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):
See where you might be able to build something that's
a little different than the market leaders.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I didn't have to change my cash flow. I didn't
have to work harder.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
There are no answers inside of your office.
Speaker 5 (00:20):
I'm Richard Dearhart.
Speaker 6 (00:21):
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 7 (00:27):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Ramping up your business?
Speaker 8 (00:31):
The time is near. You've given it hard, Now.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Get it in gear It's Passage to Profit with Richard
and Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do
marketing for Gearhart Law, and I have my own startups
in podcasts.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Are you one of the two and five Americans wanting
to start your own business or already a business owner?
Stay tuned. The show is about starting and growing your business.
Welcome to Passage to Profit. The Road to entrepreneurship where
we learn why and how ordinary people just like you
started and grew their businesses. And we also talk about
the intellectual property that helps protect your innovations. And with
(01:16):
us today is Joe Lopez from Ancora Advisory, a global
firm specializing in internationalization.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
And then we have Arnold Tsu with g reminders. Oh
my gosh, if you've ever used Calendly, this is like
if Callendly had fifty thousand kids. It's amazing all the
stuff you can do with this app.
Speaker 7 (01:35):
It's really great.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
And then we have Brett Kessler with the money Multiplier.
Let's keep this multiplication theme going.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
I'm definitely down for multiplying money. Yeah, I'm definitely jabro Reerrect. Well,
are you one of the two and five Americans wanting
to start your own business? Lots of times new business
owners ask other experienced business owners what challenges have you
seen in your journey? So I'd like to ask our
guests what unforeseen challenges have you seen when you were
(02:03):
starting and growing your businesses. Let's start with Brett challenges.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
You know, there's a lot of noise out there that
comes along and people are telling you, like different things,
So you really need to keep an open mind about
what people are telling you. I mean, I'm always a
big believer that God gave me two ears and one mouth,
so I should be listening twice as much as I talk.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
I'm still still working on that, Joe, what do you
think about that? What was a particular unforeseen event that
happened in your career that threw you off.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I was in the middle of a very large startup
transaction between a established company and their factory in China,
and I thought, oh, gosh, what a great thing for me.
I'll be in the middle, and I'll hold the money
in the middle between the transaction, make my little cut
on the side. Well, gosh, not only did I go
from being the collector, but now I'm the paye. So
(02:55):
I was getting pressure on both sides of the fence.
And this would go with any startup as far as
suppliers and incoming payments. So all of a sudden, I
learned really quickly that you can grow business fast with revenue,
but my gosh, payables and your margins are important.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Too, Arnold. What's the unforeseen situation that you had in
your entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Everything I'll echo what some of the guests have to say,
but I mean, no plan goes according to plan, right,
And I think as an entrepreneur you constantly are sort
of pivoting and you're making hopefully quick decisions with half data,
but hopefully those decisions tend to be reversible.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Joe, you're not in your head there. Do you have
something to add to that?
Speaker 9 (03:38):
I do it? Maybe think of a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
One is, where you're starting a business, There's a couple
of pieces of advice that I've gotten over the years.
One is that you can create a product and try
and sell that into a market, right and create a market.
Speaker 9 (03:52):
Or look at the market itself.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
And see what it needs and then create a product
for that. I've always found it's much better to find
the fit in the market or your product, and in
that way, there's already a built in customer base for
you to sell to.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
That kind of makes sense, Brett, what do you think?
Speaker 9 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So, even though a lot of us are in sales, right,
the thing is is, I don't like to consider myself
a person that sells or a salesman. I like to
consider myself as I am finding a solution to somebody
else's problem, and a lot of times they may not
even know that they have a problem or need that
solution yet. But we're bringing it just to light to
(04:32):
We're saying, hey, here's the problem, and we have the
solution that can solve this for you. That's great.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
So, Elizabeth, I think my big mistake has been thinking
that other people will think like I think. And I
started this video directory for business coaches, thinking h being
on video.
Speaker 7 (04:50):
Everybody's on Zoom, It's no big deal.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Everybody's comfortable on video, and they'll all do these little
thirty second commercials for themselves. And I could put together
this great website, and even people that teach people to
be on video and teach people about business don't want
to do videos of them.
Speaker 7 (05:07):
I misjudged that part of the market. I did a focus.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Group on people that would watch the videos. They were like, Yeah,
that'd be pretty cool to see a video somebody before
I call them up. But getting people to do the videos,
I misjudged that that was unforeseen.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
But I still think it was a good idea and
I do think its time will come. Your answers were
all amazing. I learned a lot, so thank you for sharing,
and now it's time to go to our future guest,
Joe Lopez from Ancor Advisory. He's a global business strategist
and he's a startup, growth and exit expert. You're talking
to us from just outside Zurich, Switzerland. Tell us what
(05:41):
you've been up to and what do you've got going
on for the future.
Speaker 9 (05:44):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, I just had a successful exit from a startup
I created off of a napkin.
Speaker 9 (05:50):
Four years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It was a dream that I had and an idea.
Four years later, I exited the business and sold my
shares just a month ago, almost to the day. So
I'm out here in Switzerland having meetings as I'm getting
ready to form a new advisory group that's going to
specialize in helping brands from the EU scale and come
(06:13):
into the US and sell their products in the US
because a lot of these companies over in Europe don't
know how to do that. So that's what I'm going
to be working on and I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
That's great. So what made you decide to get back
on the horse so quickly. I would think after an exit,
you'd like to take six months or a year off
and just regenerate.
Speaker 9 (06:32):
Gosh, me too. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I don't have an answer for that question, other than
if I just stop, I don't know that I'll be
able to start again.
Speaker 6 (06:41):
I think I have the answer to that question, Joe, Okay,
I think you're hot, Chriture. We'll never retire because our
brains won't stop working, and we could try to not
do anything and it will always end up doing something.
You're probably just one of those kind of people that
just can't sit around and watch reruns at Gilligan's Islandic.
Speaker 9 (06:59):
Something that's a great show.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
But what she says is right. I mean, it's like
you spent forty years, fifty years, turning yourself into a
machine of sorts, you know, getting up doing it every day,
and after a while, your neuropathways are just conditioned to
keep going. Right. I sometimes find it hard to stop,
even though I'm supposed to.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
I want to talk a little bit about getting a
company ready for an exit, because when I was doing
the video directory, I tried to start it from day
one to be positioned to sell because I knew I
didn't want to keep it. And so what can people
do with their companies if they're starting a company now,
because we're hoping that some of our listeners are thinking
about it.
Speaker 7 (07:40):
What would you do from day one to.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
Set it up so you could eventually have a great exit.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
There's a few things.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
The first thing is to actually position your company and
look at the market that you're in. So take a
look at whatever market is that you want to go to,
whatever industry that is, what trade it is, and see
where you might be able to build something that's a
little different than the market. Leaders that you could see
in the future might be able to attach to their
(08:08):
business or round out something. Let's give an example. Say
there's a company in the industry that you want to
move into that's selling into consumer products, selling into a
big chain retailers.
Speaker 9 (08:21):
Right, and they're really good at that.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Are they going to want to buy somebody who's also
selling into big chain retailers or would they want maybe
somebody who's selling to mom and pop stores or a
specialist that online. And if you can see that from
the beginning, then you're successful. Chances are those competitors are
going to see that as well, and that's the number
one reason for acquisition is that they try to round
(08:44):
it out the business.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
How do you know when it's time to exit?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, that's a personal question for most vendors, and it
can relate to I've seen it across the board because
prior to doing what I'm doing now, I was a
venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, which means that I was
working with a bank that helped fund startups. So I
worked with founders that had great ideas and dreams and
helped make them come to reality. So, you know, looking
(09:08):
at the broad macro view of that, what is it
that drives these dreams and these people and what do
they want at the end?
Speaker 9 (09:15):
And that's answer is very different.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It's an individual, but I would say that for the
majority of people, it's when they feel like they've reached
a point where their skill set can no longer really
contribute to the business and they need to bring in
other people who can help either fund it or maybe
they're really good with talking, but they need people to
help running the numbers more and they help bring in
(09:37):
others to operate the business at a different speed and scale.
Those are usually the times where I see businesses wanting
a founder to exit. But then there's guys like let's
look at Elon Musk, he drew it all in an apkin, right,
and he's still there and now he's running some of
the largest companies on Earth. But that's an exception and
not the rule. Most of the time it's an internal
thing and you get an idea, Okay, it's time for
(09:58):
me to go. Of course, that's the not even looking
at what your business has done, but just when it's your.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
Time and you want to exit.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
So you think it's really driven more by bounders. And
would you say, is frustration and not being able to
bring it to grow? Or how does this kind of
manifest itself?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
First and foremost, as we all know, most ideas and
dreams don't get off the runway, right, The difference between
your great idea and someone else's This is very important
for you to take it out of your drawer and
then go execute it. The execution of a new business
is the piece that matters, right, not just the concept
of it. So once that's moving and the revenues you've built, sales,
(10:38):
you've built customers, all of a sudden you have a company, right,
which is so exciting.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
When does that satisfy you? How large do you want
to get? What is your vision for it?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Do you feel like, oh my goodness, I'm getting over
my skis here, I need a partner again. All individual
factors that you feel as you're going as a leader
of your dream. But at the end of the day,
it is your dream. So a lot of people will
die in that sort and say this is what I'm
going to do.
Speaker 9 (11:04):
There's an old analogy of.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Cortes who landed in the New World and he burned
his ships to show the crew there's no going back.
And I love founders that have that mentality.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
That's great. Well, so that's kind of interesting because you're
talking about it in terms of founders. What about if
it's a larger company, you know, with a maybe a
larger management team or a board of directors, do they
just come in and say the wind is blowing in
the right direction, it's time to sell.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It does depend on the size of the business and
then the structure of the business. If you have a
board like you're referring to, or that's what your dream is,
to have a group of individuals that have invested in
the business, then all of that's got to line up.
If you are the main majority owner of your company,
then at the end of the day, it's up to you,
meaning you own fifty one percent of all of your shares,
(11:54):
but if someone else does and they own over fifty percent,
then they absolutely can make the decision of what's going
to happen to the business and when so ultimately, and
you can learn a lot about this by watching you
listening to shows like this and watching Shark Tank about
the kinds of ways in which founders will dilute their
own ownership stake to take in equity or taken even partners.
(12:17):
And at the end of the day, those folks will
have a big say in it if they own more
of the business than you do.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
I think that that is really a double edged start
what you're talking about right there, because you have to
have money to grow. Some people can bootstrap, but if
you really want to grow, I think you need some
sort of funding. But then if you give away too
much of your company, then it can have the repercussions
you just said, you lose control, at least some control, right.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
For example, I did not have full control over the
business that I sold I brought in. There was a
group that was in this involved with me. So to
Richard's point, it was a little dance making sure that
everybody was moving to the right cadence so that their
goals were the same as mine. Ultimately, it worked out,
but I'm probably making this a little bit more complicated
(13:02):
than maybe it should be. At the end of the day,
if the business is running well and there's a motivation
to exit, a few things will happen. The business will
try hard to grow sales, decrease expenses to show more profit,
which are the two ways in business that you can
increase profit only by increasing your sales or decreasing your expenses.
And position the company for sale so that it looks
(13:25):
competitive to someone that's out there that may want to
be a motivated buyer.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
Do you do about the motivated buyer?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
It's kind of funny because we have friends and they
owned in business for a long time and had really
built it up. They had bought it from somebody and
they just sold it. And our friend is sticking around
as a consultant for a couple of years, right, but
he's got a lot more freedom, and he's telling me
says like, Wow, I can't believe what this guy is.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
Doing with the business.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Now. Great, I had another question for you, when would
you do an IPO initial public offering instead of selling,
Like when would you go public with your business?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, it's a more complicated question because then you're really
involving a lot more people and opening up your company
to be you know, individual investors, right, And that's when
my old mentor said, as soon as you start looking
at putting your company public versus private, is when he
hands you a tombstone with your company's name on it and.
