Entrepreneurs Turning Niche Websites Into Million Dollar Assets with Justin Cooke & Others

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. Oh my god, we're
gonna go broke. What do wedo? Sat down with a piece of
paper and designed my own We likeit. We go from there. You
take a risk. I'm Richard Gearhartand I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard
some snippets from our show. Itwas a great one. Stay tuned to

(00:23):
hear tips about how you can startyour business ramping up your business. The
time is near. You've given ithard, now get it in gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard andElizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart, founder
of Gearhart Law, a full serviceintellectual property law firm specializing in patents,

(00:44):
trademarks, and copyrights. And I'mElizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but
I do marketing for Gearheart Law,and I have my own startups and podcasts.
Are you one of the two andfive Americans wanting to start your own
business or already a business owner?Stay tuned. This show is about starting
and growing your business. Welcome toPassage to Profit, the Road to entrepreneurship
where we learn why and how ordinarypeople just like you started and grew their

(01:08):
businesses. And we also talk aboutthe intellectual property that helps protect your innovations.
We have a special treat for you. It's Justin Cook who's the co
founder of Empire, Flippers and webStreet. And then we have two marvelous
presenters. We have Mike Chesney fromtech Ton tech Tonlife dot com with a

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multi functional beverage and if you goon this website and leok at what this
thing does, it's amazing. Yes. And then we have Natalie Noel with
Noel Family Distillery. It's Noel Distillerydot com. It's a local distillery in
Louisiana, has quite the story andit makes a great range of products.
Awesome. But before we get toour guests, it's time for your exciting

(01:52):
new business journey. And two andfive Americans imagine that want to start their
own business, and so should youstart your own business journey? Is it
important to think about the problem orneed my business will solve and how do
I address this need? So we'regoing to go to our guests today.
We're going to ask them what isthe problem that you're trying to solve and

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how does your business solve it.So welcome to the show, justin maybe
you can talk a little bit aboutthe problem that your business is meant to
solve and how you solve it.Our business, Empire Flippers, was built
to solve the problem of helping onlineentrepreneurs be able to exit their business.
Everyone starts a business, they starton affiliate side or you know, an
e commerce selling shoes or ceiling fans, but they don't know how to sell,

(02:38):
they don't know where to take thebusiness sol and so we solve that
problem by providing them into end solutionto exit your business or to sell your
business online. And then the otherproblem is Webstreet and we started a spin
off company because there are a lotof people that wanted to buy or invest
in a business but didn't know howto run one. I mean, you
buy this internet company and you're like, how do I run it? So

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we want to make an so forpeople to be able to invest in these
businesses without actually having to run them. So we pair them up with people
that are experienced with potential investors thatwant returns and so that's how Webstreak got
started. That's great, So Weappreciate that information. We'll hear more from
you later in the show. Ournext guest, Mike Chesney, tell us
about the problem that your business wastrying to solve and how you solve it.

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What we do and the problem thatwe started with was everybody, every
human being needs energy. Everybody needsenergy and that's the need state that we
looked at. And what most peopledo now is they go out and they
look for that quick fix, whichis caffeine and sugar, you know,
an energy drink. These really reputablebrands that are out there, but they're

(03:42):
not healthy. They're not good foryou. So the need that we saw
is for a healthy energy drink andone for grown ups, healthy energy drink
for adults. Energy drinks are notfor people in my age category, people
that are thirty five to eighty.There for eighteen to thirty five year olds,
thirty four year olds. You maythink you're a little bit older,

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but you look really young to us. Welcome to the show. Natalie tell
us, what is the problem you'retrying to solve and how does your business
solve it? Well, I didn'treally think about that with this one.
I just know that we wanted tobe in the business of creating fantastic spirits.
Of course, we're distillery. Wemake rum, tequila and vodka.
We're in Louisiana, we have veryhave access to sugarcane, so that's where

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we make our rum from tequila.I'm a tequila girl, so I said,
let's see if we can be theonly Louisiana distillery to make authentic tequila.
And so we did that. Imean, I like to think about
us in terms of maybe like someof our other local distilleries, the problem
I think we solved was just beingmore fun, bringing a personality to the
local landscape. Everyone was so seriousand moody with their branding, and if

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you look at our brand compared toeveryone else's, we're ready for a party.
I mean, we're ready for agood time. So I'm all about
flavor and fun and I think that'swhat sets us apart. Looking at your
website made me want to have aparty. Yeah. I mean, it's
about the moments that matter, withthe people that matter. It's still fun
to come together and create really deliciousspirits or cocktails and seewherre than nicos for

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your business, Elizabeth, what wasthe problem and what is the solution.
So we're in our podcast studio rightnow in our building in Summit, New
Jersey, but it's not really setup for other people's consumption our use.
So we're remodeling it and we're actuallydoing it ourselves. Richard is replacing ceiling
tiles and I'm helping and so anyway, the problem that I saw was we

(05:36):
had space that we weren't using.But the bigger problem was I kept meeting
people that want to tell their story. They want to start a podcast because
people need to tell their stories andthey didn't know how. And then a
lot of people need coaching. Sothat's in there too. Sounds great.
So for your heart law, we'reintellectual property attorneys and we focus on protecting

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our clients' ideas through patents, trademarks, and co he rights. That gives
them a little bit of a competitiveedge, that gives them a tool to
work with out there in the marketplace. The problem is, how do you
protect your ideas in order to letyour business flourish and the products and services
develop. And the solution is torely, at least in part on the

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legal system to give you that kindof protection. That's what we do very
well. Said, well, thankyou, and so now it is time
for our future guest, Justin Cook, co founder of Empire Flippers and web
Street. So Justin tell us alittle bit more about Empire Flippers. My
business part and I were working midlevel managers in the US and an SEO

