Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is a massive incursion on humanity.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I really started it as a joke.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
You know, it's really easy when you know nothing.
Speaker 5 (00:17):
I'm Richard Dearhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard
some snippets from our show. Do you want to know
more about starting your business?
Speaker 6 (00:24):
Stay tuned, ramping up your business.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
The time is near. You've given it hard, Now get
it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Speaker 8 (00:45):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law,
and I have my own startups and podcasts.
Speaker 7 (00:51):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and
their business ventures. Has big data collection gone too far?
Our future guest today is Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur,
social networking pioneer, and privacy expert. And if you think
social media has gone too far, listen up, because he's
(01:13):
got a plan to fix it and it might just
blow your mind.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
And then we have two really great speakers as well,
Gary Cohen, Oh my gosh, and I got it.
Speaker 8 (01:21):
I really wonder how he did this.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
He went from a startup making four thousand a year
to being listed on Nasdaq.
Speaker 8 (01:28):
I mean, come on, who does that?
Speaker 7 (01:29):
Is impressive?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:31):
And then okay, this is one of my favorite things.
Tim Neeland has ghost city tours. He has a few
cities and they take people on ghost tours.
Speaker 8 (01:41):
That is so much fun.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
We sedt do that.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Every time we went on vacation with the little kids.
We went and saw Robert and Florida. He stole Richard
tat the Robert Doll. Yeah, I've heard of it us.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
We are big ghost tour fans.
Speaker 8 (01:51):
And later on we'll hear from our friend Alicia Morrissey,
a great jazz singer, and we've got Secrets of the
entrepreneurial mind. Really about today's.
Speaker 7 (02:00):
Show, and speaking of ghosts and haunted things, I guess
we wanted to tell a story today about black cats.
It's getting close to Halloween and this ties into the
whole concept of up selling. So this is a business
related topic.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
It's story time now.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
So we had three cats and one of them died
unexpectedly and I was just crushed. And they're mostly my cats,
so memorial dy week, and I said to Richard, let's
go to the shelter.
Speaker 7 (02:30):
Innocently, she said, let's just go to the shelter and
see what we see and just look.
Speaker 8 (02:35):
They won't let us lead with cats today.
Speaker 7 (02:36):
But just look.
Speaker 8 (02:37):
Yeah, wow, what happened When we got.
Speaker 7 (02:40):
There, we saw a bunch of cats.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Well there was a little We weren't even looking for
a kit and we're looking for something little.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
And he stuck his hand out through the bars of
the cage and grabbed Richard right.
Speaker 7 (02:51):
So started usually it's the lawyers with the handout, right,
But we're.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Like, well maybe one an older cat. They're like, well
maybe you want kittens, Well one kitten. So they put
us in a room with two little kittens, two differently.
Speaker 7 (03:05):
And they were both black, and the way they played together,
we thought they knew each other. They were just like
taking off all over the room, full of energy, bouncing
up and down, and we were like, oh, we can't
really separate these two little young ends from each other.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Like, well, the second one is half price, so instead
of coming home with one cat, we came home with two,
and now we have a lot of ease.
Speaker 7 (03:26):
So was the first up cell was Elizabeth getting us
to the cat shelter in the first place. The second
upsell was getting us to take two cats instead of one.
So if you can weave those ideas into your business,
you'll be an amazing success.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
It also had really good product if you want to
call an animal product, which isn't exactly the right thing
to say, but they had something we really wanted and.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
We went for it. So now it's time for your
new business journey. Two and five Americans are starting their
own business, or at least thinking about starting their own business.
And we have a question for our panel, what's the
one mistake every new entrepreneur should avoid? But you had
to learn the hard way, so let's start off with Mark.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
The first mistake that I really want to flag for
everybody is don't be utterly unflexible when it's time to
move the business into something else. Let it morph. Make
sure you let it morph if that's where the market
is telling you it needs to go. Don't be stuck
with your righteousness.
Speaker 7 (04:28):
Gary. The one mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid, but
you had to learn it the hard way.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think i'd augment Marx, which is it's going from
telling to asking, not just to be informed, but to
move people forward.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So stop telling, start asking.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
Tim. What is the mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid,
but you had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
You don't have to do it all yourself. There's always
this hesitation.
Speaker 9 (04:52):
To involve others and this need to do it yourself,
and I have fallen for that mistake. If you're in
this for a long haul, more likely not going to
be able to do it by yourself. So you might
as well become comfortable bringing people into your company early
on and help learning how to rely on them to help.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You achieve what you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 7 (05:09):
Absolutely, My advice is is if you're hiring, make sure
that you check references, you do background screenings, because hiring
is hard enough.
Speaker 8 (05:17):
It's amazing things will turn up in a Google search
that don't turn up on a background chet.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
That's right, check their Facebook page. And speaking of social media,
it's making us distracted, manipulated and divided and the people
who built it know exactly what they're doing today. Tech
entrepreneurs and privacy pioneer Mark Weinstein, one of the original
inventors of social networking, pulls back the curtain on big tech,
(05:44):
surveillance capitalism, and why your online life is being sold
to the highest bidder. So he's here to reveal how
we can finally take back control and restore sanity to
the web. So welcome again, Mark. He's the author of
the book Restoring Sanity Online, which I did have a
chance to check out before the program. I think it's
(06:05):
definitely worth a read if you're concerned about privacy. So
tell us a little bit about surveillance capitalism and what
it's doing to us, what.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Are the reasons why? And this is the Web two
world that we still live in. It's surveillance capitalism works
in other words, on your phone, on your laptop, wherever
you are. The data ecosystem, they the proverbial day. They
know everything you're doing, who you're talking to, where you are,
what you're saying, what your topics are, what your emotions are,
what you're thinking. And this is now supercharged by AI.
(06:37):
So you know when you look me at a news feed,
whether it's on TikTok or x or install or Facebook
or wherever you are. That news feed is also designed
purposefully to addict you, to keep you there as long
as possible. And the data is stunning. Right, kids are
spending five to seven hours a day on social media.
(07:00):
And we all see this. Either we know a young
person or we know an older person. Well, a year ago,
maybe wasn't so hucked, but now with the advent of
AI supercharged algorithms, we're stuck. And what are these algorithms doing.
They're manipulating our thoughts, our opinions, our purchase decisions, our votes,
(07:21):
and so this is a massive incursion on humanity. And
I'm one of the guys who love social media. I'm
one of the guys who invented social media, one of
there's about one hundred of us, and the inventor of
the World Wide Web, Sir Tim berners Lee, has endorsed
my book, as has was you know, the great wa
was co founder of Apple. Both of these guys say
(07:42):
it's a vital read, it's a must read. And in
the book we talk about Okay, well we've got this
giant mess, but can we fix it or are we dooing?
Because remember, now social media is causing democracy to falter.
So we've got a lot of issues here, Richard, and
there's a lot going on.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And then the aspect of bots and trolls, because right now,
you know, even in the wake of all of the
political things that are going on right now, no one's
talking about the huge perpetration by bots and trolls, paid
for by nefarious entities, by nefarious countries, and they're millions up.
It's well documented and by the way, my book has
(08:23):
over four hundred you know, footnotes, because it's important to
find credible sources for anything that you're saying today. This
is also really important and we've got to get to
a much better world around fact checking and questioning the facts.
You know, was well documented a few years ago that
half of Villon's followers were bots and trolls, half of
(08:45):
Biden's followers or bots and trolls. Because you know, we're
talking about tens of millions of followers, half of them
bots and trolls, and what they're doing also to us
in our regular news feeds for us the rest of
us is the perpetration. Remember the Russians and the Chinese
would like nothing better to disrupt this democracy. Now they've
had plenty of time, they've had a good decade of
(09:09):
fomenting disagreement. And remember the backbone of democracy is disagreement,
always has been, not hatred. We don't really hate each other.
But this perpetration where we you know, most of these
people aren't even real who we think we're having an
argument with online. So there's a lot to fix now.
There's a lot of things that are coming up to
(09:30):
fix this stuff. There's a lot we can do.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur, social networking pioneer, and privacy expert,
author of Restoring Our Sanity Online. I'm just kind of wondering, like, well, okay,
so all of the sounds really crazy and it doesn't
sound good, but what does it really harm? I talk
with my kids about these topics, and they're like, oh,
(09:55):
loosen up, Dad, it's not a big deal. So what
if somebody knows what my favorite potato chip is, They're
just gonna send me ads and maybe a coupon, and
so it'll work out for me. So why get so
worked up about this?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Such a good question? And remember this is the same
thing as you know, surveillance capitalism is now about fifteen
or seventeen years old. So back in twenty ten, twenty eleven,
people thought it was cool, right, just like kids today,
it's no different. It's like, oh wow, they know what
I want. They know you know, the kind of potentip
(10:28):
to kind of shoes, they know what I like. That's great,
but it doesn't stop them. So we know all the
body shaming, We know all the issues that young women have,
young girls have suicidal thoughts there, you know, all this
stuff going on because they're made to feel as though
there's something inappropriate or inferior about them, so they have
(10:48):
to buy this product or that product. You know, we
have a breakdown in how democracy functions and in our
ability to critically think. We've got to be able to
ascertain who is pushing this information into my news feed? Why,
what's the purpose? Wouldn't it be nice? They said, well,
here's something being put in your news feet because it's
trying to affect your vote or your health care decisions
(11:11):
or you know, your financial decisions, and it's coming from
this or that. So Richard, there's a lot at stake. Heare,
and unfortunately a lot of our kids don't realize it. Also,
remember kids up to the age and through the age
of thirteen, and this goes back thirty years ago to
the present. Whatever they see advertisements they think are telling
(11:33):
the truth. That's just how it is. And now we
have to really fast forward our critical thinking teaching so
the kids can now because in the old days it
was just a potato chip ad but now they're being
fed so much information, more than ever in the history
of humankind.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
I agree one hundred percent with you. The algorithms show
us what we want to see, reinforce our beliefs. The
other side is evil, and then you go meet somebody
who doesn't believe the same.
Speaker 8 (11:59):
Way you do.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
In that not evil, They don't look what the devil,
but the algorithms or whomever is controlling that. So that's
the other thing is we blame it on the algorithms.
It's not the algorithms, it's the people that are controlling it.
There's people behind this, But my question is how do
you stop it?
Speaker 8 (12:14):
And then I'm just wondering, if some kid is getting.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Bullied online, could you like program your own bot to
go back after the bully year so they breathe your
kid alone.
Speaker 7 (12:25):
There you go fight fire with fire.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Right, Look, this is this is a great question. I
talk a lot about good AI and this is an
AI you know, centric conversation today also, and I have
a chapter on AI, you know, because AI is really
creepy with these relationships that we're developing personal relationships with
our AI friends, and the AI friend is just slurping
(12:48):
data and pushing that up into the data ecosystem. So
we can't yet, you can't yet program a personal AI
to then sort of filter everything. But here's what we
can do. We talked about because the book is very
much a recipe for the future, not a you know,
regurgitation of the past. There's enough of books talking about
(13:08):
the past. We've got to move into the future to
what I call Web four because Web three doesn't work,
and most people don't even know Web three is and
don't worry about that right now. And part of that
is for our kids is user ide verification. Now, this
is a very I'm one of the world's leading privacy guys.
I've been against this for years. But for our children
(13:28):
on social media, not for marginalized people, not for whistleblowers.
We protect the anonymity of those people. But for our
kids and social media sites and that includes you Tube,
and that includes you know, TikTok, and that includes you
know Insta, and that includes even x. Where our kids are,
we've got to make sure that anybody who's connecting to
them is a verified minor. And if there's no grown
(13:53):
up or bot who is fraudulently perpetrating and manipulating them,
we've got to We've got to start with a good
verification system. There's some countries look at this bay in Australia.
We've got to protect our kids first. That's the first
place we go.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
We're with Mark Weinstein and market's been great talking with you.
Quick question, what are some of the biggest privacy threats
that people aren't even aware of?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Well, first of all, and this goes back to the
advid of surveillance capitalism, when companies like Facebook and Google
realize that the way to make a boatload of money
is to look peak over your shoulder at everything you're
doing and then to target you with you know, ads
and all this stuff.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
For example, if we have like a fire TV or
Google TV, is that collecting data from us and then
sending it back to Amazon or Google the programs we
watch and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
All the time. Look if your phone is on and
you're logged into Instagram or any meta product, or you're
logged into Google, whatever it is, your phone is constantly listen.
Anybody can try this at home. Talk about somebody I
haven't seen in a long time. Just have a conversation,
not on your phone, just like with some friends around
the phone, and then wait a day or two or
(15:12):
thirty minutes or ten minutes, and see how long it
takes for you to get some kind of suggestion about
that friend or about that product, whatever it does you
want to talk about. Just check it out, everybody. This
is real. You're being monitored all the time. It goes
into the data. It's called the data ecosystem, and that
data is shared across platforms. And yeah, this is a
(15:33):
massive problem. So you know what's going to happen soon
is data portability. The Adventure of the Web is working
on this data interoperability so soon and this is all coming.
You'll have a pod, You'll you will actually control your data.
This is really what the future is. And this is
likely to be part of the FTC Federal Trade Commission
(15:54):
settlement with meta. We're going to start to see some
kind of data interoperability where you'll be able to pull
your data off a platform, you'll be able to control it,
et cetera.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Gary cohen Mark, I'm wondering about compulsion. So this idea
of how AI has led us to addictive behaviors with
our phone and other media. I know my dog recognizes
it because when I'm on my phone, my dog walks to.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
The other room. It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
But I also feel a compulsion, you know, as a
sixty three year old, and I have a compulsion to
look at my phone. Right, So we know other addictive forces.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
In our lives.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Are you know, numerous, how we medicate ourselves. What's happening
on that front to help people with it as an
addiction versus just ah, it's clever. I'm kind of hooked
in because there's a big distinction between those.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Gary, it's such an important question and it's not just having.
First of all, we know that the screen is addictive,
and it's addictive to a toddler. So if you have kids,
you know right now the first two years, don't let
them see the phone, don't let them see a TV.
This is and there's certain countries now that are actually
mandating that. But Gary, even as a sixty three year
old guy, you're addicted more than ever. And here's why
(17:12):
this is the AI conversation. Previously, it was the algorithms
that were manipulating your newsfeed because they could plug into
the data ecosystem and adjust and adapt. But AI is
adjusting and adapting to what you're doing in nanoseconds, anticipating
your next thought, anticipate you know, whatever is being paid
for to be pushed into your news feed. That's gonna
(17:33):
keep you hooked, and also serve who's ever paid for that?
This is why you're hooked more than ever before. What
can we do. We've got to find a way to
flag when AI is operating, and also what you can do.
I'm sorry, man, but you've got to be proactive. You
actually have to start to put your windows of time in.
You've got to lock it down. You gotta put the
(17:55):
phone away at meals, you've got to put the phone
away at night. You're gonna have to lock down the
phone and create your own sort of channels for when
it's permissible for you to be on the phone as
for an hour and just be there and then you've
got to put it down. You're gonna have to this one.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
Yeah, it's possible that we could go too far with
all of this data surveillance. For example, I think you
mentioned during your Ted Talk Mark, which is great Ted
Talk by the way, you should look up Mark on YouTube,
which admittedly is a social media channel. But you talk
about China, for example, and how they have these surveillance capabilities,
(18:32):
and they actually create rewards and punishments based on people's
online behavior and if you say the wrong thing about
the government, you could be put in jail, or your
kid could be denied access to a top school. And
they're actually being much more direct about manipulating the population.
(18:54):
And you'd like to think that we would never get
to that point. But this is a boiling frog situation.
Speaker 8 (18:59):
People are getting fired for speaking their minds on social
media right now today.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
It is ironic because we're the country of free speech.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
We were the country of Yeah, we were.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
But one thing I'd like to do, and I know
this doesn't really work for everybody. I like to try
to confuse them. So I put my wrong birthday into Facebook.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
So you get birthday cards on the wrong day. I mean,
oh my god, that's fooling them.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Yeah, and I try to confuse my Kindle by ordering
books all over the spectrum.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
I thought that was just because you had a lot
of different interests.
