of d deal with that heat. and then anxiety or stress can also, you know, raise that heart rate, which is also I think your your your heart pumping harder. So that can also help accelerate that. I don't really know of any studies where someone is by anxiety is like overheating their body, getting their core temperature up, can definitely on the margin kind of get it over the So all those things are gonna create a a problem with performance, be it in an athletic arena, be it in the military, be it someone working in a mining shaft a mining shaft or mining quarry out in in your country, and or oil patch, whatever. So if you're overheating to say it short, bad things happen. so if you can mitigate that, get the heat out of your body, you can then go perform better, be it again, in a basketball game, be it in a in a construction site.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, okay, interesting. Yeah, I was wondering what the the the correlation was in terms of overheating. So they found this solution for the military. How do you then come into
Craig Gile: So to be fair, I'm sorry for cutting you off. They were funded by the military to find this solution.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: and they did. Now frankly, there are some practical engineering challenges on having someone in the military dynamically in theater using this technology because you need to have your hands, you know, basically tethered to device to use it. we're getting you know, we're gaining some traction on getting to more dynamic versions or easily deployable versions. the military uses it primarily now like in physical training. So I I'll actually I'll touch on that. So the Stanford scientists, in the course of trying to prove they can cool somebody down quickly, they had to get someone overheated in a lab type of environment. And in the course of doing that, they kind of stumbled upon, frankly, some hard to believe performance benefits you can have if you can effectively get heat out of your body while you're working out. So there's a number of published studies but they they show like, you know, 144% increase in pull-up performance in a matter of weeks. We think cool down in between sets, 25% endurance gains in in a matter of weeks by getting heat out of your body. So there are these remarkable performance benefits, and that's how the military currently, primarily with the special forces here in the States, is using it in training to just drastically increase their their rate of fitness gains by effectively using this in training.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, okay. Interesting. Yeah. Is it just is and is it just physical? There's no psychological or like I 'cause like I like I think about stress pressure again, especially with from a military, but even like from a sporting perspective, you know, the minute you start to overheat panic's the wrong word, but you just you you feel you you feel out of regulation if that makes sense. And so for me it's kind of interesting what you're creating here because it is revolutionary in terms of it's from a physical perspective. But I I feels like there's also this connection to a psychological like because I think when you're at that perfect temperature, if you like everything just feels kinda like you feel like you're just in momentum or you're in flow or do you know what I mean? Like I I don't know if this if I'm kind of if you're thinking
Craig Gile: I know what you're saying. So there is one can certainly argue but it For something like this of a placebo or belief effect. Right. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: I've I've read a study and someone had crazy gains in the on the bench press using this, I use it like, I I'm gonna believe it, do it, and maybe I can perform better because I believe it. There is, you know, in theory something to that. The reality though is and for what it's worth, you know, if you can believe it and have the better performance, more power to you. I mean, I always say like if a placebo works like, you know, I've seen it work, you know, more power to it. The reality though is we do have like you know, all this data from the lab and from the field from our early customers
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: who are primarily professional athletes and high performers, of not only the performance but also the physiological measures where you can actually see the heart rate come down when they use it in between rest periods. So there is a science behind the performance that, you know, is is pretty solid.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, incredible. Incredible. So tell us so like so you've expanded it out of military into like sports and like so like tell us how like you've I mean starting in twenty twenty one creating a new category is not easy and especially when it comes from a science perspective and there's so much education required for it to become mainstream. Like a cool meet is quite it quite literally is a myth right you I don't think do you have an example? Do you have a a prototype like anything in front that you could share with the listeners?
Craig Gile: I should have come better repair it. There's I won't I won't I'm not sure what repair it is. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: putting you on the spot. Sorry. We can share like
Craig Gile: I know. you know what? It's you know, they there's a saying, fail the plan, plan to fail, and I failed to plan to be. But so the way that it works
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: It's okay.
Craig Gile: is is the little is about a a foot high and eight inches in diameter. Again, my metric system conversion is not good on the top of my head. and has operating unit that has this water flowing through it a a mit, an interface you put your hand in and on top of, and there's water flowing through that at the ideal temperature, which is basically taking the heat away from your hand. Which we guess is the first question I always get. Like, why can't I just put my hand in a bucket of Wouldn't that be faster because I'm using my hand, right? the body doesn't work that way. If it's too cold, it has a defense mechanism on it's called vasoconstriction to kind of keep the heat in your body. So we're again
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I said it's shocked. Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: from the we're the beneficiaries of the dozens of or a couple decades of research at Stanford. The founding scientists are part of my team where they've kind of dialed in the temperature that's cool but not cold of you know what's contacting your hand it's about tw 12 to 15 degrees Celsius for what is worth so that's the way that it works. So the the key components I mentioned earlier are a convective heat transfer and that heat when it goes you know for a system to work you need a heat sink to take that heat. So ice is a really effective heat sink. There is ice as a heat sink in our our device. So that actually begets One of the questions I think you wanted to get to, our business inflection point, right? So what we did was we took the first the latest version from Stanford's lab and created a basically a manufacturable version of that. again, single operating units, battery operated, it can run for hours, it takes ice, the ice can last for hours or days, depending upon how you're using it. and we wanted to get it to market. we knew because of the frankly, the crazy performance benefits that elite athletes or lead prepared. performers were a good first early adopter customer base for us. And our strategy for that was get it in out to the market, get in the hands of kind of a highly credible and frankly highly high profile users, and get data and testimonials from them. But as important as anything else, have them tell us what they want to see in future products. So that stage is coming towards an end. We still do have inventory of that product that we're looking to, you know, to phase out of, but it works, you know, it's proven, it's worked great. We have over 80 professional teams across all s a number of pro sports, primarily in the US, but not exclusively. I do have a few Australian rules or rugby teams over there that are customers of ours. we have Olympians, Tour de
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Australian rules.
Craig Gile: France teams, dozens of college programs here in the states here in the states like e all the colleges have like multiple sports. So and then special forces military. Now we're starting to get a lot of reach out from large industrial companies like, we have workers who were you know dropped like flies in the heat. There's no great solution for that. You guys claim you have one. We want to try it out. And we've had great results with that. And that's going to be our focus with a new product that we have coming out. so
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Incredible. And so how long are they Craig, how long are they like you put the mitt on? Like is how long are you like how long does it take to bring your body bring your temperature down, like once you've got the mitts on your in your hands?
Craig Gile: That's a good question. So the people often phrase that like, how long does this take to work? Like you put your hand in it for a period of time and it all of a sudden it kicks in. The reality is if you're overheated, as soon as you put your hand in it, it's gonna start to transfer heat out of your body. So it starts working right away. From data
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, right.
Craig Gile: that we have in the from the lab at Stanford and in the field, it's exponentially faster that rate of heat transfer, the first minute, and it starts to revert to the mean around the third or fourth minute of your normal heat rate. and so we always tell people like if you have 30 seconds, it's worth doing. You'll see a significant difference in the heat coming out of your body. How you see that, you can't sense your core temperature for what it's worth. So it's it's subtle on that. you will see yourself stopping to sweat pretty rapidly. And then you'll feel the benefits going forward. so so three to four minutes is a good time to use it. How quickly it brings the core temperature down, there's a lot of variables on that. I asked that question of my scientists, and I get the scientific answer like it depends on a number of things, and it does. But you know, typically five to ten minutes someone's core temperature come down a a degree or two Celsius, which is big. so It works very effectively and again by orders of magnitude better than anything else from their work at Stanford. The second fastest thing in terms of getting core temperature down that they tried was ice packs in your armpits and your groin simultaneously. That was half as fast. an ice bath would eventually bring your core temperature down faster, but the first few minutes, our technology at my from what I've seen is like faster, so more effective right away. there's some science. around that. so anyway, it's also easier to to carry around than an ice ice bath. so it brings it down
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, Tyler is fast.
Craig Gile: quickly. So tell people like, you know, we're We do have some a partnership with Tennis Australia. they've done done some work with them and they've
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Excellent.