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company where they do backlinks and stufffor local companies. If you're a plumber
and you want to get seen onGoogle, they would help you do that.
We had a real need to likehire people cheaply, and so we
had a previous connection to the Philippines. We said, look, why don't
we hire some people in the Philippines. So we started this remote hiring process
of hiring you know, seven eightpeople in the Philippines to the point where
we said, look, we needto go over there and kind of see

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what's going on. So my businesspartner, my future business partner, I
fly out of the Philippines and wego to this girl's house and we realize
she's got like six other people workingin her like you know, second room,
third room. They're at like plastictables with like air conditioned and plastic
chairs, and we're like, ohmy god, we're running a sweatshop,
Like what are we like literally runninga sweatshop out of the Philippines. We're

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like, we need to fix this, so we like set up an office.
We can convince our bosses to letus start this company, so we
can move to the Philippines. Wemove there and we set up our first
company. We have an office.We're now in the Philippines. We're totally
remote entrepreneurs. And we start buildinga company and you know, within six
months, our previous employer starts cuttingour finances. So they cut to half

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and then another half, and sowe're like, oh my god, we're
gonna go broke in the Philippines.This is not a place to be broke.
We looked up online and there's youcan create these little niche websites.
So I'll give you an example,cemeteryprices dot net. It was one of
our sites. Another one was likecatconstipation dot org. Right, just little
niche topics. I didn't even knowthis, but cat constipation is a real

(08:05):
problem. Come on cat podcast.I have a podcast for cats with Daniel
Woolle. You should come on thenand talk about cats. It's a real
issue. Apparently I didn't know.I'm not a cat. I'm a dog
guy. Right, So we findthese little niche topics and we started just
building content around it, all theseniche subjects that people search for. Well,
Google has a program called ad Sense, right, and so you create

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the content and you put the AdSenseblocks on your website and you just put
it's a little bit of code yousnip in there, and then Google will
automatically deliver advertisers that's relevant to eitherthe topic or the individual user that goes
there. So they may see somethingabout like a cemetery if it's on the
creation prices, or they may seelike the last ceiling fan they search for
on Amazon. So it helps,you know, earn revenue and then they

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pay you money for those And sowe built these sites started making money.
We realize people want to buy thesesites. They're like little assets, right.
So you have a little site makingone hundred bucks a month. It's
only a hundred bucks of but someone'swilling to pay two twenty five hundred,
three thousand dollars for this one hundreddollars a month website. And so we
realized that these are profitable assets thatare sellable. So we started creating them

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in batches, right, A dozena week started creating them. It takes
about three months to percolate and thenwe would sell them, and so we
became these guys that ad sense Flipperswas our original name. So how did
you figure out what topics would begood candidates for this kind of business?
So that's really important. The firstcouple of niches we selected were interesting topics
we could write content about, butweren't well searched, right, So there

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wasn't a ton of people searching Googlefor the key term. So I put
it in. I was like,oh, this is a cool niche and
it gets like seventy searches a month, but you generally wanted two thousand to
three thousand searches per month on thekeyword or better. And if there's that
much interest, then you're going toget some traffic if you can get ranked.
There were keyword research tools out thereto help you. They would tell
you exactly how many searches keyword wouldget per month, and then kind of

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the difficulty based on the sites thatare there, on how hard it is
to get ranked, and we chooseones with a low to moderate search volume
and a moderate to low difficulty.So you took that business model and you
expanded it to look for actively lookfor people that want to sell their tech
companies. Is that what you did. Yeah. So we talked about how
we built this very publicly, andthat wasn't a public thing at the time.

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We said, here's our exact process, step one, step two,
step three. A lot of peoplewould charge you for that information, and
we were like, we'll just giveit away for free. And that got
us attention, which is valuable.But it also got a lot of other
people building these sites as well,so they would do their own approach and
figure out ways to build them up. And they asked to sell with us
because we had an audience now peoplewanting to buy these little sites, and

(10:43):
we said, no way, we'renot having you sell with us, because
that's how we make our money isbuilding these sites and selling them. Eventually
we smarted onto the idea that,oh my god, we can make a
lot more money having everyone bring ustheir site. I'm not I'd admit to
being not the smart entrepreneur, andmost the good ideas come from customers beating
my head in with it. Doyou know what I mean? Like I

(11:05):
don't listen to them, and Iignore them, and I have ego and
then they're like, no, dummy, here's how I want to send you
money. And I'm like, ohokay. Like eventually we're like, okay,
we can make money at this Okay. So we let other people sell
their sites to our audience, andthat's when it really started to blow up,
and we went from you know,a couple of guys in the Philippines

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scratching out some little websites to nowwe sold over just over four hundred and
ninety million dollars worth of websites andonline businesses. Wow, that's amazing.
So who are the buyers for thesewebsites? Initially we start off with very
small sites. We've gotten to thepointhere we're selling much larger businesses SaaS software
as a service companies and large ecommerce Amazon FBA businesses. But initially the

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small little sites that cat consupation typesites were just online aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to
know is this internet money real?You know what I mean? Like like
can you really make money hundred twohundred three in er bucks a month with
these little websites? I want tobuy it and see before I get into
it, all right, So they'dbuy a site from us and their earnings
would start to hit their account.They'd paid three four thousand dollars for one

(12:09):
hundred dollars a month earner, andthey'd started to get the earnings and they're
like, oh, maybe you know, the internet money is real, Maybe
it's not just all fake, right, Maybe this is something I can do.
And so those people just aspirational atfirst. Later on a whole nother
group got into it, like privateequity and all the bigger buyers. But
initially it was just like kind oflike, you know, want to be
entrepreneurs testing the waters. That's reallyinteresting. So how exactly does the Google

