Entrepreneurs: Turning Investments into an Agribusiness Goldmine with Carsten Pfau

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):
You know you want to do something, maybe adventurers.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
My clients have zero expectation that they will ever meet
me in person.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
This company helped us out. I think you should talk.

Speaker 5 (00:18):
I'm Richard Gerhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard
some of snippets from our show. It was a great one.
Stay tuned, especially if you want to start a new.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Business, ramping up your business.

Speaker 6 (00:31):
The time is near.

Speaker 7 (00:32):
You've given it hard.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Now get it in gear It's Passage to Profit with
Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (00:40):
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 have my own startups
in podcasts.

Speaker 6 (00:54):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories
about their business journey and also share helpful insights about
the successes that they've had.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
Did you know that two in five Americans want to
start a new business or our business owners, Well, we
have lots of information to help them.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
Too, and we also talk a little about the intellectual
property that helps them flourish. We have a very special guest,
Carsten Fau. He is the general managing partner at Agritara.
He's also an investor and he's also a TV personality.
He's a fantastic guy. We can't wait to hear from.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
Him, and you're gonna want to stay tuned because after him,
we have Jason Greenwood with Greenwood Consulting. If you're even
thinking about doing e commerce and you want to do
it right, don't do it till you listen to what
Jason gets to say. And then I mean this story
to Marian Linton with Inertia Resources, it's going to blow

(01:51):
you away, So stay tuned.

Speaker 6 (01:53):
But before we get to that, it's time for your
new business Journey where two and five Americans want us
start their own business or are already business owners. And
today we're going to be asking our panel a very
important question, how do you spot business opportunities that others don't.
So let's go to Carson. First, Carson, how do you

(02:13):
respond to that question?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Somehow? It's in your guts. I mean, I get business
ideas presented basic gala daily basis. You know, it's like
little light bulb in your head. Then it gets on
and off depending on what is presented to you. It's
not a system you have. It's not an algorithm, as
we something you have to be intuitive and you have
it though you don't have it. And I believe this
is a difference maybe between successful investors and people well

(02:39):
I'll successful.

Speaker 6 (02:40):
Feel that's very, very insightful. Jason, what's your spin on that?

Speaker 3 (02:44):
For me, I think it comes down to pattern recognition
more than anything else. You know, I've been working in
the e commerce space for over twenty four years now,
and I've seen lots of technologies come and go. I've
seen lots of opportunities come and go. I've seen lots
of businesses and brands come and go over this time.
I think that's honed by ability to recognize patterns in
the industry.

Speaker 6 (03:01):
I think that even applies if you go to live
in different regions of the country. People on the East
Coast are going to do business in a different way
than the people on the West Coast and the United States.
I think there's a lot of value in that demori.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
What are your thoughts. One of the things that I
really like to do when it comes across with this
question is to make sure that I ask a lot
of questions. I will always act like the third grader
in the rule in regards to knowing about a new
process or a new opportunity. So one of the things
I like to do is ask a lot of questions.

Speaker 6 (03:29):
For me personally, in the way we operate our business
is really talking to our clients. Finding out what's going
on in their lives. Creates a lot of new possibilities.

Speaker 5 (03:38):
Well, you are lucky because you're in a very forward
thinking industry because patents are all about new ideas.

Speaker 6 (03:43):
Absolutely. Now it's time for Carston file and he is
done so much. Came from Germany, he went to Paraguay.
He's got a real estate business and investor business, and
he's also been a popular TV personality. Carston, tell us
a little bit about your journey. How did you get
from Germany to Paraguay.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I guess this was one of those decisions you
make when you're still young. You feel like you can
do whatever you want. They feel fair. You can just
redo it because you're still young and you have everything
like still in front of you. I graduated that Germany
for Germany at a young age. Actually I was twenty six,
which for Germany is young, and I thought, okay, some

(04:25):
I have some spare times of what to do with that,
and I figured, okay, I go to South America. I
learned the language, and I have some time abroad on
my resume that will certainly help me later when I
searched for like a corporate career, I was preparing myself
for and yeah, Berba because my dad at some point
that bought some land here, but he never came to

(04:47):
Prague whatever, just bought it for an agency. And I thought, well,
I go there because it's so exotic. Nobody even knows
where it is so Germany. If you talk about Purguye,
they yes, it's in Africa. So I thought this was something,
you know, you want to do, something maybe adventurous, something
nobody else was school going to do. And I thought

(05:10):
this would give me a head starts in the corporate
world later. But then now you know, life turned out
to be different for me. So one year I had
planned to stay a year, and one year turned into two,
and two into three, and twenty eight years later, I'm
still here and I've never regretted it ever, So I'm
quite happy to be here. But of course it's funny.

(05:31):
I mean, in the heart of South America, many people
dream of going to Europe, going to the US and
search for like the soup bolt bell alive. If you
imagine a highway in one lane, all those people looking
for by the life splies out on the other line
of the opposite direction is just me and are going
to Purguy, And you can imagine many people telling me

(05:53):
quite a lot of things. Actually, I went to a
country that in nineteen ninety six was in a very
bad shape, in a very bad position. Now it's one
of the best countries to invest in. It's really stable,
it's growing quite well. It has a very great investment environment.
But when I got heres at a very young age,
it was like the world wide West. But then, of

(06:14):
course there's the opportunity. Your search for opportunity. You have
to go to places where nobody else there is to go.
And now it's a little bit of my story that
had to get.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
Into the agri business. That's a great business to be
in down there. It seems like did you have a
choice of a lot of different types of businesses.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Burguay is a country that has a strong agriculture. Is
one of the largest be for exporters', largest soybean exporters,
largest tweed exporters. They do a lot of stuff. And
when you get to a country such as burg why
you know, later you get in touch with the agro business.
And I started really small. We bought like a truckload

