Entrepreneurs Growing Businesses to $100 Million with John St. Pierre Plus Others

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. How do you get through
all the pitfalls of growth and themessy middle, and the growth paradox and
all these different things without falling offthe cliff? You can bypass all these
expensive market research consultants. Sixty minutesis fine. Sixty minutes started into five

(00:23):
hours. I'm Richard Gearhart and I'mElizabeth Gearhart. You just heard some snippets
from our show. Stay tuned tohear tips about how you can start your
business ramping up your business. Thetime is near. You've given it hard,
Now get it in gear. It'spassage to profit. With Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart,founder of Gearhart Law, a full service

(00:47):
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights. And I'm Elizabeth
Gearhart, not an attorney, butI do marketing for Gearhart Law, and
I have my own startups and podcasts. Are you one of the two and
five America wanting to start your ownbusiness or already a business owner? Stay
tuned this show is about starting andgrowing your business. Welcome to Passage to
Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship,where we learn why and how ordinary people

(01:11):
just like you started and grew theirbusinesses. And we also talk about the
intellectual property that helps protect your innovations. Today on our show, we have
John Saint Pierre. He's an author, entrepreneur, coach, and co host
of the Entrepreneur's United podcast, andwe are really looking forward to speaking with

(01:32):
him. Have you ever been strandedwaiting for help forever seemingly more than once?
If so, r m easterly withthem spelled TYI am has a solution
for you. And then after wehear from her, we are going to
hear Justin Chen talk about pick foopickfu, which is really something that I

(01:56):
could use because I just went throughthis situation. What I'm trying to sounds
like a really neat idea. Ican't write to hear about it. Yeah,
But before we get to our distinguishedguests, it's time to talk about
your exciting new business journey. Twoin five Americans want to start a new
business, So should you start anew business journey? Often our listeners ask,
how do I identify my ideal customer. Let's turn to our guests to

(02:21):
find out how they identified their idealcustomers. John, talk to us a
little bit about how you identified yourideal customer. I never actually believed that
the riches were in the niches.I actually believed everybody could be my customer.
I could actually go after everybody.Let me build this product that everybody
can use. There everybody can youcan service everybody. And it wasn't until
I realized that the more specific youcan be, and I know, Elizabeth,

(02:43):
you do a lot of marketing stuff, the more specific you can be
on exactly who you're targeting. Youcan be so focused in your marketing spend
and your focus and when the peoplesee your message, they resonate with it
and they click on it. Andso the one tip that I learned that
changed everything for me was to visualizemy idea deal customer with very very very
specific visualization techniques. What is thisperson's name, where do they live,

(03:07):
do they have a family, notfamily, what kind of car do they
drive, how old are they,what do they do in their daily lives?
Why do they need your tool?And very very specifically outline two to
three customers that are your ideal visualizedcustomer as a very specific pinpoint, and
then you can build around that toget a little more general, but be
very very specific on who you're targeting. And that really helped me. That

(03:28):
visualization component changed everything for me.That's great, that's great advice, justin
how did you identify your ideal customer. We kind of had the similar approach
to John, where at first wethought we could build a tool that was
going to be helpful for everyone.We put it up on the internet.
We thought all entrepreneurs could use it, and they can, but it's incredibly
hard to market to everyone. Sowhat we did we started with a hypothesis

(03:51):
and then we just kind of watchedcustomer behavior. We talked to our customers.
In the beginning, we thought itwas going to be other bootshop entrepreneurs
like us. As it is,they don't have a lot of money.
It definitely helps that ideal from thatstandpoint, exactly ideal is kind of a
mutual, right, So it kindof pivoted to authors for a while,
self publishing authors testing book titles andbook covers, which are also great,

(04:11):
but it's not a very recurrent activity. Then we started having game companies testing
characters and all that kind of stuff, marketing assets, and then we finally
landed on e commerce brands, andwhat we found was that there were so
many product decisions that they were makingwith such a valuable impact, so product
design and packaging, branding, marketingassets, and with such frequent cadence that

(04:32):
this became our ideal customer. Andso it actually took quite a bit of
searching and analysis and talking to customersfor us to identify our ideal customer.
I wouldn't advise people to get caughtup on saying like I have to know
this from day one before starting mybusiness, because you could have a product
vision or a hypothesis and you justkind of have to keep testing that and
flexing that in the market. That'sgreat, our m easterly, how did

(04:56):
you identify your ideal customer? Well, I was my ideal customer because I
was the one that got stranded.But I ended up working for all the
gig companies and the major roadside companythat left me stranded for five hours on
a busy highway and learned that Iwas not the only person that had ever
been stranded for hours waiting with roadsideassistance, but also learning that people needed

(05:20):
help inside and outside. It's everyone, So we actually don't have a specific
target market because two thirds of thepopulation is eighteen and up that will require
our service or that would actually needit. So the customer was anyone that
needed help. There you go.That sounds great, Elizabeth. How do
you identify your ideal customers? Ithink talking to people and seeing really who

(05:45):
does really want this and who's reallymotivated and would want to spend their money
that way. So I've been talkingto a lot of people about the podcast
studio. Some people are more seriousthan other people, and I have changed
my target market a little since Ifirst got this idea. I do want
to have a people that just wantto do a podcast, but I think
I would love to get business clientsmore. Yeah. So yeah, just
talking and seeing what people really want. Yeah, I agree. For the

(06:09):
law firm, we've been doing intellectualproperty law now for eighteen years, and
really our practice has evolved over time, So I think our ideal customer has
actually changed over that period, andpart of it depends on the team that
we have. If people have certainskills and patents or copyrights or trademarks or

(06:29):
maybe litigation, then our marketing sortof changes to kind of focus and search
for clients that need those kinds ofskills. You know, I'm not really
sure that the search for the idealcustomer ever really ends right as the business
grows or changes. I think yourideal customers can also grow and change.
So I think that when people wantto start their new business journey, pinpointing

(06:53):
the ideal customer is really an importantpart of that. And so now it's
time for our entrepreneur extraordinaire, JohnSaint Pierre. Just an amazing guy in
so many different ways, and we'reso excited to have him on the show.
He's an author, and he's alsoan entrepreneur who created two very successful

(07:14):
companies, each fifty million dollars.So it actually takes I think a lot
of skill and talent to do that. And he's not just an entrepreneur,
he's a visionary leader and he cofounded and scaled, as I mentioned,
the two companies with over fifty millionin global revenue. So welcome to the
show. John, Really great tohave you here. Tell us a little
bit about what you do and whatyou bring to the people that you work

(07:35):
with. In terms of what Ido today, I'm the chairperson of a
company called Rhombus Group. We're aprivate holding company with five smallmium sized businesses
tolding somewhere aroun one hundred and fiftymillion in revenues. I also am an
entrepreneur coach, so I work oneon one with entrepreneurs, and very specifically
to your question of my target customerwho I'm looking to work with, it's

(07:57):
very specifically. I work with entrepreneursthat have been in business, you know,
five ten plus years, that havescaled their business to between five to
twenty million, and are looking togrow their companies to one hundred million and
along that journey. How do youget through all the pitfalls of growth and
the messy middle and the growth paradoxand all these different things without falling off
the cliff? Because I did oneof those companies you mentioned. I grew

(08:18):
to fifty eight million dollars in globalrevenues after fifteen years of a bootstrap hobby
startup business. Fifteen years later,we're fifty eight million dollars in global revenues.
And I got fired from my owncompany. You got fired from your
own company. I've heard of thathappening. How did that happen. Oh
boy, Well, there's a lotof stories around that one. But ultimately

(08:39):
I lost control of the ship.And what I mean by that is I
had a vision to grow this companyto one hundred million plus, and when
we were around ten million dollars inrevenues, I went to my partners.
I said, five years, onehundred million, let's go. I know
how to do this. Let's gomake it happen. Had banking partners lined
up, had a small investor linedup, you know, let's go.
So we raised five million dollars acapital, got some bank financing, once