Speaker 8 (19:31):
I don't know. I think that you're right there.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Just we have to take more downtime, Mark, right, I mean,
I don't know what the other solution is.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Well, well, you know you know that about six hours
this and it's amazing you can tolerate that much time
before there's a significant increase in the number of people
who are depressed. But that six hour marker is when
we see it with kids and grown ups. If you're
spending six hours a day on media, and that could
be your phone, your computer, TV, you've got six hours
(20:00):
a day, you're much more likely to be headed straight
into some kind of depression, a longer term depression.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
On fascinating discussion, we have to take a commercial break
where with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online,
we'll have more passage to profit right after this ip
in the news coming up as well as the AI
round Table and also Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. You
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(20:31):
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Speaker 7 (22:41):
No back to passage to profit once again.
Speaker 6 (22:43):
Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Our special guest, Mark Weinstein and he has written a
book called Restoring Our Sanity Online. He's talking about social media.
He was a social media pioneer. He was one of
the first inventors of a social media platform.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
At fourteen patents.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
He has fourteen patents and very smart guy, obviously, And
what we wanted to shift the conversation to. We talked
up a little bit about the evils of how we're
being manipulated and data mined by our social media use.
But we use it for work and we get business
from it. So we don't personally post I post on
my own LinkedIn, but otherwise we have assistants who post
(23:20):
for us on social media every day. So how do
you reconcile that with the data mining manipulation.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know, listen, that's a great question. I mean collectively,
if you are running a business, you need to reach
out and find your customers. This is different than the
you know, the ethical breakdowns of social media. You know
around you know, manipulating people's votes and things like that,
you know, body shaming, all these things that go on.
(23:48):
If you're a business, then you ought to be very
savvy about how you spend your marketing dollars. And today
you've got to spend it digitally. You can't, you know,
nobody runs the newspaper add anymore really or something like that.
You've got to be there and so you've you've just
got to be savvy about that. That's that's I think
a very appropriate use as a business person. You know,
(24:10):
you want to you want to find your customers. Now,
the way best way to use social media, in my
opinion for business is grassroots though where you're actually not
paying but you have some social media expert who can
find the people that are likely to want your product
or service and can find them in a grassroots way.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And that's by themselves being engaged in social media in groups,
you know, in thought with thought leadership and finding like
minded people. And that's really because you know, you want
to create a little movement, right, you want to you
want to create this sort of niche of what I
call ambassadors, because really you're looking for the ambassadors, the
(24:54):
people that are gonna love your product, and you're broadcast
going to where it and show it, you know, going
to use it, talk about it. That's where the rubber
meets the road.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
And I hate to say this, mark, but I'm going
to say it anyway, you can use chat jipt to
do that. Because I run a meetup group and we
had somebody who had to attend a funeral and could
make it. So I did ask it to check LinkedIn,
and it brought up somebody who I knew who had
spoken at my group before, and he came and spoke
at the group last night. And I wouldn't have really
(25:24):
thought that way unless i'd use chatjpt to scour LinkedIn
for me.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Let's see AI. Remember, AI isn't inherently good or bad.
It's the application of AI that that makes it either
nefarious or a good guy and helpful. So that's a
very good use. We all use AI, you know, I
prefer to use it, you know, in searches, right because
if you're using an unbiased AI and you want to
(25:50):
search on a product like what's really the best mattress
for this application or whatever it is, you know, AI
is really helpful right now a nan o seconds. So
I think that's a very good application. And we've got
here's the challenge in modern society. In the history of humankind,
technology runs ahead of anybody's ability to regulate or understand
its impact on the human condition and that's always going
(26:13):
to be the case. So now we're always playing ketchup.
So here we are playing ketchup around AI. Now we've learned,
you know, how nefarious it can be and also how
awkward it is. There's there's AI stuffed animals for our
kids and then they make the kids feel good. But
you know what they're doing. They're just collecting data because
they're connected to the web, and they're reporting back and
(26:33):
they figure out what to say next. This is this
is you know, we're in the middle of quite a conundrum.
But AI can be AI can also root out the
bad AI. AI can find a bot control. You know,
it's interesting. We're now going to be cat and mouse
AI versus AI.
Speaker 8 (26:51):
We are.
Speaker 7 (26:52):
Yeah, so we're with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our
Sanity Online. Mark, you were one of the early your
creators of social networking, starting back in the nineties. Maybe
you could tell us a little bit about what motivated
you to get into this business and how you got started.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You know, first of all, anybody who remembers in the nineties,
it was like it was incredible. This was called the
new economy and the idea, and we had email back then.
Don't kid yourself. We had email in the nineties, especially
in the mid to late nineties, and it was just
as ghastly as is now. In other words, it's one dimensional.
We misunderstand, we misinterpret, we're stuck on it, We're waiting
(27:35):
for the next you know. All that. So the idea
of you know, getting new technology, and at the time
it had a ten year old nephew, because you want
to listen to a kids who to listen to your
kids and other kids. And my nephew and I took
a hike around a lake on a family vacation and
we started to id eight you know, uncle Markey, wouldn't
it be great if we could? And we had this
conversation ten minutes into what. I looked at my nephew
(27:57):
who said, you know, I'm going to start a company
and give you ten percent of it. I went back
home at this point to Albuquerque. I started a company
and back then you're putting the newspaper interview people at
your dining room table. I hired engineers and graphic designers
who couldn't design pages that would load because no one
had done it before. Now at the same time, there
(28:18):
were several companies when we were in data, they were
in beda, Superfamily dot com and Superfriends dot com were mine.
They became PC magazine top one hundred sites three years
in a row worldwide. But it was an exciting, amazing time.
And this is again you know, so my tip here
is like, always pay attention to what your kids are doing.
I mean, the idea that we were all wearing ripped
(28:38):
jeans day or our kids are come on, Nick, came
from you know, our generations, the guys that are older
on this broadcast, like me and Gary and Tim and
you know, Elisabeth and Richard. You know, it was just
cool when then jeans finally got worn out that they ripped,
you would wear them. Now you buy them ripped.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
I was just too cheap to buy new pants. Mark
has just been an amazing Can you tell us where
people can find you?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Thank you. The book Restoring Our Sanity Online is audio,
It's Kindle, It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any bookstore
that you like. It's been in the airport stores for months.
The book, by the way, is highly entertaining because I
have hilarious stories. So you can find me. Mark Weinstein
Inventor dot com. You can write to me market, restore
theweb dot com and you can find the books everywhere.
(29:25):
So and thank you everybody. It's a great conversation and
the book has a lot of what you can do
right now for yourself, for your kids, what we can
do right now, and what's coming right.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
Well, the pleasure has been all ours.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Yeah, I'm going to get that for us and the kids.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
Now, we have been talking about social media and the
goods and the evils, and we're going to now segue
into a round table on AI. So this is our
AI roundtable. So I'm going to ask everybody how they're
using AI, and I'm I'm pretty sure nobody here is
using it nefariously.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
I guess we have to ask and find out.
Speaker 8 (30:02):
Mark, Why don't we start with you? What is one
way you're using AI in your business?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You know?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
And for everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I've written about AI a lot and how to regulate it.
On Fox in particular, they carried a couple of my
pieces and did some interviews. But I think AI for
search and unbiased you know, AI is a really great
way to use it. I still like to be creative,
so I'm not using it for writing or you know,
but when we're researching, you know, also people that I
(30:28):
want to connect with. I think it's a great but
also just researching a product. You know, we're always buying
things or buying things on Amazon. It's one thing to
look at their reviews, but it's another thing just to
have an unbiased AI so to give you some input
on you know, what's up or you know, or what's
going wrong with the transmission in your car or things
like that. In the old days, we'd have to like
(30:49):
get get you know, get the search results and then
sort of thumb through them. We'll you know, scroll and
figure out which one it works. But the AI search
is much more effective on you right now, what mattress
to buy, what's wrong your transmission, whatever it is. So
I enjoy it that way.
Speaker 8 (31:05):
That's a great way to use it. So Gary, how
are you using it?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah? I think.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
And listen to this conversation over the last half hour,
it brought me back to a memory when I was
at the Espen Institute and we were talking about right
when AI was being rolled out publicly, the large Language Model,
and it struck me that as a kid growing up
with severe learning differences, that there was always a connection
(31:34):
between what I wanted the output to be from me
and what it actually was. And it almost puts tears
in my eyes to.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Talk about this.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
That now, the ability to express yourself by thinking about
what the bullets are that you want to express and
then asking AI to write it and you actually see
the words and you're like, but that's what I was thinking.
And I think for so many and you know, so
(32:04):
many bients have ADHD, which often has other disabilities or
challenges for them and their learning that helping them see
how using AI to help express themselves more fully and
completely is such a huge, huge win. The way I
(32:27):
do it in my business is all my calls are
have a transcript. Those transcripts are run through cat GBT
and with a prompt it says this is what we covered.
It goes back, it looks at all my past conversations
with that person and says, this is where we're on track,
this is where we're off track. These were the people
(32:48):
we talked about, These are the things we're going to
talk about in the next call based upon that, And
what are the psychological underpinnings or coaching underpinnings that came
out in the call?
Speaker 11 (32:58):
Right?
Speaker 8 (32:59):
That is really art. That's a great way to thank
you him. How are you using it?
Speaker 9 (33:04):
I'm actually using AI in a way that probably not
a lot of people are. We're in a phase right
now where we're building AI into everything that we're building,
So whether we're talking about ghost city tours and I
know that's kind of what I'm known for, but where
it's really helped me in a sort of business sense
is the reptile conservation center that I own, and what
we do is we breed some of the world's most endangered,
(33:26):
critically endangered reptiles, and by building AI into the software
that runs that facility, because if you can imagine, every
animal has thousands of data points over the course of
its life, and they're not all easy to breed, and
because there's not many of them left, it's important that
we figure that out. So by building our software or
more appropriately building you know, open AI into our software
(33:48):
where it's able to go into the database and analyze
thousands of data points on these animals, it's valuable insight
into not only keeping these fragile animals alive, but what
is working to make sure that we're able to produce
the next generation's animals. Now I know that's not what
you brought me on to talk about. But on Goo City,
we're doing something very similar where we're able to bring
(34:08):
in you know, AI to analyze all the data points,
whether it's the data points from Google Analytics or you know,
search console or a booking software, I mean, you name it.
We have all that data running through open AI right
now and it's making connections that there is no way
we have been able to make on our own. I
mean even I like to think I have a pretty
good brain, but there's no way I'm connecting all these
(34:29):
data points. So, you know, we're not really using it
from a perspective of you know, hey, Tatch GBT, write
me this or you know, go research this or whatever,
even though there's.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
A ton of value in that. What we've been doing.
Speaker 9 (34:40):
Is using it to analyze data to help us make
better business decisions.
Speaker 8 (34:44):
I wonder if, folks, if we're able to talk to ghosts.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
Well, there's supposed to be software out there that lets
you communicate with your pets, right and then maybe so
maybe maybe a ghosts are the next step.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
I don't know, I might be surprising them want the too.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
There is something interesting that we've been working on you know,
running actually electromagnetic energy readout readouts through AI.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
And helping it make sense of it. It's actually really
interesting stuff.
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Oh wow, our daughter would be fascinated. She loves the
ghost stuff.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
I love all these different uses.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
This is just I feel like I'm doing a social
experiment every week on the show. Everybody's using it for
different things.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
It's really awesome.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
Well, I had an interesting conversation this morning with somebody
in Europe and they were talking about how their company
used AI. She was asking me about how AI is
working in the States, and so of course I followed
up with the question. They seem to be taking a
slightly different tax, so they're implementing AI into their operations,
(35:46):
but they're not firing people. They're saying, look at if
we can be more productive with you know, the more
routine tasks, and that frees our team up to go
out and spend more time interacting with customers and more
time getting business. And it was really interesting to hear
this because in the US it seems like a lot
of the dialogue is around cutting jobs.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:09):
Recently, I guess sales Force laid off about two hundred
and fifty engineers, and they were very open about the reason.
They just said, you know, AI can do your job now,
so don't let the door hit you on the way out.
This company was taking a different approach and saying we
can use it to recapture other resources that can be
redirected in positive ways for the company. So I thought
(36:32):
that was really interesting take. And you know you would think, well,
of course, right, But I think our mindsets here, you know,
perhaps groomed buy social Media have kind of put this
into our heads that AI is going to be a
job destroyer, and you don't have to think that way.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I was just wondering if, as the market shows up
against that company, whether that will hold true. In other words,
if they can need more value that way, yes, but
oftentimes the market has something to say about it. In
other words, once their competitors catch up with what they're
doing on AI, then all of a sudden, margins get destroyed.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
And now, yeah, that's a valid point, and it could
be that it works out that way, but you know,
at least instead of reflexively going to the cost cutting,
they're going to look for ways to redeploy their team.
And I also think that if a company can provide
(37:33):
incentives for people to adopt AI. It'll get adopted faster
because people can be resistant to adopting it, and if
they see that their future is still somewhat secure, then
they're more likely to implement it quicker compared to a
company that says, well, your job's going to be gone
after you do this implementation right, and so you may
(37:55):
actually make more progress, at least in the short term,
more quickly. But good point.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
I just used it this morning, so I'm going to
give my most recent use. I had my meetup group
last night and we talked about to at GPT five
what else an AI versus human and copyrights in AI?
And our next meetup is going to be October twenty first.
We do it hybrid in the studio here and also online,
and it is going to be from Mike to Market
(38:21):
building a podcast that lasts that's October twenty first in
the evening here on the East Coast. But the way
I used it this morning, I took the we record
everything on Zoom. I took the Zoom recording, I opened
up the script editing software, edited.
Speaker 8 (38:36):
Some stuff out. I don't know if I should say it.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
We got hacked in the meeting and somebody put a
porn video in the middle of it.
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Oh my god, it's so we were able to stop it.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
So I had to go edit that out before I
gave the video on anybody else.
Speaker 8 (38:49):
So I did that in the script, got the tracks.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
Were they wearing fitbits?
Speaker 8 (38:54):
I've tried not to look so uh.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
But but then I can take the train from the
script and I can throw it into chat GPT, which
I've kind of trained to talk like me. Some people
have really trained their chat gpt to speak in their voice,
and I can say, do a summary email of this
meetup that I can send out to everybody that came,
including all the links that people's podcasts that they mentioned,
all the software sites they mentioned that would have taken
(39:18):
me hours. This takes me an hour meeting. Only the
hardest part is that it's a long meeting, and the
slowest part is downloading the data and then getting the
brected transcript and video back.
Speaker 8 (39:30):
So I love all these uses.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
I love all these creative uses, and I really feel
like the people that are going to come out on
top of this are going to be the people that
use it in super creative ways and in their everyday
life too, to just speed things up.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
So I don't think we're all going away.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
Not yet, hopefully not yet. We need to take a
commercial break, but we'll be back with more passage to
profit right after this.
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Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
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So subscribe to the Passage to Profit Show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and on the iart app. Excellent time for IP in
the news. Neil Young speaking of older people. I think
Neil Young's seventy nine. I don't think it looks that great.
(42:40):
I'm looking at a picture of him here. But anyway,
he started a band, a new band called Chrome Hearts.
They've been playing for about a year, and it turns
out a company, a clothing company called Chrome Hearts, is
now suing him for trademark infringement, alleging that customers are
going to be confused if they see Neil's band and
(43:03):
their clothing.
Speaker 5 (43:04):
I want to confuse a sweater for an old guy
playing guitars. There's different categories of trademarks right right.
Speaker 7 (43:12):
The clothing company says that because they've worked with celebrities
in the past. That's enough of a bridge between what
they're doing and what Neil is doing personally. I kind
of wonder if they're not just doing this for the
publicity associated with filing a lawsuit. Evan knows that would
never happen.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Isn't there some sort of thing with trademarks too, Like
if somebody like Coca Cola, you couldn't do a close
trademark to Coca Cola because they're so well known.
Speaker 7 (43:38):
They're famous. Right, Once you've become famous, you get a
broader set of rights. But companies can use the same
trademark as long as they're in different industries. So one
of my favorite examples is Delta faucets and Delta Airlines.