Speaker 9 (14:17):
The date that it went public.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's a good job I enjoy because you're dead. Now
that's really a whole different deal. When you are looking
at taking a company public, you are really looking at scaling,
is what that's about. You want that business to be bigger,
a huge national brand perhaps, you know, you want to
position in a way where you can go out and
(14:39):
just raise a lot more capital. And then on the
flip side of that, of course, you've got a lot
more people reading your financials guiding where things will go.
So it's kind of the beginning of the end of
the control that you have with the business. So to
your point, there's never really a right time. What we
see in today's society is a lot more technology driven.
(14:59):
The technology companies will rush to you know, get an
IPO to kind of people want to get in early
and participate in that, and they're able to move that
pretty quick. But I'm a big fan of private companies
and keeping things private and in control as much as
you can.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
I'm kind of excited about what Joe's doing with bringing
European companies over here. So what's kind of the secret
for that or how do they make that decision?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So I'm working with a French company in an English
company as well. Getting into the US market. It's actually
quite scary for them if they've not done that before.
So the idea there is they've hit some kind of
a saturation point maybe in their market, maybe a competitor
has started to move into new markets, and that's going
to drive them, Elizabeth. So there's a number of factors.
(15:45):
It's always about the revenue, right and what could happen.
For example, Europeans look at typically speaking, they look at
the American market as a huge opportunity because of the
scale that we can do here in the United States
with our our open footprint of fifty states versus you know,
all the individual countries in Europe. So it can be
a little scary for them. And they're not sure how
(16:07):
to do it, who the right partners are. And they're
also terrified of things like Amazon because it's a much
less of a force of nature over here than it
is at home.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Very interesting, So we have to take a commercial break.
We're here with Joe Lopez, global business expert from Anchor Advisory,
back with more passage to profit right after this.
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Speaker 1 (18:25):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again, Richard and
Elizabeth Geerhart.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
And our special guest Joe Lopez, international business expert, and
we've just started digging into what he's doing bringing European
countries to the US.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
And when people bring something in.
Speaker 6 (18:39):
From overseas, do they do it state by state or
are there some federal lawsy can bring it in under?
Like how does that work?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The way that I advise clients to do that is,
first of all, it's a big country.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
Yes, there's fifty states.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
However, when you really boil it down and you look
at the population and the consumption in the US, there's
really only a few states you need to worry about
launching in and then from there, for example, the population
in New York, Florida, Texas, California, and then from there
you can branch out into the other regions and markets.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
It always comes down to those four states. Those are
always in the top four or five states. So if
you're coming from Europe, maybe New York makes the most
sense in Florida because they're shorter distanced.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So if you just focus in on particularly one market
or two in the beginning and shore yourself up.
Speaker 9 (19:29):
Then from there you can build it out. And the
same thing goes with Europe.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
There's really only a few countries that control most of
the demand here and most of the population and the money,
so that's where you want to focus.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
Typically when people are thinking about filing patents outside the
United States in Europe, it's really always the four major
countries France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy. Sometimes you'll add Spain
in there too, but even super big companies will typically
focus on just those four or five major countries because
(20:03):
that's where all the action is right and if somebody
tries to do something goofy, doing infringement or something in
a different country, it's usually not a lot of sales
or they can find a way to go after them
in whether the major countries. The same principle sort of
applies here in the US. You go for the markets
that are the most active.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
You know something that my father always taught me that's
very important and applies to this lesson in business of
focusing in on different countries or segments or maybe even
cities that you want to start your business in. Is
to just not try to boil the ocean in a startup.
Start with boiling a cup of water, focus on that,
get good on that, and then from there grow out.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Well, that's amazing. Advice Joe Joe Lopez, global business strategist
and startup growth and exit expert. Where can people find
out more about you and what you're doing and perhaps
how you can help them?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
LinkedIn dot com forward slash j Lopez.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
III Joe Lopez from Ancora Advisory, a global firm specializing
in internationalization www. Dot Acoraadvisory dot com. Passage to Profit
with Richard analystmth par Heart time now for ip in
the news.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Zillo don wild. It's like a Facebook page and then
it's also a set on HGTV now. But they're taking
pictures of high end homes and getting the best ones
together and putting them on the spacebook page saying, look
at the best of Zilla whatever. We can't find any
association with Zillo. However, they are not asking people if
they can use their photographs, and somebody finally decided that
(21:38):
was enough.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Let me see if I've got this right. So Zillo
has these high end homes, and of course if you've
ever been to Zillo. You see it's got all the
pictures of all the houses, not just.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
High end on Zillos. Zillo's everything, right.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But Zillo Gone Wild they took the best pictures from
the best homes and put that on a separate website.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
I don't think it's a website that I found it
on Facebook.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Okay, so it's a Facebook page and it's called Zillo
Gone Wild.
Speaker 7 (22:05):
Zilo Gone Wild.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
And they're not the only ones that are stealing pictures
from people. But a real estate photographer discovered her photos
on Zilo Gone Wild and she was like, wait, you
can't use those about giving me something for that?
Speaker 5 (22:17):
So this is tricky. Suppose if you're a real estate
agent and you hire somebody to take photos of your
client's house, and then you post them on your website
and then it ultimately gets posted on Zillo, those would
typically be considered property of the real estate agent if
they paid for them and if they had a contract.
(22:38):
But in this case, the photos were then taken from
the real estate agent or from Zilo and put on
this website. And now the photographers are getting upset about that.
And so the question is does the photographer are they
entitled to any money for this. I'd like to ask
our guests what they think about this. Brent.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You know, you would think you would be their property,
their intellectual property, and they would not be able to
just post that or use those pictures. So I don't
know if there's some kind of copyright.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
It's kind of a confusing situation because really, who has
the rights? Arnold, what do you think about it?
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I think it's somewhat of a gray area. But in
my opinion, you can use something, but at least have
a mechanism to be able to take that down, right,
So dcmay take down notices things like that. They can
send a notice please take that down, and they should
respect that jump.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We should absolutely have a process in place. But boy,
whenever I hear Zillow, I get still get stuck on
the fact that I can go look up all my
friend's houses and see how much they were worth.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Speaking of intellectual property, I do have to credit the
person who wrote this article.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
It was from.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Artnet dot com by Brian Boucher.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
We appreciate that. And if you want to learn more
about intellectual property, you can find out at our website
at www dot gearheartlaw dot com, or you can use
the contact form there and schedule a consultation with me.
Richard Gerhart. We'd be happy to discuss any at in
trademark or copyright issues with you, so please keep that
(24:08):
in mind. Passage to profit. We will be back right
after this.
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Speaker 1 (26:11):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard
on thirty eight stations across the US, so no matter
where you are, you can hear us or just check
out our podcast, which was recently ranked in the top
three percent globally. We have also been recently selected by
feed Spot Podcasters database as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast.
(26:38):
So how about that It's time for my charming wife
Elizabeth to tell us all about her projects.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
So I have been working on this website and I
had kind of retooled it. I still have been in
the background, but right now I'm focusing managing. This is
one thing I think is one of those unforeseen things
that we were talked about earlier, is I always want
to do way more than I have time or energy for.
Right now, though, we're remodeling our podcast studio. So we
have a building that law firms in and of course
(27:05):
everybody's working remotely and nobody wanted to come back right
after COVID's I couldn't sell the building, so right no,
it's commercial space.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
So what do you do with that.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
We had broadcast this show during COVID passage prepit, so
I said, well, let's remodel it and let people record their.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
Podcasts up there.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
So we've had somebody do a really cool design, like
it's going to be really high end. I love this design.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
So we're getting this ready.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
And then I know a lot of people that want
to start podcasts but they need help, so I'm doing
some coaching. I started a meetup group with Stacy Sherman
called Podcasting YouTube Creators Community. It's online and it's in person.
We do meetup groups and have various experts on how
to market your podcast, what you need to consider with
your podcast.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
So could you mention the name of that meet up
again because I think there's a meetup coming up soon.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
So it's podcast and YouTube Creators Community, and it's free.
It's just information for people that are interested in podcasting.
It's free, you can come, you can be kind of
in cognito. We're really having a good time with it.
And I also do have another podcast besides this one
with Daniel Woolley called The Jersey Podcasts, which we're also
working on, and it's about cats. So that's where I'm
(28:12):
at Now, it is time for Joe Richard and myself
to interview our next guest, Arnold Suit, who has g Reminders.
Speaker 7 (28:23):
Really cool platform, So welcome, Arnold.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
Tell us all about your platform.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
My background is sort of technical in nature. I spend
a lot of time in technology, spend a disproportion on
time on sales, marketing and running a company and so forth.
But I've spent my past twenty five years in enterprise
B to B software I founded for companies. Some are
adventure backed, smer Bootstrap, this one is self sort of
self funded. You asked about g Reminders. It is effectively
(28:48):
an end to end meeting management platform designed for financial advisors.
That's our primary market segment. Product market fit. It's such
an important thing. You can take a product, put it
in one market, it doesn't it doesn't fit. But you
take us somewhere else and it doesn't. So product market fit,
in my opinion is, you know, certainly for startups or
people that are thinking about startups, it's a very important
(29:09):
concept and it's going to hit you in the face
when it happens. You know, when you get sell through,
you start selling, that's when you know you hit product
market fit. You know, when we started gearro Miners, for example,
it was a very horizontal product that really appealed to
any professional that was generally service based. They were exchanging
their time for compensation, and so as a result they
needed to notify people of no shows and things like that.
(29:32):
Over time, over the last few years, we focused very
heavily on financial services. Service based model really integrated deeply
with a lot of their tools, and so not only
just online scheduling, but also you know, SMS, email notifications,
AI know taking. You have a note taking here in
this podcast, for example, summarizing action items, pushing back to CRM,
(29:55):
integrating with a lot of the systems sort of surrounding
that particular vertical market. So we're doing very well there,
growing north of one hundred percent, and you're on here.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
What does g reminders do.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
It's a piece of software that you connect to the
calendar that use today. She might use Outlook, might use
Google Calendar, and might use some other calendaring system. We
sit on top of it. We allow people to basically
schedule with you, so you can share a link with
your clients. It also supports things like routing and more
complex scenarios so if you want to put that on
your website, ask maybe what's your zip code? Who would
(30:27):
you like to talk to, topics that you'd like to talk to.
We would route you to the right person that sort
of thing. We would send you notifications to make sure
that you actually show up to those meetings. We would
join the meetings just like in the Zoom call for example.
We would summarize, take transcripts, record these calls, and then
create action and taskless so that you can then do
(30:47):
follow ups. And we also have automation around a lot
of that. So really the end to end meeting life cycle,
we sort of cover it end to end.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
And one thing I really liked about it when I
looked at your website and I've used Calendly, but it's
frustrating somebody I'll say, schedule with my calendlyke It's like,
well what about these other two people?
Speaker 7 (31:03):
We can't all.
Speaker 6 (31:04):
Schedule on your calendlyn You allow multiple people to find
a time that fits for them.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Yeah, we had all of that, and Calendly is a
great product and we run into them you frequently. But again,
Calendly is designed for the masses, and we're very targeted
against the markets that we focus on, and so we
kind of know our market and back to sort of
product market fit. That is a very important element for us.
You can use our product across a number of different
(31:29):
verticals essentially, but we are very focused from a business
standpoint against going after very specific markets.
Speaker 9 (31:35):
That was my question.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Actually, if i may, Richard, sorry to jump in, just
a quick question on the sales piece of that. It
sounds like you've got a great background and the technical side,
and you've developed this and even God bless you, you've
invested yourself, you're driving it. There's nothing better. That's the
American dream. My question would be, you know you've got
the right product and you've got the market fit. You see,
(31:57):
how do you reach that market? As an entrepreneur, how
do you go out after those individual financial folks?
