Entrepreneurs: Sealing Solar Energy Across the Globe with Mike Silvestrini + Others

Episode Transcript

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):
That demand in the thirst for energy is virtually insatiable.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
It is your full catalog, fully shoppable.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Menu, realistic is one of the things that they do
not see.

Speaker 5 (00:19):
I'm Richard Dearhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard
some snippets from our show. We had amazing people on
listen for the rest.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Of it, ramping up your business. The time is near.
You've given it hard, now get it in gear. It's
Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (00:39):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Speaker 5 (00:47):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do
marketing for Gearhart Law. And I am the founder of
gear Media Studios, a full service podcast studio.

Speaker 6 (00:55):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with so celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories
and their business ventures. Amazing guest Mike Silverstrini trail Blazing
entrepreneur who turned solar startups into global powerhouses. He's the
co founder of Energy and a leading voice in the
renewable energy innovation space. And he's also a board member

(01:20):
of Big Life Foundation.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
And then we have two great entrepreneurs who are kind
of redoing the retail spaces online. Stan Lucien is the
CEO and founder of Skybris it's a trailblazing real estate company.
And his website it's really cool. You have to go.
His blogs are amazing. And then we have the Vitra

(01:42):
and a crew, co founder and CEO of deal Magic,
and I looked at this website. It's really great. It's
a shopping website, but it's different.

Speaker 6 (01:50):
It's really a nice website. So you definitely have to
check it out. But before we get to our distinguished guest,
it's time or your new business journey. Two and five
Americans are business owners or at least thinking of starting
a business. So we like to ask our panel a question,
and today our question is what strategies did you use

(02:10):
to get your first client or customer. Let's start the
ball rolling with Mike Silver Screening. Mike, welcome to the show.
What did you do to get your first client or customer.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
For our first customer, I had to go back to
two thousand and seven. We were two people, pretty scrappy
and the only skill that we had really developed at
that time was how to put a proposal together, and
we were shipping them in every direction we could, and
we finally got a bite at a place that injufacturer's
guns actually for a solar power plants called Smith and
Wesson up in Massachusetts. So we opped in the car

(02:40):
and I had some volunteers, some people who were kind
of believing in the idea of my first solar energy company,
and I asked them to come along for their various expertise,
and we met Smith and Wesson and Smith and Wesson.
When you go into these types of manufacturing companies, there's
a lot of gates of security and badges and that
type of things. So I figured there was eight of

(03:01):
us that showed up. I look, let's two of us
go in and take this meeting with Smith and Wesson
and try to get our first solar project. And the
rest of you guys go walk around the nearby businesses
because it's sort of an industrial park, knock on doors
and see what happens. Well, we went into Smith and
Wesson and that deal collapsed because the lawyer just didn't
want anything to do with the project. But while we

(03:22):
were doing that, my buddy Andrew walked across the street
and knocked on the right door with astro Chemicals, who
wound up becoming our first solar project. And that one
was a really meaningful project for us because it was large,
and it was impactful, and it was an early stage
project in the solar energy industry of its type. And
then by our third and fourth customers were Walmart and Target,

(03:44):
so they kind of snowballed quickly from there. But it
took a relentless proposal generation and just keeping with it.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
That's amazing, and it's so interesting that sometimes clients just
come from places you didn't really expect. You were expecting
Smith and Wesson didn't work out, but the guys across
the street were very interested, and you landed your first customer,
So thank you for sharing that, Stan Lucian, How did
you get your first clienter? Customer?

Speaker 7 (04:10):
Sky Bris is a little different. How is it different?

Speaker 4 (04:13):
Because we offered different type of services like property management
where we manage our own properties and educational content. I
guess my first client or consumer or customer la a
tenant's right. That was kind of like provided to me
because when I bought the property, I've already had.

Speaker 7 (04:29):
Tenants living in it.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
However, though, to get more tenants, I came up with
the idea of smart home integrated technologies and our properties
like smart lights, smart doggs, smart terms that. So that
was kind of like something like an experiment for me,
you know, and then when trying it, it kind of
like opened up border market for us because we had tenants.

(04:52):
We had people that's looking for properties that have smart
technology in them, you know, not all the properties out
they have you know, smart almost us. So margol was
to make it more convenient for tenants.

Speaker 6 (05:04):
That's great. That's an amazing strategy to entice customers with
more technology. And seems like you learned from your first
tenant that this type of technology could really be attractive
to other potential tenants and that opened up the world
for you. So thank you for that. Avitra and a crew.

(05:25):
Welcome to the show. You're with deal Magic and tell
us how you got your first client or customer for
d Magic.

Speaker 8 (05:32):
As you know, we serve local poper Mom shops, anybody.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Who is on your main street.

Speaker 8 (05:38):
We got started off by fus going and frequenting our
local merchants that we would normally go to, our local
barbers and spa owners and restaurants where we would go
and frequent and just kind of tested the water to
see what their reaction would be to this kind of technology.
And we walked the streets initially, and very quickly we

(06:00):
realized that in order for us to scale, even though
a lot of people love what we are offering, in
order for us to scale, we have to automate the
hell out of it. So straight out of the bat,
we automated the onboarding process. We automated the whole sales funnel,
from add to the lead generation to the sign up

(06:22):
and sellf onboarding.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Everything is streamlined.

Speaker 8 (06:25):
And automated, and that's helping us scale across the country
in multiple categories.

Speaker 6 (06:31):
Perfect Elizabeth.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
Yes, so we're brick and mortar. We're a podcast studio,
content creation studio. So we started out podcast studio realized
there's all sorts of content you can create, and it's
not just for podcasts using the video studio. We have
an audio studio, we have a photo shoot room, But
the way that we got the first paying client I

(06:52):
had experimented with a couple other people was we had
an open house. So we had a grand opening, and
I didn't use much media to promote it. I actually
have a friend who's a super networker, and I joined
a chamber of commerce that she recommended. In the Chamber
Commerce brought a whole bunch of people to our event,
and we did put it on social media in different places.

(07:14):
And the first client that I got with somebody I
had never met before who came to the grand opening,
who saw it and is a corporate client who's doing
weekly podcast videos with me now, so that's great.

