Escape News Overload: Kira Shishkin's News Concierge Solution to Media Bias and Agenda

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Highlights

Talking heads on TV deliver agenda and bias, Kira tells Amber Stitt, while newswire-grade facts stay locked inside expensive subscriptions for the professional elite. He sets a bus crash in Kansas against a $1 trillion Saudi investment deal to show what earns a spot in the 30-second morning briefing. Some readers, he says, have canceled all their other subscriptions.

Top Quotes

"It's hard to feel informed when reading news if you're also being influenced, overwhelmed, and solicited at the same time." (Kira Shishkin)

"When you study successful people, their common behavior optimizes for fewer distractions, and that's what informed.now provides." (Amber Stitt)

"If you only read news for 30 seconds a day, what would make the cut? We think it should be the things that actually changed the world in the last 24 hours." (Kira Shishkin)

Transcript

Kira Shishkin: And so we're taking the power of the newswire, taking the power of insight-first news and information for the reader, and we're giving that power to the everyday American who's only had experience and exposure to news commentary. That's a talking head on TV talking about news, discussing it. That's not news. That's agenda. That's bias. And we want to give the everyday American the power to make up their own mind.

Amber Stitt: Welcome to the Amber Stitt Show. I'm so happy that you're here. Today we have my friend Kira Shishkin on the show. Welcome to the show.

Kira Shishkin: Amber, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be welcomed.

Amber Stitt: You're a pretty busy guy. You're traveling all over, and I've known you as a serial entrepreneur. We've talked about how you are traveling the globe essentially. Lots of freedom in that, but you're on a mission to really help people to be empowered with information. We talked a little bit about getting clarity back in their life, but the empowerment part is to make sure that with the information overload we have, we can really decipher and make decisions on our own.

With our 5-step process, we want people to have resilience in life, and that's a lot of personal reflection, but also being able to make some specific decisions for ourselves. And I think that's where your community can come into play. So, can you share a little bit about what you've been working on and why you're being asked to speak all over the place?

Kira Shishkin: It's an honor to be welcomed on your show, and I've been a fan and a listener.

Amber Stitt: Thank you.

Kira Shishkin: I get to share about the journey we've been on. We had an observation that legacy media in America functions in a way that tries to trigger you. It tries to cause a sense of fear or outrage. It is actually very hard to feel informed or get informed while you also feel like you're being influenced, while you feel like you're being overwhelmed, and while you're also actively being solicited along the way.

Amber Stitt: Yeah.

Kira Shishkin: And so those feelings are very contrary to the feeling of being informed and just having the source step back. So we set out to build a news concierge. We run the number 1 news by text. We call it a news concierge service in America, which gives folks the power to make up their own mind, which is so important in today's day, when things are changing by the hour, by the day.

That's a nutshell. What we do is we essentially text news to our readers, but we focus on getting rid of bias, getting rid of clickbait, any structural sensationalism that we observe in legacy media, and of course any advertisements or solicitations. So by the time it gets to you by text, it's just the facts and it's just the insight that leaders, executives, and people who are looking to take control of their lives are looking for.

Amber Stitt: Yeah. I mean, I work in the insurance business. I'm not a financial planner or investment advisor, but the economics of life is something that's important to have going into my day and talking with clients. But even if I'm at a bipartisan news outlet and it's on, I don't choose to have that TV on because I can't trust it anymore. So if I were to be using the concierge, how would you be communicating with me on a regular basis?

Kira Shishkin: If you were using informed.now, which is our name and also our website, in the way that acquisition.com was very much inspired by the Hormozis.

Amber Stitt: Yeah.

Kira Shishkin: It's informed.now. The way you would learn about it is you'd go to the website, and there it gives you a trailer of what the power of facts looks like. And then it's as simple as you say, "What's your name?" We don't really need your last name. We'll just say, "Hey Amber." And what's your phone number? A lot of people have discomfort with, "Oh, I'm giving someone my phone number." But it's actually one of the most secure ways to transact because we do not collect cookies.