Speaker 9 (32:02):
How do you reach them?
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Distribution is always the biggest challenge for any business. First
question people ask me what do you think about this idea?
My first question, how are you going to sell it?
How are you going to get to that market? And
you have to understand how people buy and you have
to understand where that audience is, where do they get
their information from. So we use a variety of strategies.
Traditional ones as you can imagine, CEO SEM things of
(32:26):
that nature, but we also do lots of other types
of things. So we do partnerships with other vendors, we
do partnerships with consultants that are in the space. A
big part of our value add is really being part
of that ecosystem. So you don't want to be an
island when it comes to software. You want to work
with the other systems that are already installed in these ecosystems,
(32:48):
and so we plug ourselves into that and we do deep, deep,
deep integrations, right, not just service level, I mean very deep,
and it's a handing gloves sort of native fit. So
when we do that, naturally you sort of sold from
those marketplaces. And then we also do lots of shows
and events and trade shows. Those are actually still a
thing in that particular market. But you have to be
where your customers are.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
How did you find out that the financial groups are
the best customers for your product?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
When we started, we were selling to a wide range
of businesses, but we started to see pockets of concentration,
and as an entrepreneur, you never know what you're going
to get. I don't think necessarily. Its certainly in the
early days you can't predict what next to your or
five years down the road is going to look like.
Once you're mature, you probably can get a pretty good
sense of what's going on. But in the early days
(33:37):
you really need to listen. You need to listen a lot.
You need to look at your customer base, see what's working,
see what's not working, talk to them.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Get outside of the four walls. There are no answers
inside of your office. They're all outside.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
So you got to go and talk to your customers,
talk to your prospects, what are their problems, and really listen.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
And you have to do this yourself.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You can't outsource it.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
You can't outsource your eyes in ears. It's really important.
Exactly what we did, and we started to see pockets
of concentration.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
Oh, these are your problems.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
How can we better serve you again, listen to them,
listen to the problems, and listen to the impact of
what those problems would produce if you were to actually
solve them. There could be problems, but they may not
be very impactful, so that's not really something worth working out.
But what if you could save you know, three to
four months of time a year per person. What would
(34:24):
that mean to your business, Well, it's twenty five percent
lift in revenue. Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's how you
plug yourself into the value chain.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Well, we have found with your heart laws, especially that
it is better to work with vendors that have products
that they've made for law firms. There are so many
considerations in your industry financial There are so many laws
and rules. Do you run into any problem with your software?
Speaker 7 (34:47):
With those?
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Compliance and governance is a huge deal. So we work
with a lot of broker dealers in this space that
sell products and services to firms that essentially.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Rep for them.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
So the industry is very different than perhaps you know,
other industries that might be out there. So you need
to understand that. You need to understand what type of
rules you need to live by and what kind of
compliance you need to have. So we've gone through all
of that and it's been a learning curve certainly for us.
But that's part of sort of the mot that prevents
(35:21):
other folks necessarily coming into those markets because you do
need to understand those things and you need to have
those things in place. Be a third party audits, be
it different types of controls, data retention policies, et cetera
that really support the compliance and governments of those industries.
Speaker 5 (35:35):
So it seems to me, though, when I look at
your software, it would be interesting to a lot of
different industries, a lot of different types of customers. Why
do you think it gets the pull from the financial
folks that maybe it doesn't get someplace else. What are
the features maybe of the software that appeal to them specifically?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
So at the surface, they all look sort of similar, right,
so if you look at like al or something again,
at the surface, it kind of looks the same. But
when we actually dig in and understand the different touch
points and the integration points that exist, those integrations is
really what sets us apart. And understanding those workflows and
nuances and speaking in that language. So once you have
(36:16):
the product, then you need to go make sure that
you can translate that into value for the customers.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
But again, when you focus a business on a.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Specific market and a specific problem, it focuses every single
aspect of your business against that. So you know what
features to build, you know what shows to attend, what
the salespeople should.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
Say, what the talk track is.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
It really helps.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
Focus your business.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
If you're talking to government, and you're talking to healthcare,
and you're talking to construction, they all use different terms
and different languages. It's very difficult or an organization to
understand all those things.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
It's even more.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Difficult for your staff to understand all those things. And
so I think if you can focus on a market,
it really focuses your business and as a result, accelerates
the pace significantly.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Well, it's funny say that.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
That's how I got into the marketing at your heart
law actually a patent agent, and I was drafting patent
applications for a while, but none of the marketing agencies
could understand the nuances between a patent, a trademark, and
a copyright, and they would write blogs for us to
do this stuff, and it was like, no, it didn't work.
So I ended up getting kind of stuck with it.
But I do think you're rock.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
Well. She's been stuck for eighteen years, so must not
be too bad.
Speaker 7 (37:26):
Now, did you have another comment?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I just thought there was some great insight there. I mean,
first of all, you seem like a really seasoned business person.
It's very process driven, and boy, that's usually a great
sign and path to success in pulling out a few
lessons that I heard that I think could be applied
to any business just listening to the things and the
lessons that you shared. Is when you're starting a business
(37:50):
and you're small, right, which we all are when we start,
look for something bigger, a broader rail system, something that
you can.
Speaker 9 (37:56):
Ride and attach yourself to that.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So if you're going to be the little I go
look for a larger distribution partner, someone that you can
work with who can help you scale that. That can
be applied to consumer business, to individuals, retail, you name it.
It's one of the reasons why if you have a
watch store, it's not gonna say Joe Lopez watched as much.
Speaker 9 (38:15):
On the outside, you're going to hang signs.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
For Rolex and Swatch and all the brands that would
pull someone into that store. Right. The second piece that
I heard from a B to B perspective or a
business selling to a business is that you really have
to have value to make sure that that other business
who's already got a bunch of customers and has, in
this case of software application in place, you better sure
(38:37):
as heck be bringing value to that for them to
say give me what you got and let me incorporate
that into my group there as well.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
When you were argetting the financial market, how much of
it was pulled that came from recommendations from other referrals
between other financial people within the market, and how much
of it was sort of deliberate focused marketing on your part.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
I'm a big fan of vertical markets, and so when
we started, we thought there would be one or two
verticals that we would go after. We weren't quite sure
which one those were. So to some degree we had
an idea we wanted to do this conceptually as far
as the specific vertical that grew somewhat organically. But again,
you know, we talked to a lot of customers, why
(39:24):
did you buy this? Why did you not buy this?
And when we talked to financial services, oh, they you know,
they said things like we'd like it to do X,
Y and Z. Can you do those things? And when
your startup, you know you can move fast. That's the
benefit of a startup is you can really move fast.
And so you know, you listen to those things. If
you hear it enough times, you don't need to hear
it many. If you hear it three four times, it's
(39:45):
a pattern. You go do it.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
Next week you.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Show up, Hey, I got this for you. You know when
you do stuff like that, you get amazing results. At
the flip side, you need to understand, you know, how
big is the market. You have to do a little
bit of analysis, right, but to the extent that it's
big enough for you to play.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Go play suit gee reminders. How do people find you?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
You can go to our website, to yourminus dot com.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter as well.
Speaker 6 (40:07):
So that's R and Ulf and his last name is Hsu.
Thank you very much you by listening to the Passage
to Profess show with Richard, Elizabeth Gearhart and our special
guest Joe Lopez. So now we are on to Brett
Kessler with.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
The money Multiplier.
Speaker 6 (40:22):
Tell us about the money multiplier because we all want
to multiply our money.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, absolutely so. The money multiplier is a concept. It's
driven by a book that was written by R. Nelson Nash.
He wrote this book called Becoming Your Own Banker. And
ar Nelson Nash wrote this book back in two thousand.
Actually he was my mentor and he passed away about
five and a half years ago at age eighty seven
(40:46):
years old in March of twenty nineteen. And basically, the
concept is about you being able to build, keep and
create wealth through your own debts and expenses that you
already have, right all by just adding one step in
your financial life. Now you're able to recapture and recycle
(41:08):
those dollars that were currently going out to other individuals.
So I actually just was in a conference I learned
about the concept, and I thought it was too good
to be true, right this is back in two thousand
and six, And then a couple of years later, I
learned that it wasn't too good to be true because
a lot of my colleagues that were at that conference
(41:30):
implemented this in their life. It completely changed my financial life,
you know. And now fast forward, I've been teaching this
around the country fifty to seventy live events a year,
one hundred to one hundred and twenty zoom events, virtual
events podcast. We're now helping like over fourteen thousand people
in the States and every state of the country. We
(41:51):
have Canadian colleagues that we work with as well. So
I just became very passionate about it and I started
teaching it. After I implemented the concept myself where I
paid off almost a million dollars of debt nine hundred
and eighty four thousand, seven hundred and eleven dollars in
debt to be exact in a period of time of
thirty nine months, three years and three months. I didn't
(42:15):
have to change my cash flow. I didn't have to
work harder. I didn't have to take any additional risk
or lose control of my money. I simply added this
one step in my financial life, and that's what changed it.
So the concept of the whole infinite banking, it's driven
by the wealth building tool of being able to build
your own banking system and the product that we use,
(42:39):
the machine that we used to do that is a
whole life insurance policy in a mutual company that pays dividends. Now,
I know, I say those bad words life insurance, and
everybody's mind tunes out right. There's probably somebody that says, oh, okay,
life insurance. I'm going to go walk the dog, birth
the baby, you know, do thees or whatever. Because people
(43:01):
think they know everything there is to know about life insurance.
He may be thinking, how on earth would you ever
use a life insurance product to build keep and create
well right, well again, So this is what the rich
have been doing for over two hundred years. Like if
you go study the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Morgans, the Stanleys,
(43:24):
the Barclays, like if you study how Walt Disney built Disneyland,
how Ray Croc funded McDonald's, how Pampered Chef got started
before Warren Buffett bought Pampered Chef. This is what they're doing.
This is exactly the tools that they're using. And if
you even look back, So banks, conventional banks are the
(43:47):
number one purchasers of whole life insurance in the world.
They own more life insurance than all of their land
and their buildings combined. And since twenty fourteen they quadruple,
they have quadrupled the amount of life insurance. Say purchase
banks are ensuring their key employees like they're grassed all
(44:09):
through the banking system, and they're using this to build,
keep and create wealth. And the thing you're able to
do is ake that life insurance policy. And it's specifically
designed for high immediate cash value. So in other words,
when you put money into this policy, you immediately can
(44:29):
use the cash value. Now, my definition of immediately is
within thirty days. So you put money into this, you're
able to use the cash value to go pay your debts,
your expenses, to buy your products, your services, to make
your investments right. You can use the money for anything
that you want. You never have to worry about sending
(44:49):
it back into the policy once you bring it out.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
So you have a life insurance policy you're paying I
don't know, five hundred dollars a month or something and
has a cash value of one hundred thousand dollars. You
can get that one hundred thousand dollars out after thirty days,
and then you have the use of that money to
do whatever you need to do to build a business
or make an investment. Is that basically it? Well, you
(45:14):
don't have to die.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
No, you don't have to die. And see that's what
most people think, like when they buy life insurance. It's
not going to benefit them. It's going to benefit the
next generation, our children, our grandchildren. But not this type
of policy. Now, I want to be clear, this is
not any type of life insurance policy. It's not a
term policy, a variable policy, a universal an IUL and
(45:36):
index universal life policy. This is a specifically designed, specially
engineered whole life policy that's in a mutual company that
pays dividends, that has guaranteed growth, and it's designed for
the high immediate cash value. So it all goes in
to what type of policy it is and how the
(45:58):
policy is actually designed. Right. So it's not the policy
that you can go to your brother in law that
sells life insurance and get right. We all have a
brother in law that sells life insurance. Yes, it's not
that type of policy. So the answer to your question
even further is that the thing you mentioned, Richard is
(46:18):
the death benefit. The thing you've got to remember is
there's a death benefit on the policy, but there's also
cash value in the policy. The cash that you're using
is essentially a prepayment of the death benefit. The death
benefit will always be higher than the cash value or
the loan available. I can tell you if the insurance
(46:41):
company thought you were going to die soon, they would
never sell you the policy, right, So you have to
qualify to own a policy on your own body. So
the thing that you're doing is you're essentially borrowing the
cash value or the loan availability on the policy, which
is always a lower number than the death benefit. Well,
(47:03):
insurance company can never ever lose because the death benefit
is always higher than that cash value, and you are
guaranteed to die, right, So if you don't pay back
the policy low, what happens is the death benefit will
pay off the low balance because they've already given you
that money while you're living, and then the rest of
(47:25):
the money goes to your beneficiary's tax free. So essentially,
what we're doing is adding one step in your financial life.