Speaker 6 (07:27):
You know. One of the things that I'm noticing in
all of our comments is that there's a human touch involved,
especially in getting the clients early on. I mean, we
live in a world of digital right where we rely
on the Internet, advertising, social media to try to get clients.
But at the end of the day, at least starting out,
it comes down to relationships and talking with people and

(07:49):
meeting them. Here heart Law is no different. I mean,
when we started, our very first client happened to come
from an attorney friend of mine we had known for years.
And years ears. Her name was Alice Terarinas and we
also work with her husband, Adam, and they were great.
They were very supportive of when we started the law firm.
She happened to know a client that could use our

(08:12):
services and she referred them to us, and they turn
out to be a great client. Afterwards, we did the
website and all the digital, but the first clients were
people that I actually met one on one and so
I do think that that's a good lesson for entrepreneurs
starting out. Don't just rely on digital. The human connection
is still, you know, super important. So that being said,

(08:33):
now it's time for our futured guest interview. What if
investing in clean energy could make you rich and save
the planet at the same time. Well, Mike Silvestrini isn't
just dreaming it, he's doing it, and he's able to
challenge just about everything that is conventional in the renewable space.
So we're very happy to have him. Mike, what is

(08:55):
the future of renewable energy.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Well, it's really what's the future of any energy, because
renewable energy is just one of the types of energy
sources that we rely on. As the world continues to
modernize and digitize, and you know, with more data centers
which everybody's hearing about coming online, the demand and thirst
for energy is virtually insatiable. And there's a variety of

(09:20):
tools in the toolbox for us to address that energy shortage.
And the one that I think has the most velocity
and the easiest and fastest to deploy at the best
price is solar energy. And I'm not the only one
who thinks that, because over the last five years there's
been more solar energy installed than all the coal and
nuclear and wind natural gas combined. So really, solar energy

(09:43):
is the premiere technology for all new power generation worldwide already,
so we expect that to continue.

Speaker 6 (09:50):
I'm just going to play a little Devil's advocate here
because the narrator out there seems to be that renewables
are great, but they're expensive and the technology isn't quite
there yet. But what you're saying is completely different than
what seems to be out there in the general news media.
So can you talk about.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
That a little bit?

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot of
different versions of energy markets around the world. Even within
the United States, each state is kind of its own
landscape for the econometrics of energy based off of the
resources that they have and their history of building power plants.
Like I'm in Connecticut here where there's a large nuclear
power plant, a legacy plant from the past. They just

(10:32):
signed a terrible deal to buy electricity from that plan
at a very high price. But the reality is when
you take away all the government subsidies and energy sources
are able to participate and compete toe to toe with
one another, Solar always wins. And that's happening across the world.
So we're in a variety of different international markets from
South Africa and Brazil and Columbia and others. And you know,

(10:55):
we enter these markets without any tax credits or the
types of government intervention that we have in the US
energy markets, and we're able to be thirty to forty
percent lower than the natural gas based energy that we're
competing against. So it's very easy to install new solar
plants and convert energy systems into solar based energy systems.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
As you said, AI, and all these computing programs take
a huge amount of energy. Batteries is one component of that.
But for the solar energy, I would have liked to
have solar energy on my house, but have a go
to my own house, but instead it goes to the
grid and then comes back, right, Is that still the
way it works? Like if you have solar panels on

(11:35):
top of your house, you have to send your energy
to the utility company and then they send you energy back.

Speaker 9 (11:40):
Well.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
First, when I'm discussing solar energy, we're really talking about
energy infrastructure. This is the stuff that runs the modern
world at large scale. But as far as residential solar goes,
which is not my area of expertise, I treat it
more like an appliance. It's something that you would like
to have. It's something that you're going to use, and
it does go directly meter. It doesn't go out to

(12:01):
the grid and come back first. It'll go directly to
your energy demand first. Only when there's a circumstance where
your solar energy is producing more energy for an instant
than your house is using at that same instant, will
you export the additional energy back to the grid, and hopefully,
depending what state you're in, you may get a credit
for that. We're really talking about modern energy infrastructure. If

(12:23):
these are large scale solar assets that are designed to
replace thirty or forty thousand houses worth of energy. And
that's the type of scale that we're going to need.
If we're sincere about producing energy with renewables, if we're
sincere about keeping up with the increased energy demand, we're
going to have to move faster than residential solar.

Speaker 5 (12:42):
Where are you going to get the minerals from?

Speaker 2 (12:43):
I mean silicon. Silicon is the most abundant element in the.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
World, So that's the only mineral that solar panels use.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, solar energy is just silicon. So silicon is an atom.
And if you look at a silicon atom that has
one electron in its outer shell, if you zap that
with a photo so a package of light energy, it
knots that outermost electron off of its outermost shell and
it jumps to the nearest atom, and that creates a
chain reaction. And then we have aluminum that basically provides

(13:13):
a raceway for us to collect that electrical activity. It's
called photosensitivity, and then we just keep stacking that. So
the goal of a solar panel is to have a
one atom thick layer. So the thickness of a solar
cell is measured in microns. You want one atom thick
layer of silicon cells pointed approximately towards the sun so
that you can harvest that photosensitive chain reactions and all

(13:37):
as it is is compounding that put more cells together,
more modules together, more rays together, until you have sizeable
energy production.

Speaker 6 (13:46):
We're with Mike Silver streaming from energy. Mike, can you
tell us what energy it does?

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Basically, we know we need to deploy substantially more renewable
energy at a faster rate than we're currently doing. And
the reason because even though we put five hundred billion
dollars worth of new solar in the ground last year
as a glow, that's pretty much set off the increase
in demand for energy, so we didn't really make any
headway against decarbonizing our existing energy infrastructure.

Speaker 9 (14:15):
So we need to.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Accelerate the rate at which we deploy solar energy, and
we need to look at what are the available sources
of capital for that acceleration to occur. And you can
go around the governments of the world and the large
financial institutions, and they all have their pledges, and there's
mega private equity funds and you can add all that
up and that looks like we can maintain sort of

(14:37):
this half trillion dollar run rate. But where's the additional
capital going to come from, and where we think it
makes the most sense is the American individual investor. And
what really was lacking in the marketplace was the plumbing
necessary for individual investors to find access to premium renewable
energy investment opportunities. So we took advantage of a number

(14:59):
of different tools that are pretty modern and now available,
things like regulation A in the regulatory space that allows
us to convert solar projects into securities. We have a
great digital platform. We have projects around the world that
rely on star length so that we can see and
access those plants in real time. So there's a sort
of a bundle of new technologies that we package together

(15:20):
in order to take these great investment opportunities in the
solar energy world and convert them into something that's easy
for individual investors to buy and include in their personal
investing portfolio.

Speaker 6 (15:33):
How could people access this investment platform? Where do they go?

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Energia dot com is the way that we sell our securities.
We had to make a decision as to whether or
not we were going to list our funds on a
stock exchange or if we're going to keep them private.
But for a number of reasons. We're happy to go
into this asset class, which is considered an alternative asset class,
and energy infrastructure really belongs in the private markets where

(15:59):
we can control the share price. The reason why is
that you put that onto a listed exchange, people start
wheeling and dealing amongst themselves. You know, you might be
willing to sell your stock at a lower price, and
somebody else may be able to buy a stock at
a lower price. But the price should really be attached
to the net asset value of the underlying solar projects.

(16:20):
Everybody should pay the same price because the value is
the same in order to get the desired return on investment.
So we decided to keep control over the share price,
not allow market manipulation, and instead allow people to trade
amongst themselves at a price that represents the nad of
the portfolio. And that's why we use Energia dot com
as our exchange method to sell our securities.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
So if I have an IRA and I want to
take some of the funds from my IRA and buy
energy stock, I guess as stock. Then do I just
tell my financial advisor go buy energy?

