In episode 357 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Miles Spencer.

Miles is a business leader and entrepreneur with over 30 years’ experience in the industry.

He has started, built, and led three unique companies and ‘exited’ from them, which means a founder, owner, or investor has sold their stake in a company, effectively cashing out their investment.

Today, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of an AI company called Reflekta.

Reflekta is an AI-powered ‘digital legacy platform’ in the company’s words, and their goal is to help families preserve voices, stories, and wisdom for generations.

So far, Reflekta have enabled over 20,000 stories with their customers, and their goal is to reach 1m of these by the end of 2026.

In this episode, we chart Miles' journey in business, the achievement of exiting from three different businesses, his business failures and what he learned from them, and how the art of storytelling has shaped his career, life and values.

We then do a deep dive into the work he does with Reflekta, why they employ grief counsellors and hospice workers as advisors at the business to shape their work, why they aren’t therapy, and why he views it as important to state that, in his words, ‘we are not reincarnating people’.

For Miles’ mental health journey, we discuss some mental health challenges he had in 2025 when several people close to him came close to death, the life and death of his father, who died 8 years ago and his own personal use of Reflekta too.

As always, #itsokaytovent

You can find out more about Reflekta here: https://reflekta.ai/

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In episode 356 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with David Maywald.

Born and raised in Australia where he resides today, David has worked in finance for over two decades as an investment professional, holding roles of Research Analyst and is a top-quartile Portfolio Manager.

He currently works as a governance specialist and holds a portfolio of board roles across the fields of health, education, families, active lifestyles, infrastructure, investment, and sustainability.

He is also a father and the author of the book ‘The Relentless War on Masculinity: Does It Ever End?’.

In this episode, we do a deep dive into the book, the themes he explores, who is waging this war on masculinity and why.

We also talk about the process of publishing the book, which he had to do self-published, why his financial situation allowed him the freedom of expression to write without fear of cancellation, and the reception of the book.

For David’s mental health journey, we discuss fatherhood and a couple of periods where he has been depressed in his life, due to his employment situation and being isolated from his social networks.

As always, #itsokaytovent

You can follow David on social media below:

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In episode 355 of The Just Checking In Podcast our Founder Freddie flew solo to remember a very special woman who sadly died last year.

We interviewed a woman called Claire Johnson on JCIP #66 all the way back in October 2021, where we discussed her incredible life, from dating the lead singer of 1970s rock band Deep Purple, to working in the Police service during the Yorkshire Moor murders, to the London 2012 Olympics and finally, becoming a mental health advocate.

Prior to that, in JCIP #45 in July 2022, we checked in with Sam Thomas, a mental health advocate who has been working in this space for even longer than me!

In Sam's pod we discussed his very severe mental health crisis as a result of an alcohol addiction in 2018, where he was admitted to hospital as an in-patient for the second time and an incredible, kind and supportive person called Claire Johnson supported Sam through that crisis.

Claire was very well known on Twitter in the mental health space for her tireless support of mental health advocates, and was always on hand to send a supportive message or reply to a tweet when anyone disclosed publicly they were struggling.

Fast forward four years and tragically, last year we were informed by Sam that Claire was very seriously ill and implied she didn’t have long left to live.

Then, on 12th June 2025, Claire very sadly died. Initially we had planned to have a conversation with Sam about Claire’s life and death on the podcast but unfortunately, he wasn’t ready to do that, which is absolutely fine.

However, we still wished to celebrate Claire’s life in this podcast, and we obtained permission from Claire’s son to tell you the listeners about it.

In a world today where the inter-generational divide in the UK is bigger than ever, young men and women are becoming more and more politically polarised and people have increasingly little empathy online, we need more Claire’s in this world who will approach everyone with kindness, empathy and love, whatever their situation is.

If there were more people like Claire in this world, I am 100% sure it would be an infinitely better place.

As always, #itsokaytovent

You can listen to Claire's JCIP below:

• JCIP #66 - Claire Johnson: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2595459/episodes/18686157

You can also listen to Sam's episode below:

• JCIP #45 - Sam Thomas: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2595459/episodes/18686194

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