That's all we're doing. We're putting the dollars inside of
the policy first, because that's what we want to do
is pay tax on our money one time, one time only.
We want to get that money into a tax free
environment where it's growing tax free and the government is
(47:48):
completely out of our hair, and now we're able to
access and use that money to buy the things that
we're going to buy in life anyway, for example, pay
down debts, pay your mortgage, your credit cards, your car,
your student loan payments, whatever it is. But then there's
a time where as time goes on, usually you tend
to build more wealth in your life and you don't
(48:10):
have as much third party debt maybe or maybe you do,
but now what you want to do is you want
to go buy a business. You want to invest in
products or services, right, you want to use that money
to do investments like I do a lot of real
estate investing. It has nothing to do with my life
insurance portfolio or how I do life insurance, but that's
(48:33):
what I like to do. I understand real estate. I
could go buy gold and silver, antique cars, bitcoins, cryptocur
I could do all of that, but I don't understand that.
So what I do is I take that money from
the policy and I'm using it to invest in that
real estate such as long term rentals, short term rentals, airbnbsvrbos.
(48:54):
And I also do lending. I lend money to people
for primarily real estate, So I'll put money into real
estate development deals where I'm in first position collateral. Now,
how I add that one step is like most people
would just take the money and say, okay, let me
(49:15):
loan you the money or let me invest in this
piece of real estate. Well, I add the one step.
I put the money in the policy first, and then
from the policy, I take a loan from the general
fund of the insurance company. I don't take a withdrawal.
I take a loan, which is key because when I
take a loan, I don't ever take my money out
(49:36):
of the policy. So all my money is still in
the policy, growing and compounding in that tax free growth
rate environment. And I'm using that money to make that
investment or to buy that piece of real estate. So
my money is working for me over and over again.
It's got multiple uses, and I never have to pay
(49:57):
back the policy loan, all right, and you ever have
to explain to the insurance company why I'm taking the
money out or why I am using the money. Now,
if I do pay back the policy loan, which is great,
then I have that money there immediately again, not like
as far as thirty days, immediately today, immediately to use
(50:19):
again right now to go out and fund other deals.
So really what I'm doing is I'm recycling and recapturing money,
and I'm using it over and over. And I'm just
going to point out two books. There's a guy named
Robert Kiyosaki that wrote a book called Rich Dad or Dad.
He also wrote another book called Second Chance. This concept
that I teach is exactly what Robert Kiyosaki talks about
(50:41):
in his book Second Chance. And there's another guy named
Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins wrote a book called Money Master
the Game. In chapter five point four of that Tony
Robbins book, this is exactly the concept that Tony Robbins teaches. However,
he talks about it. Him and Robert talk about it
in their books. But the problem is is they make
(51:02):
it too complicated and difficult to understand, and when people
read it, they just read right through it and don't
understand what's going on.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
I want to butt in from it and ask Joe
if he has a question for you.
Speaker 9 (51:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
So it's totally new to me and I'm just curious
as to how it's going.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
It's going great.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
You know. I started as a customer of this. I
actually implemented this in my own life back in two
thousand and eight. I paid off that almost a million
dollars a debt in thirty nine months, and I became
really passionate about this because nobody ever taught me this.
I was always taught just like probably a lot of
you guys are with your parents, your grandparents, friends, colleagues
(51:39):
and coworkers. They say, what, go get a good job,
go work for thirty or forty years. Max out your
four oh one K, your IRA, your qualified plan, and
the government will take care of you down the road. Well,
we know that doesn't happen. And that was a load
of crap, right that that just doesn't happen for most people.
So I was on a mission to share this because
(52:00):
I couldn't believe what the concept did in my own life.
So I started teaching this in March of twenty twelve,
about twelve and a half years ago. And every single year,
year after year after year, I mean all the way
through the whole entire transition business has increased. More clients
have come on board to implement this concept in their life.
(52:23):
And keep in mind, I'm not the only one that
does this. You don't have to do it with Brent
Kessler at the Money Multiplier, right, There's other people you
could do this with. But it's just getting the word
out there. See the problem in America. And again I'm
not going to steal the quote. I'm going to repeat
the quote that the late Will Rogers said. He says,
(52:43):
the problem in America isn't so much what people don't know,
it's what people think they know that just ain't so.
So a lot of the stuff that we've been taught
about wealth and money. It's just simply not the true.
So I was on a mission to peel back the
onion to see how this really really works in the
(53:07):
financial life, right as far as in people's financial life.
And here we are twelve and a half years later.
You know, so, the Money Multiplier the thing. You can
google the Money Multiplier. You can go google my name
Brent Kessler. You'll see pages and pages of plan designs,
case studies, success stories, testimonials. I have a full ninety
(53:30):
plus minute presentation that breaks down the concept and how
it works on our website, The Money Multiplier dot com.
I also wrote a book called Mapping Out the Millionaire
Mystery that I'll offer to all your listeners. Just go
to the website or send me an email brand at
the Money Multiplier dot Com. I'll send you the ebook
(53:51):
version of that book that I wrote. But don't take
my word for it. Go do the research yourself and
go watch the testimony in the success stories of the
thousands of clients that we have out there online.
Speaker 6 (54:05):
Well, Brett, it sounds like this is a passion project
for you.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I'm just on a mission to serve people, serve people
serve people with this knowledge that people don't understand. Just
like Joe said, he's never heard about this. And I
travel around the country and I speak live on stage,
and if ten percent of the audience of that audience
that I'm speaking to, whether it's live or virtual, has
(54:30):
heard about this concept, it's a lot people don't know.
They just don't know what they don't know.
Speaker 6 (54:36):
Well, Brett, you have me convinced. The Money Multiplier dot
com get the book Mapping Out the Millionaire Mystery. Listeners,
you're listening to the Passage to Profit Show with Richard
and Elizabeth Gearhart, our special guest Joe Lopez, and we
will be right back.
Speaker 13 (54:50):
I'm Jack CEO and co founder at ushabits dot Com.
When I left my job as a Wall Street banker
back in my twenties, I felt completely lost trying to
navigate the p of hiring a financial advisor. I thought
it should be easy to find the right financial advisor.
So I created a place where young families could feel
understood and their unique needs would be met with empathy
(55:11):
and expertise. That's why I started usehabits dot com, where
we help you find your financial advisor free of charge.
Usehabits dot com.
Speaker 5 (55:20):
It's passage to profit. Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
Noah Fleischmann is our producer here at Passage to profit,
and he just can't observe our future without recognizing the past.
Speaker 14 (55:33):
We've come a long way since the late eighteen hundreds.
We don't have yellow journalism from some big newspaper mogul anymore.
Now we have something called home pages and they come
from a diversity of huge sources. There's a lot of information.
Speaker 7 (55:46):
Well we need it.
Speaker 14 (55:48):
News is, after all, a twenty four hour element, so
every source wants to make sure your eyes are on
them every time you log on. There's always news happening,
and they'll make sure that there is headliner that's say,
legendary actor gone at ninety six or blinking could be
an early sign of this fatal disease. Once you click
and scroll through all the obligatory pop up ads in
(56:09):
irrelevant introduction, it's nice to know you likely don't have oralplaculitis.
And it's good to see that one time Hollywood extra
Virlins Abnermier is getting his rightful posthumous recognition. But I
was a kid long before homepages. Sometimes I actually felt
a little guilty about switching over to an odd couple
rerun when the eleven o'clock News came on. But scrolling
(56:31):
past a commercial homepage, in reality, that's pretty.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Virtual now more with Richard and Elizabeth passage to profit.
Speaker 6 (56:39):
So now it is time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
Joe Lopez, who can be found at j LOPEZII on LinkedIn, catch.
Speaker 5 (56:49):
Him on his website www dot Andcoraadvisory dot com.
Speaker 6 (56:55):
What is a secret you can share?
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Make your routines as routine as possible, whether it's the
clothes you get up to wear every day, the breakfast
that you do or you don't make, get yourself into
a routine. Make that your ritual.
Speaker 5 (57:09):
I really like the routine part. I'm very oriented like
that too.
Speaker 6 (57:14):
Arnolfsuit Greminders dot com. What is your secret you can share?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Process over outcome. Try to simplify things when you are
working with issues, try to find the root cause of
those problems.
Speaker 6 (57:27):
I think that's great advice. Rit Kessler, The Money Multiplier
dot com. What's your secret?
Speaker 5 (57:33):
Yeah, couple things.
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Number one mindset, systems and mentors. Right, you got to
have the right mindset to start with, you have to
follow a system, a proven system, and then have a
mentor have a coach to help guide you. Don't think
you can do this all on yourself. There's no I
in team, right, so be open to other people that
(57:55):
want to help. And I would also say pay attention,
get excited, and never with. There's gonna be a lot
of people that come into your life and they're going
to try to bust down and tear down your dreams,
your vision and your goals. And a lot of those
people that do that are people that are close to you,
even your close friends and your family members. Sometimes we
(58:18):
have to fire our family members. I know that doesn't
sound good, but some but I mean really, I'm not
saying don't go to Thanksgiving or Christmas with them or not,
but what comes to business and what your vision and
mission is, sometimes they're not the best people to be around.
So just being outside of the box thinker, and if
(58:39):
everything in your life is very comfortable for you and
you're going through day to day and it's very comfortable,
you're probably not doing it right. So you're gonna want
to sweat a little bit. You're gonna want to get
flushed a little bit. You're gonna want to feel very uncomfortable,
and then you're probably knowing that you're doing the right thing.
It's not easy and it all doesn't come easy, and
(58:59):
sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone.
Speaker 6 (59:01):
That is great advice. Okay, Richard Gearhart, Gearhart Law, Patents,
durdmnth's copyrights. What is your secret?
Speaker 5 (59:08):
Well, we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs over the years
at Gearheart Law. So far, we've managed to help over
forty five hundred clients since the law firm open. That's
a lot of different businesses. I want to go back
to what Arnold said because I see that the companies
that missed it were the ones that didn't understand their market,
and I think that is so important. You really got
(59:31):
to understand the end user, why they're buying, what the
value is, who they are, and then how to reach them.
I want to amplify that because I think that that
is absolutely key to growing a business.
Speaker 6 (59:45):
My secret is a little down in the weeds this time.
I would say, maybe you've been balancing the family checkbook.
Speaker 7 (59:52):
That's not enough.
Speaker 6 (59:53):
I think that if you're going to go into business,
you should take an overview class on accounting business accounting.
You should know something about it and be really careful
who you hire to do your accounting, because there are
people out there they can't do it right. If you
don't have the data in the numbers, you can't run
your business. And you've got to kind of understand how
that comes about.
Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
That's great. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio
show appearing in thirty one markets across the United States.
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 the p too P team,
our producer Noah Fleischman and our program coordinator Alisha Morrissey
(01:00:36):
and Risskapbasari. 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. 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.
(01:00:57):
Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and cop
right needs. You can find us at cureheartlaw dot com
and contact us for free consultation. Take care everybody, Thanks
for listening, and we'll be back next week.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
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):
See where you might be able to build something that's
a little different than the market leaders.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I didn't have to change my cash flow. I didn't
have to work harder.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
There are no answers inside of your office.
