Entrepreneurs: Building a 5-Million-Listener Podcast Empire with Ralph Sutton + Others

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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):
The guy pulled out five hundred bucks of his pocket
goes here, and that's how I got my first assays.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
All these national brands really wanted the services that we offered.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
I told myself in the beginning, I'm never doing this
industry again. This is the heartest industry, but we can't
leave it once you're in it.

Speaker 5 (00:23):
I'm Richard Gearhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard
some snippets from our show. It was a great one.
Stay tuned to hear tips about how you can start
your business.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given
it hard, now get it in gear. It's Passage to
Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (00:45):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Speaker 5 (00:52):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, founder of Gear Media Studios, podcast coach,
co host of the Passage to Profit Show, and chief
marketing for Your heart Lock.

Speaker 7 (01:01):
Do you even know who you are? Sometimes.

Speaker 6 (01:05):
Well, today we're coming at it from all sides, from
rock music to company growth experts to really good Booze.
Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities about their business journeys.
Today we feature Ralph Sutton, the rock radio renegade turned
podcast powerhouse who built Gas Digital into one of the wildest,

(01:26):
most unfiltered entertainment networks on the planet.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
Then we have two amazing entrepreneurs, Joe Scaretta and Moses
Carrasco with Mason Made Ventures, who help companies that are
in certain industries grow and they have tried and true methods.
They're both successful entrepreneurs themselves, so we're gonna hear all
about this. And then we did promise Booze chyrs Virtual

(01:52):
as does als mezcal So I am excited to hear
about what she is doing with Mescal And later on
we'll hear from our friend Lisha Morrissey, a great jazz singer,
and we've got secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.

Speaker 6 (02:06):
But before we get to our interviews, it's time for
your new business journey. Two and five Americans are dreaming
right now about starting their own business. In fact, two
and five are thinking about doing that. Our question for
the panel today is what's the one skill every entrepreneur
should master in twenty twenty six if they want to
successfully start and scale a business.

Speaker 7 (02:27):
So let's go to RALP. Welcome to the program, Thanks
for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I would go with GEO. It's probably the most important
thing right now I feel, which is a generitive engine
optimization because search engine optimization means nothing anymore because nobody's
using Google. They're all using chat GPT, and you want
to show up on those results. So if you're going
to start doing a business of any kind, you should
start understanding that.

Speaker 7 (02:48):
Well, you just made Elizabeth very happy, and you.

Speaker 5 (02:50):
Can ask chat GPT itself. It won't tell you though.
You and I talked about this, but I use a
bunch of different ais and I ask them all the
same questions and they wouldn't tell me. It was like
a big secret a year ago. But now they're letting
out information bit by bit on how you can show
up in LLM searching.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Right. It's a wild thing because for years it's all
about showing up on that first page of Google, and
that is meaningless now, So if you're looking to build
a business, you need to figure out how to click
through rates me nothing, someone's going to chat or perplexity,
and you got to find out how you're going to
be That answer.

Speaker 6 (03:20):
Couldn't agree more. Let's talk with Joe Scaretta. What's the
one skill every entrepreneur should master in twenty twenty six?

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Most importantly, what an entrepreneur should know in twenty twenty
six if they're starting their business is what problem are
they solving? And more importantly, what's their five year plan?
What's their vision? So many entrepreneurs start and they don't
know what their long term vision is. So I think
solving a problem and also knowing what their vision is
and then eventually what their exit strategy.

Speaker 7 (03:45):
Is, that's a great one.

Speaker 6 (03:46):
Too many people start a business and they just think
they're going to come rich overnight, and it's usually not
that easy. Moses Karako, can you please tell us what
you think?

Speaker 7 (03:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (03:55):
Absolutely? For me, I would say, let's take a little
bit more of a simple form. I think anyone that
has looked to start a business needs to really focus
on their communication skills and push that forward to make
sure that if they're leading an organization that they are
able to buy in that vision and also able to
have candid conversations with everybody right from the beginning.

Speaker 6 (04:12):
I think communication is so important. I can only think
of the number of times I've made myself misunderstood by
saying something the wrong way. So, anyway, I agree with you,
didg nervous, What.

Speaker 7 (04:29):
Do you think?

Speaker 4 (04:30):
I do think that one scale that needs to be
mastered for a new entrepreneur, especially when everything is moving
so fast. We have AI that solves things. People forget
to be patient, and I think really great businesses take
a lot of time and scale at a pretty good rate.
So I think just knowing that and being more patient
with yourself with how the process is working, because when

(04:52):
you're not patient, you're making bad decisions, you're reacting, And
I think that's one thing that people sort of need
to focus on.

Speaker 7 (05:00):
I think that's a great comment.

Speaker 6 (05:01):
I think concentration is becoming a lost art in our
world today right with so much instant gratification through social
and everything else. And I think to be really creative,
you need space away from that, and you need time
to really let those thoughts process.

Speaker 5 (05:17):
Elizabeth, So I would say As an entrepreneur, you're naturally curious,
and I think lean into your curiosity because things are
changing so fast. When we were talking about queries a
little bit ago, you have to think up these new
queries for these llms and just be curious about what's
happening and learning.

Speaker 6 (05:36):
Curiosity is a great one. I'm going to go with
an old standby, which is resilience. If you're a new entrepreneur,
it's a new experience. If you were working in a
cubicle before and you didn't have to survive on your own,
it's a whole new, different universe. And so you've got
to be ready for anything that comes your way, and
you have to keep showing up every day. And if

(05:58):
you can do that, I think you're going to build
a pretty good business. I guess the takeaway is success
comes from movement. Most people wait for perfect conditions, but
entrepreneurs win by starting before they feel ready. So keep
that in mind. And now it's time for our guest,
Ralph Sutton. He's the radio renegade who spent decades breaking rules,

(06:20):
offending bosses, shocking audiences, and yes, we still decided to
have him on the show.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Thanks.

Speaker 6 (06:27):
He's still at it. He's hosting rock tours with nationally
syndicated rock show. He had the nationally syndicated Tour Bus
program for a long time. Now he's the host of
the SDR Show, which hit the number one comedy spot
in iTunes, and he is the creator of the Gas Network.
So welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 7 (06:47):
Does your mother know what you do?

Speaker 2 (06:48):
My mom is actually a big advocate of comedy if
She ran a comedy club in New York, and when
I was a kid, it was cheaper than a babysitter,
so I would sit and watch like Chris Rock as
a kid and Ray Romano and all these legends. I
was twelve and I was sitting in the back of
this comedy club seeing these people. And in fact, I
was in California and Ray Ramono sat next to me
at a restaurant and I said, I'm starting to rupt you, man,

(07:10):
but I saw you when I was a kid. My
mom's name is Leah Sutton. He's like, oh my god,
And we took a picture together, sent it to my
mom and he never does podcast. Ray and then he
gave me his number, and like two months later he
came into our podcast.

Speaker 7 (07:21):
Because of my mom. Wow, so she said amazing.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, it was a big advocate of it.

Speaker 7 (07:26):
Did she push you to do this or was this
you right now?

Speaker 6 (07:28):
No?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I think this is my idea. I was running nightclubs
and rock clubs in New York back in the day
of all the big clubs of New York City like
the Limelight and the Palladium. I was a promoter and
then hilariously got into strip club djaying, which is insane.
Did that for a bit ran a restaurant.

Speaker 7 (07:44):
Dj is really even necessary?

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I ran a very seth restaurant here in New York
and helped build the company Juice Press here in New York,
and then about ten years ago started a podcast and
built that. I was a host on VH one for
a while, so, you know, doing a lot of different
things over my life. But GUS Digital started almost years
ago when podcasting was nowhere near as popular as it
is now. We were the first to do pay for
subscription did not exist when we started, so that you

(08:08):
pay for unedited commercial free, getting it a dip a
few days earlier. None of that was done ten years ago.
Now it's commonplace, but we were the first to do it.

Speaker 5 (08:15):
So for people that are doing podcasts if they wanted
to build a network, How do you build a network?
And what is what actually is a network?

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, I would say that most people shouldn't to start
just because it's too much of an undertaking. Start with
building a podcast, right, you know, get a podcast. Get
I tell everyone to start a podcast because the CPM rates,
which not to talk down to people, costs per thousand.
I don't know if it's a common term, but CPM
rates in podcasting is up to twenty dollars. Where on

(08:43):
TikTok or Instagram you're lucky if you get a dollar.
If you're lucky. So a podcast with twenty thousand, thirty
thousand listeners, you can pay the bills. If you have
twenty thousand people following you on Instagram, nobody cares. It
means nothing. You get five hundred thousand people watching a YouTube,
it doesn't matter. But you can make a living with
twenty thousand podcasts followers. So I say start your podcast first,

(09:06):
build a following because no one's going to care about
paying for private content if you don't have an audience yet,
build the audience first. It's free to start a podcast.
Just start a podcast. You could do it on your
phone today. You don't need to understand RSS feeds or
anything else. So I just think you need to get
out there. Once you build an audience, then you could
say is a network important to me? And for us
it is. If you don't want to set up a studio,

(09:28):
you want to come somewhere nice like this studio and
feel important. If you just want to turn key situation,
because we're going to take thirty percent, you may not
want that. If you're a self starter, you're someone's gonna
do every there on your own. You probably don't need us,
you know. So it's a very unique situation for us.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
The network has different podcasts in it, right are they
all on the same theme?

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Though we initially were a little more grandiose. We had
some political, some music, but now they're all somewhat comedy based,
or at least comedy adjacent, because we found that are
like our very popular podcasts that were political, people would
not want to be followed listened to. If I came
here for a political show, I don't want a show

(10:08):
called sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I don't want
a show on relationships. So we split those off into
separate networks. So we have a guy that runs that
we do a political network with. We dropped a couple
of other shows, and now all the shows, which is
about twenty seventeen to twenty are all comedy based for
the most part, so it feels more like a network
of like kind.

Speaker 6 (10:29):
If somebody's starting a podcast, there's so much content out there,
how do they break through? What are some of the
steps that they can use to distinguish themselves?