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ad sense part of that word withonline businesses? There's lots of different modernizations.
Google adsence is one. They callit display advertising, and Google absence
is one version of display advertising.So if you have your website, whether
it's you know, WordPress or howeveryou set up a site, there's lots
of different places you can go andyou write the content. You can put
a snippet of code in the middleof the content, above the content below

(12:56):
the content, and that will createan AD block and you see those and
as you're annoyed by them when you'research to serve on the web, but
you get an ad block, andideally it's gonna be very relevant to the
content you have, or relevant tothe person viewing the content. So I
said before, like, if it'sabout cat constipation, it'll be like cat
products and treats and toys, orit might be something that I searched for

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yesterday, Right, I search fora new lawnmower. I'll see you like
cat toys and then like a lawnmower. Because Google knows at all, basically,
and they know that I want alawnmower, right, Yeah, they
know stuff about you that you've nevereven that you never even thought you'd It's
creepy. It's getting creepy, right, it is. I would say display
ads are kind of the lowest formof modernization for websites. So typically,

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if you're building a website for yourself, your own business, you're way better
off advertising your own products or servicesthan other people's. Display ads is a
particular business model where you're just creatingthe content to put ads up. But
if you're building a website for abit business, putting ads on there and
getting you know, eighty bucks amonth trickle in in or something isn't worth
it only the site is really popularwhen we make a lot of money,

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which can happen, But for abusiness website, it doesn't make a lot
of sense. So for entrepreneurs whoare just starting out and they're in the
process of building a website now,or they're thinking about a website, do
you have any advice to offer themso that they get the most traction possible?
Depends on what kind of website they'rebuilding, right so, and what

(14:28):
kind of business they're building. Soif they're building a site just for display
ads, just to put content upto make money with that, I mean
following our process. There's other peoplelike Niche Pursuits dot com, Empire Flivers
dot com. You can go downthose sites and explain that. But if
you're building a service business or something, you're going to build it differently.
Right You're going to want to getattention, you want to draw traction through
like social media and shorts and reelsand all that stuff. But I was

(14:52):
like held back because it's been solong since I've personally built a website,
so I can struggle with your listenersright now or think building a site,
They're like, where do I gowhat kind of content do I get?
How do I set up the thingto like collect the emails, and what
kind of like CRM do I usein the background? How do I oh,
oh, right, that's just notmy thing. That sounds sounds frightening

(15:13):
and misserable. Makes me We don'twant to do a podcast. I don't
even want to do it now,right, And my mastermind was like,
look, you don't need any ofthat to put a podcast out. You
need a YouTube account, you needsome like silly logo, and you need
content like you don't need the otherstuff, man, Just put it out.
Get the content out. So justinwhat was it like working during the

(15:33):
pandemic? You had this business,you spend a lot of time growing it
during the pandemic. What was thatall about? Well, first off,
I'll say that our company is completelyremote. So as of twenty elevened about
a year after starting, we wentcompletely remote and we were forced to because
business was bad enough we had toshut down our office in the Philippines.
We ever wanted to go work fromhome, and it was depressing because I

(15:54):
felt like, oh my god,we're not a real company anymore. We
don't have an office, right,It turned out to be fantastic. Is
we were remote before any of thispandemic stuff started. So everyone on our
team. We've got Americans living inPrague, Metagine, we got a British
guy living in Manila, so we'vegot people all over the world and this
is pre pandemic. So twenty nineteen, that was our setup. We were

(16:15):
in great shape, I guess fora worldwide shutdown in that we were all
living and working remotely already. Nowthe weird thing is is that with everyone
kind of shut down, there wasa huge focus on online business. So
our business boomed. You guys diddo a fair amount of bootstrapping on your
business, right, Yeah, SoI'm an advocate of bootstrapping if at all

(16:37):
possible, right, And what bootstrappingmeans is just using your own funds,
using your own kind of hutspa,using your own blood, sweat and tears
to build your business. And whatthis does is it teaches you to be
lean and mean. Right, youdon't have other people's money, right to
be able to Oh, I'm goingto put together a big marketing budget.
I'm going to set up my SIshells, my Hong Kong Bank accounts and

(17:00):
like so many people get caught upon the kind of like stuff around them,
what's my legal requirement whatever, Whereyou just need to hustle and you
get out there and start like talkingto customers and see if they're willing to
pay you money for your product andif not, fix it. And the
best way to do that is bootstrapping. Now, not everyone, not every
company can be bootstrapped, because thereare some companies where there's a run up

(17:21):
that is so intense that there's noway you can compete without other people's money.
AI is a really good example ofthat right now, right like,
there's no I can't just like youknow, sit in our townhouse in the
Philippines and kind of bang out thework on my AI. Company's very very
difficult to do because of the moneyand the compute required to build like a
large AI model. So not everymodel is built for bootstrapping, but I

(17:45):
highly recommend it, particularly it's yourfirst round or your first shot at entrepreneurship.
Do it with the blood, sweatand tears. You're gonna run it
lean Justin Cook, co founder ofEmpire Flippers. You're listening to Passage to
Profit with Richard and Elizabeth, yourheart will be Jack right after this commercial,
and stay tuned. We have Secretsof the entrepreneurial mind coming up later

(18:06):
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again. Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart andour special guest, Justin Cook. We've
just had a fascinating discussion with Justinand we're going to keep it going now.
So there was a question from somebodyelse. Do you deal with any

(20:22):
businesses that have physical inventory? Yeah, there's a number of different types of
businesses that carry physical inventory DTC businesses. It's called direct consumer. Whether you're
selling you know, e commerce productat your website Amazon FBA or fulfillment by
Amazon, which you have, youknow, a physical product where you hold
inventory with Amazon, and you knowhybrids of those, right, So yes,
we sell those businesses regularly. Whatwe don't sell kind of like the