Speaker 5 (00:20):
I'm Richard Dearhart.
Speaker 6 (00:21):
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 7 (00:27):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Ramping up your business?
Speaker 8 (00:31):
The time is near. You've given it hard, Now.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Get it in gear It's Passage to Profit with Richard
and Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do
marketing for Gearhart Law, and I have my own startups
in podcasts.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Are you one of the two and five Americans wanting
to start your own business or already a business owner?
Stay tuned. The show is about starting and growing your business.
Welcome to Passage to Profit. The Road to entrepreneurship where
we learn why and how ordinary people just like you
started and grew their businesses. And we also talk about
the intellectual property that helps protect your innovations. And with
(01:16):
us today is Joe Lopez from Ancora Advisory, a global
firm specializing in internationalization.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
And then we have Arnold Tsu with g reminders. Oh
my gosh, if you've ever used Calendly, this is like
if Callendly had fifty thousand kids. It's amazing all the
stuff you can do with this app.
Speaker 7 (01:35):
It's really great.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
And then we have Brett Kessler with the money Multiplier.
Let's keep this multiplication theme going.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
I'm definitely down for multiplying money. Yeah, I'm definitely jabro Reerrect. Well,
are you one of the two and five Americans wanting
to start your own business? Lots of times new business
owners ask other experienced business owners what challenges have you
seen in your journey? So I'd like to ask our
guests what unforeseen challenges have you seen when you were
(02:03):
starting and growing your businesses. Let's start with Brett challenges.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
You know, there's a lot of noise out there that
comes along and people are telling you, like different things,
So you really need to keep an open mind about
what people are telling you. I mean, I'm always a
big believer that God gave me two ears and one mouth,
so I should be listening twice as much as I talk.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
I'm still still working on that, Joe, what do you
think about that? What was a particular unforeseen event that
happened in your career that threw you off.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I was in the middle of a very large startup
transaction between a established company and their factory in China,
and I thought, oh, gosh, what a great thing for me.
I'll be in the middle, and I'll hold the money
in the middle between the transaction, make my little cut
on the side. Well, gosh, not only did I go
from being the collector, but now I'm the paye. So
(02:55):
I was getting pressure on both sides of the fence.
And this would go with any startup as far as
suppliers and incoming payments. So all of a sudden, I
learned really quickly that you can grow business fast with revenue,
but my gosh, payables and your margins are important.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Too, Arnold. What's the unforeseen situation that you had in
your entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Everything I'll echo what some of the guests have to say,
but I mean, no plan goes according to plan, right,
And I think as an entrepreneur you constantly are sort
of pivoting and you're making hopefully quick decisions with half data,
but hopefully those decisions tend to be reversible.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Joe, you're not in your head there. Do you have
something to add to that?
Speaker 9 (03:38):
I do it? Maybe think of a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
One is, where you're starting a business, There's a couple
of pieces of advice that I've gotten over the years.
One is that you can create a product and try
and sell that into a market, right and create a market.
Speaker 9 (03:52):
Or look at the market itself.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
And see what it needs and then create a product
for that. I've always found it's much better to find
the fit in the market or your product, and in
that way, there's already a built in customer base for
you to sell to.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
That kind of makes sense, Brett, what do you think?
Speaker 9 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So, even though a lot of us are in sales, right,
the thing is is, I don't like to consider myself
a person that sells or a salesman. I like to
consider myself as I am finding a solution to somebody
else's problem, and a lot of times they may not
even know that they have a problem or need that
solution yet. But we're bringing it just to light to
(04:32):
We're saying, hey, here's the problem, and we have the
solution that can solve this for you. That's great.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
So, Elizabeth, I think my big mistake has been thinking
that other people will think like I think. And I
started this video directory for business coaches, thinking h being
on video.
Speaker 7 (04:50):
Everybody's on Zoom, It's no big deal.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Everybody's comfortable on video, and they'll all do these little
thirty second commercials for themselves. And I could put together
this great website, and even people that teach people to
be on video and teach people about business don't want
to do videos of them.
Speaker 7 (05:07):
I misjudged that part of the market. I did a focus.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Group on people that would watch the videos. They were like, Yeah,
that'd be pretty cool to see a video somebody before
I call them up. But getting people to do the videos,
I misjudged that that was unforeseen.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
But I still think it was a good idea and
I do think its time will come. Your answers were
all amazing. I learned a lot, so thank you for sharing,
and now it's time to go to our future guest,
Joe Lopez from Ancor Advisory. He's a global business strategist
and he's a startup, growth and exit expert. You're talking
to us from just outside Zurich, Switzerland. Tell us what
(05:41):
you've been up to and what do you've got going
on for the future.
Speaker 9 (05:44):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, I just had a successful exit from a startup
I created off of a napkin.
Speaker 9 (05:50):
Four years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
It was a dream that I had and an idea.
Four years later, I exited the business and sold my
shares just a month ago, almost to the day. So
I'm out here in Switzerland having meetings as I'm getting
ready to form a new advisory group that's going to
specialize in helping brands from the EU scale and come
(06:13):
into the US and sell their products in the US
because a lot of these companies over in Europe don't
know how to do that. So that's what I'm going
to be working on and I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
That's great. So what made you decide to get back
on the horse so quickly. I would think after an exit,
you'd like to take six months or a year off
and just regenerate.
Speaker 9 (06:32):
Gosh, me too. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I don't have an answer for that question, other than
if I just stop, I don't know that I'll be
able to start again.
Speaker 6 (06:41):
I think I have the answer to that question, Joe, Okay,
I think you're hot, Chriture. We'll never retire because our
brains won't stop working, and we could try to not
do anything and it will always end up doing something.
You're probably just one of those kind of people that
just can't sit around and watch reruns at Gilligan's Islandic.
Speaker 9 (06:59):
Something that's a great show.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
But what she says is right. I mean, it's like
you spent forty years, fifty years, turning yourself into a
machine of sorts, you know, getting up doing it every day,
and after a while, your neuropathways are just conditioned to
keep going. Right. I sometimes find it hard to stop,
even though I'm supposed to.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
I want to talk a little bit about getting a
company ready for an exit, because when I was doing
the video directory, I tried to start it from day
one to be positioned to sell because I knew I
didn't want to keep it. And so what can people
do with their companies if they're starting a company now,
because we're hoping that some of our listeners are thinking
about it.
Speaker 7 (07:40):
What would you do from day one to.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
Set it up so you could eventually have a great exit.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
There's a few things.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
The first thing is to actually position your company and
look at the market that you're in. So take a
look at whatever market is that you want to go to,
whatever industry that is, what trade it is, and see
where you might be able to build something that's a
little different than the market. Leaders that you could see
in the future might be able to attach to their
(08:08):
business or round out something. Let's give an example. Say
there's a company in the industry that you want to
move into that's selling into consumer products, selling into a
big chain retailers.
Speaker 9 (08:21):
Right, and they're really good at that.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Are they going to want to buy somebody who's also
selling into big chain retailers or would they want maybe
somebody who's selling to mom and pop stores or a
specialist that online. And if you can see that from
the beginning, then you're successful. Chances are those competitors are
going to see that as well, and that's the number
one reason for acquisition is that they try to round
(08:44):
it out the business.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
How do you know when it's time to exit?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, that's a personal question for most vendors, and it
can relate to I've seen it across the board because
prior to doing what I'm doing now, I was a
venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, which means that I was
working with a bank that helped fund startups. So I
worked with founders that had great ideas and dreams and
helped make them come to reality. So, you know, looking
(09:08):
at the broad macro view of that, what is it
that drives these dreams and these people and what do
they want at the end?
Speaker 9 (09:15):
And that's answer is very different.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It's an individual, but I would say that for the
majority of people, it's when they feel like they've reached
a point where their skill set can no longer really
contribute to the business and they need to bring in
other people who can help either fund it or maybe
they're really good with talking, but they need people to
help running the numbers more and they help bring in
(09:37):
others to operate the business at a different speed and scale.
Those are usually the times where I see businesses wanting
a founder to exit. But then there's guys like let's
look at Elon Musk, he drew it all in an apkin, right,
and he's still there and now he's running some of
the largest companies on Earth. But that's an exception and
not the rule. Most of the time it's an internal
thing and you get an idea, Okay, it's time for
(09:58):
me to go. Of course, that's the not even looking
at what your business has done, but just when it's your.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
Time and you want to exit.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
So you think it's really driven more by bounders. And
would you say, is frustration and not being able to
bring it to grow? Or how does this kind of
manifest itself?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
First and foremost, as we all know, most ideas and
dreams don't get off the runway, right, The difference between
your great idea and someone else's This is very important
for you to take it out of your drawer and
then go execute it. The execution of a new business
is the piece that matters, right, not just the concept
of it. So once that's moving and the revenues you've built, sales,
(10:38):
you've built customers, all of a sudden you have a company, right,
which is so exciting.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
When does that satisfy you? How large do you want
to get? What is your vision for it?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Do you feel like, oh my goodness, I'm getting over
my skis here, I need a partner again. All individual
factors that you feel as you're going as a leader
of your dream. But at the end of the day,
it is your dream. So a lot of people will
die in that sort and say this is what I'm
going to do.
Speaker 9 (11:04):
There's an old analogy of.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Cortes who landed in the New World and he burned
his ships to show the crew there's no going back.
And I love founders that have that mentality.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
That's great. Well, so that's kind of interesting because you're
talking about it in terms of founders. What about if
it's a larger company, you know, with a maybe a
larger management team or a board of directors, do they
just come in and say the wind is blowing in
the right direction, it's time to sell.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It does depend on the size of the business and
then the structure of the business. If you have a
board like you're referring to, or that's what your dream is,
to have a group of individuals that have invested in
the business, then all of that's got to line up.
If you are the main majority owner of your company,
then at the end of the day, it's up to you,
meaning you own fifty one percent of all of your shares,
(11:54):
but if someone else does and they own over fifty percent,
then they absolutely can make the decision of what's going
to happen to the business and when so ultimately, and
you can learn a lot about this by watching you
listening to shows like this and watching Shark Tank about
the kinds of ways in which founders will dilute their
own ownership stake to take in equity or taken even partners.
(12:17):
And at the end of the day, those folks will
have a big say in it if they own more
of the business than you do.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
I think that that is really a double edged start
what you're talking about right there, because you have to
have money to grow. Some people can bootstrap, but if
you really want to grow, I think you need some
sort of funding. But then if you give away too
much of your company, then it can have the repercussions
you just said, you lose control, at least some control, right.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
For example, I did not have full control over the
business that I sold I brought in. There was a
group that was in this involved with me. So to
Richard's point, it was a little dance making sure that
everybody was moving to the right cadence so that their
goals were the same as mine. Ultimately, it worked out,
but I'm probably making this a little bit more complicated
(13:02):
than maybe it should be. At the end of the day,
if the business is running well and there's a motivation
to exit, a few things will happen. The business will
try hard to grow sales, decrease expenses to show more profit,
which are the two ways in business that you can
increase profit only by increasing your sales or decreasing your expenses.
And position the company for sale so that it looks
(13:25):
competitive to someone that's out there that may want to
be a motivated buyer.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
Do you do about the motivated buyer?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
It's kind of funny because we have friends and they
owned in business for a long time and had really
built it up. They had bought it from somebody and
they just sold it. And our friend is sticking around
as a consultant for a couple of years, right, but
he's got a lot more freedom, and he's telling me
says like, Wow, I can't believe what this guy is.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
Doing with the business.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Now. Great, I had another question for you, when would
you do an IPO initial public offering instead of selling,
Like when would you go public with your business?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, it's a more complicated question because then you're really
involving a lot more people and opening up your company
to be you know, individual investors, right, And that's when
my old mentor said, as soon as you start looking
at putting your company public versus private, is when he
hands you a tombstone with your company's name on it and.