(06:56):
of cattle and put it on a piece of land
my brother and I own, and this was basically how
we kicked it off. But it really went to a
different level when we had the idea of actually opening
an investment firm in Germany, which was the only purpose
of actually investing in Pargua. And of course nine out
of ten potential clients told you like where prob whites,

(07:19):
Who exactly you want me to invest in the country,
I don't know existed, but there was always this one
guy or this one lady. I said like, oh, well,
this is really an interesting idea. Yeah, And I mean
we laid over one hundred million dollars with that, So
that's something that we took golf from very humble and
small beginning that I believe is a good thing. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (07:40):
Absolutely. I mean one of my mentors once said, where
leaders go there are no maps.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh it's totally true. And I got here with I
would say my German glasses on, and I expected everything
could be like in Germany or I had spent some
time in Miami as well before that, and also so
I had some experience in the US and I expect
something similar. And it was exactly as you describe it.
Really getting to a place where it's basically no infrastructure,

(08:08):
was basically no financial world, and no investment market that
had to be invented. Things are about to happen, but
they haven't happened yet. And if you see, you know,
the first settlers who got to the US, they found
something similar. I mean there was basically nothing and then
but the other feeling, at some point in time there
will be something and you want to be part of that.

(08:29):
I presented some business ideas to people in Paraguay in
the nineties and they looked at me like like a
cow would look at the astrophysics book. It's like and
you can really get frustrated feel, Okay, I made a mistake.
I'm in the wrong place. I should have gotten someplace else.
And then you doubt yourself, You doubt your decision. Are

(08:49):
you absoleepless nights?

Speaker 8 (08:50):
You think?

Speaker 2 (08:51):
What did I do with my life? I end up
in the place nobody really wants to be in. But
it turned out to be the right decision. And sometimes
you have to have to Stemini. You have to have
the stomach to do stuff like that. And you know,
when things don't really happen overnight, you still have to
be there and you still have to be patient. And
this is probably the way to go.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
Kirsten. I had to say, you must be one heck
of a salesman if you were able to get investors
to invest in something they didn't know much about like that,
because I mean, we have clients to go to these
pitch competitions that you know, we have asked the investors,
and Richard is actually in a couple of investment groups
where they look at people's proposals. Nine times out of

(09:31):
ten they're rejected. Right, So how did you convince these
investors in Germany to invest in starting in Paraguay?

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Believe it or not, Sometimes I really look at myself
in the world and think how Ditrich actually get to
do that. And it was tough at the beginning. And
I mean that you're here from so many people that
this is like a lousy idea. And then the financial
press in Germany they picked up what we were doing
and they will say like, oh, this is the worst
investment idea ever presented that I mean, so that's certainly

(10:01):
a tidle you don't want to carry. But then you
always have those people who look at stuff differently and
think okay, and the developing countries such as Paraguay, you
have high returns, you have high risk, so you have
this mixture between going into high risk but you expect
a very high return. And I was, or still am

(10:21):
representing a bridge, so to speak. So I know the
German mentality. I'm educated in Germany, I brought up there.
Then I went to Paraguay. I know the Parguy mentality.
I know the laws, the written ones and the unwritten ones.
And people thought like, okay, we usually we probably would
not invest in Parguay, but the promise of return is

(10:42):
quite interesting. And if we have somebody who is kind
of you know, these from us, he knows what we
think and well what we expect, and building this bridge
was probably the reason why maybe one out of not
one out of ten, but maybe one out of a
hundred people would actually do business with us. And over time,
of course, you know, work gets around and people talk

(11:04):
about it, and then of course you have like initial success.
You know, people talk to their enighbors, to their friends,
and relative said I made this crazy investment and I
may read some money, and then they said, oh, really,
can I do the same, And this is how all
you do it? But I mean to be honest, at
the beginning you hear so many times what a crazy
idea that is, and how crazy you are to even

(11:25):
offer that you have to get through that.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
Well, kept you doing?

Speaker 2 (11:29):
That's a good question. Actually, I don't know. Maybe I'm
just crazy enough to do it. Maybe I did not
have anything else to do. Sometimes it's a good thing
to not really have a plan, be actually to be
quite at it and to think like, Okay, I'm convinced
about my own decision. I think I'm doing the right thing,
and eventually I will convince people to come along.

Speaker 6 (11:49):
How long did it take you from the time you
started the investment company to feel like it was a success.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
From that point on, I would say two tough years.
But of course there was a time before we even
founded the investment company, which were I would say, what
was like ten years where people would tell me like,
you're wasting your time while you go to South America
and you just waste your time in it. And that
includes my own relatives, and then my founding the investment company.

(12:20):
We already had gotten to a certain level. Then we
did it for about two maybe three years, we heard
what a bad idea it was, and then suddenly it
took off.

Speaker 6 (12:28):
What did you do with the investment money? Where did
you put it in Paraguay so that it would generate
a return for your investors.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
That's the interesting part. I mean, I'm basically on both
side of the isle or the oceans of speak. I
own our call, owned the companies we invest in, and
at the other side of this investment company that raised
the cash and raised the money brought up and then
we invest in stuff we manage yourself. It's not that

(12:58):
we invest in third body project on them. We have
real estate with artgur industry, agriculture and has grown by
the bit. So many investors that was bodled why they
actually did it because they said, Okay, you are managing
it yourself. It's not that we give the money to
somebody else. That you're advising us, but go there. And

(13:18):
also you have wide love skin in the game as well,
and that was for many, that was a decisive point
to make the decision favor.

Speaker 6 (13:26):
At the end of the day, so much of business
and investment is based on the relationships that you have,
the business relationships that you have with people because they
were investing in you, Carston, right, they believed that you
were going to put their money to good use and
that you were going to be successful. And so I

(13:48):
think it's really important for all entrepreneurs to really appreciate
that the relationships that you have and the people who
believe in you are the things that drive you to success.
You're listening to Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth
Gerhart will be back with more. Carston fout, general managing
partner at Agritara right after this commercial message.