(09:03):
started acquiring some businesses, got toaround fifty million plus, and I'm like,
okay, we're right on target.Let's let's keep going. Let's raise
the next round. But this nextround gotta a little bit bigger. Probably
need to raise around twenty million thistime to raise the right capital to acquire
these last few pieces to get toone hundred And in that capital raise,
I made some drastic mistakes and basicallylost control of the management of the board

(09:24):
and the faith of the board inthat process, and within six months of
that capital coming in, they replacedme with somebody they thought was more app
to run the company that to thenext level and showed me the door.
And you know what happened is Iwas chasing this revenue growth. I meanwhile,
my equity was going the other way. Oh no, And I was
deluding myself through this process and reallydidn't have alignment to what I was thinking.
So for our listeners who aren't sofamiliar with the concepts of raising capital,

(09:48):
can you talk just a little bitabout what that means. Yeah.
Absolutely. I wrote a book recentlycalled one hundred Million Dollar Journey, and
it came out on November thirtieth,twenty twenty three, which was five year
anniversary from the day I was terminatedfrom our company. And the first principle
in that book, I go throughseven principles of entrepreneurial success. The first
principle is build and protect your equity. And when you form a company,

(10:11):
what typically happens is you don't havethat confidence to go alone, so you
bring on partners y, Hey,let's go in this together, a third
to third third or fifty to fifty, let's do this together. Well,
how many partnerships like that ultimately standthe test of time? In other words,
there's an equilibrium somebodys are providing more, somebody's providing less. Life changes
and partnerships become somewhat problematic. Thatyou know, as an entrepreneur, equity

(10:33):
is how you will create wealth throughthis thing called business. So everybody glamorizes
raising capital. I was glamorizing it. Oh my gosh, we just raised
twenty million. This is great,We're going here, We're going to make
this thing happen. But ultimately,equity costs something. And so when you
give up your equity, you're actuallygiving up control. You're giving up your
ability to grow your business for thefuture. And so I talk to a
lot of entrepreneurs of which principle tooin my book is build your own capital.

(10:56):
If you build your own capital throughproper network operating cash flows, you
don't need outside capital. You don'tneed to go hat in hand to investors
and bankers to loan money dilute yourequity. So control your own fate and
don't be glamorized by I got togo raise capital. Go create your own
capital by selling your goods and services. I think those are important lessons.
I think a lot of our audienceare people who are looking to start lifestyle

(11:20):
businesses. But there's also a percentagewho are really focused on creating a big,
impactful company that has shareholders and thatcan grow at an enormous rate.
A lot of startup entrepreneurs have avision of what they want to build,
and it could be a lifestyle businesslike you talked about, or a high
performance big business. But there's alsoways that This is where the magic sauce
is. There are ways to createa high performance business where you don't have

(11:43):
that many shareholders if you structure itthe right way. Right, So I'm
now the majority owner of one hundredmillion plus dollar company in control of my
own destiny. That's a much differentpicture than somebody who's trying to grow a
large business and own ten percent ofit. So there's a lot of things
to consider in that journey. Soyou know, I mentioned principle one,
build and protect your equity. Numbertwo is grow your own capital so you're

(12:05):
not dependent on anybody else. Principalthree is reinvest that capital very smartly in
that company I lost. I wasmaking profits in this business venture. I
was like, oh, let's diversify, let's go over here, and we
were taking good net operating cash flowand putting it into other areas to try
and grow too wide and not stickingwith our niche and what we did and
we were making the strong margins ofour business. We try to diversify too
quickly, so reinvest smartly as principalthree. Principal four is build a culture

(12:28):
of intrapreneurship. Build a team thattreats this business like your own. You
need that in order to grow yourbusiness. That people that can really think
like an owner within the business.Principal five is protect the house. You
went through all the work of buildingthis business, but as an entrepreneur,
there's one hundred holes in the boatyou plug ninety nine. You guys are
attorneys. Where's the water come out? Right? It comes out of that

(12:52):
You did not plug it will It'sit's vulnerabilities and how many entrepreneurs assess their
vulnerabilities have proper protections. Build agroup of protect around them, advisors and
protectors like attorneys CPAs, wealth advisorsthat can help them protect every decision they're
going to make. That's principal five. Principal six is accessing owners liquidity.
A lot of entrepreneurs think the onlyway they're going to get cash out of
this thing is if they sell it. That's not necessarily true. There are

(13:15):
ways and tax efficient ways to movemoney from your balance sheet of your company
to your personal balance sheet. Yourpersonal balance sheet helps the company, helps
the entrepreneurs within that company potentially gaina little bit more juice out of what
they're doing, and really helps thecompany propel its growth. And then principal
seven, which is the beautiful oneof them all, is how do you
move from CEO to chairperson? Youknow today I'm the chairperson of the company.

(13:35):
We have CEOs and all of ourcompanies. I don't operate within the
businesses. I'm able to focus ona very strategic level. And the amount
of times over my twenty five yearsan entrepreneur, I heard someone say,
John, you got to work onthe business, not in the business.
I'm like, yeah, it's alot easier said than done. Buddy.
My sleeves are up to here,I got dirt all over it. I'm
shoveling. You telling me to workon the business. Howm I going to
do that? Well, you can'tdo that until you do principles one through

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six. It's very very are tofind the right people in the right positions
so that you do feel like youcan step back and go to the more
strategic growth planning for a company,I mean with your heart law. Richard
has struggled with that. And howdo you find the right people? What
do you look for? I think, first off, we have a real
big problem with entrepreneurs in America asthey don't know how to interview. The

(14:20):
real big problem I'm finding is thatwe hire fast and fire slow, when
it should be maybe the other wayaround, which is you've got to be
very diligent with how you're hiring peopleand bringing people into your culture and into
your organization. So profiling exactly whatyou need and each role is very important.
But then when we bring them in, we got a secondary problem.
In America's entrepreneurs don't train appropriately.They throw them to the wolves and they

(14:41):
say, oh, we're too busy, just jump in and figure it out,
and they don't provide them enough guidanceand coaching and support. But then,
if you think about today's work environmenttoo, today's workforce, they want
to feel like they're a part ofsomething. They don't want to feel like
a number, they don't want tofeel like a paycheck. They want to
feel like they're a part of thisbusiness, So how do you create structures.
I talk to a lot of entrepreneursabout creating to equity structures where your
top level and management as they growto that level, can actually be part

(15:05):
in the growth appreciation of the valueof the company as a bonus program,
not necessarily as equity, because that'sprinciple one. You got to protect that.
But how do you bring people intothe organization and make them feel like
they're a part of it and allowthem to grow, allow them to fail,
Provide situational leadership and servant leadership techniquesto help foster their growth so they
can take on more and be challengedby more and own a p and l
of the business. You have todevelop that talent. Every business is very

(15:28):
different. I know, Richard afew people in the industry, and that's
a very tough one because of thenature of that industry, and students are
graduating that want to work in thehigh rise buildings downtown New York City and
it is a different climate. Butyou have to be really, really diligent
at bringing on the right people intoyour culture, leading them appropriately, and
making sure you guide them and trainthem to think like an owner. I
agree. I mean that has beena challenge. The other part of it

(15:52):
is a lot of people go tolaw school to practice law. They don't
necessarily go to become a business owneror a man, and I think that's
probably true in a lot of differentprofessions. And so finding the people who
are capable on the professional side butalso have an interest in the managerial side.
There aren't that many people out therewho really have that kind of passion.

(16:15):
But we do take steps. Wegive our team members lots of opportunities
to try new things, and theyget to work in different parts of the
administrative side of the business so thatthey understand the invoicing and the accounting and
the administrative systems, and so overtime, my two significant partners have gotten
more and more opportunities in those areas. I want to talk about the coaching.

