Leaving a Legacy Through Love with Tal
Tal Zlotnitsky came to the US from Israel at the age of twelve. Starting while in college, Tal has founded or co-founded five very successful companies over a career of nearly 30 years. In March 2021, in order to start Our.Love, Tal stepped down as CEO of his latest startup, iControl Data - now a leading B2B payments provider which handles billions of dollars in financial transactions and is backed by Goldman Sachs among other investors. Tal chose to launch Our.Love not because he is an expert on love, but because he has proven repeatedly that he can inspire brilliant people to come together to achieve audacious things.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Tal talks about his motivation to build support for love and relationships
How to start small and iterate a product to deliver value fast build to make things better
How Tal uses authenticity to recruit talent and lead his company.
Tal discusses the way the pandemic impacted his life — and how he rose from it
The importance of love in every aspect of life
Tal talks about the journey and energy of building a love-based environment
In this episode…
Love is left to chance — but what if it doesn’t have to be?
Tal Zlotnitsky believes that love is woefully under supported. Now more than ever, we are inundated with an unprecedented amount of friction and stress, and loving ourselves and our partner is put on the back burner. Tal created a safe online environment for couples to go to build a better love. You can nurture and maintain your love to be a better partner through inventive games, videos, meditations, and other resources. Love transcends and gives energy to every part of life, so are you ready to climb to the Mt. Everest of love?
In this episode of Our.Love Podcast, Tal Zlotnitsky, Founder and CEO of Our.Love talks with Jeremy Weisz. Tal shares his vision of loving better as the motivation behind creating Our.Love, how to assemble a team focused on authenticity, and why you deserve to be loved, respected, and seen in every aspect of life. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by “Our.Love Company.”
If you want to build a strong long-lasting relationship with your significant other and explore new-exciting ways to engage each other, download our Our.Love app today - it is free!
Go to www.our.love and sign up for the latest insights on all topics related to relationships and love! as well as Access to our app! It’s free.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to Our.Love Podcast, where we share insights from top scientists and relationship experts on all things about love that are out of the box, refreshing and new. Now sit back, grab a cold drink or hot one if you prefer. And enjoy today's episode.
Jeremy Weisz 0:45
I'm excited guys and thank you for having me. Before I formally introduce tell you this amazing background. I don't know if everyone knows you. I mean even as a baseball player, okay, so there's so much that we're going to learn on today's episode. But before we get to it, this episode is brought to you by Our.Love Company. And basically if you're committed to furthering and bettering your relationship, so you want to build a better relationship with your spouse or partner, you need to go and download Our.Love and download the app. It's completely free. They've had scientists relationship experts who have poured their expertise, their blood, sweat and tears into this, go to our dot love you could sign up for our newsletter about all things relationships, get access to their free app. If you have questions, you can email them at connect at Our.Love Company COMM And without further ado, we have the founder and CEO of Our.Love Tal Zlotnitsky and Our.Love is a unique love and relationship wellness technology company dedicated to helping couples of all financial means and backgrounds find maintain, and nurture their best love to the combination of science and their proprietary technology previously is co founder and CEO of AI controlled data solutions and I control mobile payment. I control mobile payment which was one of the first companies to bring pay by phone to self park in the United States. I control data solutions is a network of over 40,000 retail outlets, over 3500 distributors and manufacturers in all 50 states processes and remit billions of dollars on behalf of its clients each year as b2b payments provider, the most important thing Top Most important, father of three, Sophie is in the Navy Elena's a nurse Jacob is 18 year old one award for an invention tall thanks for joining me, let me participate in this.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 2:34
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk to you and excited about what we're doing.
Jeremy Weisz 2:38
You know the biggest thing that I was wondering when I look at your amazing background, like you can be do anything right now. Right? You've started very successful companies, but you chose our love. Why?
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 2:50
I don't know if I do anything. If I could do anything. I would be a major league manager. I wouldn't be playing anymore since I'm almost 50. But But I would still be in the game. But that aside, yeah, you know, I I'm excited and thrilled to be involved in this. This is regardless of anything else I've done in my life. Some things I'm very, very proud of this will be the most meaningful and I think most impactful thing I've ever done.