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Speaker 1 (16:08):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again, Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 5 (16:13):
And our special guest Carston foul I have been dying
to ask you this question, Carson, what did you do
about the language barrier? Because we're talking about team members.
I know in Germany everybody spoke German, but I assume
in Paraguay they're speaking Spanish. Did you speak Spanish?

Speaker 7 (16:28):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
I mean I really got here and I didn't speak Spanish,
which was part of my mission was to learn just
another language stage in Purguy and go in Spanish. That
was my basic mission. And of course you asked to
do that, I mean without the language. She said, lost
bose like and stopped. And there are many Germans here
in Paraguay and they don't speak any Spanish, and they

(16:51):
really don't even give it a try, and then they like,
I was surprised when they and they get screwed off.
What's cool about my friend, But it happens a lot.
That's the minimum you should learn the language. Yeah, and Jemy,
we have many many IM brands from all over the world,
and certainly in the US. You have to say, I
believe learning the language of the country where you go

(17:14):
to and I and my band our wise the really
least I can learn Spanic believe that's the early least
I could do. And then, of course, I mean in business,
how would you do it if you don't speak the language.
That's really I would say, just don't even try.

Speaker 6 (17:30):
I think it shows respect for the country that you're
learning in. And it's very important. I lived in Switzerland
for a while in the French part, and my French
was never quite as good as a native French speaker.
But I think the Swiss French they appreciated my efforts.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I mean people in France they really appreciate it. Also,
I mean in business, how would you understand what's going on?
And sometimes you have to read between the lines, and
how would you do that? So that's it's the very
basic thing to do. Your iPhone or whatever cell phone
you use based speaks the language, Chinese or whatever, but
you have no control over it. You don't already know

(18:05):
what the machine is translating. Maybe saying something compatly different
can be tricky. I mean I got here and I
couldn't even order a couple of Buffy. I brought a book.
I was still a time where I would read a book.
Now it's easier internet, and so when I started, I
had to use books. Now I'm on TV, so I
must have learned the language, at least the little because

(18:27):
I mean, they haven't kicked me out.

Speaker 6 (18:29):
It's a trstan Fau general managing partner at Agrita, and
he's also a TV personality. How can people find you.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Well, this thing called the Internet. It's quite good. Actually,
just gooping my name you will find me. Certainly, at
least there's a lot of stuff about me on the
internet as a website, the company, as of course a website.
Just write me and I try to respond.

Speaker 5 (18:53):
It's c A R S T E N das p
FAU dot com, ourstuinpound dot com.

Speaker 6 (19:01):
Passage to profit with Richard Analyzabeth pair Heart time for
Intellectual Property News, Elizabeth, what's going on with Intellectual property
news today?

Speaker 5 (19:10):
Some dirty tricks? If you asked me. Tesla wanted to
use some still shots from blade Runner in some of
its advertising, and Blade Runner said, no, we want to
keep our brand pure.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
We have our own agriculture, I gifts appro we do.

Speaker 5 (19:25):
We don't want to interfix our brand with Tesla, so no,
please don't use our images in your branding. So Tesla said, okay,
well now we can get around that. So they generated
their own images using AI that look early similar to
the images that Blade Runner had used. So Blade Runner
didn't like that. Warner Brothers and now there's a lawsuit.

Speaker 6 (19:48):
Yeah, and it's really interesting. So for those of you
who are unfamiliar with copyright the standards of substantial similarity, right,
And so the question is, are the images that Tesla
created trying to mimic the images and Blade Runner twenty
forty nine are those images substantially similar? And in the US,

(20:10):
these kinds of copyrights disputes, if they go to court,
are decided on a battle of the experts basis. So
Tesla would hire their own graphic artist expert who would testify, no,
the images are completely different, they're not substantially similar, whereas
Warner Brothers, the company that produced Blade Runner, would have

(20:32):
their expert who would testify that, oh, yeah, they're so close.
Obviously there's an intermingling. And so part of the challenge
in this type of situation is really trying to understand, well,
how much difference does there have to be to make
sure that there's not an infringement. We'll see what happens,
but I'm curious about what our panel thinks. Jason, you're

(20:56):
an IT guy, so you're probably pretty tuned in into
the world of artificial intelligence. What's your spin on this.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
I expect this to be a long term battle. This
is not going to be settled overnight. It's not going
to be settled on the basis of one case. It's
just going to be a constant battle between rights holders
both of not only copyrights but also trademarked material as well,
and I think to work out licensing for that.

Speaker 6 (21:23):
It's an interesting topic and I agree with you De Maurion.
What is your hake on this?

Speaker 4 (21:27):
It makes me feel there's going to be a lot
of opportunity for graphic designers who are actually doing everything
organic and AI.

Speaker 6 (21:33):
Is still not to the point where it's perfectly human person.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (21:38):
It's interesting? But again, now there should be key roads,
but that I agree with that.

Speaker 6 (21:43):
Yeah, I guess the moral of the story is be
careful with your AI. You're listening the Passage to Profit
with Richard and Elizabeth Garrett Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind
coming up soon. We'll be back right after this.

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Speaker 1 (23:56):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth.

Speaker 6 (24:00):
You're hard our special guest today, Carson fou Elizabeth, what's
going on with your projects these days?

Speaker 5 (24:05):
Well, you know who doesn't just love contractors, especially when
they don't show up?

Speaker 6 (24:11):
Seemed like construction contractions.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
Yes, so we're remodeling. So during COVID, Richard and I
put together this studio upstairs of the building that we own,
and we had the mics we're using now, which are
very expensive mics, and mixer board. We had lights, we
had cameras.