Speaker 9 (14:17):
The date that it went public.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's a good job I enjoy because you're dead. Now
that's really a whole different deal. When you are looking
at taking a company public, you are really looking at scaling,
is what that's about. You want that business to be bigger,
a huge national brand perhaps, you know, you want to
position in a way where you can go out and
(14:39):
just raise a lot more capital. And then on the
flip side of that, of course, you've got a lot
more people reading your financials guiding where things will go.
So it's kind of the beginning of the end of
the control that you have with the business. So to
your point, there's never really a right time. What we
see in today's society is a lot more technology driven.
(14:59):
The technology companies will rush to you know, get an
IPO to kind of people want to get in early
and participate in that, and they're able to move that
pretty quick. But I'm a big fan of private companies
and keeping things private and in control as much as
you can.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
I'm kind of excited about what Joe's doing with bringing
European companies over here. So what's kind of the secret
for that or how do they make that decision?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So I'm working with a French company in an English
company as well. Getting into the US market. It's actually
quite scary for them if they've not done that before.
So the idea there is they've hit some kind of
a saturation point maybe in their market, maybe a competitor
has started to move into new markets, and that's going
to drive them, Elizabeth. So there's a number of factors.
(15:45):
It's always about the revenue, right and what could happen.
For example, Europeans look at typically speaking, they look at
the American market as a huge opportunity because of the
scale that we can do here in the United States
with our our open footprint of fifty states versus you know,
all the individual countries in Europe. So it can be
a little scary for them. And they're not sure how
(16:07):
to do it, who the right partners are. And they're
also terrified of things like Amazon because it's a much
less of a force of nature over here than it
is at home.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Very interesting, So we have to take a commercial break.
We're here with Joe Lopez, global business expert from Anchor Advisory,
back with more passage to profit right after this.
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Speaker 1 (18:25):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again, Richard and
Elizabeth Geerhart.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
And our special guest Joe Lopez, international business expert, and
we've just started digging into what he's doing bringing European
countries to the US.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
And when people bring something in.
Speaker 6 (18:39):
From overseas, do they do it state by state or
are there some federal lawsy can bring it in under?
Like how does that work?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
The way that I advise clients to do that is,
first of all, it's a big country.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
Yes, there's fifty states.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
However, when you really boil it down and you look
at the population and the consumption in the US, there's
really only a few states you need to worry about
launching in and then from there, for example, the population
in New York, Florida, Texas, California, and then from there
you can branch out into the other regions and markets.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
It always comes down to those four states. Those are
always in the top four or five states. So if
you're coming from Europe, maybe New York makes the most
sense in Florida because they're shorter distanced.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So if you just focus in on particularly one market
or two in the beginning and shore yourself up.
Speaker 9 (19:29):
Then from there you can build it out. And the
same thing goes with Europe.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
There's really only a few countries that control most of
the demand here and most of the population and the money,
so that's where you want to focus.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
Typically when people are thinking about filing patents outside the
United States in Europe, it's really always the four major
countries France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy. Sometimes you'll add Spain
in there too, but even super big companies will typically
focus on just those four or five major countries because
(20:03):
that's where all the action is right and if somebody
tries to do something goofy, doing infringement or something in
a different country, it's usually not a lot of sales
or they can find a way to go after them
in whether the major countries. The same principle sort of
applies here in the US. You go for the markets
that are the most active.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
You know something that my father always taught me that's
very important and applies to this lesson in business of
focusing in on different countries or segments or maybe even
cities that you want to start your business in. Is
to just not try to boil the ocean in a startup.
Start with boiling a cup of water, focus on that,
get good on that, and then from there grow out.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Well, that's amazing. Advice Joe Joe Lopez, global business strategist
and startup growth and exit expert. Where can people find
out more about you and what you're doing and perhaps
how you can help them?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
LinkedIn dot com forward slash j Lopez.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
III Joe Lopez from Ancora Advisory, a global firm specializing
in internationalization www. Dot Acoraadvisory dot com. Passage to Profit
with Richard analystmth par Heart time now for ip in
the news.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Zillo don wild. It's like a Facebook page and then
it's also a set on HGTV now. But they're taking
pictures of high end homes and getting the best ones
together and putting them on the spacebook page saying, look
at the best of Zilla whatever. We can't find any
association with Zillo. However, they are not asking people if
they can use their photographs, and somebody finally decided that
(21:38):
was enough.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
Let me see if I've got this right. So Zillo
has these high end homes, and of course if you've
ever been to Zillo. You see it's got all the
pictures of all the houses, not just.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
High end on Zillos. Zillo's everything, right.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But Zillo Gone Wild they took the best pictures from
the best homes and put that on a separate website.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
I don't think it's a website that I found it
on Facebook.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Okay, so it's a Facebook page and it's called Zillo
Gone Wild.
Speaker 7 (22:05):
Zilo Gone Wild.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
And they're not the only ones that are stealing pictures
from people. But a real estate photographer discovered her photos
on Zilo Gone Wild and she was like, wait, you
can't use those about giving me something for that?
Speaker 5 (22:17):
So this is tricky. Suppose if you're a real estate
agent and you hire somebody to take photos of your
client's house, and then you post them on your website
and then it ultimately gets posted on Zillo, those would
typically be considered property of the real estate agent if
they paid for them and if they had a contract.
(22:38):
But in this case, the photos were then taken from
the real estate agent or from Zilo and put on
this website. And now the photographers are getting upset about that.
And so the question is does the photographer are they
entitled to any money for this. I'd like to ask
our guests what they think about this. Brent.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You know, you would think you would be their property,
their intellectual property, and they would not be able to
just post that or use those pictures. So I don't
know if there's some kind of copyright.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
It's kind of a confusing situation because really, who has
the rights? Arnold, what do you think about it?
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I think it's somewhat of a gray area. But in
my opinion, you can use something, but at least have
a mechanism to be able to take that down, right,
So dcmay take down notices things like that. They can
send a notice please take that down, and they should
respect that jump.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We should absolutely have a process in place. But boy,
whenever I hear Zillow, I get still get stuck on
the fact that I can go look up all my
friend's houses and see how much they were worth.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Speaking of intellectual property, I do have to credit the
person who wrote this article.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
It was from.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Artnet dot com by Brian Boucher.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
We appreciate that. And if you want to learn more
about intellectual property, you can find out at our website
at www dot gearheartlaw dot com, or you can use
the contact form there and schedule a consultation with me.
Richard Gerhart. We'd be happy to discuss any at in
trademark or copyright issues with you, so please keep that
(24:08):
in mind. Passage to profit. We will be back right
after this.
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Speaker 1 (26:11):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard
on thirty eight stations across the US, so no matter
where you are, you can hear us or just check
out our podcast, which was recently ranked in the top
three percent globally. We have also been recently selected by
feed Spot Podcasters database as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast.
(26:38):
So how about that It's time for my charming wife
Elizabeth to tell us all about her projects.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
So I have been working on this website and I
had kind of retooled it. I still have been in
the background, but right now I'm focusing managing. This is
one thing I think is one of those unforeseen things
that we were talked about earlier, is I always want
to do way more than I have time or energy for.
Right now, though, we're remodeling our podcast studio. So we
have a building that law firms in and of course
(27:05):
everybody's working remotely and nobody wanted to come back right
after COVID's I couldn't sell the building, so right no,
it's commercial space.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
So what do you do with that.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
We had broadcast this show during COVID passage prepit, so
I said, well, let's remodel it and let people record their.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
Podcasts up there.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
So we've had somebody do a really cool design, like
it's going to be really high end. I love this design.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
So we're getting this ready.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
And then I know a lot of people that want
to start podcasts but they need help, so I'm doing
some coaching. I started a meetup group with Stacy Sherman
called Podcasting YouTube Creators Community. It's online and it's in person.
We do meetup groups and have various experts on how
to market your podcast, what you need to consider with
your podcast.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
So could you mention the name of that meet up
again because I think there's a meetup coming up soon.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
So it's podcast and YouTube Creators Community, and it's free.
It's just information for people that are interested in podcasting.
It's free, you can come, you can be kind of
in cognito. We're really having a good time with it.
And I also do have another podcast besides this one
with Daniel Woolley called The Jersey Podcasts, which we're also
working on, and it's about cats. So that's where I'm
(28:12):
at Now, it is time for Joe Richard and myself
to interview our next guest, Arnold Suit, who has g Reminders.
Speaker 7 (28:23):
Really cool platform, So welcome, Arnold.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
Tell us all about your platform.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
My background is sort of technical in nature. I spend
a lot of time in technology, spend a disproportion on
time on sales, marketing and running a company and so forth.
But I've spent my past twenty five years in enterprise
B to B software I founded for companies. Some are
adventure backed, smer Bootstrap, this one is self sort of
self funded. You asked about g Reminders. It is effectively
(28:48):
an end to end meeting management platform designed for financial advisors.
That's our primary market segment. Product market fit. It's such
an important thing. You can take a product, put it
in one market, it doesn't it doesn't fit. But you
take us somewhere else and it doesn't. So product market fit,
in my opinion is, you know, certainly for startups or
people that are thinking about startups, it's a very important
(29:09):
concept and it's going to hit you in the face
when it happens. You know, when you get sell through,
you start selling, that's when you know you hit product
market fit. You know, when we started gearro Miners, for example,
it was a very horizontal product that really appealed to
any professional that was generally service based. They were exchanging
their time for compensation, and so as a result they
needed to notify people of no shows and things like that.
(29:32):
Over time, over the last few years, we focused very
heavily on financial services. Service based model really integrated deeply
with a lot of their tools, and so not only
just online scheduling, but also you know, SMS, email notifications,
AI know taking. You have a note taking here in
this podcast, for example, summarizing action items, pushing back to CRM,
(29:55):
integrating with a lot of the systems sort of surrounding
that particular vertical market. So we're doing very well there,
growing north of one hundred percent, and you're on here.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
What does g reminders do.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
It's a piece of software that you connect to the
calendar that use today. She might use Outlook, might use
Google Calendar, and might use some other calendaring system. We
sit on top of it. We allow people to basically
schedule with you, so you can share a link with
your clients. It also supports things like routing and more
complex scenarios so if you want to put that on
your website, ask maybe what's your zip code? Who would
(30:27):
you like to talk to, topics that you'd like to talk to.
We would route you to the right person that sort
of thing. We would send you notifications to make sure
that you actually show up to those meetings. We would
join the meetings just like in the Zoom call for example.
We would summarize, take transcripts, record these calls, and then
create action and taskless so that you can then do
(30:47):
follow ups. And we also have automation around a lot
of that. So really the end to end meeting life cycle,
we sort of cover it end to end.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
And one thing I really liked about it when I
looked at your website and I've used Calendly, but it's
frustrating somebody I'll say, schedule with my calendlyke It's like,
well what about these other two people?
Speaker 7 (31:03):
We can't all.
Speaker 6 (31:04):
Schedule on your calendlyn You allow multiple people to find
a time that fits for them.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Yeah, we had all of that, and Calendly is a
great product and we run into them you frequently. But again,
Calendly is designed for the masses, and we're very targeted
against the markets that we focus on, and so we
kind of know our market and back to sort of
product market fit. That is a very important element for us.
You can use our product across a number of different
(31:29):
verticals essentially, but we are very focused from a business
standpoint against going after very specific markets.
Speaker 9 (31:35):
That was my question.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Actually, if i may, Richard, sorry to jump in, just
a quick question on the sales piece of that. It
sounds like you've got a great background and the technical side,
and you've developed this and even God bless you, you've
invested yourself, you're driving it. There's nothing better. That's the
American dream. My question would be, you know you've got
the right product and you've got the market fit. You see,
(31:57):
how do you reach that market? As an entrepreneur, how
do you go out after those individual financial folks?
Speaker 9 (32:02):
How do you reach them?