Jeremy Weisz 3:15
So what made you transition to doing and starting this company from you know, you were doing the eye control data solutions before? Yes, why Our.Love.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 3:27
You know, I've always been deeply interested in love and relationships and intimacy, even though I wasn't that successful in it myself at a very short marriage in my early 20s. That yielded my two beautiful daughters. And then I got remarried and in that marriage, unfortunately did not last although we were married close 20 years. But what I learned from my own failures is that love is woefully under it there's not enough support, and not enough thought that's being put into love and loving by most people. It's kind of it's bizarre, because when I actually ran a survey, I hired Survey Monkey in October of 2020, to run me a survey about love and loving and we worked hard to ask the right set of questions. And it was it was overwhelming. People were overwhelmingly interested in loving their partner more and better over 80% of Americans rated that as one of their top three priorities nearly six in ten said that it was their number one priority to love their partner more and better, the numbers were similar, slightly higher in terms of being loved more than better. And yet, what's pretty remarkable is how little structure there is around being successful at love. We are exceptionally focused as a species on the things that we care about. So it's particularly in this era. Nowadays, if you're trying to lose weight if you're trying to count calories if you're trying to improve your scores. And in a test if you're trying to conceive. You want to follow sports. I mean there's data and there's statistics. You're trying to save money for weeks. timing of buy a home, most people are extremely mindful about that people know how much money they have in their bank account. And yet, when it comes to our most significant relationship, the one with our significant other, the one that can sustain us, the one that can bring us the most joy, we leave it up to chance, there isn't a place that we could go to the tells us how well we're doing as a couple how well our partner is doing. And we can share with our partner how well we're doing. And to the extent that we either one of us needs resources in support, there isn't a place today where we could go get that now, I want to be clear, I'm not I'm not pretending that I've invented the concept of relational therapy or marriage therapy, I actually want to be explicit and say, that isn't actually what we are about. That's not to say that those things aren't critical. In fact, I have a ton of respect for leaders like Oren and Ronnie Frank, who started talkspace. And people like Alex to and Michael Acton Smith, we started calm they are, they did some wonderful things in bringing to people in their homes, in their cars, wherever they're comfortable access to really impactful ways to be more mindful and engage with a professional. If you look at the data, it's pretty overwhelming the CDC data set from 2019, the last available year, which the CDC has data says that less than 10% of Americans have sought counseling of any kind, not just talking about marriage counseling, any kind of counseling. In the previous one year, only about 19% of couples actually seek out therapy. And oftentimes it's well, well after problems have started. So I want to be clear, I think therapy is critical. I think that the more people engage in therapy, and they do it willfully, and mindfully, the better. However, I think it's unquestionable that even if we just blew the roof off of the movement to get people into therapy, and double that number from 19% to 38%, that would still leave over 60% of people engage in relationships, who also want to be loved and love more and better to their own devices. I think that's unacceptable. I think in this day and age, there are ways to to bring effective capabilities to folks and package them in a way that's enjoyable for them.