Amber Stitt: Right.

Kira Shishkin: We don't need your privacy. We aren't able to even check open rates, which we're fine with. We don't need to know these things. So a lot of our users are actually anonymous. Our entire experience and value is delivered through SMS, through text.

Every morning, to answer your question more directly, you would get a text from informed.now, your news concierge, by SMS, just like in the roster of your friends in your phone inbox. And you'd take about 30 seconds to read it. It's never really more than that. This is what our users say they feel, and that's the goal: a sense of confidence that if you do encounter people talking about news, whether that's in a boardroom or in a bar, or if you do see that TV on in the background, you're not sensitive or easily swayed by that conversation because you know what's going on and you have the facts down.

Amber Stitt: The other good thing about that is, like you said, the triggering of seeing some of these things. You don't want to be in denial that there are things happening around the world or even in your own nation. So having that ability to scan and see and extract that and go about your day, that's what I do like about the concept. Now, going back in time, you haven't always lived in the US. I don't know that you actually do now, period. But do you notice, is it just in the US? Is this a global issue? This is a passion project for a reason.

Kira Shishkin: This has been such a strong alignment of my expertise and my experience with passion. The passion alignment here is very strong, so I'm waking up every day and getting really excited about helping folks get to clarity. At the end of the day, it's definitely a global problem, and I think it's even more extreme in other places.

I think in America, it's a class problem. For example, if you look to Guatemala, if you go to Uganda, if you go to Bosnia, there isn't a lot of information purity to begin with. People can't even think about that because they have not known impartial, objective news reporting. In America, we actually do have that and we are very lucky to have that, but it's only accessible to the professional elite. It's very expensive subscriptions. It's annual contracts and a lot of corporate services. We're looking at S&P Capital IQ, mostly financial services, and they are not accessible to the everyday American.

And so we're taking the power of the newswire, taking the power of insight-first news and information for the reader, and we're giving that power to the everyday American who's only had experience and exposure to news commentary. That's a talking head on TV talking about news, discussing it. That's not news. That's agenda. That's bias. And we want to give the everyday American the power to make up their own mind.

Amber Stitt: Thank you for tuning in to the Amber Stitt Show. Please give us a like and subscribe to the channel if you enjoy what we do. Your support goes a long way towards helping us bring you more compelling content. Remember, let's take action together. Now let's jump back into the conversation.

So, inside the news, are you dabbling in any of the crypto, blockchain, or fintech talk? Is that something that's important to you?

Kira Shishkin: Well, yes, it's part of my background for sure. I built a business in crypto infrastructure in the past. However, it's a chapter past me now, and when we're looking at our coverage, I think it's the spirit of your question. We actually look at world news that is changing the world. What does that mean? It means it's a global scope. It's not just the US. It's not just regional. It's not local. We're going to do the opposite of local news, but it's filtered and evaluated for inclusion in the text that you receive based on whether it changes the world or not.

So we're not going to cover micro-scale accidents or tragedies. If there's a bus crash in Kansas, it's a terrible thing, but

it isn't changing the trajectory of the world, versus if Trump and Saudi Arabia sign an agreement, as they did this week, that is actually going to increase Saudi Arabia's investment in the US economy by $1 trillion. That's actually going to shape so many households, so many businesses, so many lives. That's the scale of events that we monitor and we curate. If you only read news for 30 seconds a day, that's what should make the cut: Things that are changing and shaping the world.

Amber Stitt: I think some of the local news, like the bus in Kansas, it's awful, but I think that's what the headlines keep spiraling in and drawing our eyes to, and then you can start your day with an intention of something more negative than positive, although it's sad. So I do like the global aspect of being able to just be informed, which I know there's a reason behind the name. So how do people find you to then just go ahead and hop into that membership and start getting their text messages?