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Distribution is always the biggest challenge for any business. First
question people ask me what do you think about this idea?
My first question, how are you going to sell it?
How are you going to get to that market? And
you have to understand how people buy and you have
to understand where that audience is, where do they get
their information from. So we use a variety of strategies.
Traditional ones as you can imagine, CEO SEM things of
(32:26):
that nature, but we also do lots of other types
of things. So we do partnerships with other vendors, we
do partnerships with consultants that are in the space. A
big part of our value add is really being part
of that ecosystem. So you don't want to be an
island when it comes to software. You want to work
with the other systems that are already installed in these ecosystems,
(32:48):
and so we plug ourselves into that and we do deep, deep,
deep integrations, right, not just service level, I mean very deep,
and it's a handing gloves sort of native fit. So
when we do that, naturally you sort of sold from
those marketplaces. And then we also do lots of shows
and events and trade shows. Those are actually still a
thing in that particular market. But you have to be
where your customers are.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
How did you find out that the financial groups are
the best customers for your product?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
When we started, we were selling to a wide range
of businesses, but we started to see pockets of concentration,
and as an entrepreneur, you never know what you're going
to get. I don't think necessarily. Its certainly in the
early days you can't predict what next to your or
five years down the road is going to look like.
Once you're mature, you probably can get a pretty good
sense of what's going on. But in the early days
(33:37):
you really need to listen. You need to listen a lot.
You need to look at your customer base, see what's working,
see what's not working, talk to them.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Get outside of the four walls. There are no answers
inside of your office. They're all outside.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
So you got to go and talk to your customers,
talk to your prospects, what are their problems, and really listen.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
And you have to do this yourself.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You can't outsource it.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
You can't outsource your eyes in ears. It's really important.
Exactly what we did, and we started to see pockets
of concentration.
Speaker 9 (34:03):
Oh, these are your problems.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
How can we better serve you again, listen to them,
listen to the problems, and listen to the impact of
what those problems would produce if you were to actually
solve them. There could be problems, but they may not
be very impactful, so that's not really something worth working out.
But what if you could save you know, three to
four months of time a year per person. What would
(34:24):
that mean to your business, Well, it's twenty five percent
lift in revenue. Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's how you
plug yourself into the value chain.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Well, we have found with your heart laws, especially that
it is better to work with vendors that have products
that they've made for law firms. There are so many
considerations in your industry financial There are so many laws
and rules. Do you run into any problem with your software?
Speaker 7 (34:47):
With those?
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Compliance and governance is a huge deal. So we work
with a lot of broker dealers in this space that
sell products and services to firms that essentially.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Rep for them.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
So the industry is very different than perhaps you know,
other industries that might be out there. So you need
to understand that. You need to understand what type of
rules you need to live by and what kind of
compliance you need to have. So we've gone through all
of that and it's been a learning curve certainly for us.
But that's part of sort of the mot that prevents
(35:21):
other folks necessarily coming into those markets because you do
need to understand those things and you need to have
those things in place. Be a third party audits, be
it different types of controls, data retention policies, et cetera
that really support the compliance and governments of those industries.
Speaker 5 (35:35):
So it seems to me, though, when I look at
your software, it would be interesting to a lot of
different industries, a lot of different types of customers. Why
do you think it gets the pull from the financial
folks that maybe it doesn't get someplace else. What are
the features maybe of the software that appeal to them specifically?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
So at the surface, they all look sort of similar, right,
so if you look at like al or something again,
at the surface, it kind of looks the same. But
when we actually dig in and understand the different touch
points and the integration points that exist, those integrations is
really what sets us apart. And understanding those workflows and
nuances and speaking in that language. So once you have
(36:16):
the product, then you need to go make sure that
you can translate that into value for the customers.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
But again, when you focus a business on a.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Specific market and a specific problem, it focuses every single
aspect of your business against that. So you know what
features to build, you know what shows to attend, what
the salespeople should.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
Say, what the talk track is.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
It really helps.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
Focus your business.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
If you're talking to government, and you're talking to healthcare,
and you're talking to construction, they all use different terms
and different languages. It's very difficult or an organization to
understand all those things.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
It's even more.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Difficult for your staff to understand all those things. And
so I think if you can focus on a market,
it really focuses your business and as a result, accelerates
the pace significantly.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Well, it's funny say that.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
That's how I got into the marketing at your heart
law actually a patent agent, and I was drafting patent
applications for a while, but none of the marketing agencies
could understand the nuances between a patent, a trademark, and
a copyright, and they would write blogs for us to
do this stuff, and it was like, no, it didn't work.
So I ended up getting kind of stuck with it.
But I do think you're rock.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
Well. She's been stuck for eighteen years, so must not
be too bad.
Speaker 7 (37:26):
Now, did you have another comment?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I just thought there was some great insight there. I mean,
first of all, you seem like a really seasoned business person.
It's very process driven, and boy, that's usually a great
sign and path to success in pulling out a few
lessons that I heard that I think could be applied
to any business just listening to the things and the
lessons that you shared. Is when you're starting a business
(37:50):
and you're small, right, which we all are when we start,
look for something bigger, a broader rail system, something that
you can.
Speaker 9 (37:56):
Ride and attach yourself to that.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So if you're going to be the little I go
look for a larger distribution partner, someone that you can
work with who can help you scale that. That can
be applied to consumer business, to individuals, retail, you name it.
It's one of the reasons why if you have a
watch store, it's not gonna say Joe Lopez watched as much.
Speaker 9 (38:15):
On the outside, you're going to hang signs.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
For Rolex and Swatch and all the brands that would
pull someone into that store. Right. The second piece that
I heard from a B to B perspective or a
business selling to a business is that you really have
to have value to make sure that that other business
who's already got a bunch of customers and has, in
this case of software application in place, you better sure
(38:37):
as heck be bringing value to that for them to
say give me what you got and let me incorporate
that into my group there as well.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
When you were argetting the financial market, how much of
it was pulled that came from recommendations from other referrals
between other financial people within the market, and how much
of it was sort of deliberate focused marketing on your part.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
I'm a big fan of vertical markets, and so when
we started, we thought there would be one or two
verticals that we would go after. We weren't quite sure
which one those were. So to some degree we had
an idea we wanted to do this conceptually as far
as the specific vertical that grew somewhat organically. But again,
you know, we talked to a lot of customers, why
(39:24):
did you buy this? Why did you not buy this?
And when we talked to financial services, oh, they you know,
they said things like we'd like it to do X,
Y and Z. Can you do those things? And when
your startup, you know you can move fast. That's the
benefit of a startup is you can really move fast.
And so you know, you listen to those things. If
you hear it enough times, you don't need to hear
it many. If you hear it three four times, it's
(39:45):
a pattern. You go do it.
Speaker 9 (39:46):
Next week you.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Show up, Hey, I got this for you. You know when
you do stuff like that, you get amazing results. At
the flip side, you need to understand, you know, how
big is the market. You have to do a little
bit of analysis, right, but to the extent that it's
big enough for you to play.
Speaker 6 (39:58):
Go play suit gee reminders. How do people find you?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
You can go to our website, to yourminus dot com.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter as well.
Speaker 6 (40:07):
So that's R and Ulf and his last name is Hsu.
Thank you very much you by listening to the Passage
to Profess show with Richard, Elizabeth Gearhart and our special
guest Joe Lopez. So now we are on to Brett
Kessler with.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
The money Multiplier.
Speaker 6 (40:22):
Tell us about the money multiplier because we all want
to multiply our money.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, absolutely so. The money multiplier is a concept. It's
driven by a book that was written by R. Nelson Nash.
He wrote this book called Becoming Your Own Banker. And
ar Nelson Nash wrote this book back in two thousand.
Actually he was my mentor and he passed away about
five and a half years ago at age eighty seven
(40:46):
years old in March of twenty nineteen. And basically, the
concept is about you being able to build, keep and
create wealth through your own debts and expenses that you
already have, right all by just adding one step in
your financial life. Now you're able to recapture and recycle
(41:08):
those dollars that were currently going out to other individuals.
So I actually just was in a conference I learned
about the concept, and I thought it was too good
to be true, right this is back in two thousand
and six, And then a couple of years later, I
learned that it wasn't too good to be true because
a lot of my colleagues that were at that conference
(41:30):
implemented this in their life. It completely changed my financial life,
you know. And now fast forward, I've been teaching this
around the country fifty to seventy live events a year,
one hundred to one hundred and twenty zoom events, virtual
events podcast. We're now helping like over fourteen thousand people
in the States and every state of the country. We
(41:51):
have Canadian colleagues that we work with as well. So
I just became very passionate about it and I started
teaching it. After I implemented the concept myself where I
paid off almost a million dollars of debt nine hundred
and eighty four thousand, seven hundred and eleven dollars in
debt to be exact in a period of time of
thirty nine months, three years and three months. I didn't
(42:15):
have to change my cash flow. I didn't have to
work harder. I didn't have to take any additional risk
or lose control of my money. I simply added this
one step in my financial life, and that's what changed it.
So the concept of the whole infinite banking, it's driven
by the wealth building tool of being able to build
your own banking system and the product that we use,
(42:39):
the machine that we used to do that is a
whole life insurance policy in a mutual company that pays dividends. Now,
I know, I say those bad words life insurance, and
everybody's mind tunes out right. There's probably somebody that says, oh, okay,
life insurance. I'm going to go walk the dog, birth
the baby, you know, do thees or whatever. Because people
(43:01):
think they know everything there is to know about life insurance.
He may be thinking, how on earth would you ever
use a life insurance product to build keep and create
well right, well again, So this is what the rich
have been doing for over two hundred years. Like if
you go study the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Morgans, the Stanleys,
(43:24):
the Barclays, like if you study how Walt Disney built Disneyland,
how Ray Croc funded McDonald's, how Pampered Chef got started
before Warren Buffett bought Pampered Chef. This is what they're doing.
This is exactly the tools that they're using. And if
you even look back, So banks, conventional banks are the
(43:47):
number one purchasers of whole life insurance in the world.
They own more life insurance than all of their land
and their buildings combined. And since twenty fourteen they quadruple,
they have quadrupled the amount of life insurance. Say purchase
banks are ensuring their key employees like they're grassed all
(44:09):
through the banking system, and they're using this to build,
keep and create wealth. And the thing you're able to
do is ake that life insurance policy. And it's specifically
designed for high immediate cash value. So in other words,
when you put money into this policy, you immediately can
(44:29):
use the cash value. Now, my definition of immediately is
within thirty days. So you put money into this, you're
able to use the cash value to go pay your debts,
your expenses, to buy your products, your services, to make
your investments right. You can use the money for anything
that you want. You never have to worry about sending
(44:49):
it back into the policy once you bring it out.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
So you have a life insurance policy you're paying I
don't know, five hundred dollars a month or something and
has a cash value of one hundred thousand dollars. You
can get that one hundred thousand dollars out after thirty days,
and then you have the use of that money to
do whatever you need to do to build a business
or make an investment. Is that basically it? Well, you
(45:14):
don't have to die.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
No, you don't have to die. And see that's what
most people think, like when they buy life insurance. It's
not going to benefit them. It's going to benefit the
next generation, our children, our grandchildren. But not this type
of policy. Now, I want to be clear, this is
not any type of life insurance policy. It's not a
term policy, a variable policy, a universal an IUL and
(45:36):
index universal life policy. This is a specifically designed, specially
engineered whole life policy that's in a mutual company that
pays dividends, that has guaranteed growth, and it's designed for
the high immediate cash value. So it all goes in
to what type of policy it is and how the
(45:58):
policy is actually designed. Right. So it's not the policy
that you can go to your brother in law that
sells life insurance and get right. We all have a
brother in law that sells life insurance. Yes, it's not
that type of policy. So the answer to your question
even further is that the thing you mentioned, Richard is
(46:18):
the death benefit. The thing you've got to remember is
there's a death benefit on the policy, but there's also
cash value in the policy. The cash that you're using
is essentially a prepayment of the death benefit. The death
benefit will always be higher than the cash value or
the loan available. I can tell you if the insurance
(46:41):
company thought you were going to die soon, they would
never sell you the policy, right, So you have to
qualify to own a policy on your own body. So
the thing that you're doing is you're essentially borrowing the
cash value or the loan availability on the policy, which
is always a lower number than the death benefit. Well,
(47:03):
insurance company can never ever lose because the death benefit
is always higher than that cash value, and you are
guaranteed to die, right, So if you don't pay back
the policy low, what happens is the death benefit will
pay off the low balance because they've already given you
that money while you're living, and then the rest of
(47:25):
the money goes to your beneficiary's tax free. So essentially,
what we're doing is adding one step in your financial life.