(16:38):
I have a coach right now who'shelping me with this podcasting stuff,
who I adore. She is amazing, and I'm not at the level where
I could use you as a coach, John, But don't you think that
people need no matter how much theircompanies are worth, they need coaches like
forever. Let me fall on thesword on this one during the rapid rise

(17:00):
of that company that I lost.I was building the business and one of
my best friends. He's actually theco host of the Entrepreneurs United podcast.
The name is Rich Hoffman. He'san executive with Certer Pro Painters. You
guys may know that. Oh,sure, we use them many times.
Yeah. Rich has been a bestfriend of mine for twenty five plus years.
And he calls me in the midstof our rise like we're let's call
it, we're thirty five going onfifty million, like we're cooking. And

(17:21):
he calls me and he says,John, I'm looking for a new coach.
He's like, would you be interestedin a mutual coaching arrangement where I
coach you and you coach me?Because we've had this relationship forever and let's
do this. And I was like, yeah, Rich, Like I don't
think I have time, like rightnow, I'm just I got so many
things going on. He says,okay, he says, well, who's
coaching you? I said, coach. I don't need a coach, Like
I have my plan, I knowwhat I'm doing. I don't need anybody
right now, Like I have thisvision. I'm big. This is coming

(17:42):
to one hundred million. It wasn't, but eighteen months later I was fired.
I didn't surround myself with the protectors, the coaches, the mentors,
you know, bouncing ideas by them. Is this does this sound right?
Does this shareholder agreement look right?Like? Should I bring these investors in
this way? Like I wasn't consultinganybody. I was just full of vinegar
thing and I know everything that's goingon. I'm going to get everything figured
out because I have this done.And it was that rude moment of bang

(18:04):
smacking right in the face or inthe gut or whatever you want to call
it, that I was on thefloor going, oh my gosh, what
a bozo. I didn't surround myselfwith the best coaches, this protector group,
like I mentioned earlier, attorneys andCPAs and wealth advisors to consult with.
Today, I don't make one decisionwithout all my board of advisors around

(18:25):
me. If it's a big decision, I'll make small decisions. I'll eat
lunch and I'll do different things.We'll make decisions in our business. I'll
have the turkey today. Any onedoor decision, any one door decision,
which is irreversible, there's a lotof two door decisions we make as entrepreneurs.
No problem, you can reverse that. But any one door decision such
as bringing on investors, selling yourequity, doing things like that, you

(18:47):
cannot reverse. You should never,ever, ever do without the proper group
of advisors coaches around you and surroundingyou. So, yes, Elizabeth,
everybody needs coaches and advisors, andI fail that that wants miserably. I
agree, I think, all throughthe whole process, but different coaches at
different levels, probably because you reallydo need the different perspectives of different people,
because we don't all see things thesame way, and getting input from

(19:12):
a lot of different sources I thinkis important, and in some ways it
kind of runs counter to your instinctsas an entrepreneur. You're doing it because
you want to do it kind ofyour way, right. Part of the
entrepreneurial challenge is proving that your theory, whatever it is, is going to
work itself out, and so that'swhere your focus is. But you definitely

(19:32):
need people in your circle who aregoing to push back and say, no,
don't do that, that's not theright thing to do, and at
least consider their opinion before you makea decision. Yeah, the world's best
have multiple coaches. I always liketo give the Tom Brady example, best
in the world, multiple super Bowls. He has a nutrition coach, a
quarterback coach, a strength coach,a recovery coach, a mindset coach.

(19:52):
He's got all these different coaches helpinghim make sure he's the best at his
game. But yes, us entrepreneurs, Richard, like you said, we
think we got it all figured out. We don't need any out. That's
a sign of weakness. We don'tneed like we got this well. It's
a complete opposite. We need tosurround ourselves with the best. So what
do you think is the best pieceof advice you've ever gotten from a coach
or somebody else. It's this conceptof patient ambition. I had reckless ambition,

(20:15):
and that's why I failed. Inow exercise patient ambition. Still ambitious,
I still want to build, Istill want to grow, I want
to maximize life offerings. I stillgot a lot of things going on.
But I do it now with patients. I do it now with I don't
have to make a decision today.If it's a big decision going to take
my time, I'm going to probablythink about I'm gonna bring my group around
me. I don't have to goraise capital today to grow my company faster,
so I can dilute my equity andput myself in that position. I

(20:37):
want to be more in control ofmy own destiny, and I think patient
ambition was the key to that.And once I've got that key from a
coach, I was like, Yeah, that's it. I need more patience.
That's a tough one for me.Richard's pretty good at patients. I
don't know. I feel like I'mimpatient on a lot of things because you
realize you only have so much time, you only have so much bandwidth,

(20:59):
and so you want to get frompoint A to point B, and so
you're gonna rush through some things.But I do think though, that especially
on the big stuff, if you'retaking on new, big commitments, you
need to let it marinate for alittle bit and think about it because how
it looks today is going to lookdifferent tomorrow. Well, I'd say,
you guys have it patient ambition,we just have to put it together.

(21:23):
Yeah, right, this is great. We're talking with John Saint Pierre,
the author of The One hundred MillionDollar Journey, and he's also the co
host of Entrepreneurs United podcast. Butwe'll be back with more John and our
other guests, and also coming upat the end of the show are Secrets
of the Entrepreneur Mind. Will beback right after this. On Passage to

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Now back to Passage to profit onceagain, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and our
special guest John st. Pierre,and it's really interesting. He is helping
people really catapult their companies, helpingentrepreneurs. He's an entrepreneur coach. We've
just been asking him kind of howhe does it. He has a book

(24:03):
about it. I do see somethinghere in the show notes why cash is
King and Queen tell us about Queencash and King cash. Yeah, I
never heard of Queen cash before.Well, you know, we want to
be really correct here. Cash isnot King Cash is King and Queen.
But yet the saying is, youknow, if there's one hundred entrepreneurs in

(24:23):
the room and you said who measuresthe performance of their business based on their
profit and loss statement, like ninetynine hands would go up. That's how
most entrepreneurs measure their performance. Butthe reality is the profit and law statement
tells one part of the story.And Alan Milts he wrote the cash chapter
with Vern Harnish in the book ScalingUp. It's a really popular business book.

(24:45):
And I interviewed him and he said, you know what the problem is,
just looking at your profit and lossstatement is like reading the first chapter
of a murder mystery novel and thinkingyou know how it's going to end.
It's not the full story. Revenueis vanity prophet is san it's really cash
is King and Queen, And howdo you calculate net operating cash flow?
And he proceeded to tell me,you know what, Johnny's like, I've

(25:07):
interviewed three thousand CEOs and I'm inthis business. Not one of them could
correctly tell me how to calculate notoperating cash flow? Do you know how?
And I'm like no. And bythe way, I got a degree
in accounting. I was an entrepreneurfor twenty five plus years, and I
understood the P and L very well. I understood the balance sheet really want
I had graduated to now evaluating mybusiness at the balance sheet level. That

(25:29):
kind of graduated that level. Buthow much net operating cash flow is your
business generating? That will tell youhow fast your company can afford to grow.
And then there's a Harvard Business Reviewactually titled that how fast can your
company afford to grow? Well,that was an article that I had missed
right because I was trying to growmy company from basically zero to one hundred
million, trying to grow fifty percenta year plus. But the reality is,

(25:52):
when you ran the numbers on whatmy self financiable growth rate is,
which is there's a way to calculateself financiable growth rate. My company could
probably have to grow around five percent, but I was growing fifty percent.
Where does that forty five percent deltacome from? Bank debt? Investors?
Over leveraging your balance sheet and dilutingyour own equity, putting yourself in the