Speaker 6 (24:27):
We need all the help we can get, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
So it was really a real studio that we used
during COVID, and we had a step and repeat behind us.
But the building's very old and we remodeled the whole
downstairs and we bought it, but the upstairs is pretty
gross still. So last fall, about a year ago, we
looked at maybe selling. The buildings were hardly using it
and things weren't just right because commercial buildings, who wants
them anymore? So I said, well, why don't we rent

(24:51):
out the podcast studio? Did some research. Podcast studios are
making some money, so we decided to remodel it. But
before we even did that, though, I started a meetup group.
So I went to a pod tour in New York
and met this woman who lives like twenty minutes away
from me, and of course we met in New York.
We both live in New Jersey, and she wanted to
start a meetup too, So I said, well, let's start

(25:13):
a meetup and see if there's any interest in this
area for people doing podcasts, and that if there is,
then we can put the money into the podcast studio.
So we started the meetup. We did it in person
and on zoom It's podcasting YouTube creators community. Her name
is Stacy Sherman. She's got a huge LinkedIn following and
it's been a huge success. We've had incredible people come

(25:34):
and speak. We've done this kind of tour thing where
they come Tuesday night once we do it once a
month Tuesday night and speak at our thing. Then they
come into the city on Wednesday to iHeart and do
the radio show with us. So based on the success
that we had with the meetup, we decided to go
forward with the remodel project. But it's been very difficult
getting contractors. I had somebody was supposed to show up
this week, never shut up, never contacted me, nothing. But

(25:57):
we have got the carpet down, so that's.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
A huge one.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
We've got most of the ceiling done, so we're doing
ceiling carpet. We tore apart that it had some help
tearing apart the bathroom. So we have had some contractors
come and do some work. So getting pretty close to
getting this podcast studio done and I have people waiting
to use it, so that's pretty cool too. And I
have somebody I'm working with on a podcast now who
I just had her come and use this. We're recording

(26:20):
this from our house right now, from my office in
our house. I had her come here record our podcast
here so she could get the good sound quality with
the mics. A lot of people starting podcasts they don't
have good mics, and the sound qualities scrummy, and then
they wonder why nobody listens.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Right.

Speaker 5 (26:33):
So anyway, that's kind of what I'm really spending a
lot of time on this meetup, spending a lot of
time on the studio, and of course doing my job
at her heart Low.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
That's great.

Speaker 6 (26:41):
You're quite the communicator, aren't you.

Speaker 5 (26:43):
I'm a podcaster. I don't know how to talk anyway,
enough about me. I am so excited for our next
two guests. I mean, these guys, like I said, when
we sat down here, this, I feel like I'm in
a graduate level business class with these guys. They're so smart.
We're going to talk to Jason Greenwood right now. He
has Greenwood Consoleting. He works in the area of e
commerce and has helped so many people with his company.

(27:05):
So welcome Jason. Tell us all about it.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
I grew up in Southern California, born and raised, went
to school in Southern California as well, then in my
early twenties moved to New Zealand.

Speaker 8 (27:15):
Lived in New Zealand for almost thirty years.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
And then a year and a half ago, my wife
and I moved to Mexico and we now live in
Pueblo City, Mexico, so we're in lay tim now. A
lot of what you said resonated with me, I guess,
in terms of getting outside your comfort zone, traveling, experiencing
new places, experiencing new languages, experiencing new foods, new ways
of life, new ways of looking at the world, not

(27:38):
only as a person but also as a business person,
and trying to take those ideas and create a world
that you want to live in at the end of
the day, instead of letting your life be a victim
of circumstance, actually create the life with intention that you
want to live. And that's what I'd like to think
I've been able to do. And one of the reasons
why I started my independent consultancy four years ago after

(27:59):
being in the industry for over twenty years, was that
I did want to be able to have that location freedom,
I did want to be able to have that financial freedom.
I was already servicing clients all around the world anyway,
And if there's a silver lining to COVID at all
for our industry, it was the fact that anybody working
in the e commerce space has pretty much been able

(28:19):
to work remotely forever.

Speaker 8 (28:21):
But the reality is is that pre.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
COVID clients, especially whether you had an agency or whether
you're a consultant or whatever, clients would at least have
the expectation they would meet you one time in person.
They'd shake your hand, they'd die of ball you. Maybe
you do a presentation to the board of directors, whatever
it is, then they'd shake your hand and sign on
the dotted line. The beautiful thing about COVID is that
even that basic prerequisite of doing business with you was removed,

(28:45):
and now my clients have zero expectation that they will
ever meet me in person. Now, luckily, I now now
that the world's back opened back up again. If I'm
in their neck of the woods, I'll make an extra
effort to go and visit them at their office or
whatever the.

Speaker 8 (28:58):
Case may be. But there's no expectation that that will happen.

Speaker 6 (29:01):
I have to ask, though, is that a good thing
for a bad st.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
I think making a business connection is pretty easy to
do remotely. Making an emotional connection is hard to do.
That's how I'd characterize that, and so certainly the in
person thing. That's why I continually go to conferences and
I'm speaking at conferences. I try to do as many
in person things in my industry as I can, and
I also put out content. I've got over four hundred

(29:27):
and thirty episodes of my podcast released, the e Commerce
Edge podcast. I put out content almost every single day
on LinkedIn and Reddit and across multiple other channels. So
I think that fortunately for me, because I've got such
a large corpus of content in the world, people usually
by the time they come to me, they feel like
they already know me. They got to know me through
my content, and so more than anything else, they just

(29:49):
want to try to figure out are you really the
same guy?

Speaker 8 (29:51):
Like when we're talking business, are you the same guy that.

Speaker 6 (29:53):
You don't add your concast too much.

Speaker 5 (29:55):
Yeah, I do point out that I did go and
look for you to videos of each of you. Now
Arston's was in German, but I kind of followed along.
That's okay, But that's the first thing I do if
I'm going to meet somebody, is I go look for
them on YouTube because I do want to get a
sense of who they are. But I do want to
ask you Jason did you work in the e commerce

(30:18):
field and then went and started your own consultancy based
on what you knew in corporate and how did that
transition go.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
So I'd already been working in the industry for twenty
years by the time I started my consultancy. So I've
been working in the industry for twenty four years. Now,
that's a long time. That's you know, I would be
certainly one of the older generation working in this industry.
There's not that many people that have more than twenty
years of experience in e commerce.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
There wasn't e commerce thirty years ago.