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, you can do it yourself in three or four clicks.
On the energy A website, we have one of the
best underlying architectures for investing retirement plans directly with ENERGYA.
We have our own energy of our ira. But if
you go to the website, it should make it super
simple for you to be able to move some of
that capital and position it into real asss. So you remember,

(17:18):
when you invest in energy, you're buying a pro rate
a portion of an underlying basket of solar projects.

Speaker 9 (17:25):
There's no employees, it's not a company.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
It doesn't have operating expenses as a traditional company does.
You're just directly connected to the solar energy projects. And
each month, as the sun rises and it spins that meter,
and we invoice those customers and collect that revenue. We
pay the operating expenses for the projects and then ship
up the rest to our clients who get their pro
rided distribution of that cash flow. About eighty five percent

(17:49):
of our clients choose to get those monthly dividends and
reinvest it and buy more participation into more solar energy projects,
creating a compounded yield effect. But it's really up to
our clients. We don't make that decision. They make it
for themselves. Some people want to enjoy the monthly dibdend yield.
But that's how I think that it's a great asset
class for long term retirement planning.

Speaker 5 (18:11):
So what is the red term monthly? Like if I
were to put say ten thousand dollars in, how much
would I get as a dividend monthly on average?

Speaker 7 (18:18):
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (18:19):
So the return and the dividing the other are two
different numbers. But the way that this works is that
across we have different products. So we have a product
that's just for Brazil, and you know, we describe that
investment thesis in the offering circular.

Speaker 9 (18:33):
Why are we going to Brazil?

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Why do we think we can make money buying solar
power assets in Brazil. We do the same thing for
Latin America and in Africa, in the US, and each
of those investment thesis has a different underlying strategy and
we expect to have different results because no two markets
are the same. There are different currents, these different policies,
there's different build costs, different radiance. We take all that

(18:56):
into consideration and you get approximately a fourteen percent IRR,
which is an internal rate.

Speaker 9 (19:02):
Of return out of our Brazil portfolio.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
And we've been doing that for the last five years,
having missed fourteen percent. IRR aren't following my guy today,
we should. It's a kick ass asset class's We spotted
something in Brazil a few years ago and knew that
there was going to be some oversized opportunities to make
money with Brazilian solar. It's a very complex market. You
need to go in there with a lot of capital

(19:27):
and build a lot of software. You need to really
fight through some challenges of doing business in Brazil. But
when you do that, the reward is tremendous and we're
at a safe flying altitude. We have a beautiful batch
of operating assets. We've invested about three hundred million dollars
into Brazilian Solar and I plan on investing hundreds of
millions more. But we also have another product. Like Africa

(19:49):
is a very different market. It relies on different currencies
and different risk profiles. And our Africa product is about
a ten percent return. These are all stated after our fees,
so this is net to the and it's about a
ten percent return. And there's a lot of reasons why
Africa has.

Speaker 9 (20:04):
A lower return than Brazil.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
It's because of the presence of development finance institutions which
really adulterate the natural economics and the cost and risk
profile of African's economy. We have the US where our
dividend yield is seven and change. I want to say
it's seven point two percent. But what we really encourage
our clients to do is to even though Brazil is

(20:26):
this big, shiny double digit number, in the US is
this kind of lousy looking seven where your money market
account is three and a half. The reality is you
should blend them because these rely on a vast array
of characteristics and variables and assumptions that are changing all
the time. And when we look at solar energy as
an asset class, I'm trying to make for you guys

(20:47):
a perfect solar cocktail, and I look at the US
as the ice in the drink.

Speaker 6 (20:51):
I'm all for cocktails. We're with Mike Silvestrini here from Energy.
How do you spell energy?

Speaker 9 (20:57):
A Mike E N E r ga.

Speaker 6 (21:00):
That's great. We'll be back with more Passage to Profit
after this. Stay tuned for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind
coming up toward the end of the show. We also
have our favorite intellectual property dues and don't forget to
experience more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us
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(21:23):
Passage to Profit show on any of these platforms. We'll
be back right after this.

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Speaker 1 (23:27):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again, Richard and
Elizabeth Gerhart and.

Speaker 5 (23:32):
Our special guest Mike Silvastrini with Energy E N E
R g EA dot com and has he got an
investment for you? But he started two companies. He started
green Sky's Renewable Energy and Group for twenty five thousand
to a huge number and he sold it. And we
want to talk to him about his entrepreneurial journey and

(23:53):
what were some of the biggest challenges and how he
overcame those. So what was your biggest challenge?

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Oh man, there's too many to probably prioritize as one
big challenge, but really being an entrepreneur is just an
enormous challenge itself.

Speaker 9 (24:08):
Every day is a battle, and.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Really only the paranoids survive. We say, I look at
being an entrepreneur as sort of like being an engineer
of business systems, and you're building this tower and you're
trying to put on the next level but make in
such a way that doesn't fall over. So you constantly
have to make sure that the health of the business
is your first priority. And I always say to my team,

(24:31):
we take care of the company, the company will take
care of us. We've got to prioritize the health and
well being of the company. And I see a lot
of young entrepreneurs, and you know, after you exit a
company and you have some resources, you get a lot
of investment opportunities to glance at. I see a lot
of people starting their entrepreneurial journey in ways that make
me shriek. They're not prioritizing generally how to make money,

(24:53):
how to produce revenue. A lot of times they're too
comfortable spending money when they have none, especially if they
have an early angel investor or that type of thing.
But I'm lucky because I wasn't smart enough to get
an angel investor or any types of early support, so
I only had no money, and that allowed me to
stay out of trouble and not waste it. And we

(25:15):
wound up really scrapping our way through that first sale,
get our first cash flow in the door, and that
money was so precious to us we wouldn't spend it
on a thing. I think it sat in the back
bank account for months after we made our first twenty
five grand. But if you keep it like that, if
you put your own needs behind the needs of the company,
you can really build a beautiful business. And if you

(25:36):
know your idea has to be good and your team
has to be good and all the rest of it.
But I think the thing that really matters most is
that discipline in those early days keep it alive and
keep going because if just sticking around will allow you
your business to grow, you know, keep the doors open
and good things happen. But that requires discipline. So after
I sold greens Guys, you know, in one moment, I

(25:58):
went from having lawyers and engineers and accountants and horsepower,
hundreds of employees and solar assets across the America, and
in one stroke of the pen, I had nothing. I
had cash for the first time in my life, but
I didn't have any horsepower anymore. So I sat there
in my house and thought to myself, what am I

(26:19):
gonna do next? And started thinking about a number of
entrepreneurial strategies as an entrepreneur does in different types of
industries and ideas and note taking, and realized that pretty
quickly that I'm really an expert in solar and nothing else.
So stick with what I'm really good at and build
another company. That's where energy came out of. It was
the next lodule step for me as an expert. So

(26:42):
I knew also I was non competed from doing business
in the US for a couple of years after I
sold Green Skies, So that's one of the reasons why
I started looking overseas for investment opportunities. So I get
this opportunity to go to Nicaragua, and Nicaragua is a
wild ride. So I'm going there with the World Bank
and somebody from the Vatican. There's the Pope's representative in

(27:05):
Latin America, and the goal is to build a gigantic
solar energy project to power the people of Nicaragua. But
when I got there, things were quite different.