(26:12):
position to get fired. And that'swhy cash is king and queen. The
problem with investors is, yes,they give you money, but they take
a piece of your company. Sothat's what deluting the equity is. Right,
So you don't own one hundred percentof your company. They own a
piece of it. So the morethat you give away, the less of
it you own, the more yourbusiness grows, and the more complex it

(26:33):
becomes, the bigger the challenges inmanaging cash flow and or a long time,
I tried to keep everything in myhead and I would look at the
bank balance, and I would lookat our profit and loss statement, and
I would be doing all these mentalgymnastics. Okay, I've got payroll coming
up, and I've got this creditcard payment that's due here, and I'd

(26:56):
write it all out and then basedon that I would kind of try to
figure out out what bills I wasgoing to pay when. But the problem
with that is if you are goingto grow, you have to turn some
of the money back into the business, and you don't really know how much
of that you can afford to do. And what can end up happening is
that you take on debt, creditcard debt, or line of credit debt,

(27:18):
and you can if you're not careful, you can get yourself into trouble
with that, right, And you'retrying to finance your growth through those strategies,
but then you don't even know ifthat growth is actually paying off,
and then at some point you justcan't go any further with that. So
you really need an operation that reallyruns efficiently and is consistently profitable. But
I would be interested in knowing John, how you kind of attack this cash

(27:41):
flow problem, and especially as itpertains to maybe smaller companies that are just
getting started, and how new businessowners can help manage their cash issues.
Yeah, Richard, I think yourlistener should rewind the last forty five seconds
and listen to you again, whichyou said was exactly correct, exactly correct.
You can grow a business. Youcan grow a business tow one hundred

(28:03):
million and grow yourself poor and notown any of it and be over leveraged
and lose it all. That's thestory, right. You can grow yourself
poor, you can grow yourself outof business because as your business grows,
you need oxygen, and oxygen comesthrough really knowing what you're net operating cash
flows and how you're calculating that andare you generating enough cash to further finance
your continued growth and so what happensis a lot of small business entrepreneurs to

(28:26):
speak to that audience specifically, isthey feel like they got to go raise
capital right off the bat, asopposed to no, no, no,
no, go Sell one or twoof your widgets or one or two of
your services or whatever, generate cash, then take that cash, know how
much cash you're generating, and thenreinvest what you can properly reinvest and grow
slower on a more patient ambition levelwhere you're fully in control. We're too

(28:47):
anxious. We want to like,go, go go, we want to
chase the shiny object. Believe me, I'm that person. I want to
go too fast. Sometimes that's whythis patient ambition thought of grow the cash
you need to fuel your business andhow to do that. Now, the
best tool I can give is onmy website, which is one hundred M
journey dot com, so one hundredmillion, one hundred m journey dot com.
I have a free workbook on there, just you know, thousands and

(29:10):
thousand dollars of value on it.But the one biggest tool that's in there,
there's a financial workbook where you allyou have to do is punch in
your P and L and your balancesheet numbers and will automatically calculate your not
operating cashual and your self financiable growthrate. And that's been an eye opener.
I did a session with a company, a franchise company, with many
of their franchisees, and in onecall, I said, in this hour

(29:32):
and a half, I'm going toshow you guys, how to generate additional
one hundred thousand dollars of not operatingcashule this year by changing two or three
things. And it was all inworking capital. It was all in the
days that their ars and their apsare their inventory days. It was all
in those things that sometimes you're justgrowing, you don't have time to think
about. All you have to dois make two or three tweaks and all
of a sudden, you can generatemore cash flow to infuse in your growth.

(29:52):
So what I'm hearing you say isstep back or step up to a
higher level, and don't look atmoney as just like a dollar came in
the door today, but you haveto look at it from a really high
level and how it's flowing through yourorganization. I think one thing that your
heart law that we've come to termswith is getting a lot of clients is
great, but you don't necessarily wantevery client because if they're not going to
pay their bills, you know,then it's actually costing you money to have

(30:17):
that client instead of bringing money inone hundred percent. And in that workbook
I mentioned one of the things that'sin there is called a customer cash flow
ladder. You can actually look atall of your customers in this particular format
to determine how much marginal cash marginyou're making on each of those customers.
And you're right, a lot ofentrepreneurs who think their best customers are their
best customers are not. Some oftheir best customers are not their best customers

(30:37):
because of how they pay. Youcan make a good gross margin on them,
but if they're not paying you ontime, you're not generating the net
operating cash flow you need. You'rebetter off with a lower margin customer who
pays you in advance. Interesting point. We've worked with clients who say,
well, we pay in one hundredand twenty days. So you end up
tying up a lot of people whoare working, you know, attorney labor,
administrative labor, and then you can'tpay them from that invoice for one

(31:02):
hundred and twenty days. So youhave to come up with a way to
finance that, and so it's abig challenge. So John Saint Pierre the
author of The one hundred Million DollarJourney and he's also the co host of
Entrepreneurs United podcast. Can you tellus how people can find you? Yeah?
Absolutely, on any social media handleat John Saint Pierre one hundred.

(31:22):
Also at the aforementioned website one hundredm journey dot com. You can find
me there all the information the freeworkbook, as well as links to Amazon
to buy the book. If you'reinterested, well, that's great. Please
everybody reach out to John if youhave any questions, check out his book.
And now it's time for IP inthe News. Elizabeth Apple has come
up with a new pair of glasses. I don't know if you guys remember

(31:45):
Google glass. I remember Google glasses. I never had any I met one
guy that worked at Google that waswearing a pair of them when he came
to a meetup event. Oh reallyyeah, But otherwise I never saw anybody.
But now Apple's taking a crack atthis, right, it was only
a matter of time. They havean issued patent on it. And it's
really kind of interesting what these glassesare supposed to do. The thing that

(32:06):
I thought was the most interesting.I mean, they're supposed to do a
bunch of different things, but isthey can tell where you're looking, so
you can tell where you're glancing,track your eyes. I don't know.
I mean, that's just like toomuch information. I guess if you walk
into a store and they would wantto see what products on what shelves you're
looking at, right, it's benefitingthem not. But the one thing that

(32:27):
would be of a benefit to somebodylike me is that they do have GPS
built in. That's right. Well, we're wandering around New York City and
we can't find the restaurant, andthey say they can go opaque, so
you can use them for meditation orfor sleeping, and it was just a
recently released patent. Let me seeif there were some other really cool things.
Well, you can use them formeditation, like they'll turn themselves off,

(32:52):
and the glasses can detect whether you'resleeping or awake. So you wouldn't
want to take these to any reallyboring meetings because wise the powers that be
would be able to detect whether you'repaying attention. But the other thing is
the opaque structures may be used inheadmount of devices such as virtual reality goggles
that have forward facing cameras, Sovirtual reality goggles with cameras that capture images

(33:14):
of the real world, so youfeel like you're walking around virtually, but
it's in the real world. Anyway, I think we should ask our guests
what they think about this exciting newtechnical development. John, you're on the
hot seat again, tell us whatdo you think about this? Love it?
I think, Elizabeth we were justtalking about is called augmented reality,
which is you have your reality andthen they augment it so when you're walking

(33:37):
you can see different things. AndI saw something recently. It was this
weekend, actually, there was asailing competition on TV. But what they
did is they overlaid on the wateralmost like a football field kind of thing,
with like the the they can't goout this outskirt and where they needed
to go. But it was alldigitally put on the TV like it augmented
the reality of just the water andthe sailboat. And so that's what I

(33:59):
think is coming is all mented realitythrough these glasses. Where you actually are
walking down the street, you dosee the sidewalk, you do see the
people walking by you. But asyou look up at the store and look
at the shoes in the shoe store, you'll be like, oh, yeah,
there's how much of these shoes cost, and here's what this is,
and a whole bunch of different things. Well that makes sense, and Richard,
what you just mentioned already exists ourbusiness. One of the businesses we