(20:45):
limit on what we'll sell is anyproperty that requires a local physical requirement to
be there. So our buyers areworldwide, right, So I might have
a buyer for your business in Tulsa, the buyer might be in Hong Kong,
by might be in San Francisco.So then flying to Louisiana for example,
just an example to like run thebusiness is probably a no go for

(21:07):
most buyers, so it really doesn'twork with our model. So our mollege
requires them to be able to liveand work anywhere. So in many cases
they ship the inventory to a thirdparty. That third party does fulfillment.
Any business like that, we canabsolutely sell the misconceptions. My business partner
and I both had early in ourentrepreneur career is that. You know,
when we shut down our office inthe Philippines, I just felt like a
loser because in my view, inmy head, I was like, you

(21:32):
need an office, you need desks, an address, and that's really important
to be a real company. Otherwise, what are you like, it's not
a real business. Yeah, Imean, I think getting over our own
thoughts on what we thought a realbusiness was was a liquod learning experience for
us. I hadn't realized for along time that there are some companies that
survived solely on investor funds for yearsand years and years. I always thought

(21:53):
a successful business was more revenue thanexpenses. But that's not really true,
right, I don't know how longhave some of these companies been going where
they're just living off investors. Well, that was cute in like twenty nineteen,
twenty twenty, twenty twenty one,right with the run up and all
the money floating around. When itcomes to harder times, that's when those

(22:14):
companies go away. They don't doquite as well because investors pucker up and
they're like, I'm not putting moneyin businesses that don't have an interest in
delivering a profit. The goal ofthe business should be to drive revenue and
eventually get margins that deliver a profitto you or your investors. I'd heard
that, like Angie's List didn't makea profit for a long time, but
you wouldn't touch a company now thatdidn't have some sort of profit. I

(22:37):
mean, that's true. So it'sa requirement to sell on Empire Flippers.
We're going to do it as amultiple of profit or sellers discretion or earnings
SDE. So basically, if abusiness is doing you know, let's say
one hundred thousand a year in profit, if you have recurring revenue, that
improves your multiple. Less clients,no recurring that's going to lower your multiple.
So somewhere between let's say two tosix times your annual net it is

(23:00):
what you're going to sell for.So if you have no profit, you're
just not sellable to like most ofthe investors on our platform, and people
are looking to buy online businesses.Justin Cook, co founder of Empire Flippers.
Where can people reach you? Justinif they want to sell a business
or contact you for some other reason. Empire flippers dot Com is our brokerage
account. If we want to findout more about the investing sellers you're going

(23:21):
to talk about, but you canget to webstreet dot co and you can
figure out how to invest in successfuloperators that are buying businesses like we talked
about. Well, thank you verymuch for that. It's been amazing and
now it is time for IP inthe news. Tattoos and Lebron James.
So how can you go wrong withtattoos and Lebron James. Well, it

(23:41):
turns out that a tattoo artist,Jimmy Hayden, put a tattoo on Lebron
james arm that Jimmy Hayden designed,and then Lebron James his likeness was made
into a character on a video gameand they copy the tattoo and to this
character on the video game, andthe guy that created it said, hey,
I should get paid for that.But of course the court disagreed and

(24:02):
it went before jury and Ohio theydecided that the tattoo artist Jimmy Hayden gave
Lebron James an implied license when hedid the tattoo, and Lebron James paid
for it, and therefore he hadno claim against the gaming company for using
his tattoo on the likeness of LebronJames because artists did design it, so

(24:22):
it was a unique artwork created bythis artist, but he put it on
Lebron James. So who does itbelong to? Under normal copyright law,
the creator of the work owns thecopyright, and unless there is an agreement
between the creator and the user,the copyright stays with the creator. So
in this case, in my opinion, it probably should have stayed with Jimmy

(24:44):
Hayden, unless Lebron James and Haydenhad like some sort of deal. But
I'd like to ask our amazing guestswhat they think about this situation. Natalie,
what are your thoughts here? Well, I mean, best to just
not get a tattoo. You know, I'm pretty okay with the ruling,
so justin what's your take here?They're similar to Mike Tyson, right,

(25:06):
So, like Mike Tyson had abig tattoo on his face and it was
in the movie Hangover. Do youremember this or you get familiar with the
story, So hit the tattoo andI don't get the story excited about.
I think they had to go backin the movie and remove digitally remove the
tattoo is something they did in theHangover movie to get rid of his likeness.
So with AI, this is goingto be more of an issue.
It sounds like kind of a sillyissue, like it's very specific to like

(25:27):
a celebrity and a video game.Who cares. But you know, the
more we have digital likenesses of people, I think the more this issue might
come up. Mike, My questionfor you, Richard is what's the prior
case law for this case? Lawne. This is mixed. In some cases
the courts have found for the artistsand other cases they haven't. There's still

(25:48):
some ambiguity. Copyright is always reallyfact specific. So I mean, you
can just imagine the Ohio jury kindof liking Lebron James right and just like,
well, we're going to find forhim no matter what. Does sound
like. The tattoo artists really havea lot of rights in this. The
moral of the stories, Before youget a tattoo, call your intellectual property
lawyer. And you're listening to Passagefor Profit and stay tuned. We have

(26:11):
Mike Chesney and Natalie Noel coming up, and also Secrets of the Entrepreneur Mind.
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free benefits check. Eight hundred eighttwo four four five ninety six. Eight
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nine six. That's eight hundred eighttwo four forty five ninety six. Passage
to Profit continues with Richard and ElizabethGearhart. Now it's time for us to