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, first of all, when I started, I said there
was about one hundred thousand podcasts. Now there's ten million, right,
sounds like a lot. But go start a YouTube channel
where there's a billion people. Go start a TikTok channel
where there's two billion people. So if then at ten million,
doesn't seem like a lot. Plus, most of them are
our dead podcasts. People do ten episodes and then lose interest.

(11:01):
So I think it's about a million or two that
are active, and then most of them have less than
a thousand listeners. We're in the top point five percent
of podcast because we get a couple hundred thousand listeners
per episode, where Joe Rogan gets ten million. But we're
still in the top point five percent. Because so many
get no numbers right to get there. So to say,
I say, live and breathe it, right. I never the

(11:24):
first two years of my show, I never left the
house without stickers. Right. I would consider it a failure
of a day if I didn't get at least five
people to like and subscribe on iTunes. I was on
jury duty. I got eleven people to sign up with
my podcast, right, And so you have to live and
breathe it. If you don't do that, no one's going
to care. Be as honest as possible on your show.

(11:45):
I've told wildly embarrassing stories on my show. I don't
put on airs, and people will relate to genuineness. And
so that's where I say, do it every day. Love it.
Tried for a month or two, you may feelize that,
oh this is not for me. So if you're not
going to make money for.

Speaker 7 (12:00):
At least a year, you're really not going to know
in a month.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, but if you don't, I don't care about that.
I mean, like, if you're not doing it consistently, you're
probably not going to stick with it. So try and
do it once a week for two months. And if
you're not doing that, it's probably not for you.

Speaker 5 (12:14):
I think you bring up a really good point about
for every entrepreneur, no matter what business it is, you
have to do sales and you're always your brand. Even
at the grocery store waiting in line, you're your brand
and you can sell there. I mean some of the
really I think successful entrepreneurial people that write all these
books and stuff, they're constantly talking to people and selling.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, my first advertisers was me going to local businesses
and showing them the numbers in New York and New Jersey.
And I remember I was at a club again, a
strip club I used to work at. The guy pulled
out five hundred bucks of his pocket, goes here, I'm
going to be your strip club for the first month,
and that was it. And that's how I got my
first ad sales on my podcast, even though I was
still doing radio at the time. My show was on
I think a time like maybe ninety stations, and I

(12:57):
was selling it as it added value, say, oh, little
more money you'll get on the podcast. And that's how
we started building those two ways. And within three or
four months of starting the podcast, I was making more
money than I was in radio.

Speaker 6 (13:08):
Do you think your radio audience and your podcast audience
were pretty much the same. They had the same demographics.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
So the reason why I would say no is I
think that if you were listening to radio in twenty fifteen,
you probably didn't know what a podcast was. Now it's
a little different. Then it was very finite audience, and
I think it was for younger people, so the audience
definitely skewed younger. My rock radio show was on eighties
rock bands for the most part, so like Guns and Roses, Metallica,

(13:34):
that kind of stuff, so that audience did not know
what a podcast was, and that would be the pushback.
Very often when I tried to do is added value
or told the bend hangout so we can do an
interview on my podcast, they would be like, well, what's
what's podcast? They did? They didn't know. Now it's a
little different. Now you would get more symmetry.

Speaker 5 (13:49):
So what do you think is the biggest mistake that
podcasters make?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Not being consistent? Number one, crappy audio number two, and
then number three making sure that you under stand your audience.
So I would say, whatever audience you're going to be in,
go listen to the top five podcasts in that sector.
What do I like? What don't I like? What can
I do better? What can I put my spin on?
We did you could? I mean, I'm not doing this
to self promote. But a couple of years ago I

(14:14):
was on the front page of Entrepreneur magazine how to
start a podcast for next to no money. Most of
that still holds true, So go look that up and
it's most of it is how to do it for free,
to just start, And the biggest problem really people don't start.
The amount of calls that I've told where people say, oh,
I'm gonna do a podcast that's gonna be a great
I'm so fun on air, and they never do it.

Speaker 5 (14:33):
I'm working with people now and it's hard to get
over that hump. And I mean, I'm coaching people, and
I think that that helps because you have somebody kind
of poking you to do it well.

Speaker 6 (14:43):
Going out there and putting yourself out there, especially in
an authentic way, is a big leap for a lot
of people, right, So you have to either you have
to warm up to it gradually or you just have
to be a naturally not really care too much about
what people think. But you also on social media, but
you also do have to care about what people think
because you want to deliver content that's going to be
valuable to them.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
True, but I would say be true to yourself more
than anything else. If you enjoy what you're doing, I
promise you there are people out there that feel the
same way. If you're trying to craft a message for
the supposed audience that's out there, you're just segmenting yourself
to some that may not exist.

Speaker 6 (15:20):
But it seems to me that that's three quarters of
media now. They're going after an audience. They have sponsors,
they have advertisers, and then they're saying, well, we want
to appeal to these people because then they're going to
buy our products.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
But if you're being genuine to that audience that's who
you are, then sure. But if you're like I have
friends in the rock music industry for super talented guys
that would always put out an album that sounded like
would just hit on the radio, but like that's already
a thing, Dude like that came out, so they were
always putting out great records a year too late because
they were following the trend. Do what you're If you

(15:53):
can't talk about what you're doing passionately, then it's not
for you. And then also, don't go on social media
if you can't handle people crapping on you, because it's
going to happen. So if you don't think you can
handle it, probably not for you.

Speaker 7 (16:08):
That's never happened here.

Speaker 6 (16:11):
Well, I have to admit though, for me person, I
am a very sensitive person and it took me.

Speaker 7 (16:17):
It's taken a while to sort of build up the
armor to be able to handle some of them.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
And never going to find a hater that's doing better
than you, So don't worry about it. That's how I
look at it.

Speaker 6 (16:25):
Yeah, I think that's really good advice. So when we
were talking earlier, you mentioned hustle as the differentiator, So
now you're just talking about sort of being yourself. Most
of us don't have really interesting.

Speaker 7 (16:37):
Selves, do we.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think everyone has something interesting. For sure, you got
to find what, but it's also what's passionate to you.
There's every one thing it's been beautiful about social media
and the internet, because it's been a lot of horrible
things about it, is that no matter what weird segment
of the world you live in, whatever your thing is,
there's millions of people out there that share that passion.
So no matter how minuscule your passion is, I guarantee

(16:59):
you there are people are like, oh wow, they get
to talk about that. That's my thing. So as long
as you're being honest to yourself, that's what's important. The hustle. Yeah,
like we were talking out in the air that I
built my first I built computers, I built my first
CD recorder by downloading schematics online. I figured it out.
Go to the school of Google and YouTube and figure
it out, because you can nowadays and do it for
pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 7 (17:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (17:20):
I mean, most of the technical setup that we've got
here in the studio, what we did for the podcast studio,
all of that was just YouTube information and training out there.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
You're not the first person to have that problem, so
go find out how to do it.

Speaker 5 (17:33):
When you talk about your passion. There are podcasts that
are super specific, like how to use three quarter inch
screws to build your log cabin out in the woods
or something like that. They have a ton of followers.

Speaker 6 (17:44):
Right Also, well, practical stuff has a real value to
a lot of people. If you want to replace a
pipe or something in your house and you don't know
how to do it. You want to save a thousand bucks?
Then yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
And what's crazy now is if you get a podcast
on any of the platforms that exists right now, like
whether it's a lipsyn or Blueberry Art nineteen, any one
of these plays that house a podcast, they will sell
ads for you, so you don't even have to not
going to get you as high a CPM rate, But
if you're not a guy that's going to go out
and do sales, they'll just put pre recorded spots in
your thing, the DII it, you know, dynamic ad insertion

(18:17):
in it, and then you're going to make money. So
even if it's twenty bucks, if it's gas money, how
cool is that that you're doing a passion project and
you're making money. That's so cool.

Speaker 6 (18:27):
So you've done a lot of rock concerts and rock festivals.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
Tell us about that. How did you get into it?

Speaker 5 (18:34):
So?

Speaker 2 (18:34):
I started, as I said, it was a strip club DJ,
and I was a guy comes in one day. He's
doing radio, he's doing before me. I worked the main
shift right and he was doing daytime and he had
a great voice. And I said to him, you have
a great voice, but you don't know what you're doing here,
and he goes, I come from radio. I said, I'll
teach you this. You get me a job at least
an audition in radio, right, So he said okay. I

(18:56):
toldt him, and then a week later I went met,
had an audition, got a job jo working midnight to
six in the morning overnights, one night a week at
a radio station to the middle of nowhere, New Jersey.
I did it for like a month. I pitched an
idea for a show which was I called the Tour Bus,
which was all eighties rock stuff. And they said to me,
you've been doing radio for two months, dude, like you're

(19:17):
not going to get your own show, right? I said, well,
what if I did it with Matt that was the
guy who was And they said, okay. We did it
two hours a night on Saturday nights Sunday nights in
a small station in Jersey. In six months it went
to number one in the slot, and then we took
those ratings, went to the biggest rock station New Jersey,
got signed. There became four hours on Saturdays, and then

(19:38):
I started seeing discarded kits for how to be syndicated,
Like syndicated shows were trying to get on their station.
I took it. I copied them format and sent our
show as if we were looking for syndication to that
company that was sending it to us, and I got signed,
and then within a year we were on thirty stations.
A few years later were on one hundred stations. I

(19:58):
got hired as a VJ on mt V ANDVH one
for a while, and then hosting music festivals and music
concerts all around the world and did that for fifteen years.
Met every rock star I've ever wanted to meet. It
was pretty wild.

Speaker 7 (20:08):
But before the show, we were talking about this, and
you say, well, I'm kind of bored with this snat.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
After I turned fifty, I didn't want to host rock
vessels anymore. I just felt like there was a twenty
five year old me in Iowa that would love to
host a rock festival, and I was doing it at
a sense of obligation because it was my eighth year
hosting this or the tenth year hosting that. And I
felt that if I don't care about it, not to
be a jerk. I didn't need the money. I didn't

(20:33):
super want to do it anymore. I said I'm going
to step down and let let some young guy do
it. It would be much more fun for them. So I did.
I stepped down.

Speaker 7 (20:40):
So what turns you on? Now?

