🎙️Navigating Information Overload, Critical Thinking & Clear Communication with Kira Shishkin | Real English Conversations Podcast for Global Professionals

This is the Real English Conversations Podcast where we help you to communicate clearly and confidently in the conversations that matter most in the workplace and your professional life. Hey everyone, it's Curtis Davies here from the Real English Conversations Podcast, the show that helps global professionals to speak clearly and confidently at work. This week's guest brings an incredible mix of public speaking mastery, entrepreneurial success and expertise in navigating information in a noisy digital world. I'm talking about Kira Shishkin, founder and CEO of informed.now the number one news by SMS service built to remove bias, clickbait and ads so people can finally get factual essential news without the overwhelm.Kira is a four-time serial entrepreneur, an investor advisor and the former co-founder of a $100 million plus thin tech marketplace at Intuit. His background includes investment banking, private equity, strategy advisory and a venture fund. People's honors degrees in economics, philosophy and abstract mathematics along with accelerated executive programs at Stanford. He's also a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree and the 2018 World Public Speaking Champion featured on multiple podcasts, news outlets and international media. Today we're discussing how to navigate information overload, how misinformation shapes communication, how global professionals can think clearly and more clearly and how to communicate with precision in a distracting world. Kira, welcome to the show. This is going to be a fascinating conversation. Curtis, thank you so much for having me again. It's an absolute pleasure to be here and that was a very generous introduction. I really appreciate that. Let's start here. You've co-founded major ventures, including that $100 million plus business at Intuit. What led you to create what you're doing now at informed.now and why do you believe the world needed a news by SMS service? It's a loaded question as I'll touch briefly on my ventures to date and why this current one feels most aligned to my personal story and what I feel the world needs today. So I've come from a pretty diverse background in terms of entrepreneurship. I have worked on online businesses and started businesses across a kind of brick and mortar digital domain, marketplaces. My first business was actually in book publishing, published multiple national books on American history. That was a first sort of foray into the world of venture. I've since started a crypto company that we've operated for many years is one of the largest private crypto mining companies at a time in Eastern Europe. I've built the marketplace into it that you referenced saying but nothing felt as aligned to my own personal story and the mission I think the world needs right now as my current venture called informed.now. Our name is also our website and what informed about now is about is really helping people navigate a world that is no longer about finding the right information because information is scarce but curating and sort of almost like defending yourself from an information ecosystem that is overwhelming. There is sort of the opposite problem there's too much information right in a world that is so overwhelming when it comes to media and so noisy. We're looking for a way to give people their attention back and do that not in just any part of media but specifically in news media which I feel has a huge influence in how we understand the world we live in and also how we feel about the world that we live in and so there's a real sense of urgency that I'm feeling with this venture. Yeah, you can have that writing your head now with what you're doing without any other distractions. You can get that information instantly by going to informed.now. So for many of my listeners they're especially global professionals who like to keep track of what's going on in the world and sometimes the news feels overwhelming, biased, one-sided to one media, out later another, this is unbiased and not noisy or overwhelming. So from your perspective what's fundamentally wrong with how people consume information today? I think it's definitely the right sort of spirit of the question in terms of how can we improve our information diet but I wouldn't frame it as what are people doing wrong rather what's wrong with the systems that we inhabit and that we find ourselves in essentially because I actually don't think of it as a human error from the side of the reader right? I don't think a reader is doing anything wrong in a way or incorrect and rather the systems of media that govern the modern world are inherently very, very broken. They sort of failed to adequately transition from an old model of you know having the reader as the customer of media right? So the reader would pay for a newspaper or they would pay for maybe later a subscription for access for membership but they would be paying for news, paying for the information that they're presented with. They now live in a world where the reader is no longer the customer because the customer has become the advertiser and the advertiser is sponsoring news, you know, any major news that you read, I would venture to bet that's nine times out of ten. You're not paying for it and who is paying for it is the advertiser. And so the news media industry has become this almost, I don't know how to put it frankly and it's a bit of a circus when it comes to, you're not reading news for free because news are not free. You're reading news because you are the product of the industry and you as a product, your eyeballs, your attention, your, you know, online behavior is sold to the advertiser. Now, you know, it sounds like something we've all gotten used to and we were used to seeing those ads left side or right side in the middle of the paragraph in the middle of the sentence. But there's a deeper