(34:20):
have is pretty big in the digitalsignage business. And what people don't understand
is when you go into these retailenvironments and you look up at a digital
sign, they actually count how manypeople look at it, Are you a
male or female, what your agedemographics are, how long you looked at
the sign. That's all already inthe digital signages. They already have this.
Who's looking at me? I feelso scoped out? I mean,
this is the world that we're livingin. RM Easterly. What are your

(34:42):
thoughts? I love the idea justinYeah. I love the augmented reality aspect
of where these glasses are going.I was just on vacation in Japan and
I was using the Google Translate appquite a bit using their camera functionality where
you can just have it overlay thetranslations. And to be able to do
that that in glasses automatically based offwhere my eyes are looking would be incredibly

(35:04):
useful for any traveler, especially whereyou're not able to read the local language.
So I could see the ability totrack where you're looking to be an
important ip for the Apple glasses.If you put it in that kind of
context, it has a real practicalbenefit. Don't forget that. If you
want to learn more about patents likethe one we just talked about, you
can go to learn more about patentsdot com, or you can go to

(35:29):
learn more about trademarks dot com.And in either place you can download a
white paper, or you can setup a consultation with a gear Heart Law
attorney. Time for another commercial break. Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship
with our special guest John Saint Pierreand your hosts Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart,
we will be right back. Doyou own an annuity, either fixed,

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(37:45):
eight two four forty five ninety six. Passage to Profit continues with Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart, and we are justhaving a really great discussion our future guests
today at John Saint Pierre and hehas a lot of really interesting insights about
entrepreneurism. And we just finished upwith IP in the News, and now

(38:06):
the spotlight turns to Elizabeth Gearhart.Please share with us, Elizabeth your current
projects. Well, I was sharingsome of what I'm doing with John Saint
Pierre before we came online, andhe had some really good ideas that I'm
not going to share with anybody.I'll talk to John about it some more,
but I don't want anybody else anyway. But I had been doing Blue

(38:28):
Streak of video directory of businesses Bto B businesses. It's kind of on
the backshelf until I'm ready to comeback to it again. Last fall I
said to Richard, what are wegoing to do with our building? Because
we have a building in some NewJersey that we had a lot of people
in at one point. It hastwo floors. Even before COVID, we
had remote people. So once COVIDhit, everybody went remote, and so

(38:49):
we've been using the top floor ofthe building that's where we are today to
record passage to profit. We didthat all through COVID. So Richard bought
a whole bunch of great equipment,set it all up, and it's a
decent studio for the two of us. But I said to him, why
don't we rent the studio, fixit all up, and rent it out
to people. So I started talkingto people about renting the studio, and
I have to be honest, Ireally think it was such a great idea.

(39:10):
But then we saw some revenue projectionsfrom other podcasts video cast studio and
they were really attractive, So thatsold me instantly, right and I started
talking to people and there was alot of interest in people doing podcasts,
and not everybody wants to set upthere on equipment. What I'm finding though
talking to people is that they reallywant the coaching along with it, So

(39:34):
I'm going to be doing the coachingalong with it. But the thing is,
we had the real estate, wehad the technical know how, and
we had the know how on howto do a good podcast. So it
kind of all came together for meand I'm very excited about this. Trying
to find a contractor to do thework has been a bit of a challenge,
so Richard's going to put me towork, and like it's unskilled labor,

(39:55):
it shouldn't cost that much so we'lljust do it ourselves because this is
crazy. It's just like a matterof principle, you know. So anyway,
so we're working on putting this together. I've talked to the mayor of
our town. We're in a smalltown summit. The mayor is going to
come to the grand opening. I'vebeen networking a lot. It's kind of
everything we've done since patents are federaland a lot of trademarks are federal.

(40:16):
Everything we've done for gear Heart Lawhas always been pretty much worldwide because we
have clients all over the world.So it's really fun for me to be
doing something hyper local. I'm reallykind of enjoying it. I'm going to
all the local networking events. Thepodcasting field is growing rapidly. Richard and
I went to an event down inFlorida, and I did want to just
mention an audit y yeah podcast.Richard and I are going to each be

(40:37):
on a panel at the Empowered PodcastingConference in Charlotte, North Carolina, at
the end of June. So it'sEmpowered Podcasting and I think that that's going
to be a fun time. Alot of podcasters get together. You're around
people who like to talk, that'sfor sure. So that's kind of what
I've been doing. So enough aboutme. Now it's time to get to

(40:59):
our guests. We're gonna start withRM. Easterly, who has a company
called them spelled Thyim. That's veryclever, by the way, and I
can hardly wait to hear her storyabout this company and how she started it.
So welcome, RM. Thank you. So them they help you in
minutes is every day people helping.Every day people in fifteen minutes are less.

(41:19):
Using our applications to them helper andthe thempin app We got the idea
for the name because we were tryingto figure out something that was very clever
that would be a conversation piece,and we went through a lot of names,
a lot of names before we settledon thy Im. I had some
really out out there and then asyou're looking to obviously trademark, you want

(41:43):
to make sure that it's not somethingthat's already there, nothing someone else has.
So thy Im that's what we do. They help you in minutes,
and that's how the name came.As far as the company, I got
stranded on Highway ninety six in twentyseventeen and I had a membership with the
biggest roadside company in the US.They tell me one hour. I had

(42:04):
ran out of gas the night beforemy brother used my vehicle, he did
not fill it up. I ranout, why are you? And I
wasn't paying attention to the meter.So as I'm sitting there, they said
sixty minutes. Sixty minutes is fine. Sixty minutes turned into five hours,
and I said, oh my god, I just wish anybody, somebody would
bring me gas. I don't carewho it is. I just need one
gallon to get me. And Isaid, well, I wonder how many

(42:28):
other people have experienced this, andwhy am I paying for a membership and
blah blah blah blah blah. SoI went down there rabbit hole for the
next five years, like twenty nineteen, I started taking this series because I
got stranded again. It wasn't aslong of a wait, but this is
unacceptable. So I went and workedfor all the gig marketplace companies to understand
the gig market and it was horrible. I hated it, but I needed

(42:49):
the market research. And then Iwent and worked for the actual company that
left me stranded, and every singledepartment that I could work in to hear
what people actually needed. And thenI met my partners and we took it
from just roadside to indoor outdoor,not just people that are elderly or disabled.
When we did the test market andthe surveys and the giveaways and the

(43:13):
focus groups, eighteen to fifty fiveplus scored the same, it was just
insane. So I said, Okay, we're going to do this May of
twenty twenty three. From idea tolaunch. We launched in February of twenty
four. We built the apps out, the prototype, we tested the market
pretty bootstrapped more so, but everyonethat's involved in my company does hold equity.
So as I'm listening to John SaintPierre, I have been very,

(43:37):
very stingy with my equity with it. But it's going to help millions of
people. So where are you located? Where are you doing this? The
first city we launched in was Lansing, Michigan, the capital of Michigan,
and then we expanded in seven morecities in Michigan, two in Texas,

(43:58):
and two in Georgia. So nowwe're in Plano, Texas, and Richmond,
Texas, Marietta, Georgia, andSmyrna, Georgia, Jackson, Michigan,
Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Ourbura,Michigan, Bay City, Michigan,
Midland, Michigan, and Saginaw,Michigan, as well as Lansing. So
in two months we opened up elevenmore market. Wow, So how does
the app work? If somebody hasthe app, how do they get help?

(44:22):
Okay, So if you were brokedown right now and your battery wouldn't
start, you would go to theYou can download it on the Apple Store
or directly from the website. Ifyou have Android. Put in your information
your name, phone number, emailaddress, create your password. If you
want to create an account, orif you just want to be a one
time user, you will go toIndoor Outdoor Roadside. In the app selected

(44:43):
say what type of car you have? Pay for it. It goes to
the helper app. So a helperwithin fifteen minutes of you only helpers within
fifteen minutes off. You can seeit, so we know that it would
only take fifteen minutes for them toget there. They would see it say
yes, I can do that service, and they will be to you in
fifteen minut So listen. You canmonitor them through the app and communicate with
them as well. It's the Amazonof everyday services. That sounds great.