Jeremy Weisz 7:15
Talk about how do we leverage, you know, basically, when I do my research, Tal, you're basically allowing people to leverage technology for relationships. So talk a little bit about the technology and what you're doing at Our.Love.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 7:29
Actually, before I talk about technology, I think I want to talk about what led me to believe that the approach we're taking is the right approach. So I mentioned the fact that I've been unsuccessful and one could absolutely look at that and say, well, then who are you to offer anyone any advice and I want to be clear that this isn't about me offering any anyone any advice. I don't pretend to be an expert in relationships. What I am very good at, however, and I want to leverage that is I am really good at recruiting talented people to come together and accomplish huge missions. You look at the team that we've assembled at Our.Love. We've got some remarkable people on this team, people that have gone and done incredible things accomplish incredible things in their own lives, overcome great odds. I'm one of these people, I came to this country as an undocumented immigrant. As a 12 year old, I went to public school, I received the subsidized lunch, I went to health clinics that treated people that couldn't afford to get health care. My parents eventually moved me to a private school that allowed me to attend for $1,000 a year. And I ended up being able to go to college, partially on a scholarship from the Maryland Senate. And I've lived the American dream. And I think that's great. I'm happy about what I've accomplished. But I'm also really, really proud of the what the people on this team have accomplished. And it's a really diverse and brilliant team from the Chief Medical Director of health and wellness at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Richard sphere, who's one of the founders of this company, and a terrific guy and a longtime friend, to guys like Brian Israel, who is a brilliant meditator. He's actually a brilliant attorney, but he's also a brilliant meditator to folks like Les Wong, who became the first Chinese woman to ever climb Mount Everest. to a point I was excited and thrilled that les agreed to join this team. Because quite frankly, I think what we're doing is we're attempting to climb the Mount Everest of love. We're trying to bring love to people and make it more accessible. And we're not going to try to do that the way that others have attempted or attempting to do it. Not knocking the many outstanding companies out there that have solutions in the marketplace. Really what it boils down to is I'm a disciple of a very specific theory for how things improve. It's a theory of you have to start with small things. You have to celebrate success. You have to have something that reminds you of what you need to do and you need to have fun, you need to have fun and you need to feel good about yourself. And so everything that we're building in Our.Love is going to be rooted in a spirit of kin do we're not going to be the place you're going to come to to bitch and moan about Your partner, it's a place that you should come to if you're interested in making things better. We are going to be laser focused on improving outcomes for people. And we're going to do that through a combination of games, we're going to do that through a combination of videos including some of our own, we're going to record a short animated series that we hope becomes a hit. We're going to do these podcasts, we're going to do meditations for couples meditations that are explicitly designed for you and your partner to do together. And our goal is to be the place that you come to, if you're, you know, sitting on the couch or sitting on the toilet, forget Facebook, forget Instagram, come spend some time with us we're going to be we're going to be a lot better and a lot healthier for your soul and relationship.
Jeremy Weisz 11:06
While we were talking a little bit before we hit record about social media, okay. You're laughing so tell me your thoughts on this via social media. And I know you've strong strong opinions on it.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 11:22
I do you know, I think the best analogy I could give you actually comes from a personal story. My son and I are very close and we watch baseball together, we watch soccer together. And he's a huge fan of Everton, the English Premier League, Everton and Saturday mornings, typically everything plays, and we'll sit down and we'll quote unquote, watch the game. The reason I say, quote, unquote, is that my son is more engaged with Twitter during the game. And it's not even recognizing the fact that he's not present with me to watch the game. In fact, he misses large chunks of the game because he's more interested in the interaction. I think that's destructive, right? In my in my judgment, social media can play a very effective role in our lives if it's approached a certain way. But unfortunately, we're human, we're designed to respond to stimuli. Social media, quite frankly, brings out the worst in us. Now, we have two options, you know, how will it the moon, about how social media is corrupting our youth. And I think that's true, by the way, and social media is making life harder for us. And the data shows that that's true, our relationships are less happy when we are have used as a social social media, most couples report having at least some conflict on social media. And maybe the biggest problem with social media is you end up presenting an inauthentic version of yourself that you then try to live up to, okay. But if we just hallowed the moon, we're going to lose our view is we're going to lean in, and we're going to bring the best elements of technology and social media into Our.Love with the intent of using it for good. And we think it's possible.