(28:25):
hear from Elizabeth and her project.So what's up with you? A few
things going on. I was workingon Blue Streak directory, was a B
to B business director. I'm reframingthat a little bit. I still have
it. I got the trademark allowedthrough the Trademark Office, so I'm like,
I'm going to hold on to this. In the meantime, as I
said, Richard and I are remodelingthe podcast studio. It's gonna be really

(28:45):
cool. So we're gonna have avideo studio and an audio studio. It's
called Gear Media Studios in Summit,New Jersey. And to Justin's earlier point,
I am just doing a super deepdive into the podcasting space. We're
going to conferences. I started ameetup with Stacy Sherman once a month.
It meets in our law firm buildingin some New Jersey, but we also

(29:07):
get people from Zoom and this lastone we got over two hundred and fifty
people registered through Zoom. They won'tall come, but doing the hybrid is
a really good way to do thesekind of meetups. Now and at the
end of June, Richard and Iare both going to be presenting on panels
for podcasting at the Empowered Podcasting Conferencein Charlotte, North Carolina, and that
is Mark Ronick is putting that on. And I also have another podcast called

(29:30):
The Jersey Podcasts cat Podcasts that Ido with Danielle Woolley. I'm doing some
different things with that too, SoI'm kind of looking at how you can
help your podcast by having it onYouTube, and are there things you can
do on YouTube that will help youget downloads on Spotify. It's like what
the crossover is between YouTube and thepodcasting platforms. When I started asking people
if they wanted to run a studio, a lot of people were like,

(29:52):
well, sure, I would loveto run a podcasting studio, but I
don't know how to start a podcast. Can you help me? So coaching
business was born. So we're goingto a soup to nuts studio where you
can come in and leave with afinished product, and then if you want
marketing help with that, we caneither help you with that or refer you
to somebody who's a specialist in thepodcast marketing space, which is a different
space than traditional marketing. The wholepodcast thing is a lot like other digital

(30:17):
marketing tools, but just a littlebit different. So I'm really learning the
ins and outs. So enough aboutme. I want to hear about Techtonlife
dot Com from Mike Chesney. It'sa multifunction beverage and I just want to
hear all about it because it soundslike it's really cool. So tell us,
Mike quick background on me and howthis all got started. I'm a
soldier, that's my background. Joinedthe military right out of high school seventeen

(30:41):
years old. When to do thearmy. I was an Army ranger Special
Forces, and that's what I did. So I spent twenty five years in
the army, and being in themilitary set you up for how to do
the most with the least. Sothat geared me up to be an entrepreneur,
figuring out how to solve problems withwhat you have in hand, do
the best with what you got.After I retirement in the military in twenty

(31:03):
ten, did a couple of businesses, spinning my wheels in spots where I
really wasn't going to make any traction. But while I was there, ended
up learning a lot about needs andthings that people wanted and needed, and
found out that the government, theUS government, was looking for a nutritional
supplement for soldiers, soldier, sailors, airman, marines, and coast guardment
men and women that provided additional physicaland cognitive performance, and they wanted something

(31:29):
that was going to improve that bythirty percent. Well, I read about
it. Your job was to makepeople thirty percent smarter and thirty percent stronger.
No, that was what the governmentasked. Oh okay, So I
cold called the lady who won thecontract and created this substance and spent three
years working with her at Oxford Universityin England and tried to market the product

(31:52):
that she had created. It's anincredible nutritional supplement. The problem is it
just didn't work for what we neededin the US. It's built for elite
athletes and it just has some inherentproblems. Mainly, you can only take
two servings of it a day,so it doesn't work for people who need
it four or five six times aday if they want for energy. So
ended up coming back starting from scratch, sat down with a piece of paper

(32:15):
and designed my own sounds really crazyfor a kid who is from the Louisiana
public education system. Graduated from collegethe week after I turned forty, did
get my graduate degree from LSU.But it's crazy how these journeys turn out,
because you never would think, howdoes somebody who was an Army airborne
ranger turn out to be a biochemist, which is what it turned out.

(32:36):
I created what the human body makeswhen you're starving or when you're on a
low carb or a ketogenic diet.So your liver produces energy, it does
it by burning. Fact, reallygreat way to do it. Well.
I created one that you can makeoutside of your body, and that's what
we use as an ingredient in ourcurrent offering, which is ready to drink
beverage that comes out. You canbuy it now on Amazon or through our

(32:59):
own whip. The secret ingredient thatwe have in our product, it's the
exact same molecular structure as the keytnesthat your liver produces. So we just
created it outside your body so thatnow you can consume it and that way
you get a lot of the samebenefits that you would have if you were
on a low carb diet. Sothis is not a replacement for a low
carb diet, don't take it thatway. What this is is just another

(33:22):
form of energy, and it's cleanand it's the most efficient energy that a
human can have. What kind offeedback are you getting from people on this.
We're having some incredible feedback from everyonefrom everybody that has this. People
of my age group that are veryactive, they play golf, they play
tennis, and they used to play, you know, one round of golf
when they go out, or golfone day and tennis the next day because

(33:45):
they just didn't have enough energy todo it every day. Well, now
that they're using our Techton beverage,they're able to play around the golf in
the morning and then play around totennis in the afternoon because they have that
extra energy and they don't have anyof the side effects, like their muscles
aren't burning because they don't have alactic acid build up, or there's several
other benefits that come from this,and people could go to our website techtonlife

(34:07):
dot com and just read about allthe other benefits that come from justin cook,
Do you have a question or comment. Would it be good to like
get like a third party kind oftest of that because antecdote is cool,
Like there's good stories for sure,but like what'd be good to like to
test it out? I think itwould help your sales significantly. We've done
those there's clinical tests done on similarproducts, but our particular one, we've

(34:29):
done clinical research thoroughly tested to seewhether or not this works to increase cognition
to blood the effects of glucose toraise and lower the hormones that affect hunger
and apptite, raise and lower inflammationmarkers. So there's lots of clinical testing
that we've done. Now again we'renot going to put those claims on our
label. We're not going to putthose until we get to a certain point.