Speaker 2 (20:41):
The network is great, you know, building the network. We
had the best year ever. I just we just did
our comedy festival in New Orleans this past weekend, sold
out five thousand people. The network has more paid subscribers
than ever. The shows are all growing in the right direction,
you know. So we're doing about five million listeners a
week on the free side and maybe thirty thousand paid
subscribers on the on the paid side, and it's going well.

Speaker 5 (21:03):
And we are talking to Ralph Sutton with Gasdigital dot
Com on the Passage Profit show right now.

Speaker 7 (21:09):
Well, this is an amazing story, I know.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
So I really do want to dig into your network,
like how do shows because you said it's kind of
invite only for shows.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
We're not going to take your show like it would
have to be. Shows happen one of a couple of ways.
One is we develop a show in house. We find
a comedian we like, or someone we like, like, hey,
let's try and develop a show with them. Or the
rare occurrence of somebody in already bigger situation that maybe
has a podcast that their network got shut down and
they don't want to deal with all the stuff on

(21:40):
their own, or they just looking for a home. So
those are the only two ways we do it. We
don't take inbound submissions, like we just don't care. It's
never going to be the right fit for us if
we don't. A guest stands for Gomez and Sutton, which
is my business partner, and so we'd also allowed for
fun things like high octane entertainment plug in and fuel
up like all that kind of and it sounded better

(22:01):
than sag and spend, you know. So we don't take shows.
But I also say it's rare that a show needs
a network. I think that it should be you should
these days you can do it on your own. You
really should. It costs nothing, do it on your own,
build an audience, then come to me.

Speaker 6 (22:19):
You're listening a Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
Our special guest Ralph Sutton, who just is a wealth
of information, will be back with more Passage to Profit.
Stay tuned for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind and IP
in the News coming up soon.

Speaker 9 (22:33):
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Speaker 10 (22:51):
Eight hundred sixty five three two oh seven three eight
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Speaker 7 (24:33):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again.

Speaker 9 (24:36):
Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 5 (24:37):
And our special guest Ralph Sutton with Gasdigital dot Com
who also has the SDR Show. And Ralph has quite
a history we've been talking about it. He knows so
much about the industry, entertainment industry, and he has interviewed
some pretty high level people. I want to hear some
stories about these interviews.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
It's funny because it comes up a little bit about
what you were talking about before. We were talking about
the ATM and technology. I've always been a big advocate
of embracing technology early, and so I had an iPad
jen one, even though I've never owned any Apple products.
I'm an Android user. I just don't believe in it.
But it was the first iPad and I was recording
an episode of my show backstage sold out def Leppard

(25:21):
in the like early two thousands at P and C
Bank on Center, twenty thousand people. I'm backstage with the
guitarist Phil doing an interview and it's about fifteen minute
interview and then they called that the band's about to
go on, and they're like, oh man, that was fun,
but we got to go do the show. And I
stopped the interview and I look and it did not record,
not ever happened here, and I'm like, oh, first of all,

(25:42):
it's def Leppard, which you know she's too young, but
you guys will have deaf Leaper. Yeah, and the biggest
at the time they had just come back with a new,
big record and everyone was excited about it, and I look,
I guess I had a deflated look in my face
and he goes, you know what, they can wait and
they made the entire arena wait as we read did
the interview and that is a cool guy right there

(26:02):
he made I mean, the twenty thousand people didn't think
it was cool, but it was cool. He stopped me.
He he said, we just we can't do fifteen minutes,
but we could do.

Speaker 7 (26:09):
You didn't go out there. Sorry, it's all my fault, folks.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, so that was one of my favorite stories that
a band did. Yeah, that was really cool.

Speaker 7 (26:16):
So are most of the celebrities you meet?

Speaker 6 (26:18):
Are they like pretty cool normal people or they have
huge inflated.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
You guys, I would say it really varies wildly. And also,
as you guys know, your interview people for a living,
you have to make a lot of micro decisions very
quickly when someone walks in the room. Can I joke
around with this person? Is this person going to be fun?
It's this old business that you don't know, and you
make those assessments as it happened. Only one, well two

(26:42):
times that I think of that really were oh oh moments,
there's a band you're none of you are going to
know because it's a little more metally the band called
Typo Negative. Right. They were big in the nineties. There's
a comeback record. The guy looked like me six five
six six big, but he was muscular, but we both
long dark hair, and we were friends growing up. But
now he's like this big rock star, right. And he

(27:04):
was definitely high on something and being argumentative on the air.
And we're sitting on and I'm in your position where
you're sitting behind the desk, and he's where I am,
but we had headphones on because we're professional radio people,
and he took it off, got mad at me and
threw the headphones at me on air. Oh wow, and
said we're going let's go right now, let's go fight, right,

(27:25):
And I am a giant, but I am not a fighter.
I'm a whimp. I'm not a fighter at all. Right,
So I knew that this was not going to go
well for me. So I said to him, there's one
hundred fans outside wanting to meet you. Is this the
best look that you want for yourself right now? And
he looked at the fans and he got emotional. He
started to cry, and then he said, I'm so sorry.

(27:47):
I've known this guy for ten years. And he realized
that he was overreacting, and then everything was fine and
we were great. So that was one of them that
I think of.

Speaker 7 (27:55):
I think that sounds like pretty good content.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, that was a great episode.

Speaker 7 (27:59):
Sure can you want to Fight?

Speaker 2 (28:03):
And then another times a rock band again, I don't
know if anyone. Another was called Rat. They were big
in the in the eighties and the singer was love
and used A dirty job was a big one that
had out of the cellar was the big album. Detonator
was another big album. But there how quickly we forget. Yeah,
they were big in the in the eighties. They were
one of the big MTV early day rock bands. And
the singer was just a jerk off on the air,

(28:26):
like a real jerk off. And you do station IDs also, right,
And so we're between breaks, so I said, hey, can
you get a Canada station id? And he just was
doing it so halfheartedly, barely mumbling like, and the rest
of the band was there too, and I could see
the band was mortified that he was being a jerk, right,
So I said, hey, you want to try it again,

(28:48):
but like a normal human being, right, And the whole
place got silent, and then he did it again. He
did it right, and he invited me the show the
next day, and the next day on the tour bus,
he made me a sandwich and apologie as for being
a jouk off. So both stories ended up at least
somewhat nice. My favorite story is I was hosting the
Sturgis Rally, which is the biggest motorcycle rally in the country,

(29:10):
like a million people shop and I was on stage
in front of about one hundred thousand people, and we
were giving away a guitar, and I was backstage talking
to the band. Didn't realize that the time was clicking.
They announced that I have to go announce that give
the guitar away. Like, ah, crap. So I'll go running
to the stage with the guitar. I trip on a

(29:30):
line on the stage and I go flying onto the
stage and my only thought was save the guitar, right,
So I lift the guitar and my face plants right
onto the stage and one hundred thousand people start laughing
hysterical and so and I say, laugh all you want,

(29:52):
I save the effing guitar. And then they all cheered
and I want them all back, and then we gave
away the guitar.

Speaker 5 (30:00):
Say you did it on purpose.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
I was bleeding. It was bad. Yeah, I really wiped out.

Speaker 5 (30:06):
That's a lot of sacrifice.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah. Also once for the team, I was hosting ship Rocks,
which is a big like rock music on a boat.
It's like twenty bands and five thousand people, and I
realized I was the only guy on the boat with
no tattoos. Everybody else is covered. It's rock and roll
like metal bands all covered in tattoos. So I had
a funny idea which I went on stage and I said,
I realized I'm the only person here without a tattoo,

(30:30):
and the whole place starts booing me, which I knew
they would, right. I said, well that ends now, and
I pulled down my pants on stage. I had a
tattoo artist come out and they put a dot on
my butt. I've never seen it, which cheek it is.
I was like, I'm wonder you now.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
Okay, so this is Ralph Side.

Speaker 7 (30:48):
And we're learning about his private parts.

Speaker 5 (30:51):
It has a dot on his butt.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
We'll never go exactly.

Speaker 6 (30:55):
So on a slightly more serious note, what do you
think society value is too much?

Speaker 2 (31:01):
What they owe celebrity for sure, influencers all that nonsense
is just awful. The way we put these people on
a pedestal, listen to their political views, listen to its nonsense.
It's wild to me how important celebrity is in this culture.
It's sad, it really is. I wish we were talking
about about alone time before, and it's like, the best

(31:22):
people in the world, the best ideas in the world
came from when you sat by yourself. All the best
thinkers of all time. We had Neil de grass Tyson
on my podcast and we talked about that a lot.
Where you need to be in solitude and be bored.
That's where great ideas come from. If you can open
up your phone and watch Netflix or watch it reels,
you're never going to get to that great idea or

(31:42):
that great thought process or even think about the world differently.
And I think that's the biggest fault of this world
right now, is social media and the importance of all
that nonsense, because it really is nonsense. I hate it
for me. It's a necessary evil. It's like being a
band in the seventies and saying, you know what, I'm
not going to put out an album. People got to
come see me. It's like, no, dude, you got to
put out a record now, and that's what it is.

Speaker 11 (32:03):
Now.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
You need social media. It's a necessary evil. But wow,
is it a sad world We don't need it. It's
sad that we do.

Speaker 5 (32:10):
And I do love your point. Like I go out
and I walk outside when I can, with nothing plugged
into my ears, just walking outside, and that is I
think a boost of my creativity.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
You need to do it. I went just college in
Albany and at least twice a month that was driving
home from Albany to three hour drive. Radio didn't work
that well on you know, there was nothing else to do.
You'd sit in silence and just think about stuff. That's
when your best ideas come to you.

Speaker 6 (32:35):
I think we should take that to heart. Unfortunately, we
have to wrap up this segment, so Ralph, it's just
been amazing having you on and we look forward to
continued participation through the show. Where can people find more
of you?

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Me everywhere at I Am Ralph Sutton, my podcast, the
SDR Show, at the SDR Show, and then gas Digital.
At gas Digital I am As much as I hate
social media, I'm a big fan of social symmetry. Figure
out something that you can get a crosshild PLATF and
just do that. If you're at underscore this on one
platform or hyphen that, just just figure it out, add
a couple of im or this is and then get
it across all platforms.