Speaker 9 (27:15):
It was wild.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
It's basically like a police state, so there's cameras everywhere
and the government's always watching and they don't like any
dissent in their country.

Speaker 9 (27:23):
And then I get ushered in a black car.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Service to Loriano or Tega's mansion, where we have this
beautiful conversation about all the change that's going to happen.
And you know, I was there to represent the capital
to make this project possible, whether leveraging my relationships and
private equity or doing things like energy. That's kind of
what I'm known for, is capitalizing solar energy infrastructure. So
I get to go from there to the utility company

(27:47):
and another Dog and Pony show. Whatever you need, Mike,
you tell me what we need, We're going to make
it possible for you. And it didn't get weird until
that night when we went out to dinner and we're
sitting around with this cast of characters and then comes
the Muscle and basically the restaurant was full and it
just emptied, so now it's just us, and then there's

(28:08):
there's a couple of machine guns sitting on various tables
around us. He summons over one of the waiters and
asks him to demonstrate how much this waiter appreciates the
party in power by showing his party card, which he
is shakingly, you know, shaking hand, pulls out of his
wallet and shows me how much of a fan is
of the leading party. And they were kind of like

(28:30):
putting on this tough guy show. And you realize that
this is a group of high school buddies that run
a country, and you know, here's their cousin is sitting
in the United Nations, and their other cousin is an
ambassador to a foreign nation, and you know, but it's
just this group of individuals and they owned this nation
ruthlessly at that.

Speaker 9 (28:49):
So, needless to say, we didn't park any money in Nicaragua.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
But that type of story is not that unusual when
you're chasing down international solar opportunities.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
Wow, I don't say because I ever heard a story
like that, and I have never seen a machine gun.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
Yeah, watch out for Nick or Ragwaman. So one more
time for our audience, where can people find energy?

Speaker 2 (29:09):
ENERGYA is simply Energia dot com E N E R
g EA dot com. And what I love for people
to do is to come to the website take a
look at some of the videos. So we'll try to
present the information a number of different ways. One way
is to watch a video and see the visuals of
these assets where they are, get a sense replace read

(29:30):
the offering circular. That's where we give great detail to
our investment thesis for those brave enough to get through
a ninety page document that says establishes exactly what we're
here to do, exactly how we're doing on that mission,
the economics, the audited financial statements, and there are things
that investors should keep an eye on before getting involved.
And then lastly, we left the barrier to entry as

(29:51):
low as we could. It's just one hundred bucks is
the minimum to participate and buy some stock and energy
because as we've seen, people come in at a level
that is comfortable for them to experiment with. Some people
experiment with twenty grand, some people experiment with one hundred bucks.
Depends on who you are. But what they inevitably do
is fall in love with the product, see the transparency

(30:12):
of the reporting, see the value in the monthly dividends,
and then get more and more engrossed with energy and
become our real clients.

Speaker 6 (30:20):
That sounds great, So sign up today, go to the
Energy website. I certainly will. I'm definitely interested in learning more.
Thanks so much, Mike for being with us on Passage
to Profit. Now it's time for intellectual property news.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
This is a doozy. I'm going to let you explain it.
It's trademark confusion and its finest.

Speaker 6 (30:39):
It's two b moths. It's Columbia versus Colombia. Not the country,
but Columbia the university versus Colombia the outerwear company. Colombia
the outerwear company file the lawsuit against Columbia the university
because Columbia University did not live up to the terms

(31:01):
of a contract. Their contract acquired that Columbia University put
logo or other identifying information on any merchandise that it
sold with the Columbia.

Speaker 5 (31:13):
Name on it, right, sportswear merchandise right or was it?
Was it any merchandise or sportswear, any apparel, any apparel right?

Speaker 6 (31:21):
And so, of course, Columbia Sportswear has been in the
apparel business for a long long time, since nineteen thirty eight,
and Columbia University, of course, has been around even longer,
even since seventeen fifty four. Right, But I guess they
weren't selling T shirts back in seventeen fifty four, and

(31:41):
that's where they lost out. So they got on the
bandwagon with other universities and started selling sportswear a little
too late. And it looks like Columbia I've sold though,
So it sounds.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
Like Columbia Sportswear makes its own line and Columbia University
makes its own line, and Columbia Sportswear didn't want some
maybe they weren't up to the same standards. Some shoddily
made product that Columbia University had made confused with the
good stuff that they make. Although imagine Columbia University stuff
is good too. But I mean, I this is such.

Speaker 6 (32:15):
A weird controversy.

Speaker 5 (32:17):
It's a very strange. But they had a contract, right,
they had a license.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
In Columbia University is allegedly not following it. What was
so interesting we were talking about this. Elizabeth is from
the Pacific Northwest and she had barely heard of Columbia
University until she came out here, but she was very
aware of Columbia Sportswear sportswear and I grew up in

(32:41):
the Midwest around Chicago, and I of course knew of
Columbia University, but never really heard of Columbia Sportswear. So
it's kind of funny how different parts of the country have,
you know, different levels of familiarity with these brands. But
in any case, we'd like to turn this over to
our panel, find out what do you think about this?

(33:05):
Who do you empathize with most Colombia Sportswear, A contract
holder or Columbia University. So let's go to Pavitra and
a crew. Welcome to the show again. Give us your
thoughts on this controversy.

Speaker 8 (33:21):
Well, I side with Columbia the apparel maker. I empathize
with them because they are they are the real brand,
and Columbia University is a university and they should make
it clear that it's a university logo, university brand. If
they are using the Columbia panels, they shouldn't be confusing people.

Speaker 6 (33:43):
I agree. I think that's sensible approach. Thank you very much,
very logical, Stan Lucian, What are your thoughts?

Speaker 4 (33:52):
I think I will side with the university, but I
also agree that they.

Speaker 7 (33:56):
Should have been more transparent.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
That you know that you know, whatever product, so if
if it's support why or whatever the case, maybe they
need to be more transparent. That just is you know,
for the university and all of that tool for exactly
what's going on right now.

Speaker 6 (34:13):
Yeah, you know, even as an intellectual property lawyer, I
know that the university should be following the contract. But
there's still part of me that says, you've been there
a long time, right, and you have a certain amount
of fame, and lots of times fame can influence the
scope of your intellectual property protection. But they signed an

(34:36):
agreement with Columbia University.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Mike, what do you think, Well, it just seems like
Columbia University can't do anything right lately, but right now,
I would say that in this particular case, Colombia has
been using the mark you know, if you will of
Columbia for hundreds of years before this apparel company came around.
And I don't know the details of what agreement was signed.