(34:51):
You know, at some point wewill make this a dietary supplement.
We've already applied for our new dietaryingredient. We are certified through the FDA
generally recognized that safe process. We'vegone through all that regulatory process. We've
got all of our toxicology and allof the necessary regulatory testing for this substance,
and we've come out very very wellon what you will get better effects

(35:12):
with this particular product is if youare on a low carb diet like I
intermittent fast. I'll have my mealat six o'clock and evening, I won't
eat again until maybe noon or oneo'clock the next afternoon. For me,
it works perfect if I drink oneat ten o'clock in the morning, and
that helps me stretch my fast outa little longer and it keeps my appetite
down. So it works very wellfor me and I get a little better

(35:35):
benefit from it. I feel theeffects of it a little more viscerally than
somebody who got up and ate areally big breakfast and then drank one of
these. They may not feel thatreally clear focus that you feel when you
have this drink if you just hada full meal. But it has no
caffeine in it has no sugar,no carbohydrates, nothing that's unnatural, completely
healthy beverage, no carbs, nosugar, nothing out of the ordinary in

(35:59):
here. Good for you. It'shealthy, it's all natural. Even the
key tone that we have in oursis made through a natural process. It's
not a chemical process. It's madenaturally, So it comes from raw materials,
from sugarcane, sugar beets, that'swhere it starts from. And then
we make it through an enzyme process. So all natural. So you got
a natural product, natural ingredients,and you have no caffeine, no sugar.

(36:22):
So who is your biggest market segmentright now? Who's buying the most
of this? People that are myage. They're buying this so that they
feel healthier and they live longer.One of the other things that this doesn't
it helps with your memory. Ithelps you remember things just a little bit
better. It helps you focus,and that's the thing that people get.
One of the biggest complaints that Iget about this is, hey, I

(36:42):
don't feel like I do when Idrink a Red Bull or a monster.
Said, well, no, there'sno caffeine in this, so you're not
gonna get that jolt, but you'renot gonna crash as well. You don't
get a crash from this. Youjust get that nice, even glide from
this. So it makes you focus. It gives you that feeling of clarity.
And if anybody's ever done a lowcar diet, you know exactly what

(37:02):
I'm speaking of. The next productthat we're gonna put out is going to
be a little smaller can. Weserve a twelve ounce can. Now we're
gonna go to an eight ounce oreight point four ounce actually can, and
we're gonna put a little bit ofcaffeine in it because people want it.
I mean, people want caffeine.I drink coffee every morning, everybody.
I mean, I used to drinkcoffee all day, but I'm in my
late fifties now I can't drink coffeeall day or I won't sleep at night.

(37:25):
So we're gonna put a little bitof caffeine and we're gonna see how
our customer base reacts to that.I think they're going to react very well
to it. The name of yourproduct is Techton Techton like the tectonic plates
of the Earth. Techtonlife dot com. The Passage to Profit Show with Richard
and Elizabeth Gearhart our special guest JustinHook. I was gonna say, if
you have all this energy and youneed something to calm you down, Natalie

(37:47):
has just the thing. So we'regonna move on to Natalie Noel now with
Noel Family Distillery. It's Noeldistillery dotcom. She's a local distillery in Louisiana
Donaldson Louisiana and has just a fascinatingstory and like some really great products.
So Natalie tell us all about it. I started Noel Family Distillery with my

(38:07):
dad, and I also have mysister in the business. My aunt is
the one who slaps the labels onit, so we're really a family business.
But we are looking to grow ourbrand as far and wide as we
possibly can. I always joke,if you're going to start a spirit's business,
you want to do it in Louisiana. We know how to have a
good time, and we do havethat reputation, and I think we're all

(38:27):
about flavor and fun. And soyou'll notice with our lineup being a craft,
small distillery, you don't usually seesuch a wide range of products.
But I was aware that everyone hasa different palette and they like different things.
So we have rum, tequila,and vodka, and then we have
two styles of each of those spirits, and tequila is a super unique offering.
We are the only Louisiana distillery thatmakes authentic tequila, which means it's

(38:51):
made in Mexico. It's one hundredpercent of gave. And that only took
a couple of years too. Thatwas patient. I can't wait a couple
of years. Thank you, I'myour girl. This took us six years
from the idea until we were inthe market. Wow. So what inspired
you to get into the business.So I'm an entrepreneur. I have a
few other products companies. I startedmy own marketing digital marketing agency in twenty

(39:13):
twelve. So I'm a marketer atheart, and I appreciate really great products.
And my dad, he's a bootleggerand he had built his own still
in the backyard, and so hewas making rum. I mean, Louisiana,
we are surrounded by sugarcane and that'sthe raw material you need for rum.
So he built his own still andhe's This was about seven or eight
years ago, and we started totaste it and we were like, wait

(39:36):
a minute, this is really great. You know, should we do this?
So we started having conversations about it, and I was very adamant.
I would not do it unless wehad another Spirit group. I was like,
Dad, we're going to have adifferent product along with the rum.
We can't be a rum only business. So that was our strategic approach to
the product offering and the Spirit's business. You can't sell directly to the consumer
in most cases, so you haveto go through a distributor. So we

(40:00):
took some time and we ended upsigning this long term deal with Southern Glazier,
which is one of the largest distributorsin the country. And so we
utilize their sales team of eighty plusreps to run around Louisiana and, you
know, help tell our story.But then the things that are in our
control turns out people like to laugh, and so I do my best to