Jeremy Weisz 13:01
And I think, Tal, you know, anyone who's seen this social dilemma, the people behind the social media companies would agree with everything you're saying, and even talk about that exactly what you're saying. You mentioned recruiting an amazing team, you also have experts that you brought on, I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about the experts.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 13:21
Sure. Well, you know, one of the great privileges of going through any endeavor that is more complex than one plus one is that you you reach to individuals whose whose entire lives have been dedicated to something that you're just becoming awake to. And I was so gratified that Dr. Severe from Hopkins agreed to lead the search for us to to build a science team to help us on this mission. And it's it's not as simple as it may sound not because there was a lack of potential candidates. But because we are taking a very specific approach, we are not taking the heavy therapy approach, which you know, quite frankly, in our judgment, there are some very, very solid competitors that do that very well. And in time, we hope that they become a part of our marketplace. But more importantly, we want to take the approach of we're gonna approach love through a combination of facts based on science, but also gamification and fun. And so the experts we've been able to recruit are individuals like James Cohn, co h n. Jim coan, from University of Virginia. he's a he's a brilliant guy funny as hell. And also, you know, one of the most renowned experts on relationship science in the world. He studied very closely with john Gottman who's widely revered and appropriately so as as the godfather of relationship health. Another of our scientist is Liam Campbell. I was currently writing a book with Susan Johnson, Susan Johnson being the godmother of loving relationship therapy. And we also have a brilliant young researcher and licensed practitioner and Kristin theme. It has been incredibly impactful in giving Access to information about what works and what doesn't work so that we can make sure that whatever we build has solid science behind it, even if the experience is more of a game than therapy. And last, but most definitely not least, was one of my earliest recruits, Dr. Larry McCullough, who is a brilliant scientists, but also a guy that spent his career bringing science and technology together, he led the Ford Leadership Institute, one of the most premier leadership Institute's in the world where technology and science are often blended. And we were incredibly fortunate that he was willing to join us as our Chief Science Officer,
Jeremy Weisz 15:35
Tell us about Tal versus TJ.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 15:38
Yeah, so what that means I came to this country as a 12 year old and you know, I actually had a bit of a run on these reily Sesame Street as a child and and I sank professionally. And so I, I came to this country with a bit of a big head, and I came to this country, a smaller stature and with a name that a lot of people mispronounce is tall. And that was not fun. And you can imagine how mature junior high schoolers were about that. So I went, I had a range of nicknames for paper towel to not so tall. But in truth, I went to TJ as a baseball player, I tried out for the University of Maryland baseball team, I ended up playing semi pro baseball for a couple years instead. But the coach for the University of Maryland had a difficult time saying my name, he was a wonderful man, Tom Bradley, but he just couldn't say my name. And I took mercy on him. And I said, you could just call me TJ I the J is, was my grandfather's name, Jacob, I actually named my own son, Jacob. But that was years later. And in any event, TJ was born and he was who I was, professionally, I went by TJ for my entire career. And, and 2020 was one of these years that you know, that punched me in the face and punched a lot of us interface. I wasn't alone. But what I experienced in 2020 was a lot of turmoil I control which is a company that I started and love a company that I think does remarkably important things in the marketplace was struggling enormously, a lot of our customers were deeply affected by COVID, restaurants are a huge chunk of our customer base. And we were on the ropes and on the verge of bankruptcy even possibly. And it was a very, very trying time, I was still gratified to work with our investors, which included goldman sachs and others to resolve the situation and leave I control strong. But I also realize between eye control and what I went through in 2020, between the fact that my own 20 year old, sorry, 23 year old, was going through a very significant health crisis that required surgery, and my sister in law who I loved so dearly, and who was battling a stage four cancer, and on top of that, the demise of my own marriage, and it was a lot of stuff going on.