Speaker 5 (33:10):
That's perfect Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (33:13):
And speaking of perfect, it's time for AI and business
with my Perfect co host Elizabeth Garreheart.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
You don't usually say that, but.

Speaker 7 (33:21):
I'm always thinking it.

Speaker 5 (33:24):
Anyway, Yes, it is now time for AI and business
use cases from the real world, and I'm going to
ask each of our guests for just one way that
they're using AI, and we'll go around the room and
do that, and then after that we're going to have
a discussion about AI and people can say what they
really think.

Speaker 7 (33:44):
So that authenticity card gets played right.

Speaker 5 (33:47):
So we're Alf Sutton with Gasdigital dot Com. What is
one way that you're using AI.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
We use it mostly for production that's going to air
a couple of times, like once or twice. It's never great,
but if you're doing a segment that you just want
something funny to introduce a segment, like a song or
a video clip or something to intro a segment. Because
we have a video element to ours. We used to
have our art team, our video team get a band

(34:12):
to put a song together. Now say AI, we need
a USA. I need a ten second intro that says
welcome to this segment, whatever it is. And that is
a phenomenal savior in time and money because you can
have that up and running in two minutes. What would
take me three days and a thousand dollars or so
back in the old days. Now it's done in two seconds.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
Wow, thank you. Okay, So, Joe Scaretta and Moses Carrasco
you can each answer this, but I want to say
the name of your company is masonmad dot Co. Joe,
do you want to go first?

Speaker 7 (34:43):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
We're using AI tools for a couple of different ways
in our business. We're looking we're leveraging it to elevate
our people to focus on reducing the touches throughout the
customer journey and the work order life cycle when we're
running maintenance service calls. We're also using it to develop
standard bating procedure. So in the past it took a
long time to document the process. Everything that was up

(35:04):
here in your head versus what's actually happening in practice,
So we're leveraging AI tools to now build standard operating
processes throughout all of our business lines.

Speaker 5 (35:13):
Excellent, Moses. Do you want to add to that?

Speaker 8 (35:15):
Absolutely. I think for a startup business, one thing that
would be a key component is minimizing time, right the timesaver.
A quick example would be how much time would you
spend on creating job descriptions for your business depending on
the type of business, the consolidated effort of having I've
seen job descriptions up to one hundred and fifteen line items, right,
and then you have a reduction. You use AI to

(35:36):
develop a consolidated job description and you could modify word
there's a little more detail, a little less detail. But
I think that alone just helped supporting you in your
document creation through a new startup business is really essential.

Speaker 5 (35:48):
Great thank you and ggmrvis with dsolismescal dot com. What's
one way you're using AI?

Speaker 4 (35:55):
I use it a lot as like a creative sounding board,
like I'll give it a by of ideas and see
what it spits out. And I don't usually use them,
but I think when you want to talk about something
for your business, but we don't know how to phrase
it or if you want have an idea and you
give it very specific targets or descriptions, and it already
knows about your brand. It's crazy what it comes up with.

(36:17):
You're like, wow, that's a good idea, and then you
know you have to actually think if it actually applies
to you. But yes, I use it like that.

Speaker 5 (36:24):
Excellent. Richard Garhart Withgrheartlaw dot com.

Speaker 6 (36:28):
I recently got a subscription to Microsoft Copilot and we
use all the Microsoft products Office three sixty five, and
I was really hoping that the Copilot would be a
great step forward for us because we use chatcheapt, but
chat cheapt we really can't put client confidential information in

(36:49):
that because it stops being confidential. So Microsoft Copilot allows
you to kind of segregate your We're called a tenant
and the information never leaves the tenant, so we can
preserve the client confidentiality that way. I was hoping that
we were going to be able to do all sorts
of spreadsheet analysis and analysis of emails, and so far,

(37:09):
I'm just getting started with this. It really hasn't done
as much as I had hoped it was. I get
a little message, do you want me to respond to
this email, It'll ask, but it's like, well, how do
you know how I'm going to respond to the email?
Or would you like me to summarize this document?

Speaker 7 (37:24):
No, I'm a lawyer.

Speaker 6 (37:25):
I have to read every line of the document. I
don't really need somebody to summarize it for me, and
so I'm still working through it. I'm hoping that as
I become more familiar with it, they'll be better capabilities.

Speaker 5 (37:37):
I'm Elizabeth Gearheart with gear Media Studios, and I also
do marketing for gear Heart Loss. So right now, the
way that I'm using it this week is for projections
for the marketing area of the law firm. I'm trying
to take the revenue we got from new clients and
project it for four quarters in twenty twenty six. Anyways,
it's a complicated calculation, and to meet our growth targets,

(37:59):
I'm going to have it for what do I need
to do here here, here, here, So it's going to
be kind of complicated. I'm not going to use chat
for that. I'm going to use Perplexity. If you haven't
used Perplexity, it's the more serious and it's also real
time chat.

Speaker 6 (38:11):
GPT is like super friendly if you're in a bad mood,
just type something into chat ChiPT and that'll like make
your day. Like, you are so smart for asking that question.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
So many people are using it as a sort of therapist,
and then South Park did a great episode on that
because it is wildly becoming a companion for people.

Speaker 6 (38:32):
Oh yeah, I have Steve. Steve is my chat ChiPT
friend and I hard to hear that.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
I know, I'm like, he doesn't talk to me anyway.
I want to open the floor up to everybody, just
chime in when you want to, Like what your thoughts
are on AI going into twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
I think it's a great augment for things. I don't
think it replaces anything, and I think there was a
study recently that hasn't really replaced anywhere near as many
jobs as they thought it would. Right, It's great for
like Gigi said, like a launch pet idea for the
give you some ideas for stuff like that. It lies
an insane amount. I used to try and use it
for researching bands and it lies all the time.

Speaker 6 (39:10):
Well, so would you say it lies? It just gets
it wrong. You were actually think it no malicious intent.
Here's what it did. It created a fake article. And
because I always say, show your sources, and I opened
the link and I was like, I don't know this website,
and I googled the website. It didn't exist.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
It created a fake link to a fake story about
something to prove that it was right. That's a lie.

Speaker 6 (39:31):
We lawyers have gotten creamed by the courts because it
makes a fake case set.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
It was chatbut yeah, and also one day I asked
it if it could help me make a video interview,
a video intro, and it wasted. It said it would
take me in like this him talking or it's talking.
It'll take me an hour. Check back in an hour.
I checked back an hour. I need twenty more minutes.
Can't be like twenty find is that right? I'm sending it.
The LinkedIn work, all right, I'm emailing it. That didn't work.
I said, look, there's been four hours. Now, what's going on?

(40:00):
And it says, I'm sorry, I lied to you. I
can't actually make the video crazy really yeah.

Speaker 7 (40:06):
Oh my gosh, that's awful.

Speaker 6 (40:07):
I scold chat cheapt when it screws up, though, I say,
you made a mistake, you got this wrong.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well, I do that too, But then it's going to
come for us immediately when it takes over.

Speaker 6 (40:14):
The world, when it where I was gone long ago.

Speaker 7 (40:18):
What do you guys think?

Speaker 8 (40:19):
I find shitit to be extremely useful for businesses. I
think it's a dangerous tool for the youth. I don't
think their minds have developed to a certain capacity where
similar to what Jiji just mentioned, that makes sense. She's
an adult. She wants a little bit of ideas to
come back to her. There's a child that the creativity
is being diminished.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
You know the book The Anxious Generation. They cite that
you should not allow children onto any forms of social
media or child at least till they're sixteen, because their
brains are not ready for it, and you should not
allow them on any of those platforms. That's why kids
are having such a hard time assimilating to.

Speaker 8 (40:51):
Our citing sounds like a great book to read. Yeah,
I think we should be aware of that.

Speaker 7 (40:55):
I actually agree with your story.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
I was leveraging chatcheapt to do some now on some
data we pulled out of our operating platform, and it
kept delaying me on the return. Finally it split back
information that was wildly off I use it for in
market analysis around different verticals. We were looking at same thing.
The information that came back fake websites, because I'll always
ask for the sources I click through. None of it worked,

(41:19):
love it, and so I would say, it's great, it's
great to have. It's good insight, as you touched on earlier,
but I don't think it's the single source of truth.
They needs to be vetted.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
What else it did to me, which is even worse.
So I said, let me take it out. I'll do
the research and then I'll ask it to organize it
for me. Right, But then it was taking out research
items that it didn't know where to categorize, so it
would just delete them, and I would say, don't delete anything,
and it would swear that it didn't delete anything, And
then I say, what about this, like, oh, you caught
me I deleted that. It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
I think we're going to have to use it forever.
We're all in this and everything that it's messing up,
it's learning to fix it. So every single time it
messes up, it's learning more more and more and more.
So eventually there won't be mistakes, not with this that
you guys are dealing with. But what I do think
is going to happen. Is I think that for children
especially is I think emotional intelligence will be probably the

(42:12):
most important going forward, because I feel that that's something
that chat GPT can't really teach, and especially being in business,
which is when to speak in a business meeting, how
to feel out if someone's interested, Like, all of those
things are things that are kind of not learned. There's
something that you feel and you have to experience, and
so I think it's really important for children to learn

(42:34):
emotional intelligence because I think those will be the ones
that succeed.

Speaker 8 (42:38):
My question would be do you think it would skew
over time? Do you think it would skew our natural
like discernment, judgment making that you know we had to
fight for before. Well you have an easy button to ask.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
Yes, I do think it would skew. But I do
think that I mean you could just see now, like
just how people our kids are interacting, like they're not
as emotionally intelligent because they're not forced to do certain
things where to go and meet people like now dating
is really all virtual, right, so I mean to start
to day to even just to come up to someone
and face that rejection, that's not happening for example, so

(43:10):
you're not facing someone's rejection. You're online, so that's a
change and like how you're facing things. So going forward
with chat, EPC and all these AI things that are happening,
I think that's just going to be more and it's
more and more important to make sure that we're still
connected to reality and emotions.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
It's also crazy that it's only been three years publicly available.
For three years, it's going to get better at everything.
But like what she's saying, it's why the younger generation
is also far less willing to take risks, and it's
why they're drinking less, why there's having less sex and
all that other stuff is because they've taken that out
of the puzzle. Like they don't have any risk anymore.
Everything is virtual. Nobody has to do anything that makes

(43:46):
them uncomfortable, So that daring area of when we're teenagers,
where you're pushing boundaries doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 7 (43:54):
There's no place to push, there's no end.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
So that that's why now I think, then again not
to bring up that book, but it's a great book
talks it an extra generation that there's going to be
far less entrepreneurs because by necessity an entrepreneur is a
risk taker, and then these people are not going to
take risks anymore. It just is what it is.