(34:59):
The contract obviously govern but if it was, just if
there were no contract, then certainly that the university should
have every right to print T shirts with its brand
on it. It sounds like the apparel maker is being
a bit predatorial and using intellectual property as an opportunity
to ratchet some cash.

Speaker 9 (35:17):
Out of the university.

Speaker 6 (35:19):
Yeah, this probably makes sense. Is in the grand scheme
of things? How much difference does it make?

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Right?

Speaker 6 (35:24):
But anyway, thanks for your comments and to our audience
or our panel. If you have an idea or invention
that you want to protect, contact us at your Heart Law.
We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the
entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights. Also, you
can visit learn more about patents dot com or learn

(35:45):
more about trademarks dot com or a free consultation. You
can just download your free Entrepreneurs Quick Guides to patents
or trademarks and schedule a time with a your heart
law attorney. We have to take a commercial, but we'll
be back with more passage to profit. Stay tuned. We
have Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up soon.

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Speaker 1 (38:07):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (38:11):
Heard in thirty eight markets across the US. We'd like
to do a shout out to our listeners in Cadillac,
Michigan on Watt. Also, our podcast is in the top
global three percent of podcasts and we've also been recently
selected by Beatspot Podcasters database as a top ten entrepreneur
interview podcast. So subscribe to the Passage to Profit show

(38:34):
on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and on the iHeart app. And
now it is time for Elizabeth Spotlight, So tell us
what's going on.

Speaker 5 (38:43):
I've been taking my entrepreneurial journey along different where else
and the Gear Media Studios is my latest innovation, I guess,
and we do have a meetup group associated with a
call podcast and YouTube creators community. Podcasting is very reliant
on artificial intelligence, so most of our meetups now for

(39:04):
the community our advances and artificial intelligence and how you
use it for your podcasting and specifically for making your
videos better and analyzing the data all that stuff. So
we're taking Passage to Profit and using artificial intelligence to
really try to analyze the show and dive in and
make it better get more listeners. So that's kind of

(39:25):
what I've been focused on lately, is how can we
improve things and what can chatch ept and perplexity and
especially Google Gemini tell us about our processes and what
we're doing, not only in the studio but also at
gear Heart Law. And I like Google Gemini because it
goes straight to the horse's mouth. It's not the answers
you get from AI. I mean, people are like AI

(39:46):
is going to replace us. What we need the humans
for is to know what questions to ask because AI
is not curious. So the value of AI to you
is really if you can figure out the right questions
to ask and really dig deep into it. That's rarely
where the value of AI is for people. But now
we're going to go on to the medical minute. So
do you think if you're trying to get healthier and

(40:08):
lose weight, that it's better to eat ultra processed foods
or minimal processed foods. So everybody who thinks it's better
to eat ultra processed foods, raise your hand. Oh, nobody's
raising their hand. They did a study where they have
people eat ultra processed foods and then stop and then
eat minimally processed foods. So now what they're saying is
minimally processed foods have undergone very little alteration from their

(40:30):
natural state, such as foods, vegetables, whole grains, meat, fish,
and dairy products, the whole you know, everything we always
hear about, but the other ones typically contain ingredients not
commonly used in home cooking, like artificial flavors, preservatives, and emulsifiers.
So it's really still hard to tell. They said in
the study, let people eat as much as they wanted,
but they found that the minimally processed foods filled them

(40:52):
up better. It's something that we all knew, but we
just don't really know what they mean by ultra process
and minimally process.

Speaker 7 (40:58):
Okay, so move on.

Speaker 5 (41:01):
I am so excited about our next presenter. Pavitra Ana
Crew is a co founder and CEO of deal Magic
and you spell that d e A l MA gik
dot com. And it's a really fast growing platform where
you can shop, which is one of my favorite things
to do. So I'd like to hear all about it. Pavitra,

(41:22):
please tell us what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Speaker 8 (41:25):
Deal Magic is a vision of us to empower local
businesses and fill the technology gap they currently have with
big box stores. So what we do with deal magic
is we provide them the technology to run their businesses
and a marketplace to promote their businesses. It is a
platform that truly brings your main street online. So when

(41:46):
you go to dealmagic dot com, you will actually see
your neighborhood restaurants with whom you can place an order
for pickup our delivery, and you can book a bouquet
of flowers and for delivery for pickup, and you can
book an appointment for your haircut or a pit grooming session,
and you can also pre purchase your car wash. So

(42:09):
anything and everything that you do on your main street
is available online from your local merchants. On the flip side,
any local merchant or anybody who is just starting off
a business can quickly get their digital store fronts in minutes.
What I mean by that is all they need to
do is go into business dot day magic dot com,

(42:31):
sign up and it's available on the web, android mobile app.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
As well as anios app.

Speaker 8 (42:38):
They can be on their desk or they can use
their entire operations on the go, and they sign up
and they set up their menus, and we have a
twenty four to seven help desk that helps set everything
up in minutes for them and within half an hour
or so, they will be completely onboarded. They can start

(42:58):
promoting their business and people can come and make appointment
with that, and there is an order management system, booking
management system, promotion management system, all of that integrated with
the store front and it is fully a CEO enabled.
They can have a standalone website and of course a
mobile app that comes with that. However, they can come

(43:19):
into the marketplace where they can go in and see
not just their business, everybody else's business. On the flip
side of it, if you're in the market to go
get a bouquet of flowers, you can also probably be
thinking about, Okay, it may be your birthday, is something.
You can also book a facial appointment right there, because
everything is visible to you and everything is promoted to

(43:42):
you at the same place.

Speaker 6 (43:44):
Is this then mostly for local businesses? It's community business
oriented website.

Speaker 8 (43:50):
It is kind of a hyper local business. At the
same time, it is expanding out to be with a
global reach too. So what we currently are is everything
where you can buy online, redeem in store, or buy
online get it delivered. So you can think of it
as an amalgamation of help and door Dash and vagaros

(44:11):
of the world that offers similar services but for a
particular brand. But we particular category, if you will, obviously
is for food, Wagaro is for spas, and your dash
Spas is for health and fitness. But deal Magic is
truly one platform, but that brings everybody together. So it's

(44:34):
not just your promotions or flash deals or whatever. It
is your full catalog, fully shoppable menu. So businesses use
that to offer a deal and upsell their entire menu,
so it's full service shopping app. What we also offer
is a unique way.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
To get to their business.

Speaker 8 (44:53):
You can come to a storefront and you can see
everybody and they can compare their offerings, and they're not
only showcase their unique products. But if a floorists choose
us to be completely on their own, they still can
use all the services and technology that we provide and
have a unique address without having to create their own website.