You wouldn't confuse. Delta Faucets is a place where you
could build an airline ticket, and you wouldn't think that
Delta Airline sells fawcets. So the likelihood of confusion is
(44:01):
pretty low. But I guess the moral of the story
is that we want to pay attention to the goods
and services associated with the trademark, and we'll be keeping
track of this Neil Young lawsuit and advise accordingly. But
just because you have the same name doesn't mean you
necessarily have a good, strong case for infringement, and so
(44:21):
if you have an idea or invention that you want
to protect, contact us at gear Heart Law. We work
with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process
of obtaining patents, trademarks, and copyrights. And if you want
even more information, you go to learn more about patents
dot com or learn more about trademarks dot com. You
can book a free consultation with a gear Heart Law attorney,
(44:44):
or you can download your free Entrepreneurs Quick Guide to
Patents or trademarks.
Speaker 8 (44:49):
And now it is time to find out. I have
been waiting patiently to find this out.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
How Gary Cohen took a four thousand dollars a year's
startup in to a Nasdaq listed company.
Speaker 8 (45:02):
Welcome Gary, Please spill the beans.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Spill the beans. Well, you know, it's really easy when
you know nothing. My business partner, Rick Diamond, and I
started with each of us put in two thousand dollars.
And the idea came to me when my roommate asked
me to spy on his competitors at a trade show
in New York because I was vacation there I'm like, okay,
you know, I wasn't doing anything. I was out of school.
(45:26):
So I spent a day walking around this trade show
and he was selling the first computer systems. They were
called predictive dialers, which predicts when a person's going to
be free on the line, so that the productivity of
that caller who's placing the call is double, right, So
huge innovation in the call center industry. And so by
(45:47):
the end of the day I had made up this
story about, yeah, I'm going to the call center business,
and I'm like, I sold myself. And I called a
childhood friend. He and I had been talking about going
into real estate or something, and I said I think
I have a better idea for us, and he goes, well, okay,
we don't know anything about real estate. We don't know
(46:07):
anything about call centers. So that was the launch, literally
just made up in the air one day, and then
we started using my roommate's technology telephony. We knew nothing
about the industry, and there were competitors out there, but
they knew nothing about the technology. So that gave us
such leverage on them that places like Done in Bradstreet
(46:28):
and IBM signed up with us just because they didn't
understand how we could be so productive and so not
knowing about what we were doing. And eventually United Healthcare
hired us because we didn't know what we were doing,
because they had a hiring freezon and they said, you know,
we're going to use you, and we're going to use
(46:48):
you because you have no bad habits in this call
center business. And at the time was telemarketing, right, and
we're going.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Yep, that's true.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
We have no you know, bad habits because nobody trained us.
We're going to train you to do it well. And
we were insourced and we brought hired people, brought them
over to their offices and they taught us how to
do it. And it was one step after another. And
as we grew, we needed money and we didn't have any,
so we went to the government for money. How do
(47:16):
you do that? We had jobs, lots of jobs, and
so the first town offered us two hundred and fifty thousand,
and we did the deal. And then the next town
we got a little smarter, and then it was a
million dollars to open up a call center. But this
was the trick. I just thought it was funny. We
started getting frustrated that we get this money from the
(47:37):
government through economic development and we'd have to pay taxes
on it.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Which seems so insane.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
The government's given you money and then they well.
Speaker 7 (47:44):
It's like that says then social Security payments makes no sense.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
So we started getting clever, which was we had them
leased back everything we needed. So we'd have them buy
the computers and we'd lease it for a pretty much
a dollar a year until five years goes up, and
then we'd buy for a back from them, so the
community would actually hold the assets while we were using
(48:09):
them and depreciating them, and then we didn't need to
collect that money. And so that's how we built our
call centers. Canada gave us fifteen million dollars to open
three of them, because by that time we were hiring
thousands of peeks in a year, about twenty two hundred people.
Of that, there's like a segment of the population that
rotates really quickly. You know about high turnover of employees,
(48:33):
but that's like twenty five percent of your people are
turning over like five hundred percent, eight hundred percent. Well,
the rest are solid in there there for years.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
So I want to ask you, how do you react
now when you get a call from a telemarketer.
Speaker 4 (48:47):
When I left the business, and I was one of
the lead lobbyists in the industry against anti telemarketing legislation,
I put myself on the do not call list, that
do not mail list, I mark spam and all of
the calls I don't take them. And I also know
that when you get a pause and somebody's not there
is the predictive dilating system not working. The last thing
(49:09):
you want to do is hang out because it triggers
the next call. It'll call you back in about twenty
minutes because you'll hang it up. So it's better to
wait and then say take me off your list.
Speaker 7 (49:19):
So did telemarketers always have scripts or did that evolve
over time?
Speaker 4 (49:25):
When we entered bighead scripts and then they had the
flip books and stuff.
Speaker 7 (49:29):
That was all manual.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
We were automated, so our scripts were as they went
through the script, yes, no, maybe, and then it would
change the dialogue. Nowadays, I understand it's been twenty years
since I've been in the business, but they're using AI.
It's prompting based upon the algorithm of how the customer
or prospect is speaking and it's giving a really custom
(49:53):
response for the agent, and I'm hearing that even the agent.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Could BAI as well.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
I just was at a meeting in which this group
was showing me large group facilitation, but before the team
came into the meeting, they had an AI call each
of the people, do an hour interview with each of them,
and take those transcripts, compress them, find the intelligence that
they were looking for, and feed it back to that group.
(50:23):
And so they're basically doing the same thing in the
call center world.
Speaker 7 (50:26):
Wow, So is it unrealistic to think that companies calling
on prospective clients would use AI then as a way
to target the right clients. And then I guess, in
line with what you're saying, also developed maybe a custom
script for certain classes of perspective clients.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Yes, And going to what Mark was talking about, I
was hearing Sam Altman talk about how the ways to
secure your bank accounts and all of that information is
really not secure if you think void is the way,
because now with the deep fake, people can clone your voice.
(51:05):
So if you could do that to break security, you
could certainly do that to place a phone call with
an AI. That caller sounds just like anybody you want
them to sound like.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Yeah, there's software programs that are pretty easy to use.
So right now you're doing co two coaching, and here
it says that you're helping executives clear their minds, break
your obstacles, and achieve extraordinary success. That's really cool. Can
you tell us a success story? Is someone you worked
with without saying their name?
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (51:34):
So many one comes to mind. This person was burned out.
They were building an incredible software company, facing all the challenges,
you know, hiring the wrong people, all of that, And
first it was how do I help that person find
their time? How do I get them to get their
(51:54):
time back? Because when people are burned out, it's usually
because they don't have time and they haven't figured out
how to move the work away from them. Moved to
a leadership position versus a doer position, and often this
is a transition. Entrepreneurs have a hard time making. They're
so good at doing they have a hard time giving
(52:15):
it up. And so we moved him into that leader role,
hired talented people around him, and talked about all the
things he needed to know about developing that. He started
doing strategic planning with our firm and we built a plan.
He said, in one day he made forty five million
dollars more from that work that we did, which clearly
(52:38):
didn't cost him forty five million dollars to set there
sold the company. I can't say for the numbers, but
it's hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars and all
within five years of that meeting saying I'm done. I'm
burned out, because at that point he just like, tell
me how I can get this thing sold. So it
was helping him find his own strength that he had,
(53:00):
and then using that strength to help him find the time,
organizes business in a way that makes sense to him
and all the other employees and the great team that
he surrounded himself with, and then created a way to
position the company for somebody else to want it.
Speaker 7 (53:19):
We're with Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of
CEO two coaching. Sounds like he's getting pretty good results
so far, so Kudo's there. One of the things that
we talked about on our pre call was that the
concept of how do I keep people on the hook
versus putting me on the hook. I think this dovetails
nicely with your story about moving from an entrepreneur role
(53:42):
to a leader role. But where are some of the
techniques that an entrepreneur can practice to implement that.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
I'm working on.
Speaker 4 (53:50):
A book called On the Hook and the Idea. It's
an allegory and it talks about how somebody walks into
your office right and says, this is what I'm going
to do, and they're very excited and they tell you
you ask all the questions you have to assure yourself
that they actually know what they have in mind and
that it's clear. But it's not to convince you. It's
(54:11):
just to make sure they're clear headed about what they
want to do. Most management learning is you give them affirmation. Yeah,
that sounds great, Oh that's a great idea. However, it
takes away the hook. It puts you on the hook
and takes them off the hook. Why does that happen
Because as soon as you start giving them affirmation on
(54:34):
something that hasn't actually accomplished anything yet, you're basically saying
I agree with you. And once you agree with them,
you've become on the hook because if it doesn't work out,
they're coming back to you and they say it didn't work,
but you agreed that this was the right way to
do it.
Speaker 7 (54:49):
So let me ask you what's the difference between that
and giving authorization to move forward? How do you untangle
those two ideas.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
Yeah, thanks for the It's true, and this is a
place that leaders have a hard time, particularly at the
beginning stages of entrepreneurship. What you find though, is most
companies have role and job descriptions for people. Those are
the things that have already given that authority to that employee,
and somehow it's overlooked by both parties, the boss and
(55:21):
the employee, And so you don't need to give them permission.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
They have it.
Speaker 4 (55:25):
You granted it when you hired them, when you gave
them the job description, when you gave them the roles
of authority that they have in their role. So when
they come in, they're actually looking for your permission, and
what you don't want to do is give them that permission.
Speaker 3 (55:40):
You want to.
Speaker 4 (55:40):
Say, Wow, you sound like you've thought this all through,
you're really excited about it, and I'm looking forward to
seeing how it all turns out, and they.
Speaker 7 (55:50):
Go ah ah, But.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
They don't want to accept it because they know they
feel the tension that now is on them. But I
thought what would you do if you were in my place?
Might be the comment, Well, it is not my place.
I hired you to do this job. You're really talented
and really smart, and I believe in you and I
trust you. So I'm looking forward to seeing the results
(56:16):
that you accomplished by executing unders. When they come back
and it's done really well, you go, oh, that's fabulous,
and think about it. In their heads. They're not thinking
you gave them permission anymore. Now they can actually take
in the appreciation.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
Of what you gave them.
Speaker 4 (56:33):
And I'm telling you, almost every it's very hard for
me to think of a company I've coached over within
three hundred companies over the last twenty years, it's very
hard to find one that didn't have this issue. It's
amazing how it's just insidious. Nobody's really labeled it in
the management world. It just sits there because and then
(56:55):
they come up with all these fancy ways to trap
people as opposed to having them feel that sense of
ownership and burden of what it means to feel like
an owner of a business, which everybody on this call
knows that feeling.
Speaker 7 (57:10):
It's an interesting technique. And so you've tried this.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
It's really fun.
Speaker 4 (57:14):
Well at first, what I'll say is I'm writing the
book because it takes so long to convince a client
how to do it, meaning like it's simple. All of
you probably get what I'm saying. Right now, everybody on
the show is listening. They go, oh, I get it,
I get it good. It's so quick falls out of
your head because it's so instinctual.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
I want to be positive.
Speaker 4 (57:36):
I get the kind of visceral high from giving advice.
I'm a coach. I love advice giving. Please write. However,
I know I'm a coach and I'm not leading the person.
I'm in an instructive teaching coaching role, and that's very
different than a leadership role.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Okay, And so what I found.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
Was, over a course of a year, people will make
this adjustment, and before long they have so much time
on their hands because what happens is people no longer
come in for permission because they clearly know they're not
going to get it. And so all those people who
are lining up at your door aren't it your door anymore.
They're just doing the work and they're owning it. And
you're starting to see the results, and we see that
(58:20):
in most all of our clients, and they eventually get it.
The trick is, how do you get it quicker? How
do you really realize that when you're pointing the finger
about why are they always coming to me, it's because
you keep giving the advice. You keep wanting to answer
the question. This simple, silly one is somebody comes into
(58:40):
your office and says, hey, I can't figure out how
to use this printer, and you're like, really, that's why
you're coming to see the CEO of the business. You
can't and you do know how to fix it, by
the way, as the CEO, because you had to do
it at some point, especially if you're starting small. But
instead you say where else might you find that? They go, well,
I could ask chat GPT good next time. You don't
(59:04):
have to bring that to me, right, It's it's just
a silly example, but it's like, there are so many
places where people can find the answer other than you,
and they're responsible for it.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
So make them responsible, have them feel the hook. Attention
the ownership.
Speaker 7 (59:20):
Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of CEO two Coaching.
Speaker 8 (59:24):
Thank you Gary, great advice, Gary, How do people find you?
Speaker 4 (59:27):
CEO two coaching, dot com typing, Gary B.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
Cohen, that'll get them to me.
Speaker 8 (59:32):
Okay, great, thanks.
Speaker 7 (59:34):
Passage to Profit with Richard Analysabeth per Heart.
Speaker 8 (59:36):
Now it is time for ghost stories.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
Yay.
Speaker 5 (59:40):
I told Tim Neeland he has to tell a ghost
story of the show.
Speaker 8 (59:44):
Welcome Tim. Tell us about your ghost tours business, gus
Be Toys.
Speaker 9 (59:48):
It's the world's largest walking tour company. You know, every
year we do about a million people on our tours
and then twenty eight markets in the United States. I
think we're in right now, just a lot of fun
and it's really evolved as a co over the last
couple of years into something that I once again enjoy.
Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
You know, when I first started Ghost City.
Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
Tours, I really started it as a joke.
Speaker 9 (01:00:07):
I mean, come on, ghost tours like that can't really
be a real business, right, But what happened, you know,
I met two guys. I moved to Savanta, Georgia, and
I met two guys who were really great tour guides,
but they were horrible business people. And up until that
point in my life, I had spent the last ten
years running a marketing and web design company. So I
had this idea, like, hey, I'll start a company. I'll
(01:00:28):
build this thing up. You guys can work for me,
and you're going to make more money working for me
than you do on your own. And they did for
some reason. They stilln't really totally understand why. It was
just something I was doing in my spare time and
in the second month in business where I think, you know,
maybe I was running a couple of Google ads at
the time, or you know, maybe some Facebook ads. Maybe Yeah,
we did you almost two hundred thousand dollars in that
(01:00:49):
second month without even trying. And you know, at the time,
our profit margins were like eighty seven percent, So I thought,
maybe there's something to this.
Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Yeah, you know, it just took off from there.
Speaker 9 (01:00:59):
And you know, at first, what GHO City Tours was,
it was a way for me to help some friends
and you know, occupy my time. But it was also
out of necessity. You know, at that point in my life,
I was almost homeless. You know, I was living in
a hotel room that the manager of the hotel knew
me and let me stay in that hotel room for
about two months. So for me, it was really just
I don't want to live this way anymore. You know,
I grew up without a lot. You know, I appreciate
(01:01:21):
everything my parents did, but it was my time to
get rid of that bad Hay I didn't finally turn
my life around and get something going, and that's where.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Ghost City Tours came from.
Speaker 9 (01:01:29):
So, you know, it's morphed over the years quite a bit,
the point where I think we've been in business fourteen years.
You know, at the beginning off, I'm being completely honest,
I just needed to make money, you know, I needed
to feed myself. You know, I had to take care
of my family. But now I'm to a point where
the money. Don't get me wrong, I love money, or
we all do, but that's not so important to me anymore.
(01:01:51):
What I came to realize about Gho City Tours is that,
you know, this is a company where we can help
people get in touch with what I consider like what
people should actually be, and how we do that is
by sparking their curiosity.
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
You know.
Speaker 9 (01:02:06):
One of the biggest compliments I can get, which is
also our number one complaint about our company, is there
was too much history on this tour. There weren't enough ghosts,
you know, there's two They talk too much about the
city's culture and all this stuff. We really wanted to
hear ghost stories, and they do. But to me, it's
more important that we get people out in the world
and we open their eyes to something that maybe they
weren't thinking about before. You know, maybe we made them
(01:02:28):
come to well, we didn't make them come to New Orleans,
but they came to New Orleans. We made them see
the city through a new light, truly appreciating the culture
and the people and all those things that made a
city like New Orleans where it is. And then they
go buy a book, which to me is the biggest compliment.
