Meet Eric Burgess | Fractional Chief Product Officer, Writer, and Game Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eric Burgess and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eric, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
In my life, I’m generally cautious about major risks because I have a highly risk-averse wife. Without going into detail, taking business risks ruined her childhood. So, I’m careful to manage my professional and personal risks based on being aware of what it will take to recover if the worst happens. I calculate those risks and explain any concerns to my wife because she is my partner and deserves to be part of any major professional decisions I make. This process also includes looking at the upside that comes out even if the risk doesn’t go my way. Opportunity can even out the concerns.

That said, my best years, professionally speaking, have come from when I took risks. I just prepare appropriately and accept the outcomes if they don’t go the way I expected. In the end, despite some risks not paying off (e.g., a startup having a less than successful exit) still provide you with new options, new people added to your network, and new opportunities that would never have manifested if you keep passing up on opportunities.

I used to call it the ‘warm blanket’ problem. A job or a situation that isn’t ideal can feel like that warm blanket. You could find something better but the spot you are in is already ‘warm’ from the time you have spent there. But that’s not enough. Always get up from the warm blanket and get out there, I say. Just weigh the pros and cons and be prepared for the worst. Even the worst will offer you learning and possibly open the door to the next great adventures.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
psyML is a company focused on bringing human understanding to products and services. We use personality, emotion, and sentiment analysis to help companies make better decisions for their customers. Some years ago, these concepts were used in a negative way on Facebook and our industry got a bad reputation for manipulating people. We are the ‘white hat’ version of that and have always been since we were founded by Dr. Galen Buckwalter, a psychometrician of world renown, and the founding scientist at eHarmony. His tools and algorithms, based on the HEXACO personality scale, have been bringing people together for positive reasons for decades, helping connect people for lasting relationships. His patented tools are responsible for over 4% of the marriages in the US – and those bonds last better than any other tools out there, including people who met, as Galen puts it, ‘in the wild.’

psyML is a deeply ethical company and we are currently working with companies large and small to make the world a better place through human insight. We are helping a company that settles debts for people by crafting language that keeps people resilient during a time when they are being harassed by bill collectors. We are working with a marketing tech company to fight racism in advertising. We are partnering with a non-profit that is helping children emerge from video game addiction. And we’re helping large companies optimize performance and messaging based on a deeper understanding of their core audience. We believe in using this information to enrich human lives and we are happy to say that we succeed in doing so every month.

Building this company wasn’t easy, but as more people realize the value of personality understanding, we have grown. There is education involved and so we’ve worked with great, approachable content to help explain our value proposition. I’m a huge advocate of Content Marketing and the idea that you should give people something of value before you ever try to speak to them.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I used to regularly host international game designers here in L.A. before they appeared at a local game conference called Strategicon. The first one, a German designer named Reiner Knizia, who has designed more than 400 board games, told me that an L.A. trip (per his British friends) included “a studio tour, Hollywood, and the beach.” I did that tour in one day for years, delighting many a European board game designer.

But I don’t necessarily agree that it’s all you need of L.A. I will recommend the Hollywood portion if you stop at Musso and Frank’s, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. Amazing food, perfect service, and you are sitting in booths where great film art was composed.

The beach is wonderful, but I’d recommend quieter spots like up near Zuma or way south of Laguna Beach. I don’t care for crowds with my waves.

The Getty is a must, all bits of it. The Griffith Park Observatory also is necessary. The Last Bookstore and Clifton’s downtown. Forget the glitz of Beverly Hills and check out the small town cool feel you can get from other smaller cities like Sierra Madre, Laguna Beach, Apple Glen, Crestline…there are so many…

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
One of my best mentors in life was my friend Morgan Underwood. He was my manager for years and I say that because he hated the term ‘boss’. Once, when my parents were visiting me at my office, I introduced him to my parents as my boss and he later said, “You can just say, this is someone I work with.” He taught me that a leader doesn’t care about being a boss. He taught me the foundations of servant leadership, which I also morphed into what I call Patron Product Management. He taught me to serve those I led and inspired me to serve those for whom I make products as well. He encouraged me to know the names of everyone we met; this doesn’t just mean CEOs and VIPs – he got to know the names and the lives of the people who served us food at local restaurants. He took an interest and made people’s lives better every day. I strive to be the leader he was and I believe I succeed more and more each year.

Website: www.psyML.co

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erburgess

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/erburgess

Other: Medium: https://medium.com/@erburgess_AI