Speaker 8 (30:43):
Yeah, well, it was certainly hard, let's put it that way.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
When I first started working in the e commerce world,
everything about e commerce was difficult. Nobody trusted it, technology
was difficult, Internet was slow, Like, everything about e commerce
was hard. So it certainly got a tremendously easier to
get started in e commerce. But I would say it's
just as hard, if not harder, now to be successful
in e commerce because there's so much competition there now.

Speaker 6 (31:05):
Now you want to go back to this question about
in person versus zoom A little bit.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Remote technology has allowed me to service clients globally, right,
I don't have to physically be there with them. So
I had clients in Europe, I've got clients in Latim,
I've got clients in North America, got clients.

Speaker 8 (31:19):
And A and Z.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
You know, it definitely makes it easier to address a
global audience through your content and then service global clients
with remote technology. So there's definitely benefits to that. But
I can tell you that as someone that was heavily
involved in conferences pre COVID and is now still heavily
involved in conferences post COVID, I couldn't personally wait for
the world to open back up again so that I

(31:41):
could be with my peers hanging out with my peers.
And sometimes because we're geographically isolated, oftentimes conferences and industry
events are the only time in a year that we
might physically be together in person. And I would always
go out of my way to organize after parties, dinners, drinks,
those sorts of things, those social activities outside of the
conference environment wherever we're able to be there together, and

(32:04):
it's just a good opportunity and reason for us to
be in the same place at the same time. So
I think there's no replace in the human connection, and
we still can't translate that through the screen just yet.

Speaker 5 (32:13):
I agree with what you said in your intro that
sticking your head above everybody else in e commerce is
like trying to be a drop in the ocean and
trying to differentiate yourself. What do you do with people
with your e commerce? So I'm assuming that you take
people and help them figure out how to rise about
the noise with their e commerce company. Is that a
correct interpretation?

Speaker 8 (32:33):
It is somewhat.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
I have.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
For the last four years, I've niched down more and
more and more into the B to B e commerce space,
so helping manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors establish digital routes to market.

Speaker 8 (32:47):
So that's quite different.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
You know, the first three quarters of my career I
was working with B two C and DNAC brand, so
you know, businesses selling to consumers right and manufacturers whole
serays and distributors selling to consumers. But latterly, what I
reckonized when I first started my consultancy is that B
two C and D two C e commerce consulting is
very red ocean. It's absolutely saturated. Every consultant, every agency,

(33:09):
every everybody wants to work with the household name retail brands.
But what I witnessed, and this is one of those
goes back to that pattern recognition thing that I mentioned earlier.
I saw that, especially during COVID, B to B brands
started to realize, oh my god, our sales reps can't
go on the road. They can't go to job sites,

(33:29):
they can't go and take orders in person, they can't
go schmooze, they can't go knock on doors to win
new customers. Historically, manufacturress, wholesales, and distributors have relied on
field sales as the primary drivers of their business, and
during COVID, that string to their bow was largely taken
away from them. And so they realized, we're not prepared
to have like ninety percent of our revenue come through

(33:52):
digital channels. We're just not set up to support that.
And so I recognized that B to b's manufacturers, wholesales
and distributors are about five to ten years behind their
B two C and D two C counterparts when it
comes to digital capabilities and digital knowledge and digital skills.
So now I have focused very much on helping these

(34:14):
brands architect design not only their technology stack, but their
processes their go to market, their channel mix, all that stuff.
That's what I help those brands with. So I help
them a search and select for the technology for their
implementation partners.

Speaker 8 (34:26):
Et cetera.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
I do want to go to Carston for comments or questions.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
I agree that personal meeting for me, it's still a
little bitter way to go. I do zoom all the time,
but I still try to get the in person meeting
as often as I can, and I even slide around
the world that because I totally agree that there's still
something missing when you do it online. It never beats
the personal experience. And I believe in business, if you

(34:53):
want to build this relationship you mentioned before, then you
have to be ready to meet in person. Still, it
may be different in the future. I don't know, and
probably the younger generations just growing up with this technology.
I mean, we have to get used to it, and
the younger people they grow up with it, so it's
probably distant. But from my point of view to do business,

(35:14):
I still preserve in personal leading.

Speaker 6 (35:16):
Jason, when we were on the phone, you mentioned that
B to B was sort of like the Wild West
when it comes to coming up with systems because it
is so different and it is more complicated. What would
at a beginning entrepreneur who wants to be in the
B to B market wants to use e commerce, what
kind of advice would you have for them to help

(35:38):
it work as smooth as possible with as little money
as possible.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Depending on the category or the market that they're working in,
there are different preferred ways of doing digital business with
each other. If I'm a manufacturer, for example, and I'm
wanting to sell via distributors, and those distributors want to
do business with me, they want to buy off me
as the manufacturer. What is very very common in the
digital world for distributors is what's called e procurement, meaning

(36:03):
they've got a procurement system inside their business and they
do that procurement digitally. They do it electronically. It can
either be part of their erp or it could be
standalone procurement system, and.

Speaker 8 (36:13):
They want to do it that way.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
They want to buy that way because it's more efficient
for them to buy that way than to ring up
their sales rep at the manufacturer or to send an
email or to send a fax or whatever. All the
execution of the transaction and the pulling down of the
products catalog from the manufacturer into their eProcurement system.