That's all we're doing. We're putting the dollars inside of
the policy first, because that's what we want to do
is pay tax on our money one time, one time only.
We want to get that money into a tax free
environment where it's growing tax free and the government is
(47:48):
completely out of our hair, and now we're able to
access and use that money to buy the things that
we're going to buy in life anyway, for example, pay
down debts, pay your mortgage, your credit cards, your car,
your student loan payments, whatever it is. But then there's
a time where as time goes on, usually you tend
to build more wealth in your life and you don't
(48:10):
have as much third party debt maybe or maybe you do,
but now what you want to do is you want
to go buy a business. You want to invest in
products or services, right, you want to use that money
to do investments like I do a lot of real
estate investing. It has nothing to do with my life
insurance portfolio or how I do life insurance, but that's
(48:33):
what I like to do. I understand real estate. I
could go buy gold and silver, antique cars, bitcoins, cryptocur
I could do all of that, but I don't understand that.
So what I do is I take that money from
the policy and I'm using it to invest in that
real estate such as long term rentals, short term rentals, airbnbsvrbos.
(48:54):
And I also do lending. I lend money to people
for primarily real estate, So I'll put money into real
estate development deals where I'm in first position collateral. Now,
how I add that one step is like most people
would just take the money and say, okay, let me
(49:15):
loan you the money or let me invest in this
piece of real estate. Well, I add the one step.
I put the money in the policy first, and then
from the policy, I take a loan from the general
fund of the insurance company. I don't take a withdrawal.
I take a loan, which is key because when I
take a loan, I don't ever take my money out
(49:36):
of the policy. So all my money is still in
the policy, growing and compounding in that tax free growth
rate environment. And I'm using that money to make that
investment or to buy that piece of real estate. So
my money is working for me over and over again.
It's got multiple uses, and I never have to pay
(49:57):
back the policy loan, all right, and you ever have
to explain to the insurance company why I'm taking the
money out or why I am using the money. Now,
if I do pay back the policy loan, which is great,
then I have that money there immediately again, not like
as far as thirty days, immediately today, immediately to use
(50:19):
again right now to go out and fund other deals.
So really what I'm doing is I'm recycling and recapturing money,
and I'm using it over and over. And I'm just
going to point out two books. There's a guy named
Robert Kiyosaki that wrote a book called Rich Dad or Dad.
He also wrote another book called Second Chance. This concept
that I teach is exactly what Robert Kiyosaki talks about
(50:41):
in his book Second Chance. And there's another guy named
Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins wrote a book called Money Master
the Game. In chapter five point four of that Tony
Robbins book, this is exactly the concept that Tony Robbins teaches. However,
he talks about it. Him and Robert talk about it
in their books. But the problem is is they make
(51:02):
it too complicated and difficult to understand, and when people
read it, they just read right through it and don't
understand what's going on.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
I want to butt in from it and ask Joe
if he has a question for you.
Speaker 9 (51:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
So it's totally new to me and I'm just curious
as to how it's going.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
It's going great.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
You know. I started as a customer of this. I
actually implemented this in my own life back in two
thousand and eight. I paid off that almost a million
dollars a debt in thirty nine months, and I became
really passionate about this because nobody ever taught me this.
I was always taught just like probably a lot of
you guys are with your parents, your grandparents, friends, colleagues
(51:39):
and coworkers. They say, what, go get a good job,
go work for thirty or forty years. Max out your
four oh one K, your IRA, your qualified plan, and
the government will take care of you down the road. Well,
we know that doesn't happen. And that was a load
of crap, right that that just doesn't happen for most people.
So I was on a mission to share this because
(52:00):
I couldn't believe what the concept did in my own life.
So I started teaching this in March of twenty twelve,
about twelve and a half years ago. And every single year,
year after year after year, I mean all the way
through the whole entire transition business has increased. More clients
have come on board to implement this concept in their life.
(52:23):
And keep in mind, I'm not the only one that
does this. You don't have to do it with Brent
Kessler at the Money Multiplier, right, There's other people you
could do this with. But it's just getting the word
out there. See the problem in America. And again I'm
not going to steal the quote. I'm going to repeat
the quote that the late Will Rogers said. He says,
(52:43):
the problem in America isn't so much what people don't know,
it's what people think they know that just ain't so.
So a lot of the stuff that we've been taught
about wealth and money. It's just simply not the true.
So I was on a mission to peel back the
onion to see how this really really works in the
(53:07):
financial life, right as far as in people's financial life.
And here we are twelve and a half years later.
You know, so, the Money Multiplier the thing. You can
google the Money Multiplier. You can go google my name
Brent Kessler. You'll see pages and pages of plan designs,
case studies, success stories, testimonials. I have a full ninety
(53:30):
plus minute presentation that breaks down the concept and how
it works on our website, The Money Multiplier dot com.
I also wrote a book called Mapping Out the Millionaire
Mystery that I'll offer to all your listeners. Just go
to the website or send me an email brand at
the Money Multiplier dot Com. I'll send you the ebook
(53:51):
version of that book that I wrote. But don't take
my word for it. Go do the research yourself and
go watch the testimony in the success stories of the
thousands of clients that we have out there online.
Speaker 6 (54:05):
Well, Brett, it sounds like this is a passion project
for you.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I'm just on a mission to serve people, serve people
serve people with this knowledge that people don't understand. Just
like Joe said, he's never heard about this. And I
travel around the country and I speak live on stage,
and if ten percent of the audience of that audience
that I'm speaking to, whether it's live or virtual, has
(54:30):
heard about this concept, it's a lot people don't know.
They just don't know what they don't know.
Speaker 6 (54:36):
Well, Brett, you have me convinced. The Money Multiplier dot
com get the book Mapping Out the Millionaire Mystery. Listeners,
you're listening to the Passage to Profit Show with Richard
and Elizabeth Gearhart, our special guest Joe Lopez, and we
will be right back.
Speaker 13 (54:50):
I'm Jack CEO and co founder at ushabits dot Com.
When I left my job as a Wall Street banker
back in my twenties, I felt completely lost trying to
navigate the p of hiring a financial advisor. I thought
it should be easy to find the right financial advisor.
So I created a place where young families could feel
understood and their unique needs would be met with empathy
(55:11):
and expertise. That's why I started usehabits dot com, where
we help you find your financial advisor free of charge.
Usehabits dot com.
Speaker 5 (55:20):
It's passage to profit. Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
Noah Fleischmann is our producer here at Passage to profit,
and he just can't observe our future without recognizing the past.
Speaker 14 (55:33):
We've come a long way since the late eighteen hundreds.
We don't have yellow journalism from some big newspaper mogul anymore.
Now we have something called home pages and they come
from a diversity of huge sources. There's a lot of information.
Speaker 7 (55:46):
Well we need it.
Speaker 14 (55:48):
News is, after all, a twenty four hour element, so
every source wants to make sure your eyes are on
them every time you log on. There's always news happening,
and they'll make sure that there is headliner that's say,
legendary actor gone at ninety six or blinking could be
an early sign of this fatal disease. Once you click
and scroll through all the obligatory pop up ads in
(56:09):
irrelevant introduction, it's nice to know you likely don't have oralplaculitis.
And it's good to see that one time Hollywood extra
Virlins Abnermier is getting his rightful posthumous recognition. But I
was a kid long before homepages. Sometimes I actually felt
a little guilty about switching over to an odd couple
rerun when the eleven o'clock News came on. But scrolling
(56:31):
past a commercial homepage, in reality, that's pretty.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Virtual now more with Richard and Elizabeth passage to profit.
Speaker 6 (56:39):
So now it is time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
Joe Lopez, who can be found at j LOPEZII on LinkedIn, catch.
Speaker 5 (56:49):
Him on his website www dot Andcoraadvisory dot com.
Speaker 6 (56:55):
What is a secret you can share?
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Make your routines as routine as possible, whether it's the
clothes you get up to wear every day, the breakfast
that you do or you don't make, get yourself into
a routine. Make that your ritual.
Speaker 5 (57:09):
I really like the routine part. I'm very oriented like
that too.
Speaker 6 (57:14):
Arnolfsuit Greminders dot com. What is your secret you can share?
Speaker 4 (57:19):
Process over outcome. Try to simplify things when you are
working with issues, try to find the root cause of
those problems.
Speaker 6 (57:27):
I think that's great advice. Rit Kessler, The Money Multiplier
dot com. What's your secret?
Speaker 5 (57:33):
Yeah, couple things.
Speaker 3 (57:34):
Number one mindset, systems and mentors. Right, you got to
have the right mindset to start with, you have to
follow a system, a proven system, and then have a
mentor have a coach to help guide you. Don't think
you can do this all on yourself. There's no I
in team, right, so be open to other people that
(57:55):
want to help. And I would also say pay attention,
get excited, and never with. There's gonna be a lot
of people that come into your life and they're going
to try to bust down and tear down your dreams,
your vision and your goals. And a lot of those
people that do that are people that are close to you,
even your close friends and your family members. Sometimes we
(58:18):
have to fire our family members. I know that doesn't
sound good, but some but I mean really, I'm not
saying don't go to Thanksgiving or Christmas with them or not,
but what comes to business and what your vision and
mission is, sometimes they're not the best people to be around.
So just being outside of the box thinker, and if
(58:39):
everything in your life is very comfortable for you and
you're going through day to day and it's very comfortable,
you're probably not doing it right. So you're gonna want
to sweat a little bit. You're gonna want to get
flushed a little bit. You're gonna want to feel very uncomfortable,
and then you're probably knowing that you're doing the right thing.
It's not easy and it all doesn't come easy, and
(58:59):
sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone.
Speaker 6 (59:01):
That is great advice. Okay, Richard Gearhart, Gearhart Law, Patents,
durdmnth's copyrights. What is your secret?
Speaker 5 (59:08):
Well, we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs over the years
at Gearheart Law. So far, we've managed to help over
forty five hundred clients since the law firm open. That's
a lot of different businesses. I want to go back
to what Arnold said because I see that the companies
that missed it were the ones that didn't understand their market,
and I think that is so important. You really got
(59:31):
to understand the end user, why they're buying, what the
value is, who they are, and then how to reach them.
I want to amplify that because I think that that
is absolutely key to growing a business.
Speaker 6 (59:45):
My secret is a little down in the weeds this time.
I would say, maybe you've been balancing the family checkbook.
Speaker 7 (59:52):
That's not enough.
Speaker 6 (59:53):
I think that if you're going to go into business,
you should take an overview class on accounting business accounting.
You should know something about it and be really careful
who you hire to do your accounting, because there are
people out there they can't do it right. If you
don't have the data in the numbers, you can't run
your business. And you've got to kind of understand how
that comes about.
Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
That's great. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio
show appearing in thirty one markets across the United States.
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 the p too P team,
our producer Noah Fleischman and our program coordinator Alisha Morrissey
(01:00:36):
and Risskapbasari. 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. 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.
(01:00:57):
Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and cop
right needs. You can find us at cureheartlaw dot com
and contact us for free consultation. Take care everybody, Thanks
for listening, and we'll be back next week.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
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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