Jeremy Weisz 17:44
Im sorry, I can't imagine
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 17:47
I’ll tell you what I did, like probably a lot of Americans who felt the need to get out of the house, I did a lot of walking and listening to podcast. And you know, I was I was depressed, I think it was clinically depressed, I didn't really seek any help on it. But I had a difficult time getting out of bed in the mornings, and stress was eating me up alive. And on these walks with my my dog, I did a lot of thinking about you know about my life about what I've accomplished. And I realized, you know, for all the things I've done, and I'm proud of them for the people I've worked with, and they're all remarkable for the investors, I've had the opportunity to work with, that I'm so grateful for, I had not yet done something that I can look back to in you know, in my later years and say, You know what, that was something that impacted a lot of lives. And I felt the need to do something related to happiness and joy. And ultimately, again, possibly, paradoxically, I wind up in love, I give some credit to to my therapist. He's he, he's a brilliant guy. And he said something to me, that really resonated with me. He said, you know, the biggest problem you guys have had is that you didn't build a reservoir of goodwill. And so when things don't go right, you don't have that to lean back on, you don't have that bank account. And I got to thinking about that. And, and I realized he was right. But what was what was maybe even more profound for me was the realization that no one really has a bank account, you may think you have one. But the truth of the matter is, I don't think that if you took two people born in a relationship, even a long term relationship and put them in a room and ask them to give you a score for the wellness of their relationship or how well their partner feels at the moment that they would be able to do that. I don't think in this day and age, whether we like it or not my children's generation and maybe your children's generation look like you're about my age, you know, I think it's reality that they are communicating extensively through technology and that is not going to change. And so the question is, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it and I chose to do something about it. I chose to be engaged in you know, intensive research into into the space of love into the space of love and technology. It's funny because I actually met a Maria, my wife of 20 years, who we are still dear friends and I have nothing but affection and respect for we met on j date, right and at the time, it was embarrassing.
Jeremy Weisz 20:00
That's how I met my wife.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 20:01
Well, there you go. 22 years ago, we met on j day. And I remember that we would, you know, talk about what do we tell people we met on j day, right. And nowadays, it's completely, you know, if you don't meet on j date, or you told me on, on match.com, or on on Tinder, or any of those apps, you're looked at, like, you're a little bit crazy. And if I do my job, and if the team we've assembled does its job, you know, 10 or 15 years down the road, if you're not managing your relationship actively, and that doesn't mean managing it in the sense of, you know, robotically, we're not, we're not trying to turn you into a robot, we're trying to give you fun, easy, engaging tools, to be a better partner, to your partner, and to be someone that is able to accept love, at a different level than perhaps you're able to experience and now and I'll tell you something, I'll tell you a little secret. If you're happier with your love, if your relationship with their significant others better, everything's better, you're a better parent, you're a better co worker, you better boss, you better neighbor. It's one of these amazing things when you think about love, love is a resource. It's energy, right? Love is energy, and energy is a resource. And if love is a resource, then let's evaluate that resource and deploying that resource against other resources that we can deploy. And the beauty of love is, it's a simple, there's not, it's not at all finite, the more I have, the more people around me have and just because I have a lot doesn't mean that you Jeremy have to have less. And the more you and me have it, the more likely it is that our community in our environment is going to be a community in an environment that's steeped in love. And I gotta tell you, as I look at where we are, as a nation, as I look at where we are, from a global standpoint, the amount of friction and stress that we are dealing with is unprecedented. You know, the American psychology Association came out with a study in January 2021, in which they, you know, were screaming from the rooftops that there is an epidemic of stress in this country, Americans are reporting higher levels of stress than ever. Now, of course, some of that's COVID. But it's not all it is we are also experiencing a lot of political upheaval in this country. There is a tremendous awakening in this country, which I think can be harnessed in ways that are incredibly useful and productive and helpful. And they're people that push against out of fear and Love is the answer to a lot of these things. Love is an opportunity to look at where someone's coming from, with a completely different prism. And I think that if you are in a relationship where you feel loved, respected, seen, you are far more able to love respect and see other people, whether they're within your family or tribe or outside of it. And I think that's something we desperately need,