Speaker 8 (36:30):
They want to do that in an automated way. They
want to be as.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Efficient as possible because distribution margins or raisor thin. And
so if they have a choice of working with one
manufacturer who doesn't support digital purchasing, and then they have
the opportunity of working with the manufacturer that does support
digital purchasing, they can save themselves one to three percent
worth of cost of procurement by doing things digitally. And

(36:56):
so that's what's called punch out. It's a colloquial called
punch out. So there's a catalog that the manufacturer can
send electronically to their eProcurement system. They place the order
through their eProcurement system and a purchase order number, and
then that is transmitted back to the manufacturer electronically. So
in addition to self service e commerce like what we
see in the B two C world, in the B

(37:16):
to B world, there's three different digital sales channels. There's
the punch out I just referred to. There's EDI Electronic
data interchange, which is one ERP talking to another ERP.
What is an ERP Enterprise resource planning system, so it's
a back office business system.

Speaker 8 (37:32):
Then the final way.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Which is what I primarily help specialize in, is what's
called self service e commerce, allowing manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors
to set up an e commerce website where their customers
can log in, they can see the catalog, they can
add products to their shopping cart, and they can check out,
and then they usually are purchasing on account and then
they get built for that after the fact, they get

(37:54):
built on an invoice basis, just like they would in
the traditional person to person B to B world. So
that's really where I help. A lot of the brands
I work with. They are an existing direct to consumer brand.
That's say, for example, might have a Shopify website for
their D two C sales, their customer retail sales, and
Shopify now has some limited B to B capability in

(38:14):
their Shopify Plus edition of the platform, and so a
lot of these DTC brands they will dip their toes
in the water of B to B by starting to
offer tiered pricing or custom pricing as a tiptoe a
way to tiptoe into that so they could still use
their Shopify platform, but now they're offering custom pricing to
their B to B customers based on volume purchasing and

(38:36):
based on an on account credit based purchase instead of
having to put in their credit card every every single
time they make a purchase.

Speaker 5 (38:42):
So it sounds like a very complicated field. I think
you can't just jump into it and know what you're doing.
I think people probably ded a consultant for this. How
do people find you?

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Greenwood Consulting dot net is my website. They can also
go to the e Commerce Edge on any podcast platform
and YouTube. But we've got over four watered and thirty
episodes there that gets all the way from the basics
into the dy gritty of e commerce. And I have
some amazing guests with an incredible array of knowledge. And
then of course connect with me on LinkedIn. I put
content on LinkedIn almost every day.

Speaker 6 (39:13):
I strongly recommend that you follow up with Jason and
check out what he has.

Speaker 5 (39:17):
To offer aside to profit. They weread to entrepreneurship with
Richard elizabeth Er hurt last, but certainly not least Demur
and Linton with inertia resources. So you worked for somebody
else for a while and then decided to make the
leap yourself and you have just been knocking it out
of the ballpark with this company, so please tell us
all about what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
Mom Mentor was actually one of the first people to
do what I do lend in the US, so when
he retired, he left kind of a couple of us
to the neest egy the energy suppliers. So I'm not
actually from Houston, and mostly the energy suppliers in the
US are based out of Houston, so I'm really good
relationships with some of the largest energy suppliers in the world.
So we just took a different marketing approach. Most brokers

(39:57):
in my field like to have one hundred different energy suppliers.
We only use the top five in the world. So
it's actually so funny that Jason's talking about B to
B because that's our number one channel of being able
to reach out to customers. One of the things that
I always believe about any business is to figure out
how to differentiate yourself and how to be different than
what everybody else is doing. And every single other person
in my business all are going for the fortune five hundred,

(40:19):
the fortune one thousand customers out there. And I said,
you know, well, when you're watching anything, and when you're
looking at the market, you know most of the America's
small business owners. I mean at the end of the day,
typically once you get to that large customer, you actually
secure that large contract and our field, you're taking pennies
compared to when it actually talks about margin, you're not
getting as if it was that small business customer where

(40:41):
you make a little bit more. On the large largely
you're doing a lot of work and it's a small margin.
So we kind of hang our hat on that. We
have a physical presence in every single state that we
do business in. Right now, we're in twenty two Saints.
Over my career, I've account for business to business and
ordered or wise over five million people in the US
and in Canada being acquired on my own or business
to business. So I've figured myself as one of the

(41:03):
experts and I'm teaching people how to do that. Where
it comes from foot positions, shoulder position, when we look
at the customer. We're not to look at the customer everything.
So we've taken what we've learned residentially and how to
move that over to small businesses and it's allowed us
to be able to build a connection with small business owners.
You know large C and I customers, you know they
have people that they can pay to be able to

(41:24):
watch their energy. What we virtually do is we help small,
mid sized and large businesses hedge against their future energy
costs so they can get the lowest KILLO repossible. How
does that work that In the Northeast, what virtually happens
is that the utility companies purchased the energy for homeowners
or business owners that if they don't tell them where
to purchase it from. Now, the restrictions typically in the
Northeast is those utilities are very small, so they only

(41:46):
capable are really purchasing six months of energy, three months
of energy or even in some cases one month of
energy for a customer, and that's retail costs that's super expensive.
So homeowner small business can tell the utility saying, hey,
I would like you to purchase five years worth of energy.
You're six years, where the vintagy are seven or eight
or ten. And when they're doing that, they're getting a

(42:06):
much lower rate compared to just having the utility purchase
it in six.

Speaker 6 (42:10):
So what is the average difference between six month contract
and a five year contract.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
You're talking about over the term of five years. Like
if I were to go back and say, look, I
signed up in twenty nineteen compared to twenty twenty four,
you're talking about a thirty to forty percent difference in
the energy rate. Energy pricing naturally increases about two to
four percent every single year. Everything in the world is normal.
Business owners will tell you right now that that numbers
jump can considerably after COVID just because when everybody went

(42:39):
to go work from all utility companies around the world
expected people to use this energy and they didn't do that.
So they've had to increase pricing over time. It's continuing
to happen and already keep doing that so that they
can get back the money of the losses they're trying.