(45:15):
So you can go to roses by Moses at dealmagic
dot com and that easy your website. And we are
also enhancing our apps so that we only give them
the technology so they can have their own domain. If
roses by Moses has its own domain ownership, we power
their domain with all our back end technologies so they

(45:37):
don't have to participate on the on the marketplace. They
can have their own web page powered by everything off
the back of it, but having participating in the marketplace
gives them additional visibility. And we also do a lot
of advertising and a CEO on our own and they
will miss out on it if they do not.

Speaker 5 (45:58):
So today actually get a link to your deal magic
website from their website. Is it like an SEO bawl link.

Speaker 8 (46:04):
That's one of the ways we offered, but they don't
have to do that. So going into the technical details
of it, one way to join our marketplace is just
open up your online store fret. So the way people
reach you is, like I said x y Z at
dmagic dot com, that could be where you are it
And if you own your own domain, we can power

(46:26):
up your domain and you can create however you want.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Your website can be however you want. But all of.

Speaker 8 (46:32):
The menus and order management system and booking management system,
everything is already built for you. So you don't have
to do anything other than create a domain. And if
you already have a website that also has a menu capability,
but you want additional power that deal magic brings, you
can add a button which we help create. Click here

(46:55):
to shop on dal Magic, So click here to place
your on So I do you.

Speaker 5 (46:59):
Want to bring up one of the things that we
talked about before the show that I think is great.
If you're starting something and you don't want to have
to pay thousands of dollars for a website, you could
just use deal Magic at least starting out right, and
maybe you'll never need a website if you just use
deal Magic.

Speaker 8 (47:15):
Absolutely, And the best part is it costs nothing to
be on deal Magic. So the only time you pay
us is when something gets sold on our platform, and
we only charge a commission of fifteen percent, which already
includes the credit card processing fee, and you only pay
us when.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Somebody buys something from you. And the way we.

Speaker 8 (47:36):
Make our money is through scale, because, like Mike was
alluding to American consumers, the strength of the market is
American small business owners and American consumers, and there is
strength and scale that it offers. And the sheer size
of the number of businesses and the multiple categories that

(47:57):
we serve and the number of consumers so around, as
you know, and of itself helps us get twenty percent
off of everything that gets sort.

Speaker 6 (48:05):
That's great. We're with Pavitra and a crew co founder
of deal Magics. That's spelled d e A l MA
gik dot com. So go to dealmagic dot com. Mike,
did you have any questions for Pavitra.

Speaker 9 (48:20):
No, but I just think it's great.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
I love seeing businesses that directly impact main street enterprise because,
you know, I feel sometimes that it's harder and harder
for people to start companies in America. And I think
back to when I first started, you know, twenty years ago.
It seems like it was an easier environment, a little
bit less bureaucracy, a little bit less cost. But that's changing,

(48:42):
and we need technology like what Pavitra's doing here to
make it easier and lower the barrier of entry for
people to start their own enterprise.

Speaker 9 (48:49):
So bravo Levitra.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Ak for you.

Speaker 8 (48:51):
Another other thing to add to that is if you
are a florist on a restaurant owner, you don't have
to worry about the space with which the tach knowlogy
is changing, and you don't need to worry about adapting
to that cheat being on a platform like deal Magic,
we are constantly evolving and constantly powering a power tech stack.
So being AI powered is just click off another button

(49:15):
for you adding another feature, so you are right up
there with big box stores. We recently had a national
level florist contest and it's one of the hustles that
we did, but that really really went viral. Florists from
all over the country put the designs out there. The
winners were offered a contract wherein we are creating as

(49:38):
Deal Deal Magic Signature catalog and this is going to
help us greatly with SEO as well as enable florists
so are starting off to get access to design, the
recipes and everything that they need to power up their.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Floor is chop So it was very well received.

Speaker 8 (49:56):
It gave us an opportunity to sign up lots and
thousands of cusustomers in one shot. In the span of
one month, we were able to get hundreds of businesses
to sign up all across the nation and lots of
consumers to join and sign up as well. So I
just wanted to highlight that and if anybody is out
there listening how to go viral, how to scale your business,

(50:18):
this is one of the great ways when you come
up with an idea to bring in all sites together
and have people have an opinion or say in the process.
That really does go viral. People always like to be
heard and given a platform to express their opinions.

Speaker 6 (50:36):
I'd also like to mention too, Pavitra and Deo Magic
are your heart law clients, right, So you've been with
us now for how long?

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Oh, it's over ten plus years.

Speaker 8 (50:45):
They just want to take a step back and say
that this is my second company. My first company is
involved street and providing technology for capital markets institutional broker dealers.
That's when I started off with you, and you guys
helped us navigate all the contracts with various banks that
we were making. I was actually thrust into being an entrepreneur.

(51:08):
I'm a geeky, nerdy technology person, but you know, things
happen and then I just became an entrepreneur overnight.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
And having a law.

Speaker 8 (51:17):
Firm helped me navigate the process was very, very helpful.
And even when I was writing contracts with the Canters
and Raymond Jameses of the world, having David Postoski from
your firm representers helped us great deal because David happened
to work for BGC two, so he knew.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
The other thing that's right, and.

Speaker 8 (51:36):
Having an experienced lawyer helped us a great deal, and
he taught us the importance of trademarking and getting design
patents and all that stuff, and that has helped us immensely.

Speaker 6 (51:49):
Well, we're very honored to have served you for these
years and we're grateful for your success. Passage to profit
with Richard Analyst with pure heart, we.

Speaker 5 (51:58):
Are going to move on to our next guest who's
been waiting patiently. Stan Lucien is the CEO and founder
of Skybriss skybrz dot com, a trailblazing tech driven real
estate company that's reimagining the rental experience or innovation, education
and equity. So welcome Stan. Tell us all about what

(52:19):
you're doing.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Skybus is a realistic technology company and we offer a
lot of different solutions like property management, education, men focus
right now, it's the educational part of the company. Why
is that we try to let's just educate the next generation.
So this is where we come in with animated content
like skycas or animated educational videos. Why is that It's

(52:44):
because that we realize that real estate is one of
the things that they do not teach in middle school,
high school or even college from what I can recall,
you know, and it is one of the most big
decision that you will ever make in your life. The
moment you get out, whether you're trying to write, whether
you're trying to buy a property, no matter where you're going,

(53:07):
you're still gonna need a roof over your head. And
what we notice is that, especially for a studied right
out of college, they don't know where to go, like,
you know, what kind of steps do they need to
take to vnder a property. For instance, they might go
on zelow and see a property for it. You know,
they learn the properties. But out there we also have

(53:27):
I guess bad people, you know, a slum load or
whatever you call it. You know, they take advantage of
people that don't really know the law.