Jeremy Weisz 22:38
Describe to people how they should utilize Our.Love, I want to point people towards where can people download it and get it.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 22:47
So at this present point, our dot love is in its early stages. You know, I made the decision to start this company and launched it in March of this year, I went in and recruited initially just a couple of people I wasn't really sure where and how this was going to grow. And the first two people I recruited were my my good friend and brilliant a meditation podcaster go check out his podcast on Spotify on Apple, Brian Israel. He's a dear friend I we've known each other a long time he's married to a dear friend, we talked about my vision, I talked about my realization that when it comes to our relationship, incredibly enough, even as we use technology, to help us be better, and nearly everything that matters when it comes to relationships, we are willfully doing nothing constructed when it comes to technology. Brian bought in, he was in and the second person I went to is our president Tanya cop and Fox and you know so quite frankly, I didn't expect the Tanya would want to be as involved that was hoping that she would maybe be wanting to join the board or be an advisor. But she loved this mission so much. And Tanya is the founder and CEO of global resource and support, which is a wonderful and successful company that provides health and wellness and instruction to people with disabilities in multiple states and overseas. And Tonya was so enthusiastic that she putt in money and said I'd like to join you on this journey call. I think this is about as important as journey as I could be on and together we've you know, we've we've gone and recruited you know, a small army of very, very talented people in all phases from from marketing to technology to business. Our board is incredible. Susan Mackenzie Brady, who is the loi chair and the CEO of the Simmons Leadership Institute for inclusive leadership is our Chairwoman. We're incredibly fortunate to have her she's a brilliant thinker, someone who has been the CEO of relational Life Institute and work with a famed therapist called Terry real for many years. We've got people like Lisa tanzer, who is the president of Katy Kirk marketplace, and we'll be announcing a couple other very prominent people and Dr. Safeer and myself and Tanya also on that board, But to answer your question, and sorry for going about this at in reverse and talking about the team First, if you're coming on our app, if you're coming to our website, our dot love what I would ask that you do if you're interested in this and you want to be someone that is part of a journey and a movement to bring love into our lives, and specifically into your and your significant others life, sign up right now what we're doing is we're in the process of ramping up our efforts. We are recording podcasts, we are building our television series, we are doing meditations, we are building games that are going to be fun and impactful. And by late September, we'll be launching version 1.0. So if you're interested in being among the the pioneers that get a chance to not only experience what we're looking to do, but possibly give us some insights into what we could do to do it better, that would be wonderful. So come to our dialogue. And I'll tell you ultimately, what we expect to build is we expect to build a platform where if you're thinking about love, if you're engaged in love, if you want to be in love, if you are in love, if your love is good, if your love is not so good. If your love is in trouble, you think the place where I'm going to start is Our.Love, what I'm going to get out of Our.Love is I'm going to get resources to help me organize myself a resource to help me get closer to my partner and understand my partner better a way to track how well me and my partner are doing a basis point to compare ourselves to others in time are going to begin to share really interesting data for how people compare to others, we're always curious about our neighbors, right? We always think that the neighbor's grass is greener, well, we're gonna give you some data on your relationship, it's obviously gonna be completely and anonymized, we're going to be respecting your privacy tremendously. I'm real proud of the individuals we brought onto the team to help us there. Bernard gay, a very well respected CIO will be making sure that we are very careful with people's data. But when Our.Love is a fully realized product, it's going to be the place you want to come to just to chill out and read and learn and see and laugh and do, you're going to play games that are going to be fun, the games are going to give you the opportunity to build a virtual world with your partner if you want to, but that virtual world is going to become real. And that's about as much as I can say, without giving away too much.
Jeremy Weisz 27:13
Couples will be doing this together?