Speaker 5 (42:51):
To recoup over So, Carsten, do you have a question
or comment.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Oh no, I'm really just fallowing. I'm surprised about the energy.
See I wasn't there thinking about that actually, But then again,
I'm in the country way of energy model, so you know,
it's just one company you buy from a lot.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
Yeah, And what Carson's saying, there's in the US those
places where you can pick and choose your provider and
be in those places where you can't choose the energy
company at all, and a lot of times in deregulated areas,
which they're trying to force more states to be able
to do that. And you can pick and choose your provider,
You can pick and choose the plan or even the
purchasing strategy and some aspects if you're a small business

(43:31):
looking in shop Relipius.

Speaker 6 (43:32):
But I think a lot of people in the US
feel like the energy companies are monopolies and they don't
really consider that there could be other options. But if
you told me I could save thirty percent, then I
would become interested. Our industry is what we call a
point of pain purchase, which means that typically people will
not reach out to something that we're doing until they

(43:55):
see a bill that's astronomical, like, hey, what is this
and I've heard about doing something this. Let me look
into this a little bit now. So that's one of
the reasons that we go business to.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Business so often, because a lot of times, like I
said before, small business owners are running their business and
they're not looking at the electricity bill. They're just you know,
just paying it. And so one of the reasons our
guys try to do very professionally is to go by,
show them what they're doing, show them what they're using.
Signaling you're paying fifteen cents, you should be paying well
using the exact same electricity company. Your account number is
going to stay the same. Nothing about your bill is

(44:25):
going to change. Just instead of getting six months, you're
going to buy it for five years. We're switching your supplier.
Then some people think that you're actually changing your light company.
You can't physically even do that, Like that's what we
We make jokes with that with customers all the time,
letting you know, like hey, if we were to change
a light company, we have to come back and move
your meter around and change everything else. But what I
would tell the most people to understand if they were

(44:46):
hesitant about it, just understanding the rate increases are going
up every single year and to protect themselves from that
because it's not changing anytime. So we can already see
twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, and twenty twenty seven
curves and it's going to jump up probably about eight
nine percent.

Speaker 6 (45:01):
So one advice do you have to non business owners
to residential electricity customers? What can they do to help
manage their energy costs.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
Well, there's some really simple things that they could do.
The first thing I tell everybody is try to keep
all of your energy inside the house. That age old
thing where your grandmother used to say, Hey, if you
open the doun't air condition the entire neighborhood. And I'm
always telling the truth. So try to keep your electricity
or your heat and your cooling inside apps. Whenever your
house starts to have to work harder to being cooled

(45:32):
or heat it, you're spending more for electricity. One of
the things that most people don't realize is that actually
the appliances that you have that are not normally used,
if they're plugged in, they're still using energy. So sometimes
at toaster or sometimes that air fryer that you may
just have linked into the wall and you're not thinking
about it, it's still using energy all the time. So
a lot of people don't know that. I tell a

(45:53):
lot of people that they don't know that energy is
about five to six times more expensive between eight am
and five pm. So if you're going to use the
dishwasher or the washing machine or anything might do it
in the morning. In the evening, are all off peak
times on the weekends, so if you do that, your
meter doesn't work as hard for your kilowatts. So if
you actually wash your dishes dishwashing, do it in the

(46:14):
morning or do it after six pm. LED lighting works
and also smart thermostats naturally keep everything kind of where
it's out where you can set up different parameters on it.
But those are the big five things. Taking out things
that are not being used, using the washing machine, washer
and dryer between off peak times, trying to keep everything
inside the house, those are the big components, and making

(46:34):
sure that you keep your oft you that sounds good.

Speaker 6 (46:36):
I'm glad we've bumped into each other because I feel
like we're gonna have enough money for another vacation this year.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
LED lighting will typically just buy itself, lower the bill
about fifteen to twenty percent. If you're doing the other stuff,
you could probably get it down another ten fee.

Speaker 6 (46:51):
So when we first started buying LED lamps, they were
saying they have a life of like thirty years. But
I find myself replacing them more often than every thirty years, right,
So have they changed the construction on those?

Speaker 8 (47:04):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (47:05):
Or it really depends on the brand and where you're
getting those from. I to tell everybody that you kind
of get what you pay for with those things. So
try to get the best product and maybe a little
bit more expensive, but you'll probably replace it once. But
thirty years is a stretch most people say. I tell
people five to ten regardles of what the brand says.

Speaker 5 (47:25):
The Moor and Linton with inertia resources.

Speaker 6 (47:29):
Where can our listeners fight out more about you and
inertia resources.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
Inertia Resources i NC dot com. Our staff is on
point to be able to answer questions for anybody around
the country in regards to electricity, natural gas, solar projects
you know, bio thermal, geotheremo community solar. Well, after this discussion,
I have more energy than I before started.

Speaker 5 (47:52):
I do want to just do a shout out to
you a little bit here because it says in my
notes that your commercial industrial clients have experienced over one
hundred million dollars in savings for some of Boston's most
prominent businesses. That's amazing, that's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Yeah, we actually that needs to be updated. That number
is now uttered in thirty five million as of today.
We've picked up some really big clients over the last
twelve months and very large construction companies, some household names
that we have NBA's. We've picked up some major clients
in the past years that we're actually managing their energy
horribly and we have a ninety seven percent acceptance rate.

(48:26):
So it's very rare that we get in front of
a client and.

Speaker 5 (48:29):
We candle how are you getting in front of these clients.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
Our main way of business, believe it or not, as
business to business, but that's for our small C and
I section. For our large C and I we have
affiliates all over the country. I still believe that regardless
of we I mean, we do SEO marketing and everything
like that, but a lot of our major clients are
because we have someone that owns a private equity company

(48:51):
or hedge fund and they make introductions to us based
on relationships. So we try to make sure all of
our clients are very well taken care of and they
actually to go out and pursue other clients for us
and our I would be totally honest. Our largest customers
that we have, which I would say our top two
hundred to five hundred, were not because we knocked on
the door. It wasn't because we emailed them. It wasn't

(49:12):
because of a call, it was because hey to this
company helped us out. I think you.