consequence to having an information ecosystem that's built around the incentives of the advertiser because what the advertiser wants is not just different from what the reader wants, it's the opposite of what the reader wants. The reader, you know, Curtis, myself, you, we just want to, you know, read the news and get out and move on with our day, we've got people to teach, we've got people to connect with, we've got a world to impact, but the advertiser at any cost will click bait, will sensationalize, will dramatize the headline just so that we click because they need us to click into the article, no matter what, no matter if the headline is really misleading. And then as we go through the reading process, they'll make it verbose, they'll make it long, they'll pack it with rich media, videos, images, very sensationalized writing. And this sort of behavior is geared towards trapping you in an ecosystem, strapping you into readership of the content, and that's frankly the opposite of what the person wants. And so we have an industry that's, you know, commonly seen as broken because you have advertisement, you have bias, I didn't mention anything but bias and all of this, and you have structural sensationalism that makes the news reading experience overwhelming, manipulative, and draining. People feel drained when they read news these days. So people divide into two camps, that's maybe addressing your question more directly, so it's wrong with people's news reading habit. Because a natural response to this is one of two. One is people disengage altogether, they say, you know what, I know, like it's too much, I don't want to read this. So they self-isolate and become less aware, less knowledgeable, less connected, and obviously we don't want to live in a world that is ignorant or unaware or sort of putting their, the hand in the sand like an ostrich. But the other outcome is not better, it's people picking a source that is already resonant with what they believe in, whether that's Fox News or CNN depending on, you know, where you are in America or where you believe it doesn't really matter, you pick a source that fundamentally is going to mislead you, because they're going to reaffirm the same beliefs that you, you know, already are subscribed to, and they're going to play into these incentives of advertisers, sponsors, investors, outside influences that are all terrier, that don't really make news for you as the reader. And you look at the landscape, and I'll close with this perhaps, when you look at the landscape of news media, there are no major companies left that still write news for the readers. The vast majority, 99% are writing the news for their business partners, for their advertisers, for their sponsors, whoever pays the bills. And we wanted to build a solution that puts the reader back in on the pedestal of you are our customer. Right, your platform really promises the no more read less attitude. How does informed got now filter out all the noise, the bias ads, the stuff that's getting in the way to stay factual and concise? I would say it's a three-part answer, and I'll try to be brief because I'm going to give you a real long one just now. I would say one is we look at primary sources, we don't repose, to reread other people's creative writing. We find that a lot of people in the industry of news are actually creative writers who want it to be writers, but go to get a writering job so they're not doing news. Well, unfortunately, you've brought your skills to the wrong industry because we need more researchers, we need more analysts, we don't need more creative writers who are going to fantasize, sensationalize, and dramatize the content. So we go straight to the primary sources, whether that's central bank or the government or a business statement, but whoever is the kind of, we go to the horse's mouth, we go to the horse, it's off. And that's probably one of the most important pillars of our process is that we look at primary sources instead of commentary, discussion, etc. Number two is we practically read all the news there is. We read and scan and monitor both through technology and manually, just 24/7, we're constantly looking at news to understand, holistically, about any story, any issue, what is being talked about, what is being said, what is the common fact base across to many different publications, and that helps us a lot. And I'd say the third and last point is simply that our whole goal is neutralization of news and making news objective. And I wouldn't say this is something that's hard to do when you're intentioning to this. When you have the intention to do this, it's actually not that difficult. It's just that most companies that we're used to, they have the opposite intention. They don't try, they don't try to be objective, they don't try to be neutral. They are actually actively trying to spin a certain agenda that belongs to their sponsors or their advertisers or their, you know, entering team. Right? If you look at Fox News, they have an agenda. If you look at CNDC or CNN, they have an agenda. Now these may be different agendas, but they're tooting their horn of their own tribe, attracting their tribe to them, but also kind of, you know, redoubling down into those perspectives. So they've never tried making objective news. And most of major media is that. For us, our whole intention from the very beginning is to reduce, it's not to maximize the minimized news. And so when you have that intention, that philosophy, that mentality, I don't think it's very difficult. Like I think we only think of it as difficult because we haven't seen people try and do it publicly at large scale. Well, we're here to make a difference in that. Wonderful. You were the 2018 world public speaking champion. How did that expertise shape the way you communicate your ideas? And what communication skills do global professionals urgently need today? It's funny. You mentioned that because that was a beautiful milestone in my personal career. It was