Craig Gile: their players have used it on changeovers in tennis. They get a minute and a half on TV and televised matches, and if they use it for 30 seconds like every single changeover, there's a kind of cumulative impact or benefit of if you're at work or a tennis match or whatever, if you do it a number of times, you're gonna get incremental heat out you wouldn't otherwise get, and there's a benefit by the end of the day by getting that heat out as you go. So you're the
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, it
Craig Gile: end of the
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: can
Craig Gile: day your core temperature is lower, your heart rate's lower, you're stronger, you're fresher. And as an aside, everything I've said so far, frankly, I have data behind. I just have don't have data on this yet, but if you're if you're overheated, you start making bad decisions. So it leads to the conclusion that if you can keep yourself from getting overheated, you won't make as many bad decisions. So we're getting a lot of feedback from that from our industrial users, but I don't have any hard data on that as yet.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. That's my thing on the psychological piece, right? Like because when you're stressed or when you're overheating or when you're just not feeling like, you know, like it's like when you feel you just don't feel right. Like your body just everything you you do. You don't you you you're not so what you're talking about here
Craig Gile: You're out of source, right?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: You're out of sorts, you're completely out of sorts. And so what you're talking about here is this microactive recovery moments, like when you're in high performance or under pressure, you're enabling these active recovery moments that we talk about because what I also see, and you know, like this is just in business or you know, sometimes even high performers in general, like whether it's sports or not, is you just keep pushing and burning and burning and burning, and then you're just exhausted and you've
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: got nothing left in the tank. And so what you're you're creating here also is this ability to freshen up and go again and go better you know
Craig Gile: That's actually a very good point. Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: go better like I I that's what I the other thing I have an idea for you Craig is you need to get some in in sponsor in brand sponsorship on the likes of the Australian Open if the tennis players are using it between matches I can see big Kulmit coming up on the on the screen there
Craig Gile: We're
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: for you.
Craig Gile: We're getting there. as it happens, if you can we're a startup, so those brand sponsorships don't come for free. But we're
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: we're working towards that. And actually Australian Open is considered in the space to be like the most progressive technology wise,
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: of the the majors. So we're getting there. Actually that point. So I was getting to is our early users gave us ideas like, this is great, we've seen the benefits, you know, frankly sometimes they're you know, they're remarkable. they don't believe it and they do it and they're like, it actually is really makes sense and again the my counterparts or my customers tend to be like the performance staff of a baseball team or a football team or a basketball team or, you know, Olympic t Olympic athletes. but so one thing they said was works great, be great if it was more mobile, easier to kind of like maintain. And so we have two products in our product development pipeline. One that's we're in the process of going to the manufacturing stage, so it should hopefully get out here soon. in short form, it becomes a mobile device you can kind of put in your gym bag and carry it around and you know, picture kind of like almost like a yeti. Tumblr kind of carrying it around. But
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: yeah. I thought one of those, yeah.
Craig Gile: again, I mentioned there are two things that are required for this to work. One is a convective heat transfer and one is a heat sink. So this does require a little bit of ice. You know, it's you know, let's say it's gonna be roughly this size. so a little bit of ice, and then we have a patented format design that creates kind of a convective heat transfer flow on the outer rim of that. So what that does for us is a lot of things. As we've again you mentioned the the difficulties of creating a cat or category. This will help out a lot. Because again, everyone who overheats in even if you're gardening and you're overheating, you this can actually help you, right? So it brings the price from a thousand dollars US down to about 200 US is the target. It is easy to use, it'll weigh about a pound. it'll last for as much as a couple hours on one ice fill, but once the ice melts, you put more ice in it. So you know, if if there's any like hydration break area for athletes or industry or military, I can easily just recharge it. It basically run forever just on ice. There's no battery, no pump, no nothing. So it's a really slick design and really enthusiastic reception from our current and potentially future customers that are able to kind of roadshow it with. so We think that's gonna really kind of break out the category. Because again, I'll stress it. There is a challenge in creating a new category in terms of like convincing people that it works or changing their behavior. So I can go to someone and say, No, you're overheated
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: on the work site. this missing fan doesn't work. You should try this. There's gonna be some natural, like it's too good to be true, it's not gonna not gonna work, right? I happen to have credible science behind me. I happen to have, you know, this product will be like way easy to use. But there's an education awareness component that has to happen with any
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Huge amount.
Craig Gile: new. category.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: the but the the the beauty of a new category is it creates a huge opportunity. So it's a huge market
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: that that we're going to employ. And so one thing that that kind of like gives me comfort and confidence is when I was a young aspiring athlete, it wasn't for lack of effort that I was a failed athlete. I tell people I played basketball at a high level, it's not as high as I wanted to. But played heart in b you know, in a very sophisticated programs and like water breaks weren't a thing. It was like, you know, it's you're you're soft if you need water. Gatorade had been out for a while and you know water breaks weren't really a scheduled thing. Where now my my coach, who was very very good, would get fired if he didn't, you know, schedule water breaks all the time. So I I absolutely am convinced there'll be a world where and as helpful we can like kind of piggyback on the hydration break routine. You can do at the same time. You can, you know, be drinking a drink drink and then have your cooling the other hand. and then actually I can make a a scientific argument that it's palm cooling thermoregulation is substantially more impactful in the moment than hydration. but again there's no reason to not hydrate. you can do both. But so that's where we're going.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Agree. Yeah. It was super interesting because it's also regenerating, right? It's regenerating our s our minds, our bodies, you know, to be to be able to s continue at at a level that we need to continue when it comes to elite sport.
Craig Gile: You
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: But also the fact that you're you're allowing this to be attainable for mainstream as well. It it's a really interesting like it's it's fascinating. I've got two final questions for you, Craig.
Craig Gile: Okay.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: In in terms of you've talked about the challenges of creating a new category. You're
Craig Gile: Yep.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: also an extremely, I can tell, focused, high performance, like you know, pr pressure, the more pressure the better feels like for me from what I'm observing of you, because it's almost like it's it's
Craig Gile: Interesting, yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: potentially the adrenaline, it's the the nature of it. Have you had moments like if I think about your three acts and this is I'm assuming this is one should never assume, but I'm assuming this is your final act in terms of or who knows, i in when it comes to a career. Has
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: this been your toughest act, like in terms of from a from a career perspective?
Craig Gile: I will tell you, So it has been so one of the great things about doing a startup and I will say from my perspective it's not just because of of my path. Everyone thinks that startups are like, you know, great and I've you know, I've interviewed students going into colleges and like, you know, what are your career ideas? I don't expect a great answer, but you know, they're eighteen years old and like, I wanna, you know, run a startup and like, you don't know anything about anything so you should think about you know, learning more before you do a startup. So there is like the the kind of the myth and the mythos of the startups or like the someone dropping out of Harvard and creating Facebook, right? That does happen. but you don't really hear about all the people that dropped out of Harvard or whatever school the startup and never went anywhere, right? So there is something to having a bit of experience, figuring out, you know, what works and what doesn't work and then doing a startup that makes sense to you. So, to your question, the challenges, there are just so many multi functional different things you need to figure out with a startup. And part of it is, you know, I worked at one of the largest organizations in the United States, the military, into a humongous bank, you know, big bureaucracies, and there's always like someone to point to to go do something. That person is always you when you had a startup. So it's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: always like this has to be done is like you're looking around like, yeah, it's this guy has to do it. So like when I do have with our small team, We have discussions and people have great ideas and ultimately it comes down to I'm like, okay, that's great. Who is doing what and when are you doing it? And to your point, I think part of my background of being in the military where, you know, things just had to happen, there was no questions asked and people were accountable. people when I was in Wall Street, you know, there were lot of character flaws stereotypically about people on Wall Street, you know, the greed thing, but that greed does have people make things happen. Right. So there's not a lot of time for just sitting around and ruminating in a startup. You got to just make things happen. So to circle around your question. This has probably been the multi most multifaceted challenge of my my three acts thus far. And you know, to your answer question, the third act may not just be cool, maybe but it'll like the startup kind of stuff. I don't
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: anticipate a fourth act. but so yeah, there's definitely challenges with that. I you know, urge anybody and any founders who are are watching this have probably been in my shoes like there's always a challenge. You're always kind of you know part of the things there's something's not in your control. Like for us, we outsource our engineering and I can't, you know, grab that guy's throat to get something done today because he has, you know, 15 different customers get on a schedule and they don't have the same sentence of urgency as you do. You have that with everything. Your marketer or whatever. Well everything's in house you can again grab someone's throat. you can't control all that you want to control.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Well then that that's my final question for you. What have you learned about patience?