Speaker 5 (49:16):
Should talk by referrals.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Awesome.

Speaker 5 (49:18):
You are listening to Assade to Profit The Road to
Entrepreneurship with Richard Elizabeth Erhart, our special guest today, Carston
Bau and two amazing presenters. This has just been a
great show. But don't go away yet, because they're going
to tell you their secrets.

Speaker 12 (49:33):
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 process 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

(49:54):
and expertise. That's why I started ushabits dot com, where
we help you find your financial advisor free of charge.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
Usehabits dot com.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
It's Passage to Profit.

Speaker 6 (50:05):
Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.

Speaker 5 (50:08):
Noah Fleischmann is our producer here at Passage to Profit,
and he never stops trying to make sense of the
future by looking at the past.

Speaker 13 (50:17):
I just can't stand those disruptive ads that break in
when I'm browsing YouTube, especially when I'm watching a file
of classic television commercials. I don't think anyone's ever going
to admit to a fondness for television commercials, much less
to a fondness for watching them. But then again, try
to explain my all those bundle videos of all those
eternal commercial breaks from decades past are now the most

(50:38):
visited files out there. Truth is, for many of us,
those commercials were the wallpaper of our impressionable past. We're
the TV generation, and we're cherishing our memories, even if
we don't want to live in the past. A few
good minutes with the old commercials, it's worth a smile.
We can live around the new ones. A woman I
know actually tells me her teenage daughter likes to watch
those current day ads on her device all the time.

(51:00):
That's what you call a contemporary figure.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Now more, with Richard and Elizabeth, passage to profit.

Speaker 5 (51:06):
And now it is time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
So I'm going to go to Carston first. What's a
secret you can share with our audience that.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
It's an interesting question. I mean, if I tell you
it would not be a secret anymore. The thing is
some pretty plain baby stuffs. Don't make up any excuses,
especially up to yourself. Then give it you all. This
is something you really asked to do, and be brave
enough to delegate. I believe that that could be some

(51:36):
advice I would peach people.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
That's excellent, okay, Jason Greenwood, what's your secret?

Speaker 3 (51:41):
My recommendation is honing your empathy gene at every opportunity.
Empathy is a superpower in business, and being able to
walk a mile in your customer's shoes is a super
important part of being able to form a connection with
them that will last the test of the ages.

Speaker 8 (51:56):
That's the reality.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
And as I said earlier, I think one of the
ways you can that the best is to travel as
early and as often as you can, live in as
many countries as you can, experience as many cultures and
languages and colors, and just do business with as many
people globally as.

Speaker 8 (52:13):
You possibly can.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Just try to see the world through as many other
people's eyes as you possibly can, and that will naturally
help you to be a more empathetic person.

Speaker 6 (52:22):
I think that's really a great comment, and it's easier
now that it ever was before. Forty years ago, getting
on a plane and going to a foreign country was
a big deal, and now travel is so much easier,
especially for young entrepreneurs. I think it's a real opportunity
to go and travel around and live in different places,

(52:43):
meet different kinds of people, and I think that those
experiences will help you in your professional and personal life too.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
And if you're traveling in the US, do the TSA
pre check. It's definitely worth it. To Marian Lynton, what
is your secret that you're willing to share?

Speaker 4 (53:00):
I have two. It's one of my favorite quotes. I
think I kind of took it from somebody and made
it myself. We do things today that other people want,
so tomorrow wee can do things that other people can't.
So I would say to run a successful business, you
have to have a lot of humility. You have to
also be able to throw your ego out the door.
One thing about me when I was starting my business,
I was willing to put on any hat every day,

(53:21):
whether that was a sales hat, or if it was
a marketing hat, or if it was an Internet hat
or whatever it was for the first six months here
in Boston. I would walk to the field for a
half a mile to a mile a day just to
be able to go to prospect the customers. And a
lot of people aren't willing to do that. I would
say the other thing, to make sure that you try
to plan for the worst. I used to make sure
that every single time it's a dealt with somewhere, I

(53:42):
was going to talk to every big client that if
we would speak to you know, what objection are they
going to come up with? And it just go through
it and play through it with my mind over and
over and over, like how is this going to mess up?
Like it's going to mess up, Let me plan for it.
And I'd train our people to do that, and it's
made them so much better. When they're going to go
to their march meeting or two large meeting, they're planning
in the back of their mind, like look at this customer,

(54:04):
possibly say possibly come up with because a lot of
time and sales we go in there think at eight
this is a great proposal. I talked to him already,
this is great. I mean you go in there and
you get blindsided because you don't go through and think
of how that could kind of mess up. So that's
what we train our people to do. And I would
say that it's really really helped us be able to
grow us. They call it murphing it out, Murphy's law,
it's the worse sing.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
But that's really great advice too.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (54:26):
I mean, I think in the law business too, those
two tools that you mentioned. You know, preparation, you want
to understand what your witness is going to say before
you ask the question, so that you have an appropriate response.
And the other part of that is people used to ask, well,
what do you do, Richard, and I would say, well,
I write term papers for a living. I sit there
and I write patents and long documents and a lot

(54:48):
of people don't have the patience for that, but that's
part of the profession. Eventually you get trained to do that.
But it's also something that other people don't necessarily want
to do. I try to s state organized and I'm
constantly surprised by people who are winging it every day.
And I think you lose a certain level of productivity

(55:10):
if you don't invest some time in that activity.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
So that's my secret.

Speaker 5 (55:15):
You are a good one.

Speaker 6 (55:16):
Passage to profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing
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Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by feed
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Thank you to the p too P team, our producer
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(55:40):
Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts.
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(56:00):
Law is here for your patentrademark and copyright needs. You
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we'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
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