in Mexico City because it's a tournament that moves around the world. And it was in Mexico City in a beautiful theater in 2018. And it was a really unexpected format. It wasn't something that you would come to prepare for, right? And you would prepare a speech in a, like, talk style. On the contrary, the finalists, so we had like three or four or five different rounds. And then the final round, it was seven of us, and we're each given a slip of paper, like minutes before showtime. We're actually quite surprised. But about five to ten minutes, I don't remember exactly, before our speech, we're pulled aside and given a prompt of what it is that we're going to be speaking about. And it was in sort of, I think, a perfect analogy for learning language, getting comfortable with speaking is because it was just as much of an improvisation mastery as it was about speaking, or circulating, communicating, because they were testing not how well can you prepare, they were testing how well can you actually execute, how well can you actually do the thing. And what I think it's just a perfect analogy that I've taken away personally and I suggest for listeners as well, is that you can prepare in sort of sit in a room and practice in rehearsal. And you should do all those things. But at some point, the rubber needs to hit the pavement, right? At some point, the rubber needs to hit the road, and you have to apply and practice and put yourself in positions where you're no longer rehearsing and regurgitating kind of trained content. Of course, that's a base in the foundation you must have, but you're in a place where you are putting yourself out there and taking risk, saying like, "Hey, I'm just going to have this conversation. I don't know all the words that I need yet. I don't know all the expressions, I don't know all the techniques, but I'm just going to do it. I'm going to start and practice now." And I think that's, that takes courage, of course, and it's very scary, but I think when it's about learning, when you're learning a language and learning to communicate effectively, I firmly believe that you're going to get a little further if you actually go out there to start practicing immediately instead of waiting for the perfect moment when you feel perfectly ready, which is never going to come. Yeah, stay confident in being confident first and then just doing it, just actively hitting the start button and do it. You'll go way further faster than worrying about it. That's going to keep you stuck. Now, is English a second language for you? You mentioned that during this, it was helping you to improve a language and learn a language is that the case for you, Tyra? Yeah, for me, English is a third language. My first language is Ukrainian. Yeah, I was born and raised in Kiev in the capital of Ukraine, and then I came with age and spent really formative years in Israel. You could even say English as my fourth, because I learned my third and fourth languages at the same time. My first language is Ukrainian, but I also spoke Russian with my family when that was Russian background. So, Ukrainian first, Russian second, and then I sort of learned Hebrew and English at the same time, and so you could think of Hebrew as a third or English as a third. That's impressive. I think it's so well, and that's giving determination to my audience who are professionals just like you, entrepreneurs, business people, just like you, and you're living proof that you can sound natural, you can do it. You can achieve what you want to at a young age, too. I think there's a big age difference between myself and you, Tyra. I mean, you started your first business really young, I assume. If you're in the Forbes 30 under 30, that's really impressive to take the bull by the horn and just go after what you want it, and you've really come a long way. Kudos to you for that. Well, thank you, and I appreciate hearing that from you. It means a lot coming from you, Curtis. You really have always had the, I've had a lot of adversity in my life, and I think part of, you know, there's a chip on my shoulder, where I do feel like if you want something, you have to go and get it. If you want something, you have to fight for it and work for it and build for it. I don't think you get good at anything by being complacent or, you know, sort of sitting in the couch. If you want something, it's within reach, but you have to work hard, no one's canceling hard work. And I think, you know, a lot of people that I always sort of try to encourage is like, hey, if you are a hard working person and willing to put in the hard work, all you need is a little bit of patience and a lot less than you need. Just do it. No, the wisdom of Nike, just do it. You're like the second or third guest on my podcast that has mentioned that, that analogy of just doing it. And I mean, Nike got it right there, but it's definitely something that we can all use in every aspect of our life. We live in a world full of distraction, misinformation and emotional manipulation. What mental strategies and models or decision filters do you personally use to stay focused on truth and signal and what you do? I think there's a couple of frameworks that sort of come to mind. I think it's a really important question. And I try to ask myself occasionally to sort of clean and keep a tidy, you know, a tidy closet in my head. So I'll maybe, I'll mention two that come to mind. One is doing a frequent attention audit. I would say maybe one every quarter or once every half a year and you're just sit down and sort of write down, what are all the places that are currently taking up your attention? Right. Whether that means the media that you consume or no social media platforms or newspapers or any sort of magazines of content, just list all those things out and just like, what are you subscribed to? Right as a person? Like, what are all the information inflows that you are seeming through? And I think just doing that check, that little audit of writing them down and just