(45:06):
So you have a pool of peoplestanding by ready to help on a moment's
notice. Where did they come from. They're everyday people just like you and
me. It could be the personthat's standing behind you in line at the
grocery store. When you go outsideyou try to start your car and it
doesn't start. That person actually seesthe request and they come out and they
jumpstart your vehicle. Our helpers don'tuse their vehicles to jump start cars.

(45:30):
We have helper kits and there arethese mechanical devices that jump start the vehicle
for you if you need a jumpstart. So they're everyday people eighteen years and
older that have passed a background checkthat we have vetted that are safe.
Good people to come and help youinside outside are on the roadside. Well
that's a really good idea. Ilove the fact that you worked for these

(45:51):
companies and you saw what worked andwhat didn't work. So you said it
was a horrible experience being a gigworker. So what are you doing to
make it not so horrible for yourgig company. The difference between our gig
market and the others door Dash,Instacart, grub Hub. They tell you
what service to take, so ifyou do not accept, especially with DoorDash,

(46:13):
you don't get better services. Theother thing is when you go select
the service and you get to therestaurant, you don't even know where you're
going afterwards. So I go pickup your food for McDonald's, I have
no idea where I'm going until afterI pick your food up. We don't
tell you which ones to select.You select which ones you can do.

(46:34):
You will know exactly how much you'rebeing paid, exactly where you're going.
You will know who the person is, and they are rated as well.
Our pins, which are the peoplein need of service, rate the helpers,
and the helpers rate the pens.You know, and you decide what
service you can and cannot do.And there's no acceptance rating drop off,
so you don't have to worry aboutif you don't accept every single request that

(46:54):
is on your list, you willnot be rated lower. Also, we
have higher pain wages in the marketthan all of the other gig marketplace companies.
What is the financial model for yourbusiness? Who pays what? The
services range from ten dollars all theway to one hundred dollars depending on which
service you select, the pens pay, the helpers receive a percentage of that

(47:17):
and the company receives the other percentage. We also have helper kits to assist
our helpers assisting the pens, sowe create the kits that better assist them
in or out during roadside kits,and the helpers buy them directly from us
as well. John, did youhave a question or any advice. Yeah,
well, the first thing that cameto mind is a business development deal

(47:38):
with Ways. You know, Idon't know if you guys have ever used
Ways before, but you see theselittle cars passing by you and you can
almost click on it to see likeyou almost see who's in the car.
I tried to, like a coupleof times, I think I can't.
Can you communicate with that person that'sright next to you? That just how's
it work? But you have allthese Ways drivers that are driving that use
this app. You can just imagineyou can click the and to say,

(48:00):
hey, I need a Samaritan tohelp me, and this app picks up
and bring somebody close by. Itjust seems like there's a lot of business
partnership deals that could be applied indifferent areas, Like think about I think
about Ways app, but I thinkabout a whole bunch of different areas that
could be really explosive To partner upwith some companies that could use these services.
I think it would just be apartnership deal. You know, Ways,
You're going to get X amount foranybody who uses this feature. It's

(48:22):
almost like an app store where youknow, all these new softwares now have
connections to other apps, and sobasically RMS company can be an app within
ways that you know, when consumersuse it and they pay the twenty dollars
or one hundred dollars, Ways getsa piece of it and they don't have
to do anything. Well, that'sinteresting. Have you thought of something like
that? RM We have thought aboutit in the long term, especially being

(48:42):
able to assist other roadside companies.We patent it because we're the first to
market, so we have first tomarket advantage. Nothing like it exists with
simple services. So we thought aboutbeing able to better assist these roadside companies
because I work for the biggest andpartnering with them would be beneficial to their

(49:02):
company as well as helping their members. We want to help them because we
know that they need the help.I worked there for many years. The
problem is that they don't listen tothe consumer, the average everyday person,
not a fortune five hundred executive,not someone that makes six figures, the
average everyday person, and the smallerpeople are always forgotten about, the veterans,

(49:23):
the elderly, the disabled, theurban community. You have to listen
to the people to be able tomess with them, to know what they
want. And a lot of thesebigger companies who are roadside, especially and
even Thumbtack and Angie's List, they'renot listening and that's the main thing.
So being able to partner with themto better help them help their members who

(49:43):
are paying. We have thought aboutthat great. So, Aram, you
mentioned that you patented your app.What played into your decision to do that.
I knew I had a mega companyon my hands, and I wanted
to make sure I protected it sothat someone like Uber or door Dash or

(50:04):
instacart could not come and try toadd that later. So I covered every
single base possible with the application andthe surface method as well. We're going
to add as we go, Sowe have a lot of secrets in our
vote that we will be able toadd to that. No one else will
be able to mimic. Yeah,I mean I can see this going far
and wide and really helping a lotof people, just those little things that

(50:28):
you need to get done that's hardto do by yourself. Yeah, okay,
well, thank you arm Easterly sothey help you in minutes. Thy
I am. That's the website andunfortunately she doesn't have it in New Jersey,
but I know that she will soonbecause she is really rocking and rolling
with this, so I look forwardto it coming here. Can you repeat
the states where it is again?Please? Right now? It is in

(50:51):
Plano, Enrichmond, Texas, Marietta, and Smyrna, Georgia, and it's
in several cities in Michigan. Wewill be open in Newmark, mat soon.
It's happening fast and when we wouldbe international and very soon as well.
Just download the app and we havea download and hold giveaway, So
if you're one of the first fivepeople to download the app and use and

(51:15):
book a service as a pen,you will absolutely win one of the first
five people. So download and holdit. Okay. Cool. Passage to
Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship with Richardand Elizabeth Gearheart. Now we're on to
our next presenter, Justin Chen withPickfu Pick fu and that's his website.
I am really interested to hear aboutthis because I could see many places in

(51:36):
my life where I could use suchin my business life. So welcome Justin.
Tell us what you're doing, tellus what pickfoo is. Pickfo's a
self service consumer research platform, andwe're trying to enable anyone together real feedback
from their target audience in a matterof minutes. So what we're trying to
do is we're trying to democratize consumerresearch so that every entrepreneur, every small
business owner, they can make datadriven decisions, just like the large corporate

(51:59):
brands like and Procter and Gamble thekinds of stuff that they do with market
research. So, say you're launchinga new business and you want to get
feedback on your business name, oryour logo or even your product idea.
Instead of asking your friends and family, you know, because they are biased,
you can head to pickfood dot com. You create a simple poll,
you ask a question like which logodo you prefer for a dog grooming service?