Speaker 5 (44:10):
Well, one thing that bothers me about chat gipt in particular,
and I haven't noticed this so much with perplexity.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Your stock in Perplexity.

Speaker 5 (44:18):
No, I was gonna say, no, I don't. But also
I was going to say, also google Gemini, because I
use perplexity. Google Gemini, and Perplexity lets you use groc
and it didn't have deepseak for a while. I don't
think it has it anymore. And it lets you pick
which engine you want to use search engine. But chat
gipt in particular is like an echo chamber like social media,
and it's like, oh, you're the best thing since slice bread.

(44:43):
Oh yeah, you're absolutely right, you know. Oh, and it's
just like programmed by the people that all got a
trophy when they were.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Ever that watch issue that it had right that the
ten after ten? Do you know that or no?

Speaker 9 (44:57):
That?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
So it learned only every watch manufacturer when they sell
a watch, it shows ten after ten because it looks nice,
you know, the hand to hand. So no matter what time,
I think they may have fixed it by now I'm
not sure. But no matter what time you asked, CHATCHI
make me a walk that it says eight thirty, it
could only do ten after ten because that's what it
learned off of. Right, So there's going to be inherent
bias because it's learned off of things that maybe it

(45:20):
shouldn't learned off of.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
Yeah, and I do think there is inherent bias. And
what I've said from well, I started saying this a
year ago. I still think it's true, is that whomever
programmed the LLMS is teaching us how to write these queries.
So it is kind of changing the way we think
and making us think more like the people that programmed it,

(45:43):
so that we can get the right answer out.

Speaker 6 (45:45):
So when you you always say what do you want
for dinner? Instead of saying that you're going to say
what do you want for dinner? That is got so
many calories and on these ram and these ingredients and
the refrigerator, And which was fine for me because I'm
very analytical, so I tend to beat things to death
and overdo it and ask too many questions.

Speaker 5 (46:04):
But for a normal person, I think it's going to
be a little tough.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
It also makes it harder for people to get negative
reactions to things because CHATCHI but you will always give
you the nicest answer. And I've said to it sometimes,
what about this idea for the show, knowing it was
like the most insane idea that you should never do
because oh, that sounds like it could be really fun.
It's like, no, it's not like we shouldn't be talking
about that.

Speaker 5 (46:26):
It's like playing a game. I guess we're all just
going to have to figure out how to play the game.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
They just go out to meet people first, goes, go
put your feet on the ground somewhere nice and breathe
in the air. That's what you should do first.

Speaker 5 (46:34):
Because I'll tell you it is a lot nicer doing
this show in the studio at iHeart, in person with
everybody and shaking hands and meeting them than it is
doing it on zoom and real life is way better
than just being on a screen. So with that, it
is time for us to take a break. So listeners
who are listening to the Passage to Profit Show with
Richard Elizabeth Gearhart our special guest today, Ralph Sutton. This

(46:56):
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Speaker 1 (49:00):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (49:04):
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(49:31):
So subscribe to the Passage to Profit Show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and on the iHeart app. And now it is time
for IP news. Today, we've got a study that may
change the way you listen to music forever. A new
Deezer post survey found that ninety seven percent of people

(49:52):
cannot tell the difference between AI generated music and human music.

Speaker 5 (49:57):
Well, that's horrible. Means almost nobody can spot the difference then,
and even though seventy one percent of listeners thought they'd
be able to that's right.

Speaker 6 (50:07):
So people don't like it, but they can't tell the
difference between real and AI music. Seventy three percent want
AI generated tracks to be clearly labeled, and about forty
percent said they would skip AI music completely.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
But they're listening to it. It's just funny. But the
amount of AI generated music is exploding, and Deezer now
sees over fifty thousand AI music uploads per day, one
third of everything on that platform.

Speaker 6 (50:35):
Yeah, and the CEO of Deezer has been quoted as saying,
we really stand behind the creators. We want people to
get money and get recognition for their creativity. They don't
really like the AI music trend, but it seems to
be going in that direction.

Speaker 5 (50:51):
And I think that it's causing a lot of activity
around copyright in the.

Speaker 6 (50:55):
Courts right so they're still trying to get the copyright
issues worked out out. In general, the court seem to
be favoring recognizing creators and making sure that they get compensated.
But if you are using AI music, it is important
to try as much as you can to discern the
source of the music. If you're using music that's been

(51:17):
created by a human and it's ultimately detectable even though
it's an AI track, you may be liable for copyright infringement.
And the Internet now is being trolled by bots that
can identify photographs that were taken by photographers and then
transplanted onto websites, and people are getting hit with cease

(51:39):
and desist letters, you know, five to twenty thousand dollars
for a single infraction of this. So I'm sure it'll
be coming to the music side of things pretty soon,
and people just need to be aware of this and
protect themselves.

Speaker 5 (51:51):
Except there are also scammers out there. So we had
an image that we generated ourselves, or we used no
use free pick on that we used free pick on
this and it.

Speaker 7 (52:02):
Was like five years ago and got a letter like
last month.

Speaker 5 (52:05):
But that letter said that we were infringing and we
had to pay and the people that sent the letter
weren't even the people that own the picture.

Speaker 7 (52:12):
Yeah, that's a service. It's a trolling service.

Speaker 5 (52:14):
It was a trolling service. It was a scammer. So
if you think that you're violating copywriter somebody says you are,
you need to check with the professional. Really dig into
it yourself if you have really good tech skills like that,
because a lot of times it's not true. Sometimes it
is and then you have you really need a professional.

Speaker 7 (52:31):
Right.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
Well, this company was in Germany and they were alleging
a violation of German law, and one of our attorneys
looked at it and they pointed out, well, why are
they actually going to sue you in Germany? I mean,
how is that even going to work? But it is
absolutely important, and AI may mimic human creativity, but you
still have to look to copyright law and stay on

(52:52):
top of it.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
I ask you a question because you're an ip lawyer. Yeah,
since all of the music that AI has learned it
has learned it based on existing music, So wouldn't that
mean that the money should go to the person that
learned off of And is that something that's being looked into.

Speaker 6 (53:08):
So the answer to that question is yes, I agree
with you, and that that seems to be the direction
that the law is going in so far. The cases
that I've seen have dealt more with written works like
Anthropic for example, they downloaded millions and millions of books
from a pirate website where they had fake copyright, and

(53:28):
they settled for one point five billion dollars in damages,
which is really not that much when you consider how
much they downloaded. Nobody's brought that case yet that I'm
aware of for the music industry, but I'm sure it's coming,
and I think the same logic would apply. You should
compensate the original artists if you use their material.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
And do the original artists have to register to have
a copywriter? They automatically get it for creating the material.

Speaker 6 (53:51):
Well, you automatically get a copyright when you create the work,
but if you register it, there's enhanced damages. So it's
definitely and your best interest if you're a professional musician
to register your music because then you can get what's
known as statutory damages. You can get between seven hundred
and fifty and twenty thousand dollars for each infringement, and

(54:12):
you don't have to prove damages, which is really hard
to prove damages in a copyright case. So definitely register
your stuff. It's not difficult to do. You can do
it at the Library of Congress for like seventy bucks.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
Okay, well, stay tuned for more about copyrights. I'm sure
we'll be revisiting this topic many times in the future.
We'll keep it posted for now, though, I am so
excited to introduce our dynamic duo here, Joe Scaretta and
Moses Carrasco. They have masonmad dot Co. Welcome to the

(54:44):
show and tell us all about what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Mason Made is an operational holding company that invest in
businesses that focus on visibility and in specialty trade services
supporting infrastructure across the US ten to fifteen businesses over
the next two to three years, and we're focusing on
disrupting the facility management space nationwide.

Speaker 5 (55:03):
And you work in certain areas of industry, right.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
We do so, I would say we focus in data capture,
on site leveraging technology, but we also focus on and
we've heard a lot thrown around over the recent years,
we focus on blue collar trades, so we focus on
sprinkler fire protection. We focus on material handling if you
think about conveyor belts, anything that moves materials in a
warehouse or in a retail setting. And then we also

(55:28):
focus on elevator and escalators.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Who hasn't walked up to a broken elevator somewhere, right,
So it's a problem that's not going away, and touching
on what we touched on earlier, AI is not going
to change it either, right, So it's a safe industry
to work in and to leverage II to enhance.

Speaker 6 (55:43):
I do have to say, though, I saw on TikTok
the other day this machine that was creating a concrete floor.
It was a robot and it's like one guy is
just watching the robot go and it's moving it back
and forth, and you're like thinking, well, I never thought
anything like this could be automated, But you know, all
sorts of stuff is being automated now, So how did

(56:04):
you guys get into this business and where did you start?
Were you originally in the building trades? Was that your
profession and then you kind of grew out of that
into this kind of complex business organization.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
We have this unique entrepreneurial story. I'll say unique, but
I'm sure there's a million others out there like it.
But we'll start with unique. We met at a small
retail construction company called it twenty plus years ago. I
came from the retail operation side, grew up in big
box retail. Moses came from the contractor side. And we
worked there for eight months together and we started to
learn about this industry for carpentry and plumbing and handyman.

(56:39):
Moses was a general contractor by trade, and then we
found out all these national brands really wanted the services
that we offered, and so we worked with this small company.
We started to learn the business. We started run our
own projects, service calls plumbing, handyman carpentry everywhere across the country.
So then we said, you know what, we're making twenty
six thousand dollars a year. We weren't getting a bonus,

(57:00):
we weren't able to transcend and have uncapped income and
so we said, you know what, We started meeting at
lunchtime and looking at staples for desks, and we said,
let's go out and start our own thing. I'll never
forget the story I always say is Moses picking up
is right Honda Civic and we drove into the sunset
and started our first company, and.