If I can get somebody to go buy a book
about anything once they're done with a ghost tour and
want to learn more about the world around them. You know,
(01:02:49):
earlier were talking about social media. One of the best
ways to avoid all that is to get off of it,
you know, go out explore the world, you know, take
your family for a walk. And that is what you know,
Ghost City Towards has really become over the years, it's
been our vehicle to help pull people away from those screens,
get them out into the real world and find that
(01:03:10):
curiosity that human beings innately have, you know, and if
it takes ghosts as the catalysts to help them get
out of that zone.
Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
That's that's what we do.
Speaker 9 (01:03:18):
It's been very enlightening to see the impact that just
ghost wars can have on people.
Speaker 7 (01:03:23):
So Tim, I have to ask, do you believe in ghosts?
I do?
Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Uh, there's there's no way that I can't.
Speaker 9 (01:03:29):
Part of what ghost City does is we haven't done
them for a few years, but we hold national nationwide
ghost hunts where we'd find famous Lejuanta locations across the
country and we would rent them for a few nights.
You know, think you know Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio or
the Saint Augustine Lighthouse. People would come from across the
country and you know, ghost hunt for us for two nights.
So I have seen some stuff that would blow your mind.
(01:03:51):
I have heard stuff, you know, everything from shadow figures,
you know those figures that look like people, you know,
shadowy people walking across hallways, to full body apparitions where
you know, we're walking in abandoned hospital with a group
of people and some semi transparent lady walks out in
front of us with the hospital gown on and walks
into a wall.
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Now, those things don't happen very often.
Speaker 9 (01:04:09):
Don't let the TV shows fool you. If you see
a full body apparition, that's pretty damn rare. But you
know that the idea of being able to go into
these haunted places and actually talk and I know it
sounds crazy, especially if you don't believe in these things,
but to be able to talk to them and have
them answer questions for you, there's no way I can't
believe in ghosts after all that.
Speaker 7 (01:04:26):
Did you start out not believing in ghosts and just
really thought of it as more entertainment and then became
convinced or did you always have this spirituy side?
Speaker 9 (01:04:35):
I thought it was stupid, like seriously, Like you, I
grew up not far from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I've always
been a huge history buff, you know, especially when it
comes to the Civil War, and I would go to
the Gettysburg Battlefield very often to you know, hey, I
want to see where this guy was and you know
where this happened. And one night I was hanging out
a place that a lot of people are familiar with
in Gettysburg. It's called Devil's Done, and I was hanging
(01:04:56):
out with a park ranger buddy of mine. Off to
our right, there's a field called the Triangle, and at
night that night there were people walking through the field
of flashlights. So I got excited because I thought people
I was gonna see people get busted for rellic cutting,
so that's what I thought. And he's like, no, they're
looking for ghosts. And I remember in my head that's
just stupid. But once again, curiosity, I think it is
so important to people. And so a couple of times later,
(01:05:17):
I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go to Walmart.
You know, I'd seen those goofy ghost hunting TV shows.
So I went out, bought a voice recorder, went to
the middle of the field called the weed Field, and
I just stood there at night. And when you do
this for the first time, you feel like a total buffoon.
Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
I'm literally standing in the field in the middle of the.
Speaker 9 (01:05:32):
Night holding a voice recorder saying, can you please tell
me your name?
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
But I got a name and it was as clear
as day. It was a guy.
Speaker 7 (01:05:39):
It said George.
Speaker 9 (01:05:40):
And I know, you know, it wasn't an artist, wary
paraduay kind of thing, like. It really was a man
saying George. And at that moment I'm like, holy crap,
like there is something to this, like what is like?
And to this day I still can't explain it, but
there was something to it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Weird stuff happens.
Speaker 9 (01:05:55):
We're able to document it, and I wouldn't call it
an addiction, but I would say that if you're somebody
who is really driven by trying to understand the world
around you, and you grab onto mysteries and you want
to understand it, this whole ghost thing is a really
great topic to dive into because the reality is, I
don't think we're ever going to figure out what is
going on or what they truly are.
Speaker 8 (01:06:16):
It's pretty cool. And I got to tell you I
do have a ghost story. Oh yeah, so our house. Well,
first of all, our house when we first moved in,
the guy had died there before us, and we would
always hear footsteps in the attic. We called them one
Ie Roger, remember that. But then this one day, I'm
wondering if ghosts come and go because we had this
cat she's gone now, and she was in the foyer
(01:06:38):
and she was talking to somebody.
Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
She really was she was going where I'm ready, I mean.
And this went on for like five minutes and like, checkers,
who are you talking to? And I swear she was
talking to a ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
She might have been.
Speaker 8 (01:06:52):
So have you changed your market a little bit?
Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
Because I see you start a podcast a little bit
ago and you're doing a lot of YouTube shorts. And
what's really cool is like you're asking other people, like,
tell me about your haunting, tell me about your ghosts
or the ones I've been seeing our bigfoot. Yeah, we
love Bigfoot. Richard has bigfoot pajamas.
Speaker 7 (01:07:09):
I'm bigfoot slippers too.
Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:07:11):
This podcast it's really about just, you know, wanting to
get people to be interested in this stuff again.
Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
And it doesn't mean that you have to.
Speaker 9 (01:07:17):
Believe in ghosts or Bigfoot or anything like that. But
there's so much mystery in the world around us. And
because so everybody, you know, like we talked about are
you guys talked about earlier, everybody's so focused on that
screen or you know, trying to keep up with the
Joneses on TikTok or whatever, that they're forgetting that there's
a whole world out there that's worth exploring. And by
the way, that world is so much more exciting than
anything you're going to see on screen. And you know,
(01:07:37):
we hope that by putting these podcasts out, we can
you encourage people to put the screen down, go outside,
go for a walk, go for a hike through the woods.
Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
You never know what you're going to see.
Speaker 9 (01:07:47):
I mean, hundreds of years ago people got on wooden
ships and sailed across the world, Like how insane is that?
And now we can't even get kids that get off
the damn couch half the time. It's a crazy world
we're living in. So with us it just happens to
be ghosts and and Bigfoot and these crazy you know,
cryptozoology things. Those are the catalysts that we use to
hopefully get people engaged and get them to find that curiosity,
(01:08:08):
you know, that childlike curiosity that's still in all of us,
I think, just begging to come out.
Speaker 7 (01:08:12):
Ghost City Tours, as I understand it, places a premium
on telling historically accurate stories, right, So, I mean maybe
there's a little bit of embellishment there, but you're not
just making stuff up. I mean, these are accurate representations
of what happened in the past, right. Yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:08:30):
I think that that's one of the biggest reasons Ghost
City Tours has been so successful I mean when we
started this company, I mean, the average ghost to our
company in America, it was like a fifty seventy five
thousand dollars era company, you know, single market. You know,
they weren't really run by business people. They were run by,
you know, somebody who enjoyed giving tours of their city.
But when we came on the scene, you know, because
(01:08:50):
I was a history buff, it was very important to
me to make sure that we did the research. So
we spent a lot of times in you know, historical societies.
We knocked on doors and talked to the people who
lived in these homes that were rooms or to be haunted,
and we got the real story. And you know, the
first couple of years, we took an incredible amount of
hate from other companies because we're essentially crapping on all
over their stories. You know, for years they've been telling
(01:09:11):
people that zombies reading babies and graveyards like it's a
stupid nonsense, And we came on to the scene and said, no,
that is not what happened. But by the way this happened,
and it's actually more interesting. We essentially ruined their tours
for them. But I feel that, you know, for somebody,
anybody that is telling other people's stories, you know, especially
people who are no longer with us. You know, these
(01:09:33):
quote unquote ghosts, we owe it to them to tell
the truth. It's not fair to somebody that is no
longer with us to be able to make lies about
them or spread misinformation about them in an effort just
to make your tour spook here it there's nobody any
good and in my opinion, it's very disrespectful to the
city and then the culture as well. You have to
put that effort, extra effort in to find out the
(01:09:54):
truth and make sure that you're telling the truth. You know,
we are no fans of revisionist history here at all.
Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
Tim ghost City Tours. You ever want to swap ghost stories,
let me know.
Speaker 8 (01:10:04):
Where do people find you if they want to reach out?
Speaker 9 (01:10:07):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to learn more about
ghosty Tours, it is just go citytours dot com. You know,
same for all the social platforms as well. If you
go to any of them, you'll find ghost City Tours.
So if you just looked at my name, Tim Neillan,
you're probably gonna find the Reptop Conservation Center stuff first,
especially on Instagram. But that's me great.
Speaker 8 (01:10:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (01:10:23):
Stay tuned for more Passage to Profit with Secrets of
the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up next.
Speaker 11 (01:10:28):
I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of
lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.
If you've been involved in a serious car, truck, or
motorcycle accident, or injured at work, you have rights and
you may be entitled the money for your suffering. Don't
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(01:10:51):
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find out today for free what kind of compensation you
may be entitled to Call the legal helpline right now.
Speaker 10 (01:11:14):
Eight hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight
hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight hundred
four nine two seven oh one four. That's eight hundred
four nine two seventy fourteen.
Speaker 7 (01:11:28):
It's Passage to Profit. Alicia Morrissey is our programming director
at Passage to Profit and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist.
You can scroll to the bottom of the Passage profitshow
dot com website and check out her album and Now All.
Speaker 8 (01:11:45):
This Time or Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So Mark Weinstein,
author of Restoring Our Sanity Online, do you have a
secret you can share?
Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
The secret is really, first of all, everybody has a
good idea. So if you have a good idea, you're
not unique, okay, because almost everybody I've ever met my
life has a good idea. You know it just this
is what happens, and we think of, oh wow, wouldn't
it be great after a while, here's a good idea.
Turning that idea into reality is magic. Is whether the
(01:12:18):
rubber meets the road. It's the hardest thing you'll ever
do in your life. But here's the key. If you
decide to take your good idea or somebody else's a
good idea, whatever, wherever you get it and turn it
into reality and you believe that you're right, then it
really is a good idea, and it really is a
marketplace for it. And also that it has some sort
of ethical groundings so you can really feel good about it.
(01:12:41):
I always like that piece. Just make sure you feel
good about it. Doesn't have to be ethical, I mean look,
you know, I mean ethical, like you don't have to
be a do gooder, but make sure you know you're
actually providing value a service or a product. Don't stop.
Here's the thing. So many people are gonna tell you
you can't do it. Here's why, here's why you don't
know why to do it. You know, whatever it is,
(01:13:01):
it's wrong, it's about it, whatever it is, as long
as you believe, go for it and keep believing and
stay positive. And if you it was your best friend
or your mother or whoever it is, or your partner,
even if they're naysayers. If you believe, stay the course
and do your best to surround yourself with people who
also believe or nurture and support give you positive reinforcement. Now,
(01:13:27):
when you stop believing and stop doing it, so that's
also important. Don't be so invested in your ego that
only can't stop because people or the world, everybody's gonna
look at me like no, no, no, no. The smartest
thing you can do when you stop believing. If you
stop believing is to stop because that clears the space
for something else to come in and everything you've learned
(01:13:49):
will be of value.
Speaker 8 (01:13:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:13:51):
That was great, A great secret. So Gary Cohen with
co two coaching dot com, what's secret would you like
to share?
Speaker 4 (01:13:59):
I don't know that it is a secret, but it's
something that I've learned along the way that I share
with all my clients, which is leaders need to walk
the ridge line. And on one side of that ridgeline
is humility, and too much humility doesn't work if you're leading.
But the opposite side is ego, and too much ego
nobody wants to follow you. And so the trick, and
(01:14:21):
it is a trick, is to stay the ridge line
because when things are really not going well, you want
to stay in that humble place. You're never going to
get the teams to come along with you and be engaged.
And when things are really working well, and I've seen
in a way too many people, including myself, when it's
(01:14:43):
just like you're just kicking it, your ego takes over.
I can do no wrong, and that's usually when all
the wrong begins. So for me as a coach, I
am constantly working with my clients to stay on the
ridge line. And this is how it shows up. When
the ego show up, I become stupid as the coach.
And what I have to say, I'm a lifelong learner,
(01:15:05):
so I know more today than I did yesterday. Okay,
because I just keep devouring more information. So how is
it that I became stupid overnight with this client?
Speaker 8 (01:15:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
It's because their ego took over.
Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
And I have to tell them this before it happens
because otherwise they don't listen. So early on in the coaching,
I say this is going to happen eventually, and I
want you to know what's happening to you because you
will not want to hear anybody when the ego takes over.
Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
So it's it's.
Speaker 4 (01:15:36):
Kind of staying in that balanced place of just knowing
you're enough, not too much, not too little enough.
Speaker 8 (01:15:44):
That is great advice. Again, I get so much out
of this showman that I love doing it.
Speaker 7 (01:15:49):
Okay, I'm feeling inspired.
Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
Okay, Tim meelan those citytours dot com. What is a
piece of advice a secret you can share?
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
It's developing a bright mindset, you know.
Speaker 9 (01:15:59):
I see a lot of these younger kids coming into
the entrepreneurial business space, and they have this idea that
you know, it's going to be easy and.
Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
People will give them things and everybody.
Speaker 9 (01:16:08):
Will tell you how great you are, and when that
doesn't happen, they feel beaten, and that's really sad because
the reality is any of them could do it.
Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
I mean, if I could do this, you guys can
do it. Come on.
Speaker 9 (01:16:18):
But you know, I think the secret is developing the
proper mindset where you know you can be a proper
business owner and handle the challenges that are going to
come your way, because you are going to have days
where you want to quit. You are going to have
days where you feel like a failure, and you're also
going to have days where you feel on top of
the world. And if you live in either one of
those zones, you know it's not good for you. So
(01:16:40):
if there was a secret, I think it would just
be developing that proper mindset that sets you up for success,
you know, long term success, not necessarily success today and
not necessarily failure today, but work on who you are
as a person and be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
That's created fund Richard, your heart, your heart law patters
trade my copyrights.
Speaker 8 (01:17:01):
What is your secret?
Speaker 7 (01:17:02):
Well, I'm just going to kind of tap into what
everybody else has said here. I think you want to
cultivate a mindset of decisiveness and continuous action.
Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (01:17:13):
You need to keep the energy level high. And I
find lots of times when I'm down in the dumps,
I'm not feeling my best. Lots of times it's because
I've been putting off decisions that i need to make.
So it's not always the best time to make decisions
when you're down in the dumps. But if you can
make a few small ones, I feel like sometimes that
(01:17:34):
helps me get my momentum back, and then gradually I
can climb out of those dull drums and get back
to an efficient level of operating. And I think, no
matter what, staying busy and keeping yourself in it also
has benefits because it's hard to have negative feelings if
you're focusing on getting the next task done. So I
(01:17:56):
find those kinds of things to be the best for
self regulation.
Speaker 5 (01:18:01):
Excellent and my secret Elizabeth gearhartcre Media Studios. I feel
like if I've been successful in anything in some ways
I have, I constantly want to learn more and I'll
never feel like I know it all. I understand now,
Like these vampire movies, why these vampires when they live centuries,
they get so rich because you.
Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
Get to learn so much, you're stuff with it, and
I just feel like there's so much more I want
to learn, don't I don't know.
Speaker 7 (01:18:25):
There are a lot of rich vampires out there, and
how that you mention it.
Speaker 5 (01:18:28):
For me, it's just been this thirst for learning new
things and knowledge and it really this AI stuff, It's
really helped me a lot because I've been able to
do things so much faster.
Speaker 7 (01:18:37):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well that's it for us. Passage to
Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in thirty
nine markets across the US. In addition, Passage to Profit
has also been recently selected by feed Spot Podcasters database
as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to
(01:18:57):
the p too P team, our producer Noah Flah and
our program coordinator Alisha Morrissey, our studio assistant Rusicatpusari, and
our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabarees. Look for our podcast
tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked
in the top three percent globally. You can also find
us on Facebook, Instagram, x and on our YouTube channel.
(01:19:20):
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 Law is here for
your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find us
at gearheartlaw dot com and contact us for free consultation.
Take care everybody, Thanks for listening, and we'll be back
next week.
Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed
The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is a massive incursion on humanity.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I really started it as a joke.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
You know, it's really easy when you know nothing.
Speaker 5 (00:17):
I'm Richard Dearhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard
some snippets from our show. Do you want to know
more about starting your business?
Speaker 6 (00:24):
Stay tuned, ramping up your business.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
The time is near. You've given it hard, Now get
it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Speaker 8 (00:45):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law,
and I have my own startups and podcasts.
Speaker 7 (00:51):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and
their business ventures. Has big data collection gone too far?
Our future guest today is Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur,
social networking pioneer, and privacy expert. And if you think
social media has gone too far, listen up, because he's
(01:13):
got a plan to fix it and it might just
blow your mind.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
And then we have two really great speakers as well,
Gary Cohen, Oh my gosh, and I got it.
Speaker 8 (01:21):
I really wonder how he did this.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
He went from a startup making four thousand a year
to being listed on Nasdaq.
Speaker 8 (01:28):
I mean, come on, who does that?
Speaker 7 (01:29):
Is impressive?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:31):
And then okay, this is one of my favorite things.
Tim Neeland has ghost city tours. He has a few
cities and they take people on ghost tours.
Speaker 8 (01:41):
That is so much fun.
Speaker 7 (01:42):
We sedt do that.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Every time we went on vacation with the little kids.
We went and saw Robert and Florida. He stole Richard
tat the Robert Doll. Yeah, I've heard of it us.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
We are big ghost tour fans.
Speaker 8 (01:51):
And later on we'll hear from our friend Alicia Morrissey,
a great jazz singer, and we've got Secrets of the
entrepreneurial mind. Really about today's.
Speaker 7 (02:00):
Show, and speaking of ghosts and haunted things, I guess
we wanted to tell a story today about black cats.
It's getting close to Halloween and this ties into the
whole concept of up selling. So this is a business
related topic.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
It's story time now.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
So we had three cats and one of them died
unexpectedly and I was just crushed. And they're mostly my cats,
so memorial dy week, and I said to Richard, let's
go to the shelter.
Speaker 7 (02:30):
Innocently, she said, let's just go to the shelter and
see what we see and just look.
Speaker 8 (02:35):
They won't let us lead with cats today.
Speaker 7 (02:36):
But just look.
Speaker 8 (02:37):
Yeah, wow, what happened When we got.
Speaker 7 (02:40):
There, we saw a bunch of cats.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Well there was a little We weren't even looking for
a kit and we're looking for something little.
Speaker 8 (02:46):
And he stuck his hand out through the bars of
the cage and grabbed Richard right.
Speaker 7 (02:51):
So started usually it's the lawyers with the handout, right,
But we're.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Like, well maybe one an older cat. They're like, well
maybe you want kittens, Well one kitten. So they put
us in a room with two little kittens, two differently.
Speaker 7 (03:05):
And they were both black, and the way they played together,
we thought they knew each other. They were just like
taking off all over the room, full of energy, bouncing
up and down, and we were like, oh, we can't
really separate these two little young ends from each other.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Like, well, the second one is half price, so instead
of coming home with one cat, we came home with two,
and now we have a lot of ease.
Speaker 7 (03:26):
So was the first up cell was Elizabeth getting us
to the cat shelter in the first place. The second
upsell was getting us to take two cats instead of one.
So if you can weave those ideas into your business,
you'll be an amazing success.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
It also had really good product if you want to
call an animal product, which isn't exactly the right thing
to say, but they had something we really wanted and.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
We went for it. So now it's time for your
new business journey. Two and five Americans are starting their
own business, or at least thinking about starting their own business.
And we have a question for our panel, what's the
one mistake every new entrepreneur should avoid? But you had
to learn the hard way, so let's start off with Mark.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
The first mistake that I really want to flag for
everybody is don't be utterly unflexible when it's time to
move the business into something else. Let it morph. Make
sure you let it morph if that's where the market
is telling you it needs to go. Don't be stuck
with your righteousness.
Speaker 7 (04:28):
Gary. The one mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid, but
you had to learn it the hard way.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think i'd augment Marx, which is it's going from
telling to asking, not just to be informed, but to
move people forward.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So stop telling, start asking.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
Tim. What is the mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid,
but you had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
You don't have to do it all yourself. There's always
this hesitation.
Speaker 9 (04:52):
To involve others and this need to do it yourself,
and I have fallen for that mistake. If you're in
this for a long haul, more likely not going to
be able to do it by yourself. So you might
as well become comfortable bringing people into your company early
on and help learning how to rely on them to help.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You achieve what you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 7 (05:09):
Absolutely, My advice is is if you're hiring, make sure
that you check references, you do background screenings, because hiring
is hard enough.
Speaker 8 (05:17):
It's amazing things will turn up in a Google search
that don't turn up on a background chet.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
That's right, check their Facebook page. And speaking of social media,
it's making us distracted, manipulated and divided and the people
who built it know exactly what they're doing today. Tech
entrepreneurs and privacy pioneer Mark Weinstein, one of the original
inventors of social networking, pulls back the curtain on big tech,
(05:44):
surveillance capitalism, and why your online life is being sold
to the highest bidder. So he's here to reveal how
we can finally take back control and restore sanity to
the web. So welcome again, Mark. He's the author of
the book Restoring Sanity Online, which I did have a
chance to check out before the program. I think it's
(06:05):
definitely worth a read if you're concerned about privacy. So
tell us a little bit about surveillance capitalism and what
it's doing to us, what.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Are the reasons why? And this is the Web two
world that we still live in. It's surveillance capitalism works
in other words, on your phone, on your laptop, wherever
you are. The data ecosystem, they the proverbial day. They
know everything you're doing, who you're talking to, where you are,
what you're saying, what your topics are, what your emotions are,
what you're thinking. And this is now supercharged by AI.
(06:37):
So you know when you look me at a news feed,
whether it's on TikTok or x or install or Facebook
or wherever you are. That news feed is also designed
purposefully to addict you, to keep you there as long
as possible. And the data is stunning. Right, kids are
spending five to seven hours a day on social media.
(07:00):
And we all see this. Either we know a young
person or we know an older person. Well, a year ago,
maybe wasn't so hucked, but now with the advent of
AI supercharged algorithms, we're stuck. And what are these algorithms doing.
They're manipulating our thoughts, our opinions, our purchase decisions, our votes,
(07:21):
and so this is a massive incursion on humanity. And
I'm one of the guys who love social media. I'm
one of the guys who invented social media, one of
there's about one hundred of us, and the inventor of
the World Wide Web, Sir Tim berners Lee, has endorsed
my book, as has was you know, the great wa
was co founder of Apple. Both of these guys say
(07:42):
it's a vital read, it's a must read. And in
the book we talk about Okay, well we've got this
giant mess, but can we fix it or are we dooing?
Because remember, now social media is causing democracy to falter.
So we've got a lot of issues here, Richard, and
there's a lot going on.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And then the aspect of bots and trolls, because right now,
you know, even in the wake of all of the
political things that are going on right now, no one's
talking about the huge perpetration by bots and trolls, paid
for by nefarious entities, by nefarious countries, and they're millions up.
It's well documented and by the way, my book has
(08:23):
over four hundred you know, footnotes, because it's important to
find credible sources for anything that you're saying today. This
is also really important and we've got to get to
a much better world around fact checking and questioning the facts.
You know, was well documented a few years ago that
half of Villon's followers were bots and trolls, half of
(08:45):
Biden's followers or bots and trolls. Because you know, we're
talking about tens of millions of followers, half of them
bots and trolls, and what they're doing also to us
in our regular news feeds for us the rest of
us is the perpetration. Remember the Russians and the Chinese
would like nothing better to disrupt this democracy. Now they've
had plenty of time, they've had a good decade of
(09:09):
fomenting disagreement. And remember the backbone of democracy is disagreement,
always has been, not hatred. We don't really hate each other.
But this perpetration where we you know, most of these
people aren't even real who we think we're having an
argument with online. So there's a lot to fix now.
There's a lot of things that are coming up to
(09:30):
fix this stuff. There's a lot we can do.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur, social networking pioneer, and privacy expert,
author of Restoring Our Sanity Online. I'm just kind of wondering, like, well, okay,
so all of the sounds really crazy and it doesn't
sound good, but what does it really harm? I talk
with my kids about these topics, and they're like, oh,
(09:55):
loosen up, Dad, it's not a big deal. So what
if somebody knows what my favorite potato chip is, They're
just gonna send me ads and maybe a coupon, and
so it'll work out for me. So why get so
worked up about this?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Such a good question? And remember this is the same
thing as you know, surveillance capitalism is now about fifteen
or seventeen years old. So back in twenty ten, twenty eleven,
people thought it was cool, right, just like kids today,
it's no different. It's like, oh wow, they know what
I want. They know you know, the kind of potentip
(10:28):
to kind of shoes, they know what I like. That's great,
but it doesn't stop them. So we know all the
body shaming, We know all the issues that young women have,
young girls have suicidal thoughts there, you know, all this
stuff going on because they're made to feel as though
there's something inappropriate or inferior about them, so they have
(10:48):
to buy this product or that product. You know, we
have a breakdown in how democracy functions and in our
ability to critically think. We've got to be able to
ascertain who is pushing this information into my news feed? Why,
what's the purpose? Wouldn't it be nice? They said, well,
here's something being put in your news feet because it's
trying to affect your vote or your health care decisions
(11:11):
or you know, your financial decisions, and it's coming from
this or that. So Richard, there's a lot at stake. Heare,
and unfortunately a lot of our kids don't realize it. Also,
remember kids up to the age and through the age
of thirteen, and this goes back thirty years ago to
the present. Whatever they see advertisements they think are telling
(11:33):
the truth. That's just how it is. And now we
have to really fast forward our critical thinking teaching so
the kids can now because in the old days it
was just a potato chip ad but now they're being
fed so much information, more than ever in the history
of humankind.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
I agree one hundred percent with you. The algorithms show
us what we want to see, reinforce our beliefs. The
other side is evil, and then you go meet somebody
who doesn't believe the same.
Speaker 8 (11:59):
Way you do.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
In that not evil, They don't look what the devil,
but the algorithms or whomever is controlling that. So that's
the other thing is we blame it on the algorithms.
It's not the algorithms, it's the people that are controlling it.
There's people behind this, But my question is how do
you stop it?
Speaker 8 (12:14):
And then I'm just wondering, if some kid is getting.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Bullied online, could you like program your own bot to
go back after the bully year so they breathe your
kid alone.
Speaker 7 (12:25):
There you go fight fire with fire.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Right, Look, this is this is a great question. I
talk a lot about good AI and this is an
AI you know, centric conversation today also, and I have
a chapter on AI, you know, because AI is really
creepy with these relationships that we're developing personal relationships with
our AI friends, and the AI friend is just slurping
(12:48):
data and pushing that up into the data ecosystem. So
we can't yet, you can't yet program a personal AI
to then sort of filter everything. But here's what we
can do. We talked about because the book is very
much a recipe for the future, not a you know,
regurgitation of the past. There's enough of books talking about
(13:08):
the past. We've got to move into the future to
what I call Web four because Web three doesn't work,
and most people don't even know Web three is and
don't worry about that right now. And part of that
is for our kids is user ide verification. Now, this
is a very I'm one of the world's leading privacy guys.
I've been against this for years. But for our children
(13:28):
on social media, not for marginalized people, not for whistleblowers.
We protect the anonymity of those people. But for our
kids and social media sites and that includes you Tube,
and that includes you know, TikTok, and that includes you
know Insta, and that includes even x. Where our kids are,
we've got to make sure that anybody who's connecting to
them is a verified minor. And if there's no grown
(13:53):
up or bot who is fraudulently perpetrating and manipulating them,
we've got to We've got to start with a good
verification system. There's some countries look at this bay in Australia.
We've got to protect our kids first. That's the first
place we go.
Speaker 7 (14:11):
We're with Mark Weinstein and market's been great talking with you.
Quick question, what are some of the biggest privacy threats
that people aren't even aware of?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Well, first of all, and this goes back to the
advid of surveillance capitalism, when companies like Facebook and Google
realize that the way to make a boatload of money
is to look peak over your shoulder at everything you're
doing and then to target you with you know, ads
and all this stuff.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
For example, if we have like a fire TV or
Google TV, is that collecting data from us and then
sending it back to Amazon or Google the programs we
watch and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
All the time. Look if your phone is on and
you're logged into Instagram or any meta product, or you're
logged into Google, whatever it is, your phone is constantly listen.
Anybody can try this at home. Talk about somebody I
haven't seen in a long time. Just have a conversation,
not on your phone, just like with some friends around
the phone, and then wait a day or two or
(15:12):
thirty minutes or ten minutes, and see how long it
takes for you to get some kind of suggestion about
that friend or about that product, whatever it does you
want to talk about. Just check it out, everybody. This
is real. You're being monitored all the time. It goes
into the data. It's called the data ecosystem, and that
data is shared across platforms. And yeah, this is a
(15:33):
massive problem. So you know what's going to happen soon
is data portability. The Adventure of the Web is working
on this data interoperability so soon and this is all coming.
You'll have a pod, You'll you will actually control your data.
This is really what the future is. And this is
likely to be part of the FTC Federal Trade Commission
(15:54):
settlement with meta. We're going to start to see some
kind of data interoperability where you'll be able to pull
your data off a platform, you'll be able to control it,
et cetera.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Gary cohen Mark, I'm wondering about compulsion. So this idea
of how AI has led us to addictive behaviors with
our phone and other media. I know my dog recognizes
it because when I'm on my phone, my dog walks to.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
The other room. It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
But I also feel a compulsion, you know, as a
sixty three year old, and I have a compulsion to
look at my phone. Right, So we know other addictive forces.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
In our lives.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Are you know, numerous, how we medicate ourselves. What's happening
on that front to help people with it as an
addiction versus just ah, it's clever. I'm kind of hooked
in because there's a big distinction between those.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Gary, it's such an important question and it's not just having.
First of all, we know that the screen is addictive,
and it's addictive to a toddler. So if you have kids,
you know right now the first two years, don't let
them see the phone, don't let them see a TV.
This is and there's certain countries now that are actually
mandating that. But Gary, even as a sixty three year
old guy, you're addicted more than ever. And here's why
(17:12):
this is the AI conversation. Previously, it was the algorithms
that were manipulating your newsfeed because they could plug into
the data ecosystem and adjust and adapt. But AI is
adjusting and adapting to what you're doing in nanoseconds, anticipating
your next thought, anticipate you know, whatever is being paid
for to be pushed into your news feed. That's gonna
(17:33):
keep you hooked, and also serve who's ever paid for that?
This is why you're hooked more than ever before. What
can we do. We've got to find a way to
flag when AI is operating, and also what you can do.
I'm sorry, man, but you've got to be proactive. You
actually have to start to put your windows of time in.
You've got to lock it down. You gotta put the
(17:55):
phone away at meals, you've got to put the phone
away at night. You're gonna have to lock down the
phone and create your own sort of channels for when
it's permissible for you to be on the phone as
for an hour and just be there and then you've
got to put it down. You're gonna have to this one.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
Yeah, it's possible that we could go too far with
all of this data surveillance. For example, I think you
mentioned during your Ted Talk Mark, which is great Ted
Talk by the way, you should look up Mark on YouTube,
which admittedly is a social media channel. But you talk
about China, for example, and how they have these surveillance capabilities,
(18:32):
and they actually create rewards and punishments based on people's
online behavior and if you say the wrong thing about
the government, you could be put in jail, or your
kid could be denied access to a top school. And
they're actually being much more direct about manipulating the population.
(18:54):
And you'd like to think that we would never get
to that point. But this is a boiling frog situation.
Speaker 8 (18:59):
People are getting fired for speaking their minds on social
media right now today.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
It is ironic because we're the country of free speech.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
We were the country of Yeah, we were.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
But one thing I'd like to do, and I know
this doesn't really work for everybody. I like to try
to confuse them. So I put my wrong birthday into Facebook.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
So you get birthday cards on the wrong day. I mean,
oh my god, that's fooling them.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Yeah, and I try to confuse my Kindle by ordering
books all over the spectrum.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
I thought that was just because you had a lot
of different interests.