Craig Gile: So I come to find that I should be more patient, I guess. And I always want things to move faster than they do. I don't I have a mindset or a philosophy that when I tell something that something will be done, I want to underpromise and over deliver. And I don't get that a lot through all my different vendors. So I need patience with that. My my colleagues, I was able to bring two of my great friends from business school to help me run this. And they're like, you just gotta, you know, they're not gonna get it done by then. I'm like, why'd they tell they're gonna get done by then? So I I definitely have to learn that. There's also r a resilience and one thing mentioned earlier, there has to be a recognition that you have to set out with a a appropriate strategy that you you have more information as to you know what needs to happen than anybody else but have a sound thought through strategy and just recognize it's never gonna go exactly like that. So be
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: ready to pivot as necessary, but with a sound reason. Don't just like lose faith after, you know, your sales don't hit your your target the first two months. Like, something's wrong. He's got you know, there is some kind of stick to it I think you need to have and confidence
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: and courage your convictions on what your strategy is and just make sure that you execute it correctly.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Agree, agree. And I think patience is a is a hard one to it's a it's one of the toughest skills to learn, especially when you're t probably a type A like me, high performer, go, go, go, go, go. You've always been in roles and then all of a sudden, yeah, there's things are out of your control, there's things you can't predict. And patience comes across sometimes w for me it has and then it's like, I'm slowing down. I can't slow down. I've got to just keep going. Like and yet sometimes from from from a place of patience or presence, if you like, you have this ability to make better decisions, which comes right back to when you're cooling down with cool meet and you're on
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: like footy field, for example, you can think about the next quarter or you can think about what's next and you can actually start to strategize what is possible and I think that's that's it's it's a fascinating space and place to be.
Craig Gile: So one example I'd give on that, and I have a question for you. so like we mentioned like being fresher at the end, again, you actually brought up a really good point, it's active, dynamic cooling while you're doing something. And there's really no other way to do it, right? But
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. No.
Craig Gile: so the analogy you make for like the sports thing is if I'm a tennis player and if I don't cool and they they tend to play outdoors where it's hot, they follow the sun, they say, at the end of a match, you're you know, you get tired, you're gonna just make a hopeful shot, lose your strategy, try to hit a winner when you should. Or a stupid drop shot. If you cannot be overheated, you're gonna make better decisions. You're gonna be better able to grind out that important point in the third set or fifth set in the major. So question I have for you though, because we mentioned kind of like the patience, and wonder if you've come across this similar thing where you have a vendor, you you're something that a functionality you cannot do or not you shouldn't effectively take on yourself, you hire someone and you're waiting and you're waiting for their output. how or have you had to decide like when you like, you know, cut bait and then move on to get a a new vendor? Let's say it it's a a marketing agency that's not not performing, like how do you say like enough is enough, I need to to find go start researching and find better fits. You ever had to do that?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, a hundred percent. Tons of times. And I think it's you know, that it's kind of for me it's it's a three strike rule in a way, in terms of, you know, first time being very clear on exp I'm I mean, I think up front we've always got to be clear on our expectations. And I talk about with clients, anyone is shared what's the shared clear goal? What's the shared clear goal of this of this project or whatever we're here to be working on together? And keep coming back to that. And like there's always There's always things that can go not what according to plan as such. I also think there's a point where it's is the relationship working? Are they listening? Are they actively listening? Are they understanding where I'm coming from? Am I listening to them? Are we
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: hitting the timeline? And I think, you know, the three strike rule is, you know, okay, once yep we can learn from this and how do we fix it second time? And then the third time it's just this isn't working and I need to, I need to move on. I think that we quite often hold on to things much longer than we should, when actually we should, you know, rip the band-aid off faster at times when we just know intuitively and instinctively it's just not right. This is not working. And that's not about rushing, that's just not, you know, thinking about actually is this the right fit? And so for me that's what I always I have like what you know, are we are we hitting our shared clear goals? Have have we got the same f values? Are we aligned? Are we understanding expectations here? Communication and then and then it's for me it's this is not working. This is not fixable. and so generally yeah that's when I know it's time to call it. Because quite often I think
Craig Gile: Yeah, you're right. There's there's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: that calling we just get stuck in it and then we're wasting time and we're six months later and we're like, we're not getting we're not we're not any further ahead than what we were at the start. So this is why for me it's like saying no faster and saying yes slower. Do you know what I mean at times? Like
Craig Gile: No, I do. I that's actually a really good thought. So as you say that, was listening because you have very important people to listen when you're have any relationship, p in particular a professional relationship. So there is like this inertia. You I'll I'll I'll bang on the marketing agency, right? you gone this whole process to bring on a marketing agency and there's inertia and you they're not performing like you expect them to. Again could be my expectations, but and you just kinda like drag out, you keep like hope like, yeah they're gonna they're they promise and promise they're gonna get something across the finish line. and they don't and it's like, it's gonna have to start over with someone else, but at some point, you know, you gotta like cut it. One thing you mentioned that they made me think like what I should do better than I do when I get into one those relationships and just not even the the deliverables expectations, but just a way of operating business. So again, in the military and frankly on Wall Street too, if someone had a task to do and there's a deadline It was either done on the deadline, generally speaking, yes. But for some reason it wasn't, they would they would
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I just lost you. Hang on a sec.
Craig Gile: forewarn you like, this is not gonna happen on Tuesday at at ten o'clock, and here's why and here's what the new deadline is and it's gonna happen. And yeah, a constant like before the deadline is passed, like telling you when and why. Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, manage expectations.
Craig Gile: and and I should just tell them like That's the world I come from, that's what I expect. And if you can't, you know,
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: deliver that that that basic human consideration as a professional, you know, we're probably gonna have a problem and you're gonna be pissed off at me for for complaining the whole time and I'm gonna be annoyed and and ultimately have to fire you. So it probably should
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, how to say. think it's a really good lesson and valuable insight for anyone in business in general because I mean obviously I come from advertising and communication. It but it it it really is down to managing expectations and so being upfront with what you're expecting and if you're not going to hit my deadline please I I want I want notice and I want I I want notice not when the deadline is about to be hit. I want you I want like you know one or two hours. I think this is critical in business and especially with AI And everything can in play now, like it's more important than ever to have the discernment and the ability to be clear on each other's expectations because that's when you get the right relationship and trust and like it becomes long term and I think that's that's the critical part here. Like you it's how it's how you work. It's you know, so I think it's super important for all the listeners out there to to know that that is part of the game, so to speak. You know, it's otherwise our temperature when our temperature rises, we heat up, like it all comes
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: back it all comes back to Cool Meet in a way. It all comes back to Yeah, the building demand for your product. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible conversation
Craig Gile: They're they're just trying to they're building demand for my product by by by annoying all the all the founders out there.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: and we can keep talking about this offline. Craig, how do we find out more about you? How do we find out more about Cool Mitt. You've got a great website there, lots of information. Yeah, how do we find out more?
Craig Gile: Yeah, so the the best site is our website, coolmitt.com, so coolmitt.com so you know we have a product that has the virtue of impacting a lot of different things. Also it's the challenge
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: lost you again. Hopefully you'll come back.