(52:21):
And then you could target a generalUS audience or maybe fifty US dog
owners, and within a matter ofminutes, we're going to go out.
We're going to find those folks.We're going to get them to vote on
different options. We're going to getthem to write explanations of why they made
that selection, and then also giveyou demographic information. And we take care
of all that heavy lifting of findingthe respondents, making sure the data quality
is high, and then compiling allthe results into an easy to understand way

(52:44):
so that you can bypass all theseexpensive market research consultants and techniques that larger
companies use. That's excellent. AsI said, I started a meet up
with Stacy Sherman. I think Isaid that to promote the studio podcast studio
more in the consulting business. We'vebeen going back and forth on the logo.
We gave it a name, butwe don't want to say the name
yet. She came up with asuper cool name. I love the name

(53:06):
she came up with for this effortwe're doing. But I'm like, no,
I like this one. She's like, I'm like this one, Like,
we have to ask some people.That's why we've built it. Yeah,
it's to get out of your ownecho chamber because a lot of times
teams start debating and you know they'renot necessarily the target audience, and your
friends and family a lot of timesaren't either, and so really being able
to reach out to your potential audience, whether that's by demographic or certain attributes

(53:31):
like maybe moms who own homes orsomething like that, you can target all
those different attributes on pickfoo and gettheir feedback directly. So I guess the
logical question is where do you findthe people who are going to answer these
questions and are they part of thepickfu family or how does it work?
Yeah, So there's a whole worldof consumer panels out there. So whenever

(53:52):
you see research cited either by largecorporations or you know, news articles,
they're all typically tapping into the sameconsumer research panels. So we tap into
those same ones that a craft andPartner and gamble would use, but we
do so in an automated way,and we put our own layer of data
quality and audience targeting on top ofthat. So the reason why a lot
of this research is so expensive isthat typically you do need a market research

(54:14):
consultant to figure out which panels touse, how to create the surveys,
how to create the questions and thenmore importantly clean the data and then compile
the results, and all of thatis extremely manual and it requires a lot
of expertise, and so we're tryingto make it so that anyone who doesn't
have any of that expertise can doso in a very easy to use way.
So we have every day people testingout logos or testing out decisions that

(54:37):
they're making in everyday life. Wow, So John, do you have a
question or comment? Yeah, Iguess I was what can maybe for a
little case study? So if youlook at RM's product time, how could
that product use pickfood to further researchwhat market they should go into next?
Which markets need the service? Wouldthey use the service? Like, can

(54:57):
you give us an example of howthat would work exactly using exact business model?
Yeah? Sure. So a popularuse case is idea of validation And
so even as early as just anugget in your head, you could describe
your solution on pickfoo and get peopleto give you open end to feedback.
So perhaps you have the hypothesis thatit's let's just say homeowners and they have
long care needs, and so youcould target homeowners. On the platform,

(55:19):
you could ask a question like,I'm starting this new business that will give
you access to people on demand infifteen minutes, you know, for fifteen
dollars or whatever it is, andthen you could further describe it. Would
you be open to this and tellme why or why not? And you'll
just have people give you open endedfeedback. Think of it as going into
a coffee shop and just asking thisexact same question, but with a little
bit better targeting and filtering on thedata quality. So any question that you

(55:43):
would ask in person to your targetaudience is something that you could ask on
Pickfoo, and we'll have people testout things like napkin sketches of product designs
that they're working on, or storyboardsof videos that they're planning to shoot.
It really is anything that you're workingon that you can get feedback on.
Part of me wonders can you asktwo similar questions but get different results.

(56:04):
Yeah, we try to guide thatas much as possible, so you're definitely
right. You could ask a questionin a bias manner and you may get
skewed results. So we do havea lot of templates on the website with
questions that are phrase in the bestpractice manner, and so those are a
great starting point. And we alsohave a great customer success who's happy to
hop on a call with you todiscuss your poll, if you want some
feedback on if you've asked the questioncorrectly and all of that. So,

(56:29):
while it is self service, wedo recognize that humans need help with software
sometimes, and so we do havea team to help with that. So
how are you marketing this? Yeah, so exactly how to do this?
Exactly? Like I said before,we've kind of had a kind of a
meandering journey because we thought it wasgoing to be just other entrepreneurs and obviously
anyone can use it, but it'svery difficult to market to all entrepreneurs.

(56:50):
So for a while we were marketingto authors, and that's still a great
segment for us. We're very popularin the self publishing space for book titles
and book covers, but now wefocus a lot of our marketing efforts on
people building physical products to sell toconsumers. So people who sell on Amazon
or maybe they have a Shopify storeor an Etsy store, and they want
to get feedback on product designs ortheir packaging or their branding. Or any

(57:14):
of their marketing materials that they're usingto sell these products. This has become
our best customer segment just because ofall the decisions that they're having to make.
You can imagine before you put tenthousand dollars into some inventory, you
would want to get some feedback onwhat color variation do people want? You
know, is this the pattern thatthey would be interested in buying? And
these are all incredibly impactful decisions thatyou want to de risk because you don't

(57:37):
want to be stuck sitting there withten thousand dollars worth of product that's just
not moving because you didn't get feedbackon it. John, do you have
another You look like you're thinking aboutsomething there. I just keep thinking about
ab testing. You know. Ihave this book that just came out,
but I had to choose on myown actually between four covers, like which
cover was the best and to beable to ab test a marketing campaign and

(57:59):
ad campaign. I'm even thinking rightnow justin like I have some Google ads
that I'm running for my coaching services, Like I could put together three or
four coaching ads and which one wouldresonate with entrepreneurs. The most of this
category, like so I think aB testing and what Richard, what you
were talking about related to the question, and it makes me think about like
chat GPT. You can askt thesame question, but if you ask it

(58:19):
four different ways, it's going togive you like seven different answers. Right.
So I was working with AI thismorning and that's why it made me
AI stuff is driving me crazy.I asked it a question like went into
complete left field. So how youasked a question there matters a lot.
Yeah, it just resonating with Justinwhen you were talking about the business stories
like okay, polling, Okay,I understand, Like I was thinking surveys

(58:43):
in my head. But then whenyou hit the AB testing, like which
ad will get the biggest impact orthe biggest lift, or before I buy
inventory, what should the packaging bethis or the like, there's some pretty
big decisions there that people just gowithin their own internal teams and make a
gut judgment they could test. I'massuming that's a big part of your business.
I mean, if you could thinkabout it as hypothetical AB testing,
because typically AB testing you're putting somethinglive, but these could be all decisions

(59:06):
that you haven't made yet. Youhaven't launched it yet. The product isn't
live that you're not able to abtest it. You don't have a website
to ab test it on, ormaybe you're selling it on a marketplace where
you don't have control of that platform, so you can't ab test something.
So there's a lot of decisions thatwe're all making flying blind, which is
kind of scary in retrospect. Buton the book cover side, one other
story we had was we had anauthor who came to us and he was

(59:29):
working with a publisher and they haddifferent visions for the book cover. As
you can imagine, it was abouttraveling all around the world. He had
visited every country. This author wantedto put photos like a photoclaus of like
everywhere he had been. The publisherwanted to go a completely different way,
and they wanted to do something alittle more tasteful, kind of like the
country stamps on the passports. Andso he decided to these pick food to
try to prove them wrong. Sohe tested it. He lost. He

(59:52):
trying to mess with his cover tolike blend the tube, and eventually he
lost every single time, and thenhe relented to the publisher. It finally
convinced them that, okay, likeI'm going to go with my publisher because
like they actually did have a betterdesign. He went on to become a
New York Times bestseller. But alot of times it's the option you don't
think is going to win. Alot of times it's hard because, like
these are all very personal decisions asentrepreneurs, Like we all know exactly what

(01:00:15):
book cover we want, which companyname or logo, like we have it
in our head. And to getthis kind of feedback from the general audience
can be eye opening, and sometimesthat brutal feedback is what you need.
Though it's good for resolving internal conflicts. But I think it's it's so important
because with the whole marketing thing thatI've been doing and talking about the podcast
and everything, I'm telling people,your podcast cover art is really important because

(01:00:38):
if you go to these directories,you see like a bazillion podcast and all
you see is their cover art,and so that's like your first impression,
like when you walk in and meetyour boyfriend's parents for the first time or
whatever. And I think it canbe really valuable for that too, because
we're trying to turn some of ourcontent at your heartline to a podcast.
We have this monthly content and wehad somebody do the cover art, and

(01:01:00):
then we had our assistant. Youknow, she doesn't care if we get
mad at her, Like she'll saywhat she thinks with ever's on her mind.
She's like, I just think that'sterrible. You know you need to
send it to somebody else. Well, can you also use this for personal
questions? You ever get like personalquestions like should I date this guy?
Yeah, we've had people testing datingprofile pictures and bios. My co founder

(01:01:24):
used it to get feedback on babynames in a funny way. He did
it in the reverse where he wasdeciding between two boys names and he wanted
people to give them their best shotat making fun of them because he wanted
to know how bad could it bewith these two names and then choose the
one that would be you know,made fun of the least. That was
a fun way of using the tool. So how is the company doing?