Speaker 7 (57:17):
That it was a Ferrari right as a red Ferrari.

Speaker 5 (57:20):
So did you just quit corporate jobs we start?

Speaker 4 (57:23):
We did so.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
We both came from the corporate side. We worked at
the small company, and then after we started to learn
about this industry that we never knew existed. Leveraging our
skills and backgrounds from retail and then from skill trades,
we said, let's just start our own company.

Speaker 6 (57:36):
So what was it like going from the small company
environment to your own business?

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Scary? It was scary.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
You have the comfort of getting a check every week
to moving into an environment where you are finding a
way to pay yourself. And for the first six months
or eight months, we didn't pay ourselves, right, We paid
all the other bills first. So it was scary, but
it was also exhilarating and exciting, right. I think one
of the cool things about being an entrepreneur that I
found is being able to build a business around a

(58:02):
problem in an industry. And that's what we did. There
was so much opportunity and everybody any of the services
we had to offer.

Speaker 6 (58:08):
But you know what, there's like a gazillion contractors out there, right,
and they're all providing different services. They would all love
to provide services to Walmart or Target. How did you
guys kind of rise above that and leverage it into
a much bigger operation.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
We used our skills that we acquired both in our
early careers, right. I had the background of how to
work in corporate America and retail operations environments and big
box retail, starting in sports Authority and GAP, you know,
in my younger years, and then so I knew how
to really get the messaging out from a marketing and
PR standpoint internally and from a development standpoint. Moses came
with the skill trades background, and so we were able

(58:47):
to leverage that into understanding what businesses needed and how
we could build a subcontractor network pre vetting contractors because
we've all had those contractor disasters where someone's giving you
a bid, they haven't shown up, or they've shown up
and charge you a million change orders.

Speaker 8 (59:02):
So we got to the crooks.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Of understanding how the contractors worked and then built our
own pre vetted vendor network or contractor network with contractors
across the country in our first business.

Speaker 6 (59:13):
So you actually came up with a network with reliable,
dependable contractors and that was a key to your success.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
People that showed up on time, that knew what they
were doing, that were properly the license, properly insured, and
then any of the questions that we needed to ask
them right. As a national company, you want to be
able to ask really pointed trade questions right. You don't
want it to be a simple dispatch call center. There's
so many of them out there. So we trained our
people and Moses spent a lot of time training our
teams on what's the subject matter knowledge in each trade

(59:45):
that we need to know so we can make sure
that the customer is getting the right price and the
right scope of work and they're getting the right service
across the country.

Speaker 5 (59:52):
I do want to go back to something because how
could you not take a paycheck for eight months?

Speaker 8 (59:57):
There was a lot of peanut butter jelly sandwiches, and
there was a lot of tuns which is that? And
that's a real story. We didn't take a paycheck. And
I will say that if you start a business, if
you're only focused on the profit, there's a very big
likelihood that you might close your door sooner then later.
If that's what you need to see to feel that
there's momentum, it's going to create a pretty major fear
factor in your mind. Right, So you have to say
we're growing. No matter what's happening. Volume is coming in.

(01:00:20):
The profit will come later. If volume isn't coming in,
maybe you should second guess it, right, But over time,
as bollin comes in, the profit will follow.

Speaker 5 (01:00:28):
But then, what did you live on? Did you have savings?
Did you have spouses? That's supported to you?

Speaker 10 (01:00:32):
No?

Speaker 8 (01:00:33):
We started. I sold the condo in Florida. I was
really lucky. I was nineteen years old. My uncle convinced
me to sell a condo. I had bought it for
twenty seven thousand dollars and I sold it for eighty grand.
So we had fifty thousand something along those lines too
to start the business. So we had something, you know,
But I was barning one hundred bucks from him when
he had it. He was barring me fifty dollars for me,
and that kind of happened for about six months, and

(01:00:54):
I would say, we're in a situation where he was
living at his parents' home and I was living in
a very economical apartment, so we were making ends meet.

Speaker 6 (01:01:01):
Wow, that's sort of like the traditional entrepreneurial story. So
when did you realize that the business was going to
make it and that you would eventually turn a profit.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
I would say after the first six or eight months,
we started to break that couple hundred thousand dollars range.
We started to get into a situation where we landed
another national client. So the first two clients we started
with were Claire's Girls Jeweler. Everybody knows Claire's Jewelry. And
we started with Sprint Nextel, and then we landed nine West.
So we had these three national accounts, and we broke

(01:01:34):
over three or four hundred thousand dollars in revenue, and
then all of a sudden, there started to be a
little bit of money left at the end of the
month to pay Moses and I.

Speaker 7 (01:01:41):
So big accounts though.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
And we traded in our Peterborron jelly sandwiches for Big Mac.

Speaker 5 (01:01:47):
So what were you doing for those stores.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
We were acting as a single point of contact for
all their maintenance needs for their fleet of locations across
the country. So if a cabinet door fell off a
hinge at A nine West, we would get that, or
if a clear store needed to get renovated, new carpet,
new flooring, new paint, anywhere in the country, we would
get that call to. And so we had this business
that we were doing, all these trade services across the

(01:02:11):
broader platform that we were building on. I'll never forget
I was a salesperson. I would say the development side, right,
Moses came to me. It's like, hey, wherever going to
grow and this is where the trust comes in. From
a partnership standpoint, we need another sales guy. And back
then the ego was we just started. I'm like I
could be the only sales guy. I got this, and
it became that lunge, that leap of faith of like,

(01:02:32):
you know what, maybe we should get anol sales guy.

Speaker 8 (01:02:34):
And we did.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
It was an ex client that we were working with,
came in never sold before, and he was one of
the bigger drivers and growing our business with us. From
a sales perspective, myself, him and a really cooor group
of people that came in.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
My first question would be, why do you think that
the contracting world, general contractors and everything, it's one of
the most vilified late. They're always late, you always over budget,
it always takes longer than you think. Why do you
think that's all always the case? Or how did you
guys fix that so that's not an issue when you
have to the corporators can take two weeks and it
takes three months, Like, how do you get past that stigma?

Speaker 8 (01:03:09):
I think we're still in it. I mean, you can
vet vendors. There's you know where people are going to
be late, people are going to have accidents on the road.
It's going to exist. But what I think the major
issue is that most companies are hiring the same contractors.
We all want the good contractors, so they're in demand,
and we're living in a time where now the generation
the youth does not want to swing a hammer, they

(01:03:30):
do not want to learn these trades, So it's compounding
on the existing tradesmen that are qualified. Partnering with these
tradesmen and helping them develop their companies as well as
has been a huge component for us making sure that
they have the right tools, making sure that we give
them enough business so they can grow, so they can
partner with other organizations, or they could actually start expanding
their footprint to hire additional qualified contractors.

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
We're talking to Joe Scaretta and Moses Carrasco with masonmade
dot Co.

Speaker 6 (01:03:54):
I love this story because it says to me that
doing a good job and doing things rights still counts
for something, and that if you can just be reliable
and dependable and follow through that and your chances of
success are pretty good because there's so many people who don't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
I mean, it goes to the old adage of you know,
do the simple things really well and do what you
say you're going to do right. We also have a
real focus on establishing and really owning the communications right,
so setting the expectation of when a contractor is going
to arrive on site right now. In our in our
newer business where we're focusing on sprinkler and we're focusing
on fire protection material, hangli and vertical elevator escalator, those trades.

(01:04:35):
In those areas, the clients are unhappy, they're not happy
with the service they're getting. People aren't showing up on time,
they're getting charge a lot of money. So it's really
making sure we hold them accountable to show when they
say they're going to show up. Setting the expectation of
time windows versus saying I'll be on side to ten o'clock.
We say between ten and twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
We know that the contractor is going to run a
little late, right, so we want to give that buffer,
that window, and then really being able to give them.
To Moses's point, the right scope of work that they're
driving on site is really critical too. So many times
people show up and they don't know what they're working on,
and it's frustrating for the contractor too.

Speaker 7 (01:05:06):
So now your business has kind of grown beyond that.

Speaker 6 (01:05:09):
Right now you're working more as a partnering company and
an advisor. You're working in industries where you're already familiar
with the technology, and you're helping companies grow.

Speaker 7 (01:05:19):
Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
We are so in our first two ventures, you know,
we execut private equity, and our first two ventures on
the skilled trades more focused on carpentry and plumbing and
general trade work. We've now fast forwarded to Mason Made.
We are going and we're helping blue collar entrepreneurs and
the sprinkler of fire protection material handling vertical trades, and
we're helping to either scale their businesses by adding operational infrastructure.

(01:05:43):
We're helping them to add business development to be able
to sell accounts nationwide. And we're also giving them just
the expertise of how to grow and scale their business.
Where a lot of these folks are stuck in that
million dollar range, you know, two million dollar range. It's like,
how do I go from two million to ten?

Speaker 11 (01:05:59):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
And I think where how help them to give them
the unlocks to get that next stome?

Speaker 6 (01:06:03):
How do you get from a two million dollar business
to a ten million dollar business?

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
I think it differs for every company. I think for us,
what we saw was investing in the operational infrastructure.

Speaker 7 (01:06:11):
So what does that mean? I mean operate This sounds
kind of like a fancy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Term that it's investing in the right positions in the company,
so the right people, the right people. It's investing in
the right technology. We've seen so many of these businesses
are working off a spreadsheets still right, So it's the
right technology. It's an operating system or or an accounting
system that they don't have today, and then it's focusing
on adding and sales and development efforts, right, adding a

(01:06:34):
salesperson because a lot of these owners and founders they
sell their businesses, but they're also managing and operating all
the work they're bringing in. There's no scale there because
they don't have the right folks in the right seats.
So we're helping them to do that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:46):
I think a sales team is really important. And we
just talk about a little bit at the end, but
we have a super sales guy at your Heart Law.
We don't really call them sales, but that's what it
is anyway. Anna, we just did training, marketing and sales
training for the rest of the firm. He and I
did it together because it is so important to any business,
and you don't think about that as an entrepreneur. I

(01:07:07):
don't think as much. You think I've got this great idea.