Craig Gile: of you know focusing on on different different performers. So athletes, industrial, military, firefighters, everyone can can benefit from this. So cool mitcom. people can feel free
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: we can find out more from you through coolmitt.com and you said firefighters, athletes, military
Craig Gile: yeah, so the the website should have information for people who working out, not just elite professional athletes, but anybody who goes to the gym and is trying to be their their best self. industrial users, so any safety officer is looking for heat mitigation for their workers, military, as well as the firefighters or anybody. So there's that and then anybody can reach out to me directly. I'm I'm painfully accessible at Craig at coolmitt.com So if anybody has some or so feel free to hit me up anytime.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Great, thank you, Craig. Craig, thank you so much for your time. What a great conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm wishing you
Craig Gile: I did too, Bee. Thanks for giving me a a little bit a slice of your morning there in down under.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, thank you. And I'm wishing you utmost success with Cool Mitt and everything in in your Act Three. You have a lot of knowledge to share with a lot of people as well. So yeah,
Craig Gile: Thank you so much.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I love that you're creating a a whole new category. It's very exciting. So thank you so much for your time.
Craig Gile: Well you're part of that, the the awareness and education part. So thank you so much.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, thank you.
Craig Gile: Hey Bee Pleasure to meet you, or pleasure to see you. and yeah, thanks for taking the time here on a currently nice evening in sunny Florida.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Is it still sunny? Like a because do you have daylight savings? Is that started or finished? I mean, I should say. Okay.
Craig Gile: we got another half an hour till sunset, I think. you know, the days are getting shorter here finally in in our summer.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: I know it's your winter, right? Or fall. that's right, that's right. Yep.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, we're we're heading into summer as well now. Like we're in spring. We're one one month in and it is a beautiful spring day here today. You can really notice the look I'm not wear I'm not wearing any sleeves. Like that's always a a good sign in you know, coming to the end of end of September. Although, you know, like I said, I've
Craig Gile: that's the tell? No sleeves.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: just come from back from New York last week and I was noticing the the change in season there coming into fall, so
Craig Gile: You see the leaves start to change already up there? Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes. Had a rainy New York day. I was like, sitting in the cafe thinking, gosh, this is, you know, different too. I'm coming out of this and here we are. So Craig,
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: it's it's such a privilege to talk to you and I want to say a big kind hello to all the listeners out there and we are continuing to have some really great diverse conversations and understanding from a founder, you know, their the critical inflection points that they're facing and then how they're shaping and shifting and what they're doing differently and This one is is also another action packed conversation. So Craig, let's get on into it. You're the founder,
Craig Gile: Let's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: president, and chairman of Arteria Technology. And it's the company behind Cool Mit, and you've got your beautiful branded logo on your t shirt. I'm all
Craig Gile: I do. Yes.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: about brand. I'm all about, you know, having getting your brand out there because as a founder, you and your business and your brand are you're so interconnected. So, you know, one tip for the the listeners out there is Bee proud.
Craig Gile: Actually just realized I have for the branding I I have behind me a box of the product that's getting
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: ready to go. I think it's gonna go to a customer in Canada. I gotta send it out tomorrow, but I just just remembered that was there.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, I love it. I love the branding too, by the way. It goes very well with what we're about to talk about. So, like I said, you are the founder, president, chairman of of Arteri Technology, the company behind Cool Meet. It's a patented palm cooling technology designed to improve human performance and help people manage the impact of heat. You had an important inflection point, Craig, and it emerged as you moved from a career spanning military aviation, glob global financial markets, including living and working in New York in Wall Street. And investment into entrepreneurship and bringing those very different experiences together to commercialise breakthrough thermoregulation science developed at Stanford. Today, Craig, you're focused on taking thermal regulation technology into the wider world, building awareness of a new approach to heat across sport, military, first responders, and physically demanding workplaces. And at the heart and soul of your work is a belief that innovation only creates meaningful impact when it moves beyond the science and into people's lives. And so f for you, Craig, that means turning an emerging technology. You're actually you're actually creating a new category into something that can help people perform, work, and live more safely in the heat. Started the company in twenty
Craig Gile: That is it. That is it. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: twenty one.
Craig Gile: we did, so let me tell you a bit about the path if that makes sense. So I'll
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes.
Craig Gile: start with, so throughout the course of human history, I think, wasn't there for the entire time, but I think people have been suffering from the impact of heat. And you know, things that we do now, like a misting fan or get in shade or even get in air conditioning, if you're overheated, those are not particularly effective about really addressing the situation. They'll kind of like limit how much you're keep raising in temperature, but they don't really do much to solve the problem. So these two Stanford biologists, Dr. Craig Heller and Dennis Gron, like literally made a discovery that kind of unlocks the key to that. and I'll get into how that technology actually works with the biology of your body here in a second. But you kind of ask about like the founder's story and the founder's path. And so as you kind of alluded to, Act O career was actually in the US Navy. I flew jets off an aircraft carrier in a previous life. As it happens, I just had a great reunion with some squadron mates of mine last week ago.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: This
Craig Gile: it was great. A lot of stories, many of them true, were bandied about for the entire weekend. so act one was flying jet what
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Top gun comes to mind for me, Craig. When you talk about top gun comes to mind for me, like you're probably rolling your eyes at me, but I feel like it's like aviation top gun, like
Craig Gile: If you you know, looking back, I didn't wasn't very impressed by myself and I'm still not. But what we did was some pretty cool stuff. And if you have watched Top Gun, I will say the first one was kind of crazy ridiculous, some of the you the Hollywoodization of it. Oddly enough, that actual strike in the second one of like going through the canyons and then doing this crazy pop up
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: delivery, that was actually something that we did. so that was actually pretty realistic, shockingly. the first
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: my god, are you serious?
Craig Gile: part of that movie, him going Mach ten, is just ridiculous. I'm not even sure why they have to be so ridiculous in Hollywood, but we can we'll save that for another day day.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. That bit going through did you actually do that? Like going through like that? Because that whole going through those mountains or whatever, I was at the edge of my seat going, Holy shit, these people are about to cry like it was so I felt like I was in it.
Craig Gile: We there was a famous actually canyon in Oman that we used to train when we were out at sea going through that and and they called it Star Wars Canyon. I actually never really watched those movies, but apparently there's a scene where they're kinda going through these canyons and that's what it was. Like literally it probably had to be four or five hundred feet high, and then we'd get down in in the middle of them and kind of d go down for a few minutes 'cause there's a pretty long canyon, then go out to the ocean. Anyway. so that was a pretty cool act one of my career with some great folks. I had the pleasure to serve with. And then I decided I was at the time engaged to be married to at the time my lovely girlfriend, then my lovely fiance and my current lovely wife, or my bride that I still call her. so we we were going to get married. I didn't want to be going to sea for you know raising kids and going to sea all the time and I had a great experience but I decided to get out of the Navy, go to business school. I went to the the Wharton School of Business and I got my MBA and like most Wharton students I majored in finance and like most important finance majors, I went to Wall Street. So that was Act Two of my career. That was the New York phase. Went there and worked for a number of years for banks and hedge funds. I was a trader, so went back into a kind of dynamic work environment and a trading floor. did work with some Aussies. A bunch of aussies were part of our gold desk when I traded the commodities part. And they were good good mates. they were not afraid to go out and have a a beer or two after work. and So that was Act Two, great time, you know, dy again, like I said, exciting, dynamic job. kind of fit my personality to some degree, I guess. You know, the challenge and the the the fast paced, quick decisions nature
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I'd say
Craig Gile: of that was similar to the the squadron of the the airplane experience.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: and then so act three has been this kind of startup entrepreneurial side. And with that we moved to Florida, but as part of act three was actually the connection was with from act one. Which was through my Navy network, I met the gentleman who had funded this technology originally for the US military. There's a D R D arm in the U.S. It's called DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. It's famous for it's been around since the 1950s. It literally sprung up in reaction to the Soviet Union beating us to space in the 1950s. So its mandate since then has been to invest in revolutionary science and technology first to win the Cold War and now to I in theory keep us ahead of the world in science technology. So a lot of military stuff has come out of it. But as importantly, they do have a an eye towards having civilian technology come out of it. So famously for DARPA, things like the internet, GPS, email, robotics, even the RNA vaccines were all originally DARPA projects. So they're very early then revolutionary ideas that they invest in. That makes sense? Any questions on that?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, it makes complete sense. What k what is coming up for me though is like you've had three acts, aviation Finance and then obviously what you're doing now from a revolutionary science perspective and i there's something really interesting and there's a weave in terms of just this high performance required in everything you're doing. And you said there was a commonality between Act One and Act Two. I actually think Act Three sorry, Act One and Act Three there's the com common association, but I actually think Act Two brings it together because you have to be commercial to
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: to actually make a business y succeed as a start up, right? You can't you can't just have an idea without n understanding the commercial realities to it as well.