(01:01:44):
Is it fairly new? It seemslike such a great idea. We built
this fifteen years ago as a sideproject. My co founder and I were
building a completely different business and weneeded to get feedback on a website redesigned.
We were tired of asking our friendsand family we should have gone into
a coffee shop, but we're bothintroverted engineers, so we decided to build
a solution to get a digital focusgroup. And that's kind of where it

(01:02:06):
came to Fruition, And so weleft it as a side project for many
years, and we kept iterating onbased on customer feedback, but eventually it
started really resonating with this e commercesegment and mobile gaming as well, and
so that gave us kind of thekick in the butt to go and go
full time on this particular project.And so that's when we decided to start
growing out the team and kind ofreinvesting a lot of our cash flow into

(01:02:30):
organizational growth and marketing. So howmuch does it cost? Like Ballpark,
it starts at a dollar per response, so fifteen responses fifteen dollars, so
it's incredibly affordable. If you wantto do a little bit more targeting or
add more complexity to the poll,it does get more expensive, but we
try to make it as easy andcheap as possible and you get to control
it. How much you spend.Can you tell us your website one more

(01:02:51):
time? Sure? It's pickfood dotcom, so pickf you dot com.
It's free to sign up. Whenyou do sign up, you'll be guided
through a free onboarding poll. Soshe tried it out for free without putting
in any information. Passage to ProfitThe Road to Entrepreneurship with Richard, Elizabeth
Gearhart and our special guest today,John Saint Pierre, and we will be
right back. For over seventy fiveyears, the Marine Toys for Tots program

(01:03:13):
has provided toys and emotional support toeconomically disadvantaged children, primarily during the holidays.
But needs are not just seasonal,and now neither is Toys for Tots.
They've expanded their outreach to support familiesin need all year long with their
new programs, including the Foster CareInitiative, giving toys and tangible items for

(01:03:35):
children to move with inspiring hope fora brighter future. The Native American Program
has grown to benefit over two hundredthousand children annually, providing toys and books
to participating reservations. And the YouthAmbassador Program, a select group of our
nation's youth children helping children going aboveand beyond to raise peer awareness and encourage

(01:03:59):
local community supple on behalf of Toysfor Tots. To learn more about how
you can help, visit toysfotts dotorg and help bring hope to a child's
future, it's Passage to Profit.Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage
to Profit and she's also a fantasticjazz vocalist. You can scroll to the

(01:04:19):
bottom of the Passage profitshow dot comwebsite and check out her album. And
I just want to point out thatPassage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio
show and we're heard on thirty onestations, some in Texas and some in
Michigan. And we also have apodcast that's rated in the top three percent

(01:04:42):
of podcasts. So how about thataccording to listen Notes. That's pretty cool.
And now it's time for Secrets ofthe Entrepreneurial Mind with Elizabeth Gerhart.
Yes, so I will start withyou, John sank Pierre. Do you
have a secret that you could sharethat's helped you be a successful entrepreneur.
It's a secret that shouldn't be asecret, and it's one that I learned

(01:05:05):
after the big failure that I experiencedthat I think is critical. A lot
of entrepreneurs have business plans I'm sureRM and just have business plans. I
always had business plans. We'd setour team down every year and we'd have
our business plan. We know wherewe're going to go with our business.
But yet, if I actually challengeone hundred entrepreneurs and say, do you

(01:05:26):
have a life plan? Do youhave a thirty year life plan? Do
you have it written down on apiece of paper, your strategic business plan
for you the person, the individual? Nine times out of ten they think
they know. Like I thought,I knew what I wanted to achieve,
and what ends up happening is whatI found was that I was running my
business this way and I was runningmy life this way. And that's where

(01:05:46):
entrepreneurs we get ourselves into trouble.And we can't have work life abundance because
we have a lot of work andnot a lot of life or a lot
of life and our work doesn't getthere. How do you achieve both of
those is really having really good clarityon your life plan, a thirty year
life plan for yourself that you canthen when you build your business plan,
make sure they're aligned and make sureyou're building your business to achieve your life

(01:06:09):
plan and not just building your businessto achieve a business plan. And that's
the big secret that I learned thatreally changed the whole game for me.
Wow, that's really a great secret. So RM easterly thy im they help
you in minutes. That's the website. What is your entrepreneurial mind secret that
has helped you achieve your success?When you're listening to people, you take

(01:06:32):
bits and pieces from it and youapply it as necessary. But everything as
someone says does not mean that itapplies to you and your company, your
target audience, your consumer. Everythingisn't the same. That's my secret.
Stay true to you and apply whennecessary like lotion I love. That is
so true. So justin Chen pickFu, pick Fu, and that's his

(01:06:56):
website. What is your secret thatyou're willing to share? I think it's
what's helped with our success has justbeen obsessive with customer feedback and being customer
driven. Like I said, ourjourney's been taking us in a lot of
different directions. And if we hadstuck doggedly I guess with our initial hypothesis
without listening or seeing how people wereusing the product, I don't think we

(01:07:18):
would be in the same place today. And so I think you can always
have your company vision and your productvision, but you do need to adapt
to how the market wants to useyour platform or your product, and you
really need to talk to your customersto understand where their pain points are,
because, like Richard was saying before, like ideal has to be for your
business, and you need to beideal for them. And it's kind of

(01:07:40):
a two way street. Just becauseyou're providing some value, maybe they're not
providing enough value to you as abusiness. And you don't have to service
every customer out there, Like chooseyour customers wisely and the ones that are
going to help your business grow.Richard Gearhart, what is your secret?
There are so many things I wouldsay, but I would say, most
recently a big seat is to stayflexible and roll with the punches because the

(01:08:03):
business landscape changes just every day.I mean even a few years ago,
who'd thought AI would be where itis, and now it's going to be
a factor and we have to adaptto it. So I think being flexible
and rolling with the punches. Ithink keeping a positive mental attitude through all
the ups and the downs is reallyimportant. I want to go deep in

(01:08:27):
the weeds with mine, So bearwith me. We're going deep in the
weeds here. So this is aboutyour business name. I made this big
mistake with this one business I wasgoing to start. I searched Google for
the domain, and I didn't buyit right away, and I went back
the next day and a troll hadbought it and want to sell it to
me for five thousand bucks. Andso I probably have bought ten domains trying

(01:08:48):
to figure out the right name,right. But if it comes to me
and it's a name I might useand I'm looking and nobody has it,
then I just buy it. Andthat's my secret. So eventually you probably
will use one thousands of domains forsale and contact Elizabeth Garheart Baily costs twelve
bucks a year and so it's nota lot of money. But if you

(01:09:08):
really do want that name and youthink that you're going to think about it,
well it could be too late.So that is my secret. Well
that's great and Passage to Profit isa nationally syndicated radio show appearing in thirty
one markets across the United States.Thank you to the P TOWO P team,
our producer Noah Fleischman, and ourprogram director Alisia Morrissey. Look for
our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get yourpodcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the

(01:09:31):
top three percent globally. You canalso find us on Facebook, Instagram,
x and on our YouTube channel.And remember, while the information on this
program is believed to be correct,never take a legal step without checking with
your legal professional first. Gearheart Lawis here for your patent, trademark and
copyright he needs. You can findus at gearheartlaw dot com and contact us

(01:09:54):
for free consultation. Take care everybody, Thanks for listening, and we'll be
back next week. The proceeding waspaid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast
constitutes neither an endorsement of the productsoffered or the ideas expressed.