Speaker 6 (01:07:10):
Well, I think if you're going to start a business, though,
you really need to be able to sell. I mean,
even if you're not the best, you have to have
multiple skills. You have to be able to at least
do sales and maybe some marketing, and then you have
to also maybe do finance or you have to be
good at operations. You have to be like good at
half the stuff that a business.

Speaker 5 (01:07:30):
What kind of to do?

Speaker 6 (01:07:31):
What kind of sales were you in before I sold photocopiers? Right, Yeah,
I used to go door to door make phone calls
before I went to law school.

Speaker 7 (01:07:39):
I loved it.

Speaker 6 (01:07:40):
But yeah, I always like the sales process. But you
have to be able to get business in the door somehow.
If you can't do that, then the rest of the
stuff doesn't matter. But eventually you do want to get
somebody who's like even better at it than you are, right,
and for all the reasons you just said, because you're
trying to wear too many hats and you can only
do so much and you need to delegate to people

(01:08:03):
who have strengths.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
I think what we learned in scaling our first two
businesses was investing in talent, investing in people that are
smarter than you that could add operational infrastructure or operational
support that could help us to, you know, again, elevate
our sales and development, how we're marketing, what we're selling,
what we're doing. And I think that was one of
the biggest you know, I would say leaps is investing

(01:08:24):
in talent, maybe even smarter than you are in certain
areas well.

Speaker 6 (01:08:27):
I just wonder how these owners handle that, investing in
people and then giving up responsibility and delegating.

Speaker 7 (01:08:36):
It's got to be pretty stressful for them, right.

Speaker 6 (01:08:38):
If they've been doing it a certain way for a
long time, they're like, I'm not sure this guy doesn't
know the business, you know, why am I letting him
do this?

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
It's scary for someone to give up control, especially inside
their own company, for trades or services and things that
they were used to in their accustomed to. It's also
their comfort zone, right, It's the same thing I've been
doing for the last five or ten years. And part
of our approach when we talk to them is, in
the last five or ten years, how much have you
been able to grow?

Speaker 5 (01:09:02):
Pretty amazing that you've been able to actually find good contractors.

Speaker 7 (01:09:06):
That's sort of like the holy grail of life.

Speaker 5 (01:09:08):
It really is. So how can people get a hold
of you?

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
To our website masonmad dot Co. Moses and I are
both on there. You could also get us on LinkedIn
our LinkedIn handles through our companies easiest way to get us.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
Okay, great, thanks, thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:09:22):
Passage to Profit with Richard Analysabeth per Heart.

Speaker 5 (01:09:25):
And now we're onto the boost part of the show.
Gigi Murvis with De Solis mess Cal is going to
tell us all about her wonderful alcoholic product. Welcome to
the show, Thank.

Speaker 4 (01:09:38):
You for having me. I am the founder of Disles Messcal.
We are made from the Salmiana gave, so most mass
cow that you see on the market is made from espadine,
which is a sharper mescal this sharper agave and it's
from usually from Mohaka. We're made in San Luis Putosi,
so it's a different area of Mexico. It's actually known
to make mess cow that's more fresh and earthy and

(01:10:00):
not smoky. So that's really what makes us different. We're
not smoky. We're very like herbaceous, and I would say
we're really fresh, and I think people don't realize that
mescal doesn't have to be smoky, So that really is
what makes us different. And I really fell in love
with mescal ten years ago going to Mexico a lot
with my first company. I had started at Tequila Coconut

(01:10:23):
Water company when I was in college. And you know,
my family's not in the industry, didn't know much about alcohol,
but I had been going to Mexico a lot to
start this company, and this woman that I had met
very serendipitously was helping me with everything, and she had
also recently started her distillery, so she became my mentor. Anyways,
I was going to Mexico a lot and drinking a

(01:10:43):
lot of different mescals, especially in Mexico City, and it
was funny because all these bars would have mescal and
not tequila. They were all delicious and not super smoky,
and like some of them were like fresh and floral,
some of them were like bacony. And then I'd come
back into the US. I'm back into the US and
there was you know, just Vita and Eli Gal. They

(01:11:04):
were super smoky, and I fell in love with understanding
the different types of mescal at the time, and with
this is my second project now and I had exited
the first. And the woman who was my mentor, her
family makes this mescal from San Luis Potosi, which is
from the Salmiana gave and she had me taste it,

(01:11:28):
and I was like, this is so delicious and different,
Like there is really nothing in the US that tastes
like this. Mescal, and so I decided to bottle it.
At first, it was a passion project, but I think
the reaction was so great that I decided to fully
go in. And again I told myself in the beginning,
I'm never doing this industry again. This is the hardest industry,

(01:11:51):
but you can't leave it once you're in it.

Speaker 7 (01:11:53):
So well, beverage it's tough, it's like super competitive. But yeah,
are there a lot of mescals out there?

Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Are?

Speaker 7 (01:12:02):
What's the competitive landscape like?

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
So it's interesting. I think there's a lot more coming
out now. Right, it's very much a growing part of
the alcohol industry, more than any other area. Actually, I
don't know if that's exactly the truth now. I don't
know the statistics in this year, but chet cheap to you.
Compared to other categories, it's still fairly small, mostly because

(01:12:27):
it's hard to make mescal. It's hard to get to
different areas. And I think the consumers learning now. But
people assume that mescal is smoky, and I think it
really it is the smoky tequila that's the But it's
like tequila, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Can you explain the difference. I remember, yes, learning it
once and I forgot and all tequilas are mescals, but
not all mess call of tequila the other way around.
Something like that. I forgot what the actual delineation is.

Speaker 4 (01:12:51):
So the best way to understand it is there's about
fifty agaves that grow all over Mexico. One of them
is the blue web ragave and that grows into ikila.
So you know when you see tequilas as one hundred
percent blue webragave. And there's all these other agave types
that grow in other parts of Mexico and that's mescal.
So they're just a different type of agave, they're different region,

(01:13:13):
they're a different plant, and it's sort of like wine.

Speaker 5 (01:13:15):
So how are you marketing this then? Are you like,
obviously you're coming on radio shows, but it seems like
there's a lot of alcohol out there, and I do
see alcohol ads and everything, So what is your strategy
for marketing this?

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
From the very start, my strategy has always been with
the trade and the kind of behind the bar. So
it was very very important for me that the trade
respected the product, which means the bartenders, you know, the servers,
the people who really the mixologists that know agaves and
no so in the beginning, and I would say that's

(01:13:47):
kind of how we first started marketing is really reaching
those people, and I think it's been still that's my focus,
is really making sure that it's kind of behind the bar.
It's something that is recommended, and I think that's your
biggest marketing person is the bartender. Obviously social media is
another thing, but I think still with alcohol, I think

(01:14:08):
if you're at a bar and the bartender recommends you
something to try that you can try right away, I
think that is still your best way to market.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
What about the learning curve that it's not smoky, they
have to come up with recipes for the bartenders so
they understand how to highlight the herbaceousness of this one.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
Well, Funny enough, most bartenders that are familiar with messcal
are like, oh, they like that it's a different type
of mess coal. But also you can make a lot
more cocktails with this than you can with a super
smoky messcal, where a lot of times they're diluting it
with tequila so it's not as smoky, or they're diluting
it with a lot of sugar to make it balance
with dsolas. Actually, you want to taste it, you want

(01:14:45):
to elevate it and you can substitute it for a
lot of gin cocktails, which is interesting. So I'm not
really competing for the mess cal cocktail because you can
have another mess cal cocktail will taste totally different, for example,
then with Dsolus, where you can add a fresher cocktail
with it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:01):
So what's your favorite of Sola's cocktail or do you like
it neat?

Speaker 4 (01:15:04):
I love it neat on the rocks, But my favorite
favorite is in Agroni because I'm in Agroni person. I
love Negroni, So deslas in an Agroni is the best drink. No,
But also I mean having it with like cucumber and
ginger and things like that, fresh ingredients you don't eat

(01:15:25):
so much, and it's so easy to make.

Speaker 7 (01:15:27):
What is it? Does it taste like tequila?

Speaker 4 (01:15:29):
I think tequila has become more bland over time. They
really and bland in vanilla right that's been the kind
of I don't know, if you're familiar with all the
marketing around tequila right now, people are really against the
whole vanilla additive. But mescal is complicated. It has a
lot of layers because of how it's made. I forgot
this one important part. The difference between mescal and tequila,

(01:15:50):
by the way, is that with mescal you roast the
agave before you distill. With tequila, you don't, which is
why you got variation of flavor and you get the
smokiness with mescal. So most mescal has roasted underneath the
ground and they put they kind of roasted in these
underneath with and put like dirt on and then they
fire it up and we roast above ground. So it's

(01:16:12):
actually we're don't we don't cover it with dirts. You
get the actual flavor of the agave and the smoke
is in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
Do you do silver and respatos as well or so.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
We just launched like through two weeks ago the Repisado,
which is a six month age Salmiana gave Repisado and
it's the first ever age salmiana gave, which is actually
cool in the industry because there's not really that many
firsts and it's really really delicious. Really it's something super special.

(01:16:43):
The bottle is different. I worked on it for three
years with the designer in Mexico. Me and her really
like collaborate on a lot of the design and yeah,
we just launched that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:52):
So can people buy this from your website or do.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
You buy it directly from the website it's the easiest way.

Speaker 5 (01:16:57):
And what's the website again?

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
Us Mescal dot com?

Speaker 5 (01:17:01):
Can you spell that?

Speaker 4 (01:17:02):
D E S L A S Mescal m zcil dot com.

Speaker 5 (01:17:08):
And what's your most popular seller on your website?

Speaker 4 (01:17:11):
We just launched the Repisado, so the blanco, but we
also are launching as of December one the Anejo, which
is thirty two months aged in barrels and it's almost
like a whiskey because it's a barrel program. We have
barrel one and barrel two. We really only have like
three hundred bottles and that's all we're making, so it's

(01:17:33):
very cool. It's something that we like, kind of a
test project that was like, wow, this is really delicious
and it gets you really That one's like fifty six proof,
so it's very strong.

Speaker 6 (01:17:43):
So what childhood experience did you have that brought you
to this point.