Speaker 7 (53:35):
The realistic law.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
You know, some landlord may try to do things that's illegal,
you know, to some tenants and they kind of have
to allow that. Why is that It's because they do
not know that the landlord cannot do that. So this
is when I come with the educational part of it,
you know, to try to educate people, to try to
tell them that you know what this is what's out

(53:57):
there for you Again, it's not like those information or
not available out there, but they just kind of like
written in such a complex language that you need a
realistic agent or attorney to break that information down.

Speaker 7 (54:09):
So even though it's public available information.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
So that's why again we need we use you know,
animated content to try.

Speaker 7 (54:17):
To better educate the you know, the people.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
I love your animated content. Yeah, what's interesting is I
went on your website and as looking at your animated content,
and it's really attractive and well done, and I learned
something that I didn't really know just from like a
short video there. One thing that your video said was
if you want to buy a multi family unit that
if there's renters there, you can use that rent to
help you get the loan for it.

Speaker 7 (54:40):
Right, Yes, that's octurate.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
So some of the banks lenders may let you use
some of the income from the other unit to you know,
to help you qualify for the muggage.

Speaker 5 (54:51):
Yes, and that was just one of your short videos.

Speaker 6 (54:53):
Yeah, that's pretty helpful and the videos were very well done.
By the way, we're speaking with Stan Lucien. You're at
sky Britz come right, that's s k y b r
i Z dot com. Is that correct? It's your website.
You mentioned earlier that there are some unscrupulous landlords who
might be praying on younger tennents.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
I know the main focus is to trying to educate
the younger generation, but I do not believe that only
the younger generation got you know, victimized by some bad landlord.
I can take a story for myself. My first rental property.
When I first read it, I was nineteen, and the
property was flooded all the time.

Speaker 7 (55:35):
Whenever it's running. You know, all of my learning always
get you know, destroyed.

Speaker 4 (55:40):
And even that it was hard for the landlord to
make any repair. I was always paying rent on time,
you know, I was always doing what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 7 (55:49):
But when there's a repair that's needed, the.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
Landlord refused to make the repair, and I have to
pay the consequences for a lendo that I refused to
fix his own property.

Speaker 6 (55:59):
So how would you prevent that from happening in the future,
What steps would you take?

Speaker 7 (56:04):
Well, this is when that's the goal that I'm trying
to achieve.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
So I want people to be able to be you know,
I'm glad I learned that now I can make a
better decision rather than I wish I knew that. So
this is when we're trying to put those information out
this and that. Do you know that your landlord can
I do that? Or your landlord is supposed to repair
your property? Your landlord can I charge you for you know,
like for instance in New York City, your only in
luck can no longer charge you you know, first month

(56:31):
rant and last month security deposit like twice.

Speaker 7 (56:33):
And you know, that's exactly how.

Speaker 4 (56:35):
I'm trying to educate people to make better inform decision.

Speaker 7 (56:38):
My goal right now with the website because.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
We redesigning it right, we're trying to make it a
hub for realisted not just ed. So we're also going
to brand listing, which is also a scanners where people
are gonna be able to list properties on our website
and also make properties. Followers will also be able to
follow realistic agents, follow landlords.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Learn that.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
The idea is to again to make the website a
platform for like a realistic hub, you know, no matter
what she needs, so you'll be able to get it
from all website.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
So we're speaking with Stan Lucy and a skybrist But
I wanted to ask our guests today, Mike Selvestrini of Energy.
Do you have any questions or comments on this website?

Speaker 2 (57:18):
No, none, really, it's it's it sounds like there's a
few different businesses kind of getting together here. And you know,
my if you're good at a bunch of different things
and you can think you can scrap together some business
across those categories, that's great and you should do that.
My recommendation would also be to figure out which one
of those business channels is going to be the most
profitable and the one that you enjoy the most. You

(57:40):
can get excited about every day and really focus on
it and try to scale it. Whether that's educating renters
or looking at the technology component of a rental user experience.
Those are distinct businesses. Both are good ideas, and if
you pick one and write it, I bet you can,
you know, find out where it goes.

Speaker 5 (57:57):
I think that's good advice. I love your education piece,
I love your little videos. I guess looking at it,
I wouldn't worry so much about listening properties there is.
I would the education part in the videos, and then
maybe you can get some of these real estate places
to sponsor you. I'm not really sure how you would
monetize a purely educational website. But I know there are ways.

Speaker 4 (58:17):
I guess it come down to my first property. When
I bought my first property, I wish I knew our
club bought a multi family instead, I would have read
some of the units and leave for free and one
of the other ones deeping off. You know, how much
the bank landed and how much is the muggage. And
my second property could have just been like a single
family unit. But again, you know, some of the things

(58:40):
that you learn them after the fact, you know, and
again those are information that's out there. My real estate
agent could have tell me that, you know, what, are
you interested in buying a multi family instead of single family?

Speaker 7 (58:51):
This is the benefits that that's in it all.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
My attorney could have also brought that up to me,
but they did it, you know, And again I've learned
that after the fact. And then that's why it got
me to the property management part of the company. So
I bought my firstrainity, my second properties, you know, and
third one. And then for the educational part of it,
it's again it's the same learning experience. I'm like, I

(59:14):
wish I knew that, you know, and I'm pretty sure
there's also other people out there that I also wish
they knew, you know, information, I mean, they knew some
kind of stuff before they.

Speaker 7 (59:22):
Made the decision. So I've tried different approach I tried.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
I started with me until I get to Skycasts, which
is all animated videos, and then I launched that to
Housing Insight, which is all blogs articles, and then we
also have housing chronicles. We're trying to make real estate from,
you know, trying to use real life, real life scenario
to try to educate people that way as well. So

(59:45):
because we know people can build it to you know,
to some of the content that we've posted. So that's
kind of what it got me into that you don't
want to try too many things at the same time.
But it's because of the data that I'm getting from
different part of the you know, from different part of
the solution under the company, and that's what I'm like,
you know what, why not combine all of those and

(01:00:07):
put them under one umbrella, you know, so I can
turn that into a hub for people. And that's when
the leasting part comes to it. I'm like, if somebody's
looking for properties, they're just one click away from trying
to get educational content rather than trying to navigates YouTube
or trying not navigate to or the website when everything
is right there within the same website.

Speaker 5 (01:00:28):
So, Stan, you said you do property management. Do you
have clients that you manage properties for?

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
As a friend, now, I focused on managing my own properties.
For now, it's just my properties, but only it's a
big market. But for now, it's just my properties that
you know, we manage.

Speaker 5 (01:00:42):
Because it seems to me when I heard you say
property management, it seemed to me that you could use
this website, in this community that you're building to drive
people to your property management business, especially since it seems
like you do encourage people to buy multifamily and then
you could expand your personal property manage meant to help
other people manage their properties because property management is huge

(01:01:04):
when people are more than one property.

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Yeah, that's one of the things. So this is one
of a call part of the company. And you know,
so when we post our educational content, so people won't
just think that we're just making stuff up, you know.
So it's things that we learn from our own experience
because we also manage this, so we know what we're
talking about. So we don't just post content out there.