seeing them for the first time in a list. I think it'd be very powerful because you'll realize a lot of things in there that are on the list, but you don't want them to be a math list. Right. There's things like, oh, I'm spending more time on Instagram or on other social media than you would like to. Right. And I think doing an attention audit of looking critically at where all is your attention going. So to speak, I think it's really important. And so that's that's one trick I use. The second I'll mention is, it sounds a little harder to explain and I struggle to sometimes. But sometimes we navigate an environment, whether it's making a decision where we are seeking more and more information, but not because we need more information, just because we're addicted to knowing and learning and kind of hoarding information. Right. So there's very often that you're able to make a decision without further information. I would just ask yourself the question of like, is having more information on this topic actually going to lead me to make a different decision, and then I would say actually more often than I imagined in my life, no, sometimes you actually don't need more information. You may be on autopilot, you may be someone who's just used to being sort of an exhaustive comprehensive kind of research or type when you're hoarding all the possible data points and all the possible information to make a call. But very often you already know that, hey, getting a little bit more information about the same candidate or subject or experience or decision, it's actually not going to change your mind. And if it is not going to change your mind, stop seeking it. Like don't invite that additional information stream into your mind. If knowing it, you won't make a different decision. So an example that I'll open and we mentioned briefly is, for example, you're hiring and you're in the final rounds of hiring an associate for your team, right? You've already spoken to both finalists, right? And you already know that one guy can't communicate in a way that you need to. You have very different clasping styles and the other guy gets it. You're still waiting for transcripts from other universities. You're waiting for references to come through. You're waiting for their GPA to be confirmed. You're waiting for what else. You're waiting for all these background checks. In reality, you already made up your mind knowing what their grades were in university is not going to influence that decision. And so in that moment, you say to yourself, well, I'm not going to make a different decision knowing more information. I've sort of already now. In that case, save yourself the information overload, save yourself the noise and just stop ordering information. Across your startups, including Shintech, VC, crypto mining that you mentioned earlier, book publishing, and now with media. What patterns do you see in successful companies and leaders? So I've had opportunities to both build companies and help others build companies and supporting and backing them. And to me, the quality, it's characteristic, I'm not even sure how to describe it, a feature that I'm always looking for that I've seen having the highest correlation to success is the founding team or the founders level of understanding of the customer. How well do they know their client or user subscriber customer, wherever you want to call them? How well do they know the person that they're serving? It can mean literally person, do you personally understand how old this person is, their gender, their location, their geography, their profession, their political leanings? How well do you understand the person that you serve? But it always sees, not just demographics, it's also around what problem they're trying to solve with your company solution. What exactly is that problem? When does it arise? What other solutions have they tested? Why do they come to you? That level of like intimacy with the customer's pain points, the customer's problems and the customer's really, it's called customer empathy. And that level of customer empathy to me and my journey has, I've seen that to be the highest correlation to success. Many English learners and global professionals in my audience struggle to stay updated without drowning in the content. Practical steps would you recommend to consume news wisely, improve critical thinking, and most importantly, stay calm? I mean, I don't think reading more is the answer. That's also the thesis behind our company is that you don't need to read more. That's actually going to make you more interest, more overwhelmed and more confused many times. Right? It's about reading the right things. So, I don't suggest people read any gossip, drama and sort of like political drama or celebrity gossip, things of that nature, because they are a type of entertainment that has somehow found its way into the news industry and it is extremely exhausting. Like it's taking up brain space, I call it a brain width, which is a mix of bandwidth and I guess brain power. It takes up brain width that's very valuable. So I would say just unless you're really, really passionate about celebrity gossip and political drama and like rumors and gossip, like that's the whole genre of media, unless you're really passionate about those things, I would really cut that out. That's one of the most exhausting things and I would also cut out any media companies that surfaced that to you, right? If there's a media company that's showing you, feeding you drama, bias and rumors, don't buy it. Don't buy it into that. It's going to take more than it gives to you. So I mentioned already that it's not about reading more, it's about reading the right things. To me, I do find it's very important to identify sources that really honor your respect and your attention and you can tell very quickly whether news companies do or not. Some that I used to read before, obviously, building informed of it now and now, that's my primary reading is, I really enjoy Reuters, Axios, I