Kira Shishkin: I would say world news also tends not to be the most optimistic. Local news can get a lot of sensationalism and drama, but world news too is quite sad and sometimes not optimistic.

But to answer your question, to learn more about our mission and what we're doing and how we're doing it, going to our website, informed.now, is the best way to do it. Right there is also the most common way for people to sign up. Just click a button, and it's completely free to start. We want to give folks the power of facts and make it accessible.

We also run the biggest news by text toll-free number in the US, which is a less well-known element of our platform. It's like 800 Flowers or 800 Got Junk, although we'd rather be associated with flowers than Got Junk.

Amber Stitt: Inform 1-800-Info.

Kira Shishkin: We are 844-406-INFO.

Amber Stitt: Okay. Now, resilience is being able to overcome and keep moving forward in life. What's the feedback on people's mental clarity by going through a news outlet like this versus what we've been doing for the last 5 to 10 years?

Kira Shishkin: I think folks have been so drained by legacy media over the last 2 decades, as the system for how they got paid, how they would make money, turned away from reader-supported into advertiser-supported. So many incentives started optimizing around advertisers because they're now the customers. The reader was and continues to be sold to the advertiser. Our behavior, our attention, our consumer behavior is sold to the advertiser, which is why news is free. It's not because it's actually free. It's because you're the product being sold to the advertiser instead of the news being sold to you as insight.

So we've restored the fidelity, or the way things should be, when it comes to news designed for you to get informed and not influenced, not overwhelmed, not solicited, and not drained. The response from our users has been really reassuring. Folks are sharing that they've canceled all their other subscriptions. Why would I subscribe to anything else that drains me when I can have the facts here? It's all the time I have anyway, because folks don't make a lot of time to read news, and I can get the facts, I can get the insight, and move on with my day.

We've heard a lot about clarity and confidence from our users, a sort of peace of mind, because now you're reading content that is designed not to trigger you, designed to neutralize whatever's going on, so that you can just have a passive response. It's designed to make news boring again, because news has been way too sensationalized.

Amber Stitt: Well, you mentioned the Hormozis. If anyone's really been watching, we'll call them the billionaires, the top 1%, people who are influential in business building. There's a huge group of people who say, put your phone down, and there's an awareness there for those who really want to get back to real life. I know that this is a component of that, and it's very important.

What we're seeing is that business leaders are saying they're putting their phone down. I think Mel Robbins says even in her bathroom, and there's no phone on the nightstand anymore. So this is part of that story. It's really self-reflection: Are you going to do the work? And this is a way that you can be keeping up with everything. I think it's a step in the right direction, and I think that's where most of the elite are going, or are already at anyway, and it's going to give us more confidence and clarity, like you said.

Kira Shishkin: I would also add that I think there's a huge shift towards a resurgence, perhaps a reawakening

Amber Stitt: Yeah.

Kira Shishkin: around what you described as the elite, which I think is not a bad way to describe it. There is a top layer in society, a layer of society that has different privileges and different opportunities. What's also being showcased in that strata, as we're describing it, is an awakening of a sense of global citizenship. It's not just about my environment, my neighborhood, my block, my city. I'm also a citizen of the world.

I think it's an effect of how globalized we've become and how globalized we continue to become. I'm no longer just an American who lives in Pittsburgh or an American who lives in San Francisco. I'm an American who may live there, but I'm a citizen of the world, and I care about what's going on around me because it's all affecting me. We've seen that with so much China action and so much Middle East action, with America playing more of that role. A lot of American citizens are also waking up to the fact that I don't just live in America, I am part of a global civic body, so to speak. That's a trend we're leading into since we focus on global monitoring and global awareness.

Amber Stitt: The clarification there is that when you study successful people, the behaviors are fewer distractions, and this is what you're providing. So it's awesome.

Well, I'm glad that I caught you for a few minutes today. I really appreciate you being on the show.

Kira Shishkin: Thank you for having me. This has been delightful.