Craig Gile: Yeah, so you know there's a lot of things you need to to figure out if you do have a viable startup. And and again from my investor
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: side, I realize that it can't be, you know, there's a lot of things that have to come into play to be a successful business. And frankly, the way I look at myself running this startup, I have in my investor hat on as well. Like, does this make sense? Have I de-risked all the things that need to be risked? So that the for a startup, you know, you have to a few things have to be accomplished or de-risked. One is let's say it's technology. Presumably, does this technology work? Right? That's the first thing that has to happen. So for us, these Stanford scientists, and I'll get into it a bit more, proved out that this is a uniquely different solution to solve a big problem. Is there a market for it? Is there a sizable enough market for it to be a worthwhile investment? For us, you know, frankly, every person on this planet could presumably have a thermoregulation problem, being cooling, overheated, or too cold. This is the best way to address it. That so there's clearly a very large market for that. you want to have some kind of competitive moat in some ways, it can be a patent like we're have and have have filed, or different intellectual property, or even just like being first to market and executing well can be build a competitive moat. And then another risk you want to have is make sure have the right team to push it forward, the right strategy. So you know, like I said, you can't one shouldn't go into a startup just like, I have a great idea, I think it's gonna work, and all my friends like. it and it's it makes perfect sense. You have to think, I think, pretty thoroughly through all the different things that you need to make sure that's something's set up to be successful. And then, you know, frankly, it all comes down to execution. So you can have the best ide you have a a very average idea and great e execution and you can be very successful. You can have the best idea in the world and not good execution and it's not going to work.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: agree. The other part for me that comes up is this pivoting under pressure as well. Like, you know, like again, all your ex experience in aviation, you know, markets that no doubt crashed at times and, you know, changed on a daily basis. Like as a as an entrepreneur, y there's y it's y you do need to pivot when you're under pressure, it's being strategic around how you pivot. Like you've just called out what's required as a start up. There's also like at times where, for example, and I'm sure we'll get into it with CoolMeet, where sure you've got the technology there, it's it's a patent technology, it's come out of Stanford, but you've no doubt had moments where the product is not necessarily market fit, right, or something's something's not working and that you need to pivot and you're
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: under this immense pressure. And so it's how do you remain strategic versus just blowing it all up, for example. Or knowing when to pivot without holding on for too long to something, knowing that it you you do need to pivot as well.
Craig Gile: Yes, that's a good question. And it does come up with the the path that we have taken so far.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, so tell us about that, yeah.
Craig Gile: so I'll just talk about the science for like one second to so people know like like how it works.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, go for it. Yeah.
Craig Gile: So these Dr. Heller and Gron at Stanford Basically discovered that there are parts of our bodies, as we're mammals, with a mammalian adaptation, where the naturally hairless palms of hands, soles of feet, and this part of the face, which is called the glabrous part of the skin, has a different arterial structure. So the way it's different has what I call arteriovenous anastomoses or AVAs. So when you overheat, these AVAs open up to form a wider shunt, more rapid blood flow from arteries to veins to the atmosphere. So how your body naturally works that way. they discovered basically that's how our bodies work to radiate heat. You know, as an example, I always tell people like you might notice if you're hot in the middle of the night under the covers, you might find your foot naturally out of the covers. That's you're actually naturally using
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, I was about to ask you that.
Craig Gile: that adaptation to kind of bring cool-in from that part of your body. So Heller and Grom make this discovery. They think they can create technology to accelerate what your body wants to do. They get the ultimately five million dollars over three years from DARPA to create this technology. And And you know, long story short, they do in fact prove they can accelerate how your body wants to naturally radiate heat. The way it works is and I won't get into too much detail unless you really want to, but the technology, the the necessary components for it to work are you need to have the heat not only just something cold in your hand, has to take heat and have somewhere to go. So there's a convective heat transfer that happens with our technology. So basically it takes the heat away, it flows through the system, and the heat goes away, gets rechilled, comes back. constant flow of water going across your hand that allows cold but air out of your hand, goes away, allows cold blood to flow to your heart, including from the inside out. And that's why it's by orders of magnitude more effective about getting heat out of your body and bringing your core temperature down. Which then has a multitude of benefits. So there's nothing no good side to your core temperature rising, frankly. it's a very pretty narrow range in terms of the your operating range of of that temperature. it's was that th hundred and two degrees, hundred and two and a half. Fahrenheit was what thirty nine Celsius is where you start to have degradation performance hundred and four maybe what forty, forty one is where you start to have like heat stroke type of issues. so so your body extends that very narrow range. So Heller and Gron proved they can cool somebody down quickly, which was their mandate for the military. Their military is looking for a solution for soldiers in an extreme environments like the Middle East. And so yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Craig, can we just pause this? Sorry, can we just pause it for a second to understand just a little bit more around overheating, especially from a military perspective?
Craig Gile: Sure.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: They've come up with this way to cool people down, especially like from a military perspective. You've called out a couple of things where you've said, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you stick your foot out or you pull your hands out under your Duna cover or your duvet. Is there point is it like is there moments in terms of when we as humans overheat, like in from a military perspective, is it because of being under pressure, in the firing line so to speak, or is it that they're
Craig Gile: Okay.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: the what their uniform that they're wearing, like what's causing like I guess what w what problem did these scientists see from a military perspective and the need to cool them down?
Craig Gile: So here are the things that create have the body overheat or creates heat inside the body. One is ph physical exertion.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yes, yeah.