(40:20):
come up with these funny little conceptsthat help us to stand out on social
and people relate feeling happy when theywant our content, to feel happy when
they drink our spirits because at theproduct that tastes really delicious and it's something
that I would want personally, andso I think that's helped us. It's
a very challenging spot. I mean, we're competing against the Titos of the

(40:40):
world, or the cosum Egos andGreg Goose who have thirty million a year
to spend on marketing, and we'rejust a startup. So I think we
do the best that we can,and we have realistic expectations, try to
keep our costs down and just beas creative as possible, because I do
think we have that as the upperhand. I mean, those guys are
bigger, they can't move as quicklyto the trends in terms of creative or

(41:01):
platforms or those kinds of things untilwe try to take advantage of that,
and I think my marketing background helps. We've definitely we've definitely experienced a lot
of people changing their behaviors. Alot of the locals distillers have changed their
behaviors in terms of their marketing approachesin the last year. Your site's fun

(41:22):
like, it clearly has your personality. It has like your family's personality,
like a quirk to it. That'skind of cool. I'm actually okay.
If we just create a business thatis in Louisiana and we're the go to
for the local vodka or the localrealm, why the hell are we not
the go to for local tequila.I mean, we're the only one where
the by Louisiana get a local grown. This is where your people, the

(41:45):
investment goes back into the community.I mean, think about my merch vender.
He loves me, he's here inmanners. So like we just feed
the economy. Right. If youkept it kind of local to Louisiana,
it could be a destination experience.Yeah, that's true. You could have
your distillery, Like you could showthem your dad still in the backyard.
That's the first thing they see onthe tour is is still that he made

(42:06):
right. So maybe if you connectedand coordinated with some of these tour groups
in Louisiana. We do. Wedo the best that we can to interact
with our local tourism. We're gettingmore parties, We're getting more tours Our
distillery is in Donaldsonville, so that'sa little bit outside of Betrous so I
mean it's a smaller town. Butthey're actually filming a movie there, so
that's cool. That's happening right now, So I mean it's got some charm.

(42:28):
We also partnered with LSU with theofficial tequila of LSU Athletics, so
you know, we tried to associateour brand with a very established brand.
We do have some local influencers thatwe've partnered with. I'm kind of up
in air about influencers for driving sales. I think it does drive awareness to
the restaurants that we're in, andso I like to create content with them,

(42:49):
and I think that's important. Itake their approach when I go to
a restaurant that I'm here to helpmarket your business and to market our spirits
within your business. We created apodcast video cast ourselves called Crafted Connections,
and so I go behind the bar, I interviewed the bartender, let them
talk about their restaurant, the foodthere, the flavors, how do they
like to make cocktails. That's anotherapproach. Rising tide lifts all boats too,

(43:14):
right, So if you're promoting them, your top of mind when it
comes around like, oh I lovethat girls, she's great. I think
that's really smart for marketing, branddevelopment and brand loyalty and getting your ambassadors
out there right. I think alsolike it's community marketing. It is fun
to attach ourselves and add value tothe people that sell our products. So
you have pure liquors and then youhave mixes. So what's your most popular

(43:37):
right now? The pickle vodka isour number one cellar, and then our
Repasodo tequila. To try that picklevodka. That sounds pretty good. Yeah,
it's really fun. It's easy todrink. You can drink it straight
or drinking and blooey Mary or Martini. I was obsessed with pickles after having
a few kids, so I waslike loving Martini's. I didn't love olives.
I was like, what the hellis there no pickle Martini? And

(43:58):
then the idea for the tequila was, you know that knows a lot of
celebrities making tequilas, but I wasthinking why not try. So we've ended
up with a female owned distillery downin Mexico and they've been fantastic to work
with us to create a flavor profilethat I liked. I also call myself
the master of flavor, so ifwe like it, we'd go from there.
We take a risk. Natalie Noelwith Noel Family Distillery. It's Noeldistillery

(44:21):
dot com. We can shift throughoutthe country if your state allows us to
come in and it's shop dot Noeldistillerydot com. If anybody listening to this
is going to Louisiana, stop byand tour the site. We'll make you
feel like home. The Passage toProfit Show with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart our
special guest Justin Hook, and wewill be right back. Have you ever

(44:42):
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(45:30):
nine one seven eight five four six, eight hundred nine one seven eight five
four six. That's eight hundred nineone seven eighty five forty six. It's
Passage to Profit. Alicia Morrissey isour programming director at Passage to Profit,
and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of

(45:52):
the Passage profitshow dot com website andcheck out her album. Now it is
time for Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind, So justin what is a secret that
you can share with our listeners thathas helped you in your journey? Yeah,
I mean I mentioned it earlier.You know, you have a lot
of like head trash. I hada lot of head trash about entrepreneurship and

(46:13):
what's required to be successful. AndI think there's a lot of paths we
feel like we're forced to follow.So like, you know, like Mike
mentioned earlier, he's a veteran.I'm a veteran, right and you know,
when I got out of the Navy, I thought there was a path
I would just be kind of forcedto take. I need to go get
a job, I need to finishschool, and there's a path to take.
And that was just head trash.What I realized is you can actually
forge your own path right by beingan entrepreneur. You can go out there

(46:36):
and say, look, I'm goingto build the life I want to lead.
I'm going to put myself in aposition where I can take advantage of
things and direct myself rather than kindof like blowing like a feather in the
wind. Right, I can actuallyforge my own path. And that was
a secret that it took me tillmy thirties really to understand. I wish
I would have got out my twenties. And when I run into these young
entrepreneurs today that understand that, I'mlike, Wow, they are hungry.