(01:01:27):
And fortunately for us, we barely have any vacant unit,
and even if we do, they take less than a
way to till then.

Speaker 7 (01:01:35):
And I believe the reason why.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
Is because of the technology part that we added into
our properties. I've heard different landlords and other people always
be like, why did they invest so much in your properties?
They just rental properties, you know. People don't care about that.
They just need a roof over the head, you know.
But we don't see it like that because some renters
they want to be different, they want to stand out.
They want to stand up property that look nice again,

(01:01:58):
that have technology cert i, that have the technologies and
all of those things to stand that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:03):
I think what you're doing is great. So what kind
of people do you want to have get in touch
with you? Do you want people that are looking to
buy property that need education?

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Well, for right a main focus is kind of for
property owners, landlord or builtair. So we're gonna need people
to come and least the property on our platform, so
that will be our primary focus, and then people that
also need to learn about the real estate market. But
our primary focus right now is to trying to get
property owners Wiltairs show them that.

Speaker 7 (01:02:28):
We have traffic, high traffic on our website, So if.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
They lease the property, the chance to also get somebody
from our webs that to you know, to contact them.

Speaker 7 (01:02:37):
It's it's highly likely.

Speaker 5 (01:02:39):
Okay, So if you're a real estate person or you're
a property owner, go to skybris skyb r z dot
com and help stand build a site out. Thank you,
stan back.

Speaker 6 (01:02:51):
With more passage to Profit Secrets of the Entrepreneurial mind
Us coming up next.

Speaker 13 (01:02:57):
I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of
lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.
If you've been involved in a serious car, truck, or
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you may be entitled to money for your suffering. Don't
accept an offer you get from an insurance company until.

Speaker 9 (01:03:16):
You talk to a lawyer.

Speaker 13 (01:03:18):
And we represent some of the best personal injury lawyers.
You can find, tough lawyers that will fight to win
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(01:03:40):
call the legal helpline right now.

Speaker 11 (01:03:42):
Eight hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight
hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight hundred
four nine two seven oh one four. That's eight hundred
four nine two seventy fourteen.

Speaker 10 (01:03:57):
It's Passage to Profit.

Speaker 6 (01:03:58):
Alicia Morrissey is This is our programming director at Passage
to Profit and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You
can scroll to the bottom of the Passage profitshow dot
com website and check out her album.

Speaker 5 (01:04:12):
And now it is time for Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
I am going to start with Mike Sophastrini, co founder
of Energy E N E er g EA. What secret
can you share with our listeners?

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Mike, I think that the secret to getting through all
the constant struggles that entrepreneurship is all about is realizing
that when you have your down days, there is a
good day on the horizon. But you also have to
realize that when you're having a great day, you know
there's a piano hanging by it right somewhere nearby.

Speaker 9 (01:04:43):
You just have to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Get comfortable with that the ups and downs of building
a company and not get too excited with the good
news and not get too depressed when the going is
rough and steady.

Speaker 9 (01:04:53):
Eddie right through it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:55):
That's hard, but you're right, I agree. Pavitra and a
Crew deal Magic t E A l M A gik
dot com. What is the secret you can share?

Speaker 8 (01:05:05):
All I would say is perseverance, and you really have
to keep at it. It's so easy to come across
a time where you feel like, why the hell am
I doing it? I better give up and go get
a job that pays me well when please salary a bonus.
But you have to keep at it and you will

(01:05:26):
read the reward. The reward is not just at the
end of the day. There is no you know, can
a copy of plenty and no part of gold at
the end of the rainbow. It's not just that, of
course it is there, but it's all so the journey
and the reward for me personally has been personal freedom

(01:05:47):
and intellectual freedom that I got by starting my own company,
being a mother, and being a very creative person technologically.
Going through this journey itself has been a great reward,
And it would say keep at it you will see
the secret.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
That is great advice. Really, it's so easy to give up,
but yeah, you just gotta keep going. You know what
they say, if you're going through hell, keep going, Sam
Lucy and with skypers dot com A s k y
b r i Z dot com. What's the secret you
can share?

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
I will say that once you trying to create something new,
what is a new company or new segment, a new
you know, type of technology, it's gonna be hard, you know,
because if it's the first time you're doing something, or
if it's the first time it's then done, then there's
really nowhere else that you cannot if you can learn
from our copy from you know.

Speaker 7 (01:06:39):
But no matter how how.

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
They get, don't give up. You know it's gonna get hard,
but do not give up. Instead, I will say, take
a step back and look at them at a different perspective.
You don't see what you're doing wrong, and how can
you do it different to get a different result.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
Well, that's great advice. Richard Gearhart gear Heart lot G
E A R H A R T l A.

Speaker 6 (01:07:01):
I would say that a good way that I manage
my entrepreneurial emotions is through planning. I plan for the
good times, I plan for the bad times. I don't
constrict myself with the plan, but I use it as
a guide. If I see another opportunity, then I'll go
for it, even if it's not on the plan. But
if things aren't going so well, I usually feel better

(01:07:24):
if I know that there's a backup way to keep
things going or keep things moving forward, even if this
particular project doesn't work out. So for me, having a
plan and working the plan is always been really helpful.

Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
My secret is I think that everybody should go to
chat GPT or perplexity or especially google Gemini and ask
it what can you tell me about and then put
your own name in there, and maybe the city or
state where you live, and see what there is about
you in those search engines and what there is about

(01:08:02):
your business. So maybe what can you tell me about energy?
And see what comes up? Because right now you can
really control that narrative by going on podcasts like this one,
starting your own podcasts, whatever information you put online. So
these things are looking at everything you have online. So
really I would put more be in the media, put

(01:08:22):
blogs out, make sure you're putting a lot online that
says what you want to say about yourself and your company.

Speaker 6 (01:08:28):
That's really great advice. We work with our social media consultant,
Carolina Tabares, and we were looking at our website traffic
sources and the AI search engines are becoming a larger
and larger part of the referrals. People go from the
chat GPT to our website now as we go forward.

(01:08:52):
So having that good presence in the artificial intelligence realm,
you know, perplexity chatchip is really important.

Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
And it also gives you the references where it found
the information from. So most of mine comes from LinkedIn,
most of Richard's comes from the Gearhartlaw website that they
use a few other sources too. So now you know
where to post or where to put the information that
you want to be known for.

Speaker 6 (01:09:15):
It's an excellent point. Thank you for sharing that. Well,
that's it for us. Passage to Profit is a nationally
syndicated radio show appearing in thirty eight 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 to

(01:09:36):
P team. Our producer, Noah Fleischman and our program coordinator
Alisha Morrissey, our studio assistant risicat Busari, and our social
media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. 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

(01:10:00):
information on this program is believed to be correct, never
take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first.
Gearheart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs.
You can find us at gearheartlaw dot com and contact
us for free consultation. Take care, everybody, thanks for listening,
and we'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.