Craig Gile: So if you're working out hard, if if you can be hockey players here in the States, if you're a basketball player in an air conditioned gym, if you're starting to sweat, your body has overcome its ability to naturally dissipate that heat, right? So you physical exertion is how you can overheat your body. In the weight room, you can physically you know heat up your muscles. hot ambient temperature will also accelerate heating up your your body. And then wearing PPE or some kind of like uniform That is going to kind of contain the heat in your body, all those things will contribute to your body overheating. Now you do bring up an interesting thing. And there is a c direct correlation between your body's core temperature and your heart rate. Part of that is just like the the demands on your heart for to basically kind of d deal with that heat. and then anxiety or stress can also, you know, raise that heart rate, which is also I think your your your heart pumping harder. So that can also help accelerate that. I don't really know of any studies where someone is by anxiety is like overheating their body, getting their core temperature up, can definitely on the margin kind of get it over the So all those things are gonna create a a problem with performance, be it in an athletic arena, be it in the military, be it someone working in a mining shaft a mining shaft or mining quarry out in in your country, and or oil patch, whatever. So if you're overheating to say it short, bad things happen. so if you can mitigate that, get the heat out of your body, you can then go perform better, be it again, in a basketball game, be it in a in a construction site.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, okay, interesting. Yeah, I was wondering what the the the correlation was in terms of overheating. So they found this solution for the military. How do you then come into
Craig Gile: So to be fair, I'm sorry for cutting you off. They were funded by the military to find this solution.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: and they did. Now frankly, there are some practical engineering challenges on having someone in the military dynamically in theater using this technology because you need to have your hands, you know, basically tethered to device to use it. we're getting you know, we're gaining some traction on getting to more dynamic versions or easily deployable versions. the military uses it primarily now like in physical training. So I I'll actually I'll touch on that. So the Stanford scientists, in the course of trying to prove they can cool somebody down quickly, they had to get someone overheated in a lab type of environment. And in the course of doing that, they kind of stumbled upon, frankly, some hard to believe performance benefits you can have if you can effectively get heat out of your body while you're working out. So there's a number of published studies but they they show like, you know, 144% increase in pull-up performance in a matter of weeks. We think cool down in between sets, 25% endurance gains in in a matter of weeks by getting heat out of your body. So there are these remarkable performance benefits, and that's how the military currently, primarily with the special forces here in the States, is using it in training to just drastically increase their their rate of fitness gains by effectively using this in training.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, okay. Interesting. Yeah. Is it just is and is it just physical? There's no psychological or like I 'cause like I like I think about stress pressure again, especially with from a military, but even like from a sporting perspective, you know, the minute you start to overheat panic's the wrong word, but you just you you feel you you feel out of regulation if that makes sense. And so for me it's kind of interesting what you're creating here because it is revolutionary in terms of it's from a physical perspective. But I I feels like there's also this connection to a psychological like because I think when you're at that perfect temperature, if you like everything just feels kinda like you feel like you're just in momentum or you're in flow or do you know what I mean? Like I I don't know if this if I'm kind of if you're thinking
Craig Gile: I know what you're saying. So there is one can certainly argue but it For something like this of a placebo or belief effect. Right. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: I've I've read a study and someone had crazy gains in the on the bench press using this, I use it like, I I'm gonna believe it, do it, and maybe I can perform better because I believe it. There is, you know, in theory something to that. The reality though is and for what it's worth, you know, if you can believe it and have the better performance, more power to you. I mean, I always say like if a placebo works like, you know, I've seen it work, you know, more power to it. The reality though is we do have like you know, all this data from the lab and from the field from our early customers
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: who are primarily professional athletes and high performers, of not only the performance but also the physiological measures where you can actually see the heart rate come down when they use it in between rest periods. So there is a science behind the performance that, you know, is is pretty solid.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, incredible. Incredible. So tell us so like so you've expanded it out of military into like sports and like so like tell us how like you've I mean starting in twenty twenty one creating a new category is not easy and especially when it comes from a science perspective and there's so much education required for it to become mainstream. Like a cool meet is quite it quite literally is a myth right you I don't think do you have an example? Do you have a a prototype like anything in front that you could share with the listeners?
Craig Gile: I should have come better repair it. There's I won't I won't I'm not sure what repair it is. So
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: putting you on the spot. Sorry. We can share like
Craig Gile: I know. you know what? It's you know, they there's a saying, fail the plan, plan to fail, and I failed to plan to be. But so the way that it works
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: It's okay.
Craig Gile: is is the little is about a a foot high and eight inches in diameter. Again, my metric system conversion is not good on the top of my head. and has operating unit that has this water flowing through it a a mit, an interface you put your hand in and on top of, and there's water flowing through that at the ideal temperature, which is basically taking the heat away from your hand. Which we guess is the first question I always get. Like, why can't I just put my hand in a bucket of Wouldn't that be faster because I'm using my hand, right? the body doesn't work that way. If it's too cold, it has a defense mechanism on it's called vasoconstriction to kind of keep the heat in your body. So we're again
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I said it's shocked. Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: from the we're the beneficiaries of the dozens of or a couple decades of research at Stanford. The founding scientists are part of my team where they've kind of dialed in the temperature that's cool but not cold of you know what's contacting your hand it's about tw 12 to 15 degrees Celsius for what is worth so that's the way that it works. So the the key components I mentioned earlier are a convective heat transfer and that heat when it goes you know for a system to work you need a heat sink to take that heat. So ice is a really effective heat sink. There is ice as a heat sink in our our device. So that actually begets One of the questions I think you wanted to get to, our business inflection point, right? So what we did was we took the first the latest version from Stanford's lab and created a basically a manufacturable version of that. again, single operating units, battery operated, it can run for hours, it takes ice, the ice can last for hours or days, depending upon how you're using it. and we wanted to get it to market. we knew because of the frankly, the crazy performance benefits that elite athletes or lead prepared. performers were a good first early adopter customer base for us. And our strategy for that was get it in out to the market, get in the hands of kind of a highly credible and frankly highly high profile users, and get data and testimonials from them. But as important as anything else, have them tell us what they want to see in future products. So that stage is coming towards an end. We still do have inventory of that product that we're looking to, you know, to phase out of, but it works, you know, it's proven, it's worked great. We have over 80 professional teams across all s a number of pro sports, primarily in the US, but not exclusively. I do have a few Australian rules or rugby teams over there that are customers of ours. we have Olympians, Tour de
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Australian rules.
Craig Gile: France teams, dozens of college programs here in the states here in the states like e all the colleges have like multiple sports. So and then special forces military. Now we're starting to get a lot of reach out from large industrial companies like, we have workers who were you know dropped like flies in the heat. There's no great solution for that. You guys claim you have one. We want to try it out. And we've had great results with that. And that's going to be our focus with a new product that we have coming out. so
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Incredible. And so how long are they Craig, how long are they like you put the mitt on? Like is how long are you like how long does it take to bring your body bring your temperature down, like once you've got the mitts on your in your hands?
Craig Gile: That's a good question. So the people often phrase that like, how long does this take to work? Like you put your hand in it for a period of time and it all of a sudden it kicks in. The reality is if you're overheated, as soon as you put your hand in it, it's gonna start to transfer heat out of your body. So it starts working right away. From data
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, right.
Craig Gile: that we have in the from the lab at Stanford and in the field, it's exponentially faster that rate of heat transfer, the first minute, and it starts to revert to the mean around the third or fourth minute of your normal heat rate. and so we always tell people like if you have 30 seconds, it's worth doing. You'll see a significant difference in the heat coming out of your body. How you see that, you can't sense your core temperature for what it's worth. So it's it's subtle on that. you will see yourself stopping to sweat pretty rapidly. And then you'll feel the benefits going forward. so so three to four minutes is a good time to use it. How quickly it brings the core temperature down, there's a lot of variables on that. I asked that question of my scientists, and I get the scientific answer like it depends on a number of things, and it does. But you know, typically five to ten minutes someone's core temperature come down a a degree or two Celsius, which is big. so It works very effectively and again by orders of magnitude better than anything else from their work at Stanford. The second fastest thing in terms of getting core temperature down that they tried was ice packs in your armpits and your groin simultaneously. That was half as fast. an ice bath would eventually bring your core temperature down faster, but the first few minutes, our technology at my from what I've seen is like faster, so more effective right away. there's some science. around that. so anyway, it's also easier to to carry around than an ice ice bath. so it brings it down
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, Tyler is fast.
Craig Gile: quickly. So tell people like, you know, we're We do have some a partnership with Tennis Australia. they've done done some work with them and they've
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Excellent.
Craig Gile: their players have used it on changeovers in tennis. They get a minute and a half on TV and televised matches, and if they use it for 30 seconds like every single changeover, there's a kind of cumulative impact or benefit of if you're at work or a tennis match or whatever, if you do it a number of times, you're gonna get incremental heat out you wouldn't otherwise get, and there's a benefit by the end of the day by getting that heat out as you go. So you're the
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, it
Craig Gile: end of the
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: can
Craig Gile: day your core temperature is lower, your heart rate's lower, you're stronger, you're fresher. And as an aside, everything I've said so far, frankly, I have data behind. I just have don't have data on this yet, but if you're if you're overheated, you start making bad decisions. So it leads to the conclusion that if you can keep yourself from getting overheated, you won't make as many bad decisions. So we're getting a lot of feedback from that from our industrial users, but I don't have any hard data on that as yet.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. That's my thing on the psychological piece, right? Like because when you're stressed or when you're overheating or when you're just not feeling like, you know, like it's like when you feel you just don't feel right. Like your body just everything you you do. You don't you you you're not so what you're talking about here
Craig Gile: You're out of source, right?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: You're out of sorts, you're completely out of sorts. And so what you're talking about here is this microactive recovery moments, like when you're in high performance or under pressure, you're enabling these active recovery moments that we talk about because what I also see, and you know, like this is just in business or you know, sometimes even high performers in general, like whether it's sports or not, is you just keep pushing and burning and burning and burning, and then you're just exhausted and you've
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: got nothing left in the tank. And so what you're you're creating here also is this ability to freshen up and go again and go better you know
Craig Gile: That's actually a very good point. Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: go better like I I that's what I the other thing I have an idea for you Craig is you need to get some in in sponsor in brand sponsorship on the likes of the Australian Open if the tennis players are using it between matches I can see big Kulmit coming up on the on the screen there
Craig Gile: We're
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: for you.