(46:58):
They are going to crush it yearsfro now. They're going to be future
leaders. So yeah, I justI think understanding you can forge your own
path. You're not stuck following ascript or a path that's laid out for
you by society. You can makeit your own. That is huge and
I wish I had known that alot younger too. I mean, I
think it's easier with some of thetools today, like you have upwork and
you have fiver, so you cando gig economy jobs on there and grow

(47:20):
business from there. I mean,I know a lot of people use it
as an intro to their regular businessand it helps them get clients. But
yeah, that's huge. Mike Chesneyfrom tech ton tech tonlife dot com.
Mike, what is your secret thatyou can share? Well? I think
the biggest thing for young entrepreneurs ispick your partners wisely. Because you think
you know the people that you're goinginto business with, you never know until

(47:43):
you get down in the trenches withthe people that you're working with, especially
when you're bootstrapping a business. Younever really know the character of somebody until
you get down to where you're downto your last one hundred dollars in the
bank account and you're still trying tomake payroll. So pick your partners wisely
and make sure you know exactly whothey are before you get into a business
with them. And that would bemy advice to new entrepreneurs. I think

(48:05):
that is excellent advice. Natalie Noelwith Noel Family Distillery. It's Noeldistillery dot
com. So Natalie, what isyour secret? Well, my secret is
mindset and I've already started coaching mydaughter on this and my son, I'm
like, life is hard and youneed to be okay with that. And
I think when you're in business,like being a quarterback, you can't get
too high, you can't get toolow. And one of my biggest things

(48:29):
is celebrating the small wins. SoI'm running around the hall if we got
a great email, or if wesold one hundred and fifty products in one
couple of days. I just tryto have a positive mindset and make sure
I'm always focused on nine and Idon't get too low, don't get too
high. Yeah, that's really greatadvice because entrepreneurs can go really low.

(48:50):
My business partner can go pretty low, so it's good for her that I
stay pretty happy. You know,you just got to roll with the punches
because they are coming. It's goodto bounce each other too. I feel
that way. Sometimes my business partnerwill get kind of negative or whatever,
and then I'll get positive or he'llget positive, and you know, when
I'm negative, he'll kind of likeyou balance you out, So you have
to have that kind of understanding.And again it goes back to what Mike

(49:10):
said, be a good partner,someone's trustworthy, that has character, they're
gonna you know, they're not goinganywhere. Yeah, exactly. People may
have the best of intentions, butit doesn't always work out that way.
And then mine was I have abusiness coach and she was actually on the
show a while back, Sonya Setra, but she keeps telling me, you
know, you know a lot,and you can't assume that everybody that you're
talking to knows everything that you knowbecause you've been an entrepreneur and in the

(49:35):
entrepreneurial world for so long and thingsthat are just like second nature because you
had to do them, not becauseyou wanted to learn them or do them
necessarily, but you were forced to. Other people don't know. So don't
think, oh, they're being thisway and it's not cool. It's there
being that way because they don't knowwhat you know. That makes total sense
to me, and I take forgranted and I think like if I just
share that idea, that's just acommon idea and it's not unique. And

(49:58):
then I realized, like, whoaokay, And the other problem you ever
get the other guys who try totalk above. They try to use a
lot of jargon, and they tryand because they want to be smart,
they got so much ego in it. Yeah, and they're not speaking to
their customers right. Their customers arelike, can you just explain to me
what my problem is and how yousolve it? And they're like, look
at how smart are you? Amright, Yeah, that's not helpful.

(50:19):
So Richard actually has a couple ofpartners in the law firm, and it's
funny because they really compliment each other. Well, yeah, amazing. So
Richard does everything, he does everything, and then they each do kind of
like half of what he does.So it's good. Like my dad,
I mean, this is his firstentrepreneurial journey. When you talked about it,
justin some days you're a down.So like in our six year journey,

(50:40):
some days I would be like totallyin the tank, and then he
would be like, no, wejust got to get in the game.
Because I'm a former athlete. Iplayed college basketball, so any kind of
sports analogy he was thrown at me, and I was like, Okay,
you're right, let's just stay inthe game. And then some days he
would call me, and he waslike, what the hell do we do?
I just took all y'all it's funny, like this is terrible, I'm

(51:01):
so sorry. I was like,no, don't worry about it. And
then then we are mascot is aLouisiana tree frog. So we would see
a little tree frog, you know, just kind of stuck on a window,
and then we'd say, oh,yes, it's a sign. When
you were starting off and start up, any sign is a good sign.
Definitely. I definitely ignore every redflag. There is no no red flag,

(51:23):
because that is just an opportunity forme to punch through it. For
sure. I think the other thingsstarting off that you don't realize that we
did not realize when we were incorporate because they're both corporate refugees. You
have to learn marketing. You don'thave to be a specialist and expert,
but you have to learn marketing tosome level if you're going to be an
entrepreneur and own a company. I'malways amazed at my undergrad is marketing and

(51:46):
I have an NBA. But I'malways amazed at folks that will start a
business and they think marketing that's optional, right, Like, what are you
doing, don't do it? Stayemployed. Well, it's time for us
to sign and off. Passage toProfit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing
in thirty one markets across the UnitedStates. Thank you to the P two

(52:07):
P team, our producer Noah Fleischman, and our program coordinators Alisha Morrissey and
Risicatbasari. Look for our podcast tomorrowanywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast
is ranked in the top three percentglobally. You can also find us on
Facebook, Instagram, x and onour YouTube channel. And remember, while
the information on this program is believedto be correct, never take a legal

(52:30):
step without checking with your legal professionalfirst. Gearheart Law is here for your
patent, trademarking, 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.The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's
hosting of this podcast constitutes neither anendorsement of the products offered or the ideas expressed.