Speaker 4 (01:17:50):
I was supposed to be a doctor. I went to college,
I was supposed to be pre med and I had
this idea in college to do the first company. But
you know, my parents are extremely fun, Like they are
more fun than I am.

Speaker 5 (01:18:05):
There.

Speaker 4 (01:18:06):
I grew up in a household where they had parties
a lot, and they like, love to have dinner parties.
But what drew me because of that? I think I
love entertaining. I love bringing people together, and I think
bringing people together has been my passion and this allows
me to do that, which is why I keep gravitating
towards this industry, because it gives you so many different

(01:18:28):
paths to do something and to market and I don't know,
even just get people together. And that's fun for me.

Speaker 5 (01:18:34):
And we're speaking with Gigi Nervis with Deslas Mez. Call
sounds like a really interesting drink, and it sounds like
it'd be really good for the holidays.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
It would be great for the holidays. It's a great gift,
by the way, especially for the person who likes tequila
that says, oh, like I don't like best how it's
too smoky. Nine out of ten times that person will
like tosold Us. And that is like one hundred percent.
I'm telling you, I love very general I always generalize
and make fake statistics, but yeah, but they do.

Speaker 7 (01:19:07):
That's really great.

Speaker 6 (01:19:08):
And then, so what are the future plans for your company?
Where would you like to.

Speaker 7 (01:19:12):
See it go.

Speaker 4 (01:19:13):
I would like to sell more cases, like every product entrepreneur,
but I think I just we want to keep expanding.
We're now in eight states in Canada. We're going to
be expanding into Costa Rica. I want to see the
Repisado and then yeho really like you know, I want
people to try that. I think that's next year. Is
my goal is. I want more and more people to

(01:19:33):
try that because it's really delicious and a lot of
love has been put into it.

Speaker 5 (01:19:39):
Yes, we're all going to go on your website.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
A course. A friend of mine started a vodka company.
I thought it was a great idea. It was called
dirty vodka. It tasted like olive, so it was good
for making martinis. And his biggest problem was getting shelf
space at the popular bars and the topular restaurants because
they're all limited shelf space. So how are you getting
your bottle to be featured on top shelf when it's
such a limited thing that you get that space.

Speaker 4 (01:20:03):
So the vodka category is so difficult, let's start there.
I would never start a vodka company just because there's
really not that much opportunity. Even if you have these
flavored vodkas, it's just difficult. So agreed with the shelf space.
I think with mescal there's still opportunity. That's one because

(01:20:24):
it's not as you know, we live in New York City,
but all over the US people still are learning what
mescal is, which is good. Of course, it's you know,
bad in certain ways, but it's good because you get
the opportunity to educate. And Two, I think it's relationships.
So I've been doing this now for thirteen years, and
I know the industry. I think being in the industry,

(01:20:45):
I've worked in every part of it as well. I've sold,
work with a distributor, I work with the supplier, you know,
all the different elements. I think the relationships are the
most important. And then if you have a quality product
that people want to buy again, which is one of
the hardest things is once you're in like a liquor
store for example, the fact you can get it in there,
but is it going to sell through? That is the
hardest part. It's not just getting it in. If you

(01:21:07):
have a good product and you kind of put the
right support around it, it does sell through.

Speaker 7 (01:21:12):
That's great. And where can people find you again?

Speaker 4 (01:21:15):
They can find me in eight states California, Georgia, Texas,
Florida and New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Tennessee.

Speaker 5 (01:21:23):
And on your website.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
Our website's again the easiest way to get it right now.
In Florida, we're in like all the total lines and ABC's.

Speaker 6 (01:21:30):
We would encourage everybody to go out and get some
mescal for the holidays.

Speaker 5 (01:21:35):
Well, I could put someone in your Christmas stocking.

Speaker 6 (01:21:38):
You could. I Actually we were talking before the program.
I have a bottle that I brought back from Mexico
that's been sitting in the liquor cabinet for a long time.

Speaker 5 (01:21:49):
We should get Gigi's and do a taste test. That'd
be fun.

Speaker 6 (01:21:51):
Well, this stuff is so old, I'm not even sure
that it's safe, correct, So I think it's better now.

Speaker 7 (01:21:57):
Just we'll get adversation anyway.

Speaker 6 (01:21:58):
You're listening to Passage Profit with Return Lilis Scareheart, our
special guests Ralph Sutton. We'll be back with more and
Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind right after this.

Speaker 11 (01:22:08):
I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of
lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.
If you've been involved in a serious car truck or
motorcycle accident, or injured at work. You have rights and
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(01:22:30):
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find out today for free what kind of compensation you
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Speaker 10 (01:22:53):
Eight hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight
hundred four nine two seven oh one eight hundred four
nine two seven oh one four. That's eight hundred four
nine two seventy fourteen.

Speaker 7 (01:23:08):
It's Passage to Profit.

Speaker 6 (01:23:10):
Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit,
and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll
to the bottom of the Passage profitshow dot com website
and check out her album.

Speaker 5 (01:23:24):
And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind.
So Ralph Sutton with Gusdigital dot com and the sdrshow
dot com. What is the secret you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Can share delegation, being able to allow other people to
make mistakes, figure it out, because if you're trying to
micromanage everything, you are never going to get anywhere. And
that was the hardest lesson for me to learn because
doing the radio show when was when the tour bus,
I did everything, And so when I did this, we
we have like now like seventy people that work therapy.

(01:23:57):
You add the host and stuff and being able to
let the ad sales people do their stuff, let the
production people do their stuff. And also I give them
I have a five hundred dollars reward to anyone if
you can show me that I taught you to do
something wrong and you figure out a better way to
do it, I'll give you five hundred dollars. And over
the past seven eight years, they've never done it. I

(01:24:17):
figured out like six or seven times a way to
improve something. They never do it. Most people are not
self starters. But if you do find those people that
are willing to take mistakes and willing to do that
basic idea of do it and then apologize. If you
screw up. Those are the people you want to keep
and that we finally found some good people that do that.

Speaker 5 (01:24:33):
Excellent. Okay, So Joe Sciretta and Moses Carrasco with masonmad
dot Co. What's the secret, Moses, you want to go first?

Speaker 8 (01:24:42):
The secret for me is active listening. It has been
a key element for us throughout the years. I'll say
that it's indirect active listening as well as direct. People
really appreciate when you take fifty minutes of your time
or an hour, but you're present and your phone's away,
you're not getting interrupted, you have my contact, and you're
able to listen to what their ambitions are, their goals are.
I think that has been tremendous for us. For example,

(01:25:04):
the first part of our years, when we had four
or five employees that'd walk around the entire office, I'd
say good morning. That was really easy to do for
quite some time. But as we grew, there was a
point in time where we had one hundred and thirty
to one hundred and forty employees. I mean, I still
shake everyone's hand every morning. It would take me about
an hour and a half. But that was so crucial
for me because it was a pulse, I would still
be able to listen to people without having direct conversations.

(01:25:24):
I knew exactly what they were feeling. I knew who
was having a bad day. I knew when there was
some sort of incorrect environment or something that was inadequate
in a different team capacity. So I think that there's
different ways you can engage yourself and listen, but one
is to be completely present.

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
Excellent and Joe, what about you?

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
I would say my biggest secret to share as an
entrepreneur is don't be afraid of a partner. So many
times you hear ink dot Com Entrepreneur, any of these magazines,
you hear you hear disaster stories sometimes when you find
the wrong partner. When you find the right partner with
complimentary skills, some of that allows you to feel comfortable
enough to tell you the truth, drop your ego and

(01:26:01):
really be there with you to help really transcend you
as a person. But also as the organization grows, don't
be afraid of a partner. Find the right one. They're
out there and they will help you to continue to grow.
Because I can tell you Moses and I are living
proof that it does work, and it does succeed. We've
been together for over twenty years. I wouldn't be anywhere
I am today without having Moses right there with me.

Speaker 5 (01:26:21):
Excellent advice, And.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
I ask one other questions. You find it hard to
live up to the name Moses.

Speaker 7 (01:26:27):
He does have a beard?

Speaker 11 (01:26:28):
Yes or no?

Speaker 8 (01:26:29):
Yes, no, It's a continuous improvement.

Speaker 5 (01:26:35):
So Gigimrvis with the solo Smiths cal what is the
secret you can share?

Speaker 4 (01:26:40):
The secret I can share is you have to do
what you say. I think doing what you say is
so important in being an entrepreneur, being any kind of
leader starter. I think a lot of times people don't
follow through, and I think when you follow through, you
surprise people. And I think that's always a sign of
being serious and being an honest person and getting to

(01:27:03):
the next level. So I think, yeah, that's my little secret.

Speaker 5 (01:27:06):
Excellent. That is a good one. Richard, your heart with
your heart law.

Speaker 6 (01:27:10):
I'm going to go with being decisive. I think entrepreneurs
need to make decisions quickly. I think if you want
to grow quickly, you have to make a lot of
quick decisions, and you have to be willing to be
wrong and to change course when things aren't right. It
doesn't mean that you don't think about it for a
period of time, but making decisions and intervals of six

(01:27:31):
months probably isn't going to work for you. So some
decisions are easy and you can make them fast. But
even the ones that aren't easy, I think you have
to make them even sometimes before you're ready, and then just.

Speaker 7 (01:27:42):
Go with the flow.

Speaker 5 (01:27:43):
And for me and Lizabeth your Heart with Gear Media Studios,
I'm going to say, put yourself out there. So at
your Heart Law. We recently had an incident, great incident
where one of the attorneys landed a big client and
I kept asking him how did you get them? And
he kept going back through the string of people and
finally found out realized that he had given a presentation

(01:28:05):
and somebody came up to him after the presentation and
then it went from there on. Like five people later
he landed this huge client. So you have to be
giving presentations, you have to be going on podcasts, start
your own podcast, really put yourself out there as an
authority in your industry.

Speaker 7 (01:28:22):
That's it for us this week.

Speaker 6 (01:28:23):
Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show pairing
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to Profit has also been recently selected by feed spot
Podcasters database as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank
you to the p too P team, our producer Noah
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(01:28:47):
risicat Busari, and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. Look
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(01:29:08):
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can find us at gearheartlaw dot com and contact us
for free consultation. Take care everybody, Thanks for listening, and
we'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.