Craig Gile: We're getting there. as it happens, if you can we're a startup, so those brand sponsorships don't come for free. But we're
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: we're working towards that. And actually Australian Open is considered in the space to be like the most progressive technology wise,
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: of the the majors. So we're getting there. Actually that point. So I was getting to is our early users gave us ideas like, this is great, we've seen the benefits, you know, frankly sometimes they're you know, they're remarkable. they don't believe it and they do it and they're like, it actually is really makes sense and again the my counterparts or my customers tend to be like the performance staff of a baseball team or a football team or a basketball team or, you know, Olympic t Olympic athletes. but so one thing they said was works great, be great if it was more mobile, easier to kind of like maintain. And so we have two products in our product development pipeline. One that's we're in the process of going to the manufacturing stage, so it should hopefully get out here soon. in short form, it becomes a mobile device you can kind of put in your gym bag and carry it around and you know, picture kind of like almost like a yeti. Tumblr kind of carrying it around. But
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: yeah. I thought one of those, yeah.
Craig Gile: again, I mentioned there are two things that are required for this to work. One is a convective heat transfer and one is a heat sink. So this does require a little bit of ice. You know, it's you know, let's say it's gonna be roughly this size. so a little bit of ice, and then we have a patented format design that creates kind of a convective heat transfer flow on the outer rim of that. So what that does for us is a lot of things. As we've again you mentioned the the difficulties of creating a cat or category. This will help out a lot. Because again, everyone who overheats in even if you're gardening and you're overheating, you this can actually help you, right? So it brings the price from a thousand dollars US down to about 200 US is the target. It is easy to use, it'll weigh about a pound. it'll last for as much as a couple hours on one ice fill, but once the ice melts, you put more ice in it. So you know, if if there's any like hydration break area for athletes or industry or military, I can easily just recharge it. It basically run forever just on ice. There's no battery, no pump, no nothing. So it's a really slick design and really enthusiastic reception from our current and potentially future customers that are able to kind of roadshow it with. so We think that's gonna really kind of break out the category. Because again, I'll stress it. There is a challenge in creating a new category in terms of like convincing people that it works or changing their behavior. So I can go to someone and say, No, you're overheated
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: on the work site. this missing fan doesn't work. You should try this. There's gonna be some natural, like it's too good to be true, it's not gonna not gonna work, right? I happen to have credible science behind me. I happen to have, you know, this product will be like way easy to use. But there's an education awareness component that has to happen with any
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Huge amount.
Craig Gile: new. category.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Gile: the but the the the beauty of a new category is it creates a huge opportunity. So it's a huge market
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: that that we're going to employ. And so one thing that that kind of like gives me comfort and confidence is when I was a young aspiring athlete, it wasn't for lack of effort that I was a failed athlete. I tell people I played basketball at a high level, it's not as high as I wanted to. But played heart in b you know, in a very sophisticated programs and like water breaks weren't a thing. It was like, you know, it's you're you're soft if you need water. Gatorade had been out for a while and you know water breaks weren't really a scheduled thing. Where now my my coach, who was very very good, would get fired if he didn't, you know, schedule water breaks all the time. So I I absolutely am convinced there'll be a world where and as helpful we can like kind of piggyback on the hydration break routine. You can do at the same time. You can, you know, be drinking a drink drink and then have your cooling the other hand. and then actually I can make a a scientific argument that it's palm cooling thermoregulation is substantially more impactful in the moment than hydration. but again there's no reason to not hydrate. you can do both. But so that's where we're going.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Agree. Yeah. It was super interesting because it's also regenerating, right? It's regenerating our s our minds, our bodies, you know, to be to be able to s continue at at a level that we need to continue when it comes to elite sport.
Craig Gile: You
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: But also the fact that you're you're allowing this to be attainable for mainstream as well. It it's a really interesting like it's it's fascinating. I've got two final questions for you, Craig.
Craig Gile: Okay.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: In in terms of you've talked about the challenges of creating a new category. You're
Craig Gile: Yep.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: also an extremely, I can tell, focused, high performance, like you know, pr pressure, the more pressure the better feels like for me from what I'm observing of you, because it's almost like it's it's
Craig Gile: Interesting, yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: potentially the adrenaline, it's the the nature of it. Have you had moments like if I think about your three acts and this is I'm assuming this is one should never assume, but I'm assuming this is your final act in terms of or who knows, i in when it comes to a career. Has
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: this been your toughest act, like in terms of from a from a career perspective?
Craig Gile: I will tell you, So it has been so one of the great things about doing a startup and I will say from my perspective it's not just because of of my path. Everyone thinks that startups are like, you know, great and I've you know, I've interviewed students going into colleges and like, you know, what are your career ideas? I don't expect a great answer, but you know, they're eighteen years old and like, I wanna, you know, run a startup and like, you don't know anything about anything so you should think about you know, learning more before you do a startup. So there is like the the kind of the myth and the mythos of the startups or like the someone dropping out of Harvard and creating Facebook, right? That does happen. but you don't really hear about all the people that dropped out of Harvard or whatever school the startup and never went anywhere, right? So there is something to having a bit of experience, figuring out, you know, what works and what doesn't work and then doing a startup that makes sense to you. So, to your question, the challenges, there are just so many multi functional different things you need to figure out with a startup. And part of it is, you know, I worked at one of the largest organizations in the United States, the military, into a humongous bank, you know, big bureaucracies, and there's always like someone to point to to go do something. That person is always you when you had a startup. So it's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: always like this has to be done is like you're looking around like, yeah, it's this guy has to do it. So like when I do have with our small team, We have discussions and people have great ideas and ultimately it comes down to I'm like, okay, that's great. Who is doing what and when are you doing it? And to your point, I think part of my background of being in the military where, you know, things just had to happen, there was no questions asked and people were accountable. people when I was in Wall Street, you know, there were lot of character flaws stereotypically about people on Wall Street, you know, the greed thing, but that greed does have people make things happen. Right. So there's not a lot of time for just sitting around and ruminating in a startup. You got to just make things happen. So to circle around your question. This has probably been the multi most multifaceted challenge of my my three acts thus far. And you know, to your answer question, the third act may not just be cool, maybe but it'll like the startup kind of stuff. I don't
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: anticipate a fourth act. but so yeah, there's definitely challenges with that. I you know, urge anybody and any founders who are are watching this have probably been in my shoes like there's always a challenge. You're always kind of you know part of the things there's something's not in your control. Like for us, we outsource our engineering and I can't, you know, grab that guy's throat to get something done today because he has, you know, 15 different customers get on a schedule and they don't have the same sentence of urgency as you do. You have that with everything. Your marketer or whatever. Well everything's in house you can again grab someone's throat. you can't control all that you want to control.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. Well then that that's my final question for you. What have you learned about patience?
Craig Gile: So I come to find that I should be more patient, I guess. And I always want things to move faster than they do. I don't I have a mindset or a philosophy that when I tell something that something will be done, I want to underpromise and over deliver. And I don't get that a lot through all my different vendors. So I need patience with that. My my colleagues, I was able to bring two of my great friends from business school to help me run this. And they're like, you just gotta, you know, they're not gonna get it done by then. I'm like, why'd they tell they're gonna get done by then? So I I definitely have to learn that. There's also r a resilience and one thing mentioned earlier, there has to be a recognition that you have to set out with a a appropriate strategy that you you have more information as to you know what needs to happen than anybody else but have a sound thought through strategy and just recognize it's never gonna go exactly like that. So be
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No.