Speaker 8 (19:31):
I don't know. I think that you're right there.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Just we have to take more downtime, Mark, right, I mean,
I don't know what the other solution is.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Well, well, you know you know that about six hours
this and it's amazing you can tolerate that much time
before there's a significant increase in the number of people
who are depressed. But that six hour marker is when
we see it with kids and grown ups. If you're
spending six hours a day on media, and that could
be your phone, your computer, TV, you've got six hours
(20:00):
a day, you're much more likely to be headed straight
into some kind of depression, a longer term depression.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
On fascinating discussion, we have to take a commercial break
where with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online,
we'll have more passage to profit right after this ip
in the news coming up as well as the AI
round Table and also Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. You
don't want to miss that, and don't forget to experience
more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram,
(20:31):
x and YouTube, or by subscribing to our podcast anywhere
that you get your podcasts. Just look for the Passage
to Profit show on any of these platforms. We'll be
back right after.
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No back to passage to profit once again.
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Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Our special guest, Mark Weinstein and he has written a
book called Restoring Our Sanity Online. He's talking about social media.
He was a social media pioneer. He was one of
the first inventors of a social media platform.
Speaker 7 (22:58):
At fourteen patents.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
He has fourteen patents and very smart guy, obviously, And
what we wanted to shift the conversation to. We talked
up a little bit about the evils of how we're
being manipulated and data mined by our social media use.
But we use it for work and we get business
from it. So we don't personally post I post on
my own LinkedIn, but otherwise we have assistants who post
(23:20):
for us on social media every day. So how do
you reconcile that with the data mining manipulation.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know, listen, that's a great question. I mean collectively,
if you are running a business, you need to reach
out and find your customers. This is different than the
you know, the ethical breakdowns of social media. You know
around you know, manipulating people's votes and things like that,
you know, body shaming, all these things that go on.
(23:48):
If you're a business, then you ought to be very
savvy about how you spend your marketing dollars. And today
you've got to spend it digitally. You can't, you know,
nobody runs the newspaper add anymore really or something like that.
You've got to be there and so you've you've just
got to be savvy about that. That's that's I think
a very appropriate use as a business person. You know,
(24:10):
you want to you want to find your customers. Now,
the way best way to use social media, in my
opinion for business is grassroots though where you're actually not
paying but you have some social media expert who can
find the people that are likely to want your product
or service and can find them in a grassroots way.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And that's by themselves being engaged in social media in groups,
you know, in thought with thought leadership and finding like
minded people. And that's really because you know, you want
to create a little movement, right, you want to you
want to create this sort of niche of what I
call ambassadors, because really you're looking for the ambassadors, the
(24:54):
people that are gonna love your product, and you're broadcast
going to where it and show it, you know, going
to use it, talk about it. That's where the rubber
meets the road.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
And I hate to say this, mark, but I'm going
to say it anyway, you can use chat jipt to
do that. Because I run a meetup group and we
had somebody who had to attend a funeral and could
make it. So I did ask it to check LinkedIn,
and it brought up somebody who I knew who had
spoken at my group before, and he came and spoke
at the group last night. And I wouldn't have really
(25:24):
thought that way unless i'd use chatjpt to scour LinkedIn
for me.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Let's see AI. Remember, AI isn't inherently good or bad.
It's the application of AI that that makes it either
nefarious or a good guy and helpful. So that's a
very good use. We all use AI, you know, I
prefer to use it, you know, in searches, right because
if you're using an unbiased AI and you want to
(25:50):
search on a product like what's really the best mattress
for this application or whatever it is, you know, AI
is really helpful right now a nan o seconds. So
I think that's a very good application. And we've got
here's the challenge in modern society. In the history of humankind,
technology runs ahead of anybody's ability to regulate or understand
its impact on the human condition and that's always going
(26:13):
to be the case. So now we're always playing ketchup.
So here we are playing ketchup around AI. Now we've learned,
you know, how nefarious it can be and also how
awkward it is. There's there's AI stuffed animals for our
kids and then they make the kids feel good. But
you know what they're doing. They're just collecting data because
they're connected to the web, and they're reporting back and
(26:33):
they figure out what to say next. This is this
is you know, we're in the middle of quite a conundrum.
But AI can be AI can also root out the
bad AI. AI can find a bot control. You know,
it's interesting. We're now going to be cat and mouse
AI versus AI.
Speaker 8 (26:51):
We are.
Speaker 7 (26:52):
Yeah, so we're with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our
Sanity Online. Mark, you were one of the early your
creators of social networking, starting back in the nineties. Maybe
you could tell us a little bit about what motivated
you to get into this business and how you got started.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You know, first of all, anybody who remembers in the nineties,
it was like it was incredible. This was called the
new economy and the idea, and we had email back then.
Don't kid yourself. We had email in the nineties, especially
in the mid to late nineties, and it was just
as ghastly as is now. In other words, it's one dimensional.
We misunderstand, we misinterpret, we're stuck on it, We're waiting
(27:35):
for the next you know. All that. So the idea
of you know, getting new technology, and at the time
it had a ten year old nephew, because you want
to listen to a kids who to listen to your
kids and other kids. And my nephew and I took
a hike around a lake on a family vacation and
we started to id eight you know, uncle Markey, wouldn't
it be great if we could? And we had this
conversation ten minutes into what. I looked at my nephew
(27:57):
who said, you know, I'm going to start a company
and give you ten percent of it. I went back
home at this point to Albuquerque. I started a company
and back then you're putting the newspaper interview people at
your dining room table. I hired engineers and graphic designers
who couldn't design pages that would load because no one
had done it before. Now at the same time, there
(28:18):
were several companies when we were in data, they were
in beda, Superfamily dot com and Superfriends dot com were mine.
They became PC magazine top one hundred sites three years
in a row worldwide. But it was an exciting, amazing time.
And this is again you know, so my tip here
is like, always pay attention to what your kids are doing.
I mean, the idea that we were all wearing ripped
(28:38):
jeans day or our kids are come on, Nick, came
from you know, our generations, the guys that are older
on this broadcast, like me and Gary and Tim and
you know, Elisabeth and Richard. You know, it was just
cool when then jeans finally got worn out that they ripped,
you would wear them. Now you buy them ripped.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
I was just too cheap to buy new pants. Mark
has just been an amazing Can you tell us where
people can find you?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Thank you. The book Restoring Our Sanity Online is audio,
It's Kindle, It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any bookstore
that you like. It's been in the airport stores for months.
The book, by the way, is highly entertaining because I
have hilarious stories. So you can find me. Mark Weinstein
Inventor dot com. You can write to me market, restore
theweb dot com and you can find the books everywhere.
(29:25):
So and thank you everybody. It's a great conversation and
the book has a lot of what you can do
right now for yourself, for your kids, what we can
do right now, and what's coming right.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
Well, the pleasure has been all ours.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
Yeah, I'm going to get that for us and the kids.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
Now, we have been talking about social media and the
goods and the evils, and we're going to now segue
into a round table on AI. So this is our
AI roundtable. So I'm going to ask everybody how they're
using AI, and I'm I'm pretty sure nobody here is
using it nefariously.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
I guess we have to ask and find out.
Speaker 8 (30:02):
Mark, Why don't we start with you? What is one
way you're using AI in your business?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You know?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
And for everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I've written about AI a lot and how to regulate it.
On Fox in particular, they carried a couple of my
pieces and did some interviews. But I think AI for
search and unbiased you know, AI is a really great
way to use it. I still like to be creative,
so I'm not using it for writing or you know,
but when we're researching, you know, also people that I
(30:28):
want to connect with. I think it's a great but
also just researching a product. You know, we're always buying
things or buying things on Amazon. It's one thing to
look at their reviews, but it's another thing just to
have an unbiased AI so to give you some input
on you know, what's up or you know, or what's
going wrong with the transmission in your car or things
like that. In the old days, we'd have to like
(30:49):
get get you know, get the search results and then
sort of thumb through them. We'll you know, scroll and
figure out which one it works. But the AI search
is much more effective on you right now, what mattress
to buy, what's wrong your transmission, whatever it is. So
I enjoy it that way.
Speaker 8 (31:05):
That's a great way to use it. So Gary, how
are you using it?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah? I think.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
And listen to this conversation over the last half hour,
it brought me back to a memory when I was
at the Espen Institute and we were talking about right
when AI was being rolled out publicly, the large Language Model,
and it struck me that as a kid growing up
with severe learning differences, that there was always a connection
(31:34):
between what I wanted the output to be from me
and what it actually was. And it almost puts tears
in my eyes to.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Talk about this.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
That now, the ability to express yourself by thinking about
what the bullets are that you want to express and
then asking AI to write it and you actually see
the words and you're like, but that's what I was thinking.
And I think for so many and you know, so
(32:04):
many bients have ADHD, which often has other disabilities or
challenges for them and their learning that helping them see
how using AI to help express themselves more fully and
completely is such a huge, huge win. The way I
(32:27):
do it in my business is all my calls are
have a transcript. Those transcripts are run through cat GBT
and with a prompt it says this is what we covered.
It goes back, it looks at all my past conversations
with that person and says, this is where we're on track,
this is where we're off track. These were the people
(32:48):
we talked about, These are the things we're going to
talk about in the next call based upon that, And
what are the psychological underpinnings or coaching underpinnings that came
out in the call?
Speaker 11 (32:58):
Right?
Speaker 8 (32:59):
That is really art. That's a great way to thank
you him. How are you using it?
Speaker 9 (33:04):
I'm actually using AI in a way that probably not
a lot of people are. We're in a phase right
now where we're building AI into everything that we're building,
So whether we're talking about ghost city tours and I
know that's kind of what I'm known for, but where
it's really helped me in a sort of business sense
is the reptile conservation center that I own, and what
we do is we breed some of the world's most endangered,
(33:26):
critically endangered reptiles, and by building AI into the software
that runs that facility, because if you can imagine, every
animal has thousands of data points over the course of
its life, and they're not all easy to breed, and
because there's not many of them left, it's important that
we figure that out. So by building our software or
more appropriately building you know, open AI into our software
(33:48):
where it's able to go into the database and analyze
thousands of data points on these animals, it's valuable insight
into not only keeping these fragile animals alive, but what
is working to make sure that we're able to produce
the next generation's animals. Now I know that's not what
you brought me on to talk about. But on Goo City,
we're doing something very similar where we're able to bring
(34:08):
in you know, AI to analyze all the data points,
whether it's the data points from Google Analytics or you know,
search console or a booking software, I mean, you name it.
We have all that data running through open AI right
now and it's making connections that there is no way
we have been able to make on our own. I
mean even I like to think I have a pretty
good brain, but there's no way I'm connecting all these
(34:29):
data points. So, you know, we're not really using it
from a perspective of you know, hey, Tatch GBT, write
me this or you know, go research this or whatever,
even though there's.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
A ton of value in that. What we've been doing.
Speaker 9 (34:40):
Is using it to analyze data to help us make
better business decisions.
Speaker 8 (34:44):
I wonder if, folks, if we're able to talk to ghosts.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
Well, there's supposed to be software out there that lets
you communicate with your pets, right and then maybe so
maybe maybe a ghosts are the next step.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
I don't know, I might be surprising them want the too.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
There is something interesting that we've been working on you know,
running actually electromagnetic energy readout readouts through AI.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
And helping it make sense of it. It's actually really
interesting stuff.
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Oh wow, our daughter would be fascinated. She loves the
ghost stuff.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
I love all these different uses.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
This is just I feel like I'm doing a social
experiment every week on the show. Everybody's using it for
different things.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
It's really awesome.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
Well, I had an interesting conversation this morning with somebody
in Europe and they were talking about how their company
used AI. She was asking me about how AI is
working in the States, and so of course I followed
up with the question. They seem to be taking a
slightly different tax, so they're implementing AI into their operations,
(35:46):
but they're not firing people. They're saying, look at if
we can be more productive with you know, the more
routine tasks, and that frees our team up to go
out and spend more time interacting with customers and more
time getting business. And it was really interesting to hear
this because in the US it seems like a lot
of the dialogue is around cutting jobs.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:09):
Recently, I guess sales Force laid off about two hundred
and fifty engineers, and they were very open about the reason.
They just said, you know, AI can do your job now,
so don't let the door hit you on the way out.
This company was taking a different approach and saying we
can use it to recapture other resources that can be
redirected in positive ways for the company. So I thought
(36:32):
that was really interesting take. And you know you would think, well,
of course, right, But I think our mindsets here, you know,
perhaps groomed buy social Media have kind of put this
into our heads that AI is going to be a
job destroyer, and you don't have to think that way.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I was just wondering if, as the market shows up
against that company, whether that will hold true. In other words,
if they can need more value that way, yes, but
oftentimes the market has something to say about it. In
other words, once their competitors catch up with what they're
doing on AI, then all of a sudden, margins get destroyed.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
And now, yeah, that's a valid point, and it could
be that it works out that way, but you know,
at least instead of reflexively going to the cost cutting,
they're going to look for ways to redeploy their team.
And I also think that if a company can provide
(37:33):
incentives for people to adopt AI. It'll get adopted faster
because people can be resistant to adopting it, and if
they see that their future is still somewhat secure, then
they're more likely to implement it quicker compared to a
company that says, well, your job's going to be gone
after you do this implementation right, and so you may
(37:55):
actually make more progress, at least in the short term,
more quickly. But good point.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
I just used it this morning, so I'm going to
give my most recent use. I had my meetup group
last night and we talked about to at GPT five
what else an AI versus human and copyrights in AI?
And our next meetup is going to be October twenty first.
We do it hybrid in the studio here and also online,
and it is going to be from Mike to Market
(38:21):
building a podcast that lasts that's October twenty first in
the evening here on the East Coast. But the way
I used it this morning, I took the we record
everything on Zoom. I took the Zoom recording, I opened
up the script editing software, edited.
Speaker 8 (38:36):
Some stuff out. I don't know if I should say it.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
We got hacked in the meeting and somebody put a
porn video in the middle of it.
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Oh my god, it's so we were able to stop it.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
So I had to go edit that out before I
gave the video on anybody else.
Speaker 8 (38:49):
So I did that in the script, got the tracks.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
Were they wearing fitbits?
Speaker 8 (38:54):
I've tried not to look so uh.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
But but then I can take the train from the
script and I can throw it into chat GPT, which
I've kind of trained to talk like me. Some people
have really trained their chat gpt to speak in their voice,
and I can say, do a summary email of this
meetup that I can send out to everybody that came,
including all the links that people's podcasts that they mentioned,
all the software sites they mentioned that would have taken
(39:18):
me hours. This takes me an hour meeting. Only the
hardest part is that it's a long meeting, and the
slowest part is downloading the data and then getting the
brected transcript and video back.
Speaker 8 (39:30):
So I love all these uses.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
I love all these creative uses, and I really feel
like the people that are going to come out on
top of this are going to be the people that
use it in super creative ways and in their everyday
life too, to just speed things up.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
So I don't think we're all going away.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
Not yet, hopefully not yet. We need to take a
commercial break, but we'll be back with more passage to
profit right after this.
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Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 7 (41:57):
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So subscribe to the Passage to Profit Show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and on the iart app. Excellent time for IP in
the news. Neil Young speaking of older people. I think
Neil Young's seventy nine. I don't think it looks that great.
(42:40):
I'm looking at a picture of him here. But anyway,
he started a band, a new band called Chrome Hearts.
They've been playing for about a year, and it turns
out a company, a clothing company called Chrome Hearts, is
now suing him for trademark infringement, alleging that customers are
going to be confused if they see Neil's band and
(43:03):
their clothing.
Speaker 5 (43:04):
I want to confuse a sweater for an old guy
playing guitars. There's different categories of trademarks right right.
Speaker 7 (43:12):
The clothing company says that because they've worked with celebrities
in the past. That's enough of a bridge between what
they're doing and what Neil is doing personally. I kind
of wonder if they're not just doing this for the
publicity associated with filing a lawsuit. Evan knows that would
never happen.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Isn't there some sort of thing with trademarks too, Like
if somebody like Coca Cola, you couldn't do a close
trademark to Coca Cola because they're so well known.