actually think BBC is pretty strong, associated press. These are some names that I think still have internalistic credibility, even though they're also suffering under the same incentive, like structural incentive, misalignments, I think they're quite great. You just have to be careful with what you consume, careful with that muscle, the most important one in your head and how you exercise it and do even an audit with what you're consuming. If you want to be entertained, be entertained, but don't use that as your source of information. There's a difference there and the brain can trick you. And just to wrap up here, for someone listening who feels overwhelmed, confused by the news or unsure who to trust, what is the one piece of advice you want them to walk away with today? What this is behind our company and something I believe very personally is that you should be able to do all your news reading in one minute per day. You do not need to spend hours researching, cross checking, reading one side of politicians, reading the other side, no one has time to read double or triple their news. Very few people have time to read the news once. So I don't think, I think less is more and I think more is toxic, consuming more and more is not going to help you feel more confident or more informed or more aware. The thesis behind informed dot now is that our readers, our subscribers actually do only spend 30 seconds to a minute reading news every day, but it is also formulated as a habit. So they do it every single day. And so I would say if you want to read news one, lean more into the world of caring about it. You don't go on like two, three hour rabbit holes trying to cash up so to speak, rather try to really make a very time boxed frame in a day, whether it's five minutes or one minute, a dude regular, right? Like say read the news twice a week, just for five minutes, no more than five minutes. You'll be surprised what it does to you over just a few weeks, over a few months. You will become more confident, more aware, you'll be able to plug into conversations that you previously had no access to, whether that's socially in a pub or professionally in a boardroom. You will feel like you actually can relate to people better, especially across cultures, across disciplines. If you're meeting with new partners or new co-leans, it will help you connect in ways that one of the most fundamental things. Of course you can discuss the TV shows and et cetera pop culture, but if you're working with someone who just arrived to America from Colombia, for example, and they're a new business partner and you want to make contact, one of the things that is probably the easiest ways to connect is demonstrate interest, curiosity, knowledge, and awareness of what's going on in their country. To me that is much more credible, especially in the professional environment, way to connect, then say, "Oh, have you seen Game of Thrones?" It's like, "Yeah, I've seen Game of Thrones." Okay. Now we've both seen Game of Thrones. Very cool. Yeah, and I would say, you know, we've informed up now. We built one way to do that and we don't claim to have it all figured out, but we are laser focused and purpose built to this specific use case of helping people, especially busy professionals, feel more in touch with the world they inhabit, the markets they operate in and the people they they connect with, and informed up now sort of, you know, is one attempt that I would love if anyone is curious or interested, I would love to get feedback. And so if you enjoy the product, let me know and, you know, I hope folks like it if there's any curiosity in solving this need, this pain point, I would say we did pretty well. And I'd be excited to hear feedback, positive or negative from folks. Yeah, because feedback is the stepping stone to really creating something outstanding. And just like Kura said, only a couple of minutes of a day, you don't have to spend hours, but it's brain training really and reading in English can help you with learning things in English and new words and information and the right informed information. And I love how you name your company, what it should be named, it's the perfect name for what you're doing. Kura, thank you so much for an insightful conversation, your work sits right at the intersection of communication, clarity, critical thinking and technology. All things my audience cares deeply about for everyone in anyone listening. If you want clean, factual news without bias or any of the noise in between, Kura, can you tell everyone where they can find the work you do? I'm sure they've heard the website by now, but this is one last plug to get it out there. Where can they find you? Anyone who's looking to level up their world knowledge or just being more in touch with what's happening around, in a way that feels accessible and worthwhile and not draining, we're looking for our people, we're looking for fellow news minimalists and our website is informed.now. Excellent. I'll put that in the show notes in the description of this podcast and thanks once again for being on the show. Curtis has been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. If you're ready to take your English to the next level and start speaking with confidence at work, whether it's in meetings, job interviews, presentations or important conversations with your boss, coworkers or clients, I can help you. You don't have to feel nervous about finding the right words, worrying about your accent or struggling to keep up in fast paced conversations. With the right practice and guidance, you'll be able to express your ideas and yourself clearly and naturally. Let's start with a trial lesson. We'll go over what you want to improve, do a quick evaluation and map out a plan to help you feel strong and in control when you speak English. I only have a few trial spots available each month, so if you see an opening in my calendar, wrap it well you can. Click the link below to book your trial lesson with me now.