Craig Gile: ready to pivot as necessary, but with a sound reason. Don't just like lose faith after, you know, your sales don't hit your your target the first two months. Like, something's wrong. He's got you know, there is some kind of stick to it I think you need to have and confidence
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: and courage your convictions on what your strategy is and just make sure that you execute it correctly.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Agree, agree. And I think patience is a is a hard one to it's a it's one of the toughest skills to learn, especially when you're t probably a type A like me, high performer, go, go, go, go, go. You've always been in roles and then all of a sudden, yeah, there's things are out of your control, there's things you can't predict. And patience comes across sometimes w for me it has and then it's like, I'm slowing down. I can't slow down. I've got to just keep going. Like and yet sometimes from from from a place of patience or presence, if you like, you have this ability to make better decisions, which comes right back to when you're cooling down with cool meet and you're on
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: like footy field, for example, you can think about the next quarter or you can think about what's next and you can actually start to strategize what is possible and I think that's that's it's it's a fascinating space and place to be.
Craig Gile: So one example I'd give on that, and I have a question for you. so like we mentioned like being fresher at the end, again, you actually brought up a really good point, it's active, dynamic cooling while you're doing something. And there's really no other way to do it, right? But
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah. No.
Craig Gile: so the analogy you make for like the sports thing is if I'm a tennis player and if I don't cool and they they tend to play outdoors where it's hot, they follow the sun, they say, at the end of a match, you're you know, you get tired, you're gonna just make a hopeful shot, lose your strategy, try to hit a winner when you should. Or a stupid drop shot. If you cannot be overheated, you're gonna make better decisions. You're gonna be better able to grind out that important point in the third set or fifth set in the major. So question I have for you though, because we mentioned kind of like the patience, and wonder if you've come across this similar thing where you have a vendor, you you're something that a functionality you cannot do or not you shouldn't effectively take on yourself, you hire someone and you're waiting and you're waiting for their output. how or have you had to decide like when you like, you know, cut bait and then move on to get a a new vendor? Let's say it it's a a marketing agency that's not not performing, like how do you say like enough is enough, I need to to find go start researching and find better fits. You ever had to do that?
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, a hundred percent. Tons of times. And I think it's you know, that it's kind of for me it's it's a three strike rule in a way, in terms of, you know, first time being very clear on exp I'm I mean, I think up front we've always got to be clear on our expectations. And I talk about with clients, anyone is shared what's the shared clear goal? What's the shared clear goal of this of this project or whatever we're here to be working on together? And keep coming back to that. And like there's always There's always things that can go not what according to plan as such. I also think there's a point where it's is the relationship working? Are they listening? Are they actively listening? Are they understanding where I'm coming from? Am I listening to them? Are we
Craig Gile: Right.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: hitting the timeline? And I think, you know, the three strike rule is, you know, okay, once yep we can learn from this and how do we fix it second time? And then the third time it's just this isn't working and I need to, I need to move on. I think that we quite often hold on to things much longer than we should, when actually we should, you know, rip the band-aid off faster at times when we just know intuitively and instinctively it's just not right. This is not working. And that's not about rushing, that's just not, you know, thinking about actually is this the right fit? And so for me that's what I always I have like what you know, are we are we hitting our shared clear goals? Have have we got the same f values? Are we aligned? Are we understanding expectations here? Communication and then and then it's for me it's this is not working. This is not fixable. and so generally yeah that's when I know it's time to call it. Because quite often I think
Craig Gile: Yeah, you're right. There's there's
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: that calling we just get stuck in it and then we're wasting time and we're six months later and we're like, we're not getting we're not we're not any further ahead than what we were at the start. So this is why for me it's like saying no faster and saying yes slower. Do you know what I mean at times? Like
Craig Gile: No, I do. I that's actually a really good thought. So as you say that, was listening because you have very important people to listen when you're have any relationship, p in particular a professional relationship. So there is like this inertia. You I'll I'll I'll bang on the marketing agency, right? you gone this whole process to bring on a marketing agency and there's inertia and you they're not performing like you expect them to. Again could be my expectations, but and you just kinda like drag out, you keep like hope like, yeah they're gonna they're they promise and promise they're gonna get something across the finish line. and they don't and it's like, it's gonna have to start over with someone else, but at some point, you know, you gotta like cut it. One thing you mentioned that they made me think like what I should do better than I do when I get into one those relationships and just not even the the deliverables expectations, but just a way of operating business. So again, in the military and frankly on Wall Street too, if someone had a task to do and there's a deadline It was either done on the deadline, generally speaking, yes. But for some reason it wasn't, they would they would
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I just lost you. Hang on a sec.
Craig Gile: forewarn you like, this is not gonna happen on Tuesday at at ten o'clock, and here's why and here's what the new deadline is and it's gonna happen. And yeah, a constant like before the deadline is passed, like telling you when and why. Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, manage expectations.
Craig Gile: and and I should just tell them like That's the world I come from, that's what I expect. And if you can't, you know,
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah.
Craig Gile: deliver that that that basic human consideration as a professional, you know, we're probably gonna have a problem and you're gonna be pissed off at me for for complaining the whole time and I'm gonna be annoyed and and ultimately have to fire you. So it probably should
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Yeah, how to say. think it's a really good lesson and valuable insight for anyone in business in general because I mean obviously I come from advertising and communication. It but it it it really is down to managing expectations and so being upfront with what you're expecting and if you're not going to hit my deadline please I I want I want notice and I want I I want notice not when the deadline is about to be hit. I want you I want like you know one or two hours. I think this is critical in business and especially with AI And everything can in play now, like it's more important than ever to have the discernment and the ability to be clear on each other's expectations because that's when you get the right relationship and trust and like it becomes long term and I think that's that's the critical part here. Like you it's how it's how you work. It's you know, so I think it's super important for all the listeners out there to to know that that is part of the game, so to speak. You know, it's otherwise our temperature when our temperature rises, we heat up, like it all comes
Craig Gile: Yeah.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: back it all comes back to Cool Meet in a way. It all comes back to Yeah, the building demand for your product. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible conversation
Craig Gile: They're they're just trying to they're building demand for my product by by by annoying all the all the founders out there.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: and we can keep talking about this offline. Craig, how do we find out more about you? How do we find out more about Cool Mitt. You've got a great website there, lots of information. Yeah, how do we find out more?
Craig Gile: Yeah, so the the best site is our website, coolmitt.com, so coolmitt.com so you know we have a product that has the virtue of impacting a lot of different things. Also it's the challenge
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: lost you again. Hopefully you'll come back.
Craig Gile: of you know focusing on on different different performers. So athletes, industrial, military, firefighters, everyone can can benefit from this. So cool mitcom. people can feel free
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: we can find out more from you through coolmitt.com and you said firefighters, athletes, military
Craig Gile: yeah, so the the website should have information for people who working out, not just elite professional athletes, but anybody who goes to the gym and is trying to be their their best self. industrial users, so any safety officer is looking for heat mitigation for their workers, military, as well as the firefighters or anybody. So there's that and then anybody can reach out to me directly. I'm I'm painfully accessible at Craig at coolmitt.com So if anybody has some or so feel free to hit me up anytime.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: Great, thank you, Craig. Craig, thank you so much for your time. What a great conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm wishing you
Craig Gile: I did too, Bee. Thanks for giving me a a little bit a slice of your morning there in down under.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, thank you. And I'm wishing you utmost success with Cool Mitt and everything in in your Act Three. You have a lot of knowledge to share with a lot of people as well. So yeah,
Craig Gile: Thank you so much.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: I love that you're creating a a whole new category. It's very exciting. So thank you so much for your time.
Craig Gile: Well you're part of that, the the awareness and education part. So thank you so much.
Bee Murray, Bee Formless: No, thank you.