Speaker 7 (43:38):
They're famous. Right, Once you've become famous, you get a
broader set of rights. But companies can use the same
trademark as long as they're in different industries. So one
of my favorite examples is Delta faucets and Delta Airlines.
You wouldn't confuse. Delta Faucets is a place where you
could build an airline ticket, and you wouldn't think that
Delta Airline sells fawcets. So the likelihood of confusion is
(44:01):
pretty low. But I guess the moral of the story
is that we want to pay attention to the goods
and services associated with the trademark, and we'll be keeping
track of this Neil Young lawsuit and advise accordingly. But
just because you have the same name doesn't mean you
necessarily have a good, strong case for infringement, and so
(44:21):
if you have an idea or invention that you want
to protect, contact us at gear Heart Law. We work
with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process
of obtaining patents, trademarks, and copyrights. And if you want
even more information, you go to learn more about patents
dot com or learn more about trademarks dot com. You
can book a free consultation with a gear Heart Law attorney,
(44:44):
or you can download your free Entrepreneurs Quick Guide to
Patents or trademarks.
Speaker 8 (44:49):
And now it is time to find out. I have
been waiting patiently to find this out.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
How Gary Cohen took a four thousand dollars a year's
startup in to a Nasdaq listed company.
Speaker 8 (45:02):
Welcome Gary, Please spill the beans.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Spill the beans. Well, you know, it's really easy when
you know nothing. My business partner, Rick Diamond, and I
started with each of us put in two thousand dollars.
And the idea came to me when my roommate asked
me to spy on his competitors at a trade show
in New York because I was vacation there I'm like, okay,
you know, I wasn't doing anything. I was out of school.
(45:26):
So I spent a day walking around this trade show
and he was selling the first computer systems. They were
called predictive dialers, which predicts when a person's going to
be free on the line, so that the productivity of
that caller who's placing the call is double, right, So
huge innovation in the call center industry. And so by
(45:47):
the end of the day I had made up this
story about, yeah, I'm going to the call center business,
and I'm like, I sold myself. And I called a
childhood friend. He and I had been talking about going
into real estate or something, and I said I think
I have a better idea for us, and he goes, well, okay,
we don't know anything about real estate. We don't know
(46:07):
anything about call centers. So that was the launch, literally
just made up in the air one day, and then
we started using my roommate's technology telephony. We knew nothing
about the industry, and there were competitors out there, but
they knew nothing about the technology. So that gave us
such leverage on them that places like Done in Bradstreet
(46:28):
and IBM signed up with us just because they didn't
understand how we could be so productive and so not
knowing about what we were doing. And eventually United Healthcare
hired us because we didn't know what we were doing,
because they had a hiring freezon and they said, you know,
we're going to use you, and we're going to use
(46:48):
you because you have no bad habits in this call
center business. And at the time was telemarketing, right, and
we're going.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Yep, that's true.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
We have no you know, bad habits because nobody trained us.
We're going to train you to do it well. And
we were insourced and we brought hired people, brought them
over to their offices and they taught us how to
do it. And it was one step after another. And
as we grew, we needed money and we didn't have any,
so we went to the government for money. How do
(47:16):
you do that? We had jobs, lots of jobs, and
so the first town offered us two hundred and fifty thousand,
and we did the deal. And then the next town
we got a little smarter, and then it was a
million dollars to open up a call center. But this
was the trick. I just thought it was funny. We
started getting frustrated that we get this money from the
(47:37):
government through economic development and we'd have to pay taxes
on it.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Which seems so insane.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
The government's given you money and then they well.
Speaker 7 (47:44):
It's like that says then social Security payments makes no sense.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
So we started getting clever, which was we had them
leased back everything we needed. So we'd have them buy
the computers and we'd lease it for a pretty much
a dollar a year until five years goes up, and
then we'd buy for a back from them, so the
community would actually hold the assets while we were using
(48:09):
them and depreciating them, and then we didn't need to
collect that money. And so that's how we built our
call centers. Canada gave us fifteen million dollars to open
three of them, because by that time we were hiring
thousands of peeks in a year, about twenty two hundred people.
Of that, there's like a segment of the population that
rotates really quickly. You know about high turnover of employees,
(48:33):
but that's like twenty five percent of your people are
turning over like five hundred percent, eight hundred percent. Well,
the rest are solid in there there for years.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
So I want to ask you, how do you react
now when you get a call from a telemarketer.
Speaker 4 (48:47):
When I left the business, and I was one of
the lead lobbyists in the industry against anti telemarketing legislation,
I put myself on the do not call list, that
do not mail list, I mark spam and all of
the calls I don't take them. And I also know
that when you get a pause and somebody's not there
is the predictive dilating system not working. The last thing
(49:09):
you want to do is hang out because it triggers
the next call. It'll call you back in about twenty
minutes because you'll hang it up. So it's better to
wait and then say take me off your list.
Speaker 7 (49:19):
So did telemarketers always have scripts or did that evolve
over time?
Speaker 4 (49:25):
When we entered bighead scripts and then they had the
flip books and stuff.
Speaker 7 (49:29):
That was all manual.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
We were automated, so our scripts were as they went
through the script, yes, no, maybe, and then it would
change the dialogue. Nowadays, I understand it's been twenty years
since I've been in the business, but they're using AI.
It's prompting based upon the algorithm of how the customer
or prospect is speaking and it's giving a really custom
(49:53):
response for the agent, and I'm hearing that even the agent.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Could BAI as well.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
I just was at a meeting in which this group
was showing me large group facilitation, but before the team
came into the meeting, they had an AI call each
of the people, do an hour interview with each of them,
and take those transcripts, compress them, find the intelligence that
they were looking for, and feed it back to that group.
(50:23):
And so they're basically doing the same thing in the
call center world.
Speaker 7 (50:26):
Wow, So is it unrealistic to think that companies calling
on prospective clients would use AI then as a way
to target the right clients. And then I guess, in
line with what you're saying, also developed maybe a custom
script for certain classes of perspective clients.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Yes, And going to what Mark was talking about, I
was hearing Sam Altman talk about how the ways to
secure your bank accounts and all of that information is
really not secure if you think void is the way,
because now with the deep fake, people can clone your voice.
(51:05):
So if you could do that to break security, you
could certainly do that to place a phone call with
an AI. That caller sounds just like anybody you want
them to sound like.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Yeah, there's software programs that are pretty easy to use.
So right now you're doing co two coaching, and here
it says that you're helping executives clear their minds, break
your obstacles, and achieve extraordinary success. That's really cool. Can
you tell us a success story? Is someone you worked
with without saying their name?
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (51:34):
So many one comes to mind. This person was burned out.
They were building an incredible software company, facing all the challenges,
you know, hiring the wrong people, all of that, And
first it was how do I help that person find
their time? How do I get them to get their
(51:54):
time back? Because when people are burned out, it's usually
because they don't have time and they haven't figured out
how to move the work away from them. Moved to
a leadership position versus a doer position, and often this
is a transition. Entrepreneurs have a hard time making. They're
so good at doing they have a hard time giving
(52:15):
it up. And so we moved him into that leader role,
hired talented people around him, and talked about all the
things he needed to know about developing that. He started
doing strategic planning with our firm and we built a plan.
He said, in one day he made forty five million
dollars more from that work that we did, which clearly
(52:38):
didn't cost him forty five million dollars to set there
sold the company. I can't say for the numbers, but
it's hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars and all
within five years of that meeting saying I'm done. I'm
burned out, because at that point he just like, tell
me how I can get this thing sold. So it
was helping him find his own strength that he had,
(53:00):
and then using that strength to help him find the time,
organizes business in a way that makes sense to him
and all the other employees and the great team that
he surrounded himself with, and then created a way to
position the company for somebody else to want it.
Speaker 7 (53:19):
We're with Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of
CEO two coaching. Sounds like he's getting pretty good results
so far, so Kudo's there. One of the things that
we talked about on our pre call was that the
concept of how do I keep people on the hook
versus putting me on the hook. I think this dovetails
nicely with your story about moving from an entrepreneur role
(53:42):
to a leader role. But where are some of the
techniques that an entrepreneur can practice to implement that.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
I'm working on.
Speaker 4 (53:50):
A book called On the Hook and the Idea. It's
an allegory and it talks about how somebody walks into
your office right and says, this is what I'm going
to do, and they're very excited and they tell you
you ask all the questions you have to assure yourself
that they actually know what they have in mind and
that it's clear. But it's not to convince you. It's
(54:11):
just to make sure they're clear headed about what they
want to do. Most management learning is you give them affirmation. Yeah,
that sounds great, Oh that's a great idea. However, it
takes away the hook. It puts you on the hook
and takes them off the hook. Why does that happen
Because as soon as you start giving them affirmation on
(54:34):
something that hasn't actually accomplished anything yet, you're basically saying
I agree with you. And once you agree with them,
you've become on the hook because if it doesn't work out,
they're coming back to you and they say it didn't work,
but you agreed that this was the right way to
do it.
Speaker 7 (54:49):
So let me ask you what's the difference between that
and giving authorization to move forward? How do you untangle
those two ideas.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
Yeah, thanks for the It's true, and this is a
place that leaders have a hard time, particularly at the
beginning stages of entrepreneurship. What you find though, is most
companies have role and job descriptions for people. Those are
the things that have already given that authority to that employee,
and somehow it's overlooked by both parties, the boss and
(55:21):
the employee, And so you don't need to give them permission.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
They have it.
Speaker 4 (55:25):
You granted it when you hired them, when you gave
them the job description, when you gave them the roles
of authority that they have in their role. So when
they come in, they're actually looking for your permission, and
what you don't want to do is give them that permission.
Speaker 3 (55:40):
You want to.
Speaker 4 (55:40):
Say, Wow, you sound like you've thought this all through,
you're really excited about it, and I'm looking forward to
seeing how it all turns out, and they.
Speaker 7 (55:50):
Go ah ah, But.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
They don't want to accept it because they know they
feel the tension that now is on them. But I
thought what would you do if you were in my place?
Might be the comment, Well, it is not my place.
I hired you to do this job. You're really talented
and really smart, and I believe in you and I
trust you. So I'm looking forward to seeing the results
(56:16):
that you accomplished by executing unders. When they come back
and it's done really well, you go, oh, that's fabulous,
and think about it. In their heads. They're not thinking
you gave them permission anymore. Now they can actually take
in the appreciation.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
Of what you gave them.
Speaker 4 (56:33):
And I'm telling you, almost every it's very hard for
me to think of a company I've coached over within
three hundred companies over the last twenty years, it's very
hard to find one that didn't have this issue. It's
amazing how it's just insidious. Nobody's really labeled it in
the management world. It just sits there because and then
(56:55):
they come up with all these fancy ways to trap
people as opposed to having them feel that sense of
ownership and burden of what it means to feel like
an owner of a business, which everybody on this call
knows that feeling.
Speaker 7 (57:10):
It's an interesting technique. And so you've tried this.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
It's really fun.
Speaker 4 (57:14):
Well at first, what I'll say is I'm writing the
book because it takes so long to convince a client
how to do it, meaning like it's simple. All of
you probably get what I'm saying. Right now, everybody on
the show is listening. They go, oh, I get it,
I get it good. It's so quick falls out of
your head because it's so instinctual.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
I want to be positive.
Speaker 4 (57:36):
I get the kind of visceral high from giving advice.
I'm a coach. I love advice giving. Please write. However,
I know I'm a coach and I'm not leading the person.
I'm in an instructive teaching coaching role, and that's very
different than a leadership role.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Okay, And so what I found.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
Was, over a course of a year, people will make
this adjustment, and before long they have so much time
on their hands because what happens is people no longer
come in for permission because they clearly know they're not
going to get it. And so all those people who
are lining up at your door aren't it your door anymore.
They're just doing the work and they're owning it. And
you're starting to see the results, and we see that
(58:20):
in most all of our clients, and they eventually get it.
The trick is, how do you get it quicker? How
do you really realize that when you're pointing the finger
about why are they always coming to me, it's because
you keep giving the advice. You keep wanting to answer
the question. This simple, silly one is somebody comes into
(58:40):
your office and says, hey, I can't figure out how
to use this printer, and you're like, really, that's why
you're coming to see the CEO of the business. You
can't and you do know how to fix it, by
the way, as the CEO, because you had to do
it at some point, especially if you're starting small. But
instead you say where else might you find that? They go, well,
I could ask chat GPT good next time. You don't
(59:04):
have to bring that to me, right, It's it's just
a silly example, but it's like, there are so many
places where people can find the answer other than you,
and they're responsible for it.
Speaker 3 (59:15):
So make them responsible, have them feel the hook. Attention
the ownership.
Speaker 7 (59:20):
Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of CEO two Coaching.
Speaker 8 (59:24):
Thank you Gary, great advice, Gary, How do people find you?
Speaker 4 (59:27):
CEO two coaching, dot com typing, Gary B.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
Cohen, that'll get them to me.
Speaker 8 (59:32):
Okay, great, thanks.
Speaker 7 (59:34):
Passage to Profit with Richard Analysabeth per Heart.
Speaker 8 (59:36):
Now it is time for ghost stories.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
Yay.
Speaker 5 (59:40):
I told Tim Neeland he has to tell a ghost
story of the show.
Speaker 8 (59:44):
Welcome Tim. Tell us about your ghost tours business, gus
Be Toys.
Speaker 9 (59:48):
It's the world's largest walking tour company. You know, every
year we do about a million people on our tours
and then twenty eight markets in the United States. I
think we're in right now, just a lot of fun
and it's really evolved as a co over the last
couple of years into something that I once again enjoy.
Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
You know, when I first started Ghost City.
Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
Tours, I really started it as a joke.
Speaker 9 (01:00:07):
I mean, come on, ghost tours like that can't really
be a real business, right, But what happened, you know,
I met two guys. I moved to Savanta, Georgia, and
I met two guys who were really great tour guides,
but they were horrible business people. And up until that
point in my life, I had spent the last ten
years running a marketing and web design company. So I
had this idea, like, hey, I'll start a company. I'll
(01:00:28):
build this thing up. You guys can work for me,
and you're going to make more money working for me
than you do on your own. And they did for
some reason. They stilln't really totally understand why. It was
just something I was doing in my spare time and
in the second month in business where I think, you know,
maybe I was running a couple of Google ads at
the time, or you know, maybe some Facebook ads. Maybe Yeah,
we did you almost two hundred thousand dollars in that
(01:00:49):
second month without even trying. And you know, at the time,
our profit margins were like eighty seven percent, So I thought,
maybe there's something to this.
Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Yeah, you know, it just took off from there.
Speaker 9 (01:00:59):
And you know, at first, what GHO City Tours was,
it was a way for me to help some friends
and you know, occupy my time. But it was also
out of necessity. You know, at that point in my life,
I was almost homeless. You know, I was living in
a hotel room that the manager of the hotel knew
me and let me stay in that hotel room for
about two months. So for me, it was really just
I don't want to live this way anymore. You know,
I grew up without a lot. You know, I appreciate
(01:01:21):
everything my parents did, but it was my time to
get rid of that bad Hay I didn't finally turn
my life around and get something going, and that's where.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Ghost City Tours came from.
Speaker 9 (01:01:29):
So, you know, it's morphed over the years quite a bit,
the point where I think we've been in business fourteen years.
You know, at the beginning off, I'm being completely honest,
I just needed to make money, you know, I needed
to feed myself. You know, I had to take care
of my family. But now I'm to a point where
the money. Don't get me wrong, I love money, or
we all do, but that's not so important to me anymore.
(01:01:51):
What I came to realize about Gho City Tours is that,
you know, this is a company where we can help
people get in touch with what I consider like what
people should actually be, and how we do that is
by sparking their curiosity.
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
You know.