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 27:17
Yes, you know, Our.Love is rooted in a very basic, and I think undeniable reality, which is that Our.Love is expressed and communicated in ways where we is particularly in the context of a relationship, the mirroring that we get from our partner is a really significant part in our ability to both figure out exactly how to love them best in being able to express to them how we need and want to be loved best, I think, you know, the word authenticity is often talked about, it almost feels, you know, quaint to say be authentic. But in truth, the older I get, and the more I think I experienced life, the more I realize, and quite frankly, it's one of the reasons that I did go back to Tal, when I started this venture, that being yourself and being able to be seen for who you are by a person that you care about, and that you respect, and they respect you, and is willing to see you as you are, except you as you are. That's incredibly powerful. And that can only be accomplished when two people choose to do it together. So our goal and our hope is that we're going to create an environment that is welcoming to you, regardless of whether you're someone that is, you know, sort of reluctant to, you know, to get engaged with, with things like that, right? We recognize it for a lot of people therapy is a non starter, we're not a therapy out where you know, in time, I think we'll have some capabilities there through partnerships or other in other ways. But what we are is we're a safe place where you can come and you can experience and very quickly in through games, learn habits that you can immediately bring to your relationship and see progress. And we think that through progress, what will happen is space will be created, the most beautiful thing about progress is that when you experience it, you suddenly become hungry for more. And actually, it's it's what the social media companies use against us in a way, right? When you are doing something and you feel successful. And what is feeling successful in the social media context, it's getting a lot of likes, you know, the more successful you feel, the more engaged you become. We want to do the same thing except we want to do adjust with your partner. And in time, we do think that we might be able to introduce really unique ways for you to involve a small selection of people, which will be part of your community, but initially, just you and your partner.
Jeremy Weisz 29:45
Um, one last question for you, Tal, first of all, thank you, thank you for sharing. I mean, if anyone's listening this they can just feel the passion and the legacy that will be created from this and so I want to encourage everyone to go to Our.Love and it's You you literally have no excuse like you can get on your app, improve your relationships, go to Our.Love and check it out download it. You know, my last question is, you know, when you speak of or I talk about your kids, I can just you light up, right? And I love for you. And I mentioned at the top of the interview about your son, Jacob, and he wanted to work for an invention. So I love for you to talk a little bit about that, and about what your kids are, are working on.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 30:31
Yeah. So, you know, I feel so fortunate to be a dad of three unbelievable human beings. My eldest, Sophia wanted to go to the Navy before college and we sort of encouraged her to go get a college degree, and then we'll see if you still have the fire in the belly. And she did and she, she went to join the Navy and, and she's a seabees, the construction Battalion, the folks that, you know, in the Marines need a bridge built overnight. They call the seabees. Right. So, you know, Sophia is, you know, I'm so proud of her and her partner Matty into life.
Jeremy Weisz 31:04
Quickly on Sophia, why do you think why did she want to go in the Navy? Why was she still passionate about that?
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 31:09
Well, you know, I mean, I come from a family that served my Maria's father was in the Navy. And I know that was a something that brought Sophia and him close. So I think that was part of it. But, you know, my family served in the Israeli military granted, but everyone in my family but me quite frankly, served and so I think it was it was she sort of grew up believing in service. And while I didn't serve in the military, I am a strong believer in service and I looked at my daughter Laney, while she was going to college to become a nurse, she first became a licensed practical nurse. She's now becoming a registered nurse. She spent almost two years in Baltimore City, Inner City public schools as a personal nurse to disabled children in India sit in a class for children that were just learning life skills. So you know, I think it's a little bit in the blood. But all my children are incredibly empathetic. And you know, my son Jacob was part of a team at his high school Bullis High School in Potomac, Maryland that invented something called the we stroll, which is a stroller for people in wheelchairs. It was motivated by a teacher in the school whose husband suffered a brain injury and they had an infant and he was wheelchair bound. And he was heartbroken about not being able to take his child for a stroll. So he had long dreamed of doing and my son and a team of very bright kids figured out how to do it. And, you know, they want a couple of international awards. And I'm deeply, deeply proud of him. That to me, and I got to say, you know, if I'm going to talk about my kids, I got to give a word out to Maria, you know, Maria was a is an incredible mother, she was always deeply involved in in all of their activities. And they're incredibly fortunate that she was, you know, Jacob was actually a bit of a savant violinist. He was the lead violinist of a school orchestra. And he owes that he owes that to his mom because he wouldn't quit. She just didn't let him quit. And now of course, he loves it and is so grateful. So I just want to give a very well deserved shout out through to Maria
Jeremy Weisz 33:11
Tal, first of all, thank you for having me, everyone, check out Our.Love and more episodes of the podcast. Thanks so much.
Tal J. Zlotnitsky 33:19
My pleasure. Thank you so much. Jerry's been it's been fun.