Speaker 9 (01:02:06):
One of the biggest compliments I can get, which is
also our number one complaint about our company, is there
was too much history on this tour. There weren't enough ghosts,
you know, there's two They talk too much about the
city's culture and all this stuff. We really wanted to
hear ghost stories, and they do. But to me, it's
more important that we get people out in the world
and we open their eyes to something that maybe they
weren't thinking about before. You know, maybe we made them
(01:02:28):
come to well, we didn't make them come to New Orleans,
but they came to New Orleans. We made them see
the city through a new light, truly appreciating the culture
and the people and all those things that made a
city like New Orleans where it is. And then they
go buy a book, which to me is the biggest compliment.
If I can get somebody to go buy a book
about anything once they're done with a ghost tour and
want to learn more about the world around them. You know,
(01:02:49):
earlier were talking about social media. One of the best
ways to avoid all that is to get off of it,
you know, go out explore the world, you know, take
your family for a walk. And that is what you know,
Ghost City Towards has really become over the years, it's
been our vehicle to help pull people away from those screens,
get them out into the real world and find that
(01:03:10):
curiosity that human beings innately have, you know, and if
it takes ghosts as the catalysts to help them get
out of that zone.
Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
That's that's what we do.
Speaker 9 (01:03:18):
It's been very enlightening to see the impact that just
ghost wars can have on people.
Speaker 7 (01:03:23):
So Tim, I have to ask, do you believe in ghosts?
I do?
Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Uh, there's there's no way that I can't.
Speaker 9 (01:03:29):
Part of what ghost City does is we haven't done
them for a few years, but we hold national nationwide
ghost hunts where we'd find famous Lejuanta locations across the
country and we would rent them for a few nights.
You know, think you know Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio or
the Saint Augustine Lighthouse. People would come from across the
country and you know, ghost hunt for us for two nights.
So I have seen some stuff that would blow your mind.
(01:03:51):
I have heard stuff, you know, everything from shadow figures,
you know those figures that look like people, you know,
shadowy people walking across hallways, to full body apparitions where
you know, we're walking in abandoned hospital with a group
of people and some semi transparent lady walks out in
front of us with the hospital gown on and walks
into a wall.
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Now, those things don't happen very often.
Speaker 9 (01:04:09):
Don't let the TV shows fool you. If you see
a full body apparition, that's pretty damn rare. But you
know that the idea of being able to go into
these haunted places and actually talk and I know it
sounds crazy, especially if you don't believe in these things,
but to be able to talk to them and have
them answer questions for you, there's no way I can't
believe in ghosts after all that.
Speaker 7 (01:04:26):
Did you start out not believing in ghosts and just
really thought of it as more entertainment and then became
convinced or did you always have this spirituy side?
Speaker 9 (01:04:35):
I thought it was stupid, like seriously, Like you, I
grew up not far from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I've always
been a huge history buff, you know, especially when it
comes to the Civil War, and I would go to
the Gettysburg Battlefield very often to you know, hey, I
want to see where this guy was and you know
where this happened. And one night I was hanging out
a place that a lot of people are familiar with
in Gettysburg. It's called Devil's Done, and I was hanging
(01:04:56):
out with a park ranger buddy of mine. Off to
our right, there's a field called the Triangle, and at
night that night there were people walking through the field
of flashlights. So I got excited because I thought people
I was gonna see people get busted for rellic cutting,
so that's what I thought. And he's like, no, they're
looking for ghosts. And I remember in my head that's
just stupid. But once again, curiosity, I think it is
so important to people. And so a couple of times later,
(01:05:17):
I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go to Walmart.
You know, I'd seen those goofy ghost hunting TV shows.
So I went out, bought a voice recorder, went to
the middle of the field called the weed Field, and
I just stood there at night. And when you do
this for the first time, you feel like a total buffoon.
Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
I'm literally standing in the field in the middle of the.
Speaker 9 (01:05:32):
Night holding a voice recorder saying, can you please tell
me your name?
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
But I got a name and it was as clear
as day. It was a guy.
Speaker 7 (01:05:39):
It said George.
Speaker 9 (01:05:40):
And I know, you know, it wasn't an artist, wary
paraduay kind of thing, like. It really was a man
saying George. And at that moment I'm like, holy crap,
like there is something to this, like what is like?
And to this day I still can't explain it, but
there was something to it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Weird stuff happens.
Speaker 9 (01:05:55):
We're able to document it, and I wouldn't call it
an addiction, but I would say that if you're somebody
who is really driven by trying to understand the world
around you, and you grab onto mysteries and you want
to understand it, this whole ghost thing is a really
great topic to dive into because the reality is, I
don't think we're ever going to figure out what is
going on or what they truly are.
Speaker 8 (01:06:16):
It's pretty cool. And I got to tell you I
do have a ghost story. Oh yeah, so our house. Well,
first of all, our house when we first moved in,
the guy had died there before us, and we would
always hear footsteps in the attic. We called them one
Ie Roger, remember that. But then this one day, I'm
wondering if ghosts come and go because we had this
cat she's gone now, and she was in the foyer
(01:06:38):
and she was talking to somebody.
Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
She really was she was going where I'm ready, I mean.
And this went on for like five minutes and like, checkers,
who are you talking to? And I swear she was
talking to a ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
She might have been.
Speaker 8 (01:06:52):
So have you changed your market a little bit?
Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
Because I see you start a podcast a little bit
ago and you're doing a lot of YouTube shorts. And
what's really cool is like you're asking other people, like,
tell me about your haunting, tell me about your ghosts
or the ones I've been seeing our bigfoot. Yeah, we
love Bigfoot. Richard has bigfoot pajamas.
Speaker 7 (01:07:09):
I'm bigfoot slippers too.
Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:07:11):
This podcast it's really about just, you know, wanting to
get people to be interested in this stuff again.
Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
And it doesn't mean that you have to.
Speaker 9 (01:07:17):
Believe in ghosts or Bigfoot or anything like that. But
there's so much mystery in the world around us. And
because so everybody, you know, like we talked about are
you guys talked about earlier, everybody's so focused on that
screen or you know, trying to keep up with the
Joneses on TikTok or whatever, that they're forgetting that there's
a whole world out there that's worth exploring. And by
the way, that world is so much more exciting than
anything you're going to see on screen. And you know,
(01:07:37):
we hope that by putting these podcasts out, we can
you encourage people to put the screen down, go outside,
go for a walk, go for a hike through the woods.
Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
You never know what you're going to see.
Speaker 9 (01:07:47):
I mean, hundreds of years ago people got on wooden
ships and sailed across the world, Like how insane is that?
And now we can't even get kids that get off
the damn couch half the time. It's a crazy world
we're living in. So with us it just happens to
be ghosts and and Bigfoot and these crazy you know,
cryptozoology things. Those are the catalysts that we use to
hopefully get people engaged and get them to find that curiosity,
(01:08:08):
you know, that childlike curiosity that's still in all of us,
I think, just begging to come out.
Speaker 7 (01:08:12):
Ghost City Tours, as I understand it, places a premium
on telling historically accurate stories, right, So, I mean maybe
there's a little bit of embellishment there, but you're not
just making stuff up. I mean, these are accurate representations
of what happened in the past, right. Yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:08:30):
I think that that's one of the biggest reasons Ghost
City Tours has been so successful I mean when we
started this company, I mean, the average ghost to our
company in America, it was like a fifty seventy five
thousand dollars era company, you know, single market. You know,
they weren't really run by business people. They were run by,
you know, somebody who enjoyed giving tours of their city.
But when we came on the scene, you know, because
(01:08:50):
I was a history buff, it was very important to
me to make sure that we did the research. So
we spent a lot of times in you know, historical societies.
We knocked on doors and talked to the people who
lived in these homes that were rooms or to be haunted,
and we got the real story. And you know, the
first couple of years, we took an incredible amount of
hate from other companies because we're essentially crapping on all
over their stories. You know, for years they've been telling
(01:09:11):
people that zombies reading babies and graveyards like it's a
stupid nonsense, And we came on to the scene and said, no,
that is not what happened. But by the way this happened,
and it's actually more interesting. We essentially ruined their tours
for them. But I feel that, you know, for somebody,
anybody that is telling other people's stories, you know, especially
people who are no longer with us. You know, these
(01:09:33):
quote unquote ghosts, we owe it to them to tell
the truth. It's not fair to somebody that is no
longer with us to be able to make lies about
them or spread misinformation about them in an effort just
to make your tour spook here it there's nobody any
good and in my opinion, it's very disrespectful to the
city and then the culture as well. You have to
put that effort, extra effort in to find out the
(01:09:54):
truth and make sure that you're telling the truth. You know,
we are no fans of revisionist history here at all.
Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
Tim ghost City Tours. You ever want to swap ghost stories,
let me know.
Speaker 8 (01:10:04):
Where do people find you if they want to reach out?
Speaker 9 (01:10:07):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to learn more about
ghosty Tours, it is just go citytours dot com. You know,
same for all the social platforms as well. If you
go to any of them, you'll find ghost City Tours.
So if you just looked at my name, Tim Neillan,
you're probably gonna find the Reptop Conservation Center stuff first,
especially on Instagram. But that's me great.
Speaker 8 (01:10:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (01:10:23):
Stay tuned for more Passage to Profit with Secrets of
the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up next.
Speaker 11 (01:10:28):
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lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.
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Speaker 10 (01:11:14):
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hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight hundred
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four nine two seventy fourteen.
Speaker 7 (01:11:28):
It's Passage to Profit. Alicia Morrissey is our programming director
at Passage to Profit and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist.
You can scroll to the bottom of the Passage profitshow
dot com website and check out her album and Now All.
Speaker 8 (01:11:45):
This Time or Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So Mark Weinstein,
author of Restoring Our Sanity Online, do you have a
secret you can share?
Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
The secret is really, first of all, everybody has a
good idea. So if you have a good idea, you're
not unique, okay, because almost everybody I've ever met my
life has a good idea. You know it just this
is what happens, and we think of, oh wow, wouldn't
it be great after a while, here's a good idea.
Turning that idea into reality is magic. Is whether the
(01:12:18):
rubber meets the road. It's the hardest thing you'll ever
do in your life. But here's the key. If you
decide to take your good idea or somebody else's a
good idea, whatever, wherever you get it and turn it
into reality and you believe that you're right, then it
really is a good idea, and it really is a
marketplace for it. And also that it has some sort
of ethical groundings so you can really feel good about it.
(01:12:41):
I always like that piece. Just make sure you feel
good about it. Doesn't have to be ethical, I mean look,
you know, I mean ethical, like you don't have to
be a do gooder, but make sure you know you're
actually providing value a service or a product. Don't stop.
Here's the thing. So many people are gonna tell you
you can't do it. Here's why, here's why you don't
know why to do it. You know, whatever it is,
(01:13:01):
it's wrong, it's about it, whatever it is, as long
as you believe, go for it and keep believing and
stay positive. And if you it was your best friend
or your mother or whoever it is, or your partner,
even if they're naysayers. If you believe, stay the course
and do your best to surround yourself with people who
also believe or nurture and support give you positive reinforcement. Now,
(01:13:27):
when you stop believing and stop doing it, so that's
also important. Don't be so invested in your ego that
only can't stop because people or the world, everybody's gonna
look at me like no, no, no, no. The smartest
thing you can do when you stop believing. If you
stop believing is to stop because that clears the space
for something else to come in and everything you've learned
(01:13:49):
will be of value.
Speaker 8 (01:13:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:13:51):
That was great, A great secret. So Gary Cohen with
co two coaching dot com, what's secret would you like
to share?
Speaker 4 (01:13:59):
I don't know that it is a secret, but it's
something that I've learned along the way that I share
with all my clients, which is leaders need to walk
the ridge line. And on one side of that ridgeline
is humility, and too much humility doesn't work if you're leading.
But the opposite side is ego, and too much ego
nobody wants to follow you. And so the trick, and
(01:14:21):
it is a trick, is to stay the ridge line
because when things are really not going well, you want
to stay in that humble place. You're never going to
get the teams to come along with you and be engaged.
And when things are really working well, and I've seen
in a way too many people, including myself, when it's
(01:14:43):
just like you're just kicking it, your ego takes over.
I can do no wrong, and that's usually when all
the wrong begins. So for me as a coach, I
am constantly working with my clients to stay on the
ridge line. And this is how it shows up. When
the ego show up, I become stupid as the coach.
And what I have to say, I'm a lifelong learner,
(01:15:05):
so I know more today than I did yesterday. Okay,
because I just keep devouring more information. So how is
it that I became stupid overnight with this client?
Speaker 8 (01:15:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
It's because their ego took over.
Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
And I have to tell them this before it happens
because otherwise they don't listen. So early on in the coaching,
I say this is going to happen eventually, and I
want you to know what's happening to you because you
will not want to hear anybody when the ego takes over.
Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
So it's it's.
Speaker 4 (01:15:36):
Kind of staying in that balanced place of just knowing
you're enough, not too much, not too little enough.
Speaker 8 (01:15:44):
That is great advice. Again, I get so much out
of this showman that I love doing it.
Speaker 7 (01:15:49):
Okay, I'm feeling inspired.
Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
Okay, Tim meelan those citytours dot com. What is a
piece of advice a secret you can share?
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
It's developing a bright mindset, you know.
Speaker 9 (01:15:59):
I see a lot of these younger kids coming into
the entrepreneurial business space, and they have this idea that
you know, it's going to be easy and.
Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
People will give them things and everybody.
Speaker 9 (01:16:08):
Will tell you how great you are, and when that
doesn't happen, they feel beaten, and that's really sad because
the reality is any of them could do it.
Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
I mean, if I could do this, you guys can
do it. Come on.
Speaker 9 (01:16:18):
But you know, I think the secret is developing the
proper mindset where you know you can be a proper
business owner and handle the challenges that are going to
come your way, because you are going to have days
where you want to quit. You are going to have
days where you feel like a failure, and you're also
going to have days where you feel on top of
the world. And if you live in either one of
those zones, you know it's not good for you. So
(01:16:40):
if there was a secret, I think it would just
be developing that proper mindset that sets you up for success,
you know, long term success, not necessarily success today and
not necessarily failure today, but work on who you are
as a person and be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
That's created fund Richard, your heart, your heart law patters
trade my copyrights.
Speaker 8 (01:17:01):
What is your secret?
Speaker 7 (01:17:02):
Well, I'm just going to kind of tap into what
everybody else has said here. I think you want to
cultivate a mindset of decisiveness and continuous action.
Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (01:17:13):
You need to keep the energy level high. And I
find lots of times when I'm down in the dumps,
I'm not feeling my best. Lots of times it's because
I've been putting off decisions that i need to make.
So it's not always the best time to make decisions
when you're down in the dumps. But if you can
make a few small ones, I feel like sometimes that
(01:17:34):
helps me get my momentum back, and then gradually I
can climb out of those dull drums and get back
to an efficient level of operating. And I think, no
matter what, staying busy and keeping yourself in it also
has benefits because it's hard to have negative feelings if
you're focusing on getting the next task done. So I
(01:17:56):
find those kinds of things to be the best for
self regulation.
Speaker 5 (01:18:01):
Excellent and my secret Elizabeth gearhartcre Media Studios. I feel
like if I've been successful in anything in some ways
I have, I constantly want to learn more and I'll
never feel like I know it all. I understand now,
Like these vampire movies, why these vampires when they live centuries,
they get so rich because you.
Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
Get to learn so much, you're stuff with it, and
I just feel like there's so much more I want
to learn, don't I don't know.
Speaker 7 (01:18:25):
There are a lot of rich vampires out there, and
how that you mention it.
Speaker 5 (01:18:28):
For me, it's just been this thirst for learning new
things and knowledge and it really this AI stuff, It's
really helped me a lot because I've been able to
do things so much faster.
Speaker 7 (01:18:37):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well that's it for us. Passage to
Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in thirty
nine markets across the US. In addition, Passage to Profit
has also been recently selected by feed Spot Podcasters database
as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to
(01:18:57):
the p too P team, our producer Noah Flah and
our program coordinator Alisha Morrissey, our studio assistant Rusicatpusari, and
our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabarees. Look for our podcast
tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked
in the top three percent globally. You can also find
us on Facebook, Instagram, x and on our YouTube channel.
(01:19:20):
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 Law is here for
your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find us
at gearheartlaw dot com and contact us for free consultation.
Take care everybody, Thanks for listening, and we'll be back
next week.
Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed
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