Entrepreneurs: How to Stay Relevant in Today's Competive Marketplace with Dave Anderson + 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):
Oh you got a little business that's so cute.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm an accidental entrepreneur.

Speaker 4 (00:13):
I have that ability to say, you know what, I
feel like. There's a gift here.

Speaker 5 (00:17):
I'm Richard Gerhart.

Speaker 6 (00:18):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Are you thinking of starting a
business or have one you're trying to grow? Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
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 7 (00:36):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Speaker 6 (00:43):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. I help your Heart Law with
their marketing and I run a podcast in content creation
Studio and provide podcast consulting.

Speaker 7 (00:51):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Entrepreneurship, where
we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and
their business ventures. Today we have the business bully himself,
Dave Anderson. He joins us to drop raw truth crush
excuses and reveal what it really takes to turn Hustle
into a seven figure business.

Speaker 6 (01:11):
And then we have Melissa Franks, how do you go
from being an assistant to running your own multimillion dollar company?

Speaker 5 (01:18):
Good politics, and I think it was a little more
than that.

Speaker 6 (01:22):
And then Derek Johnson, who's really got an incredible story.
If you can't get fit with Derek's.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
Help, I get fit just looking at him.

Speaker 6 (01:31):
Inspirational just looking at him. We want to hear his
whole story. And coming up later on it's Noah's Retrospective
along with Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind.

Speaker 7 (01:42):
Studies show that two and five Americans want to start
their own business. So we're going to ask our panel
today on your new business journey, what's the biggest lie
new entrepreneurs believe about success and how can they overcome it?
Turning to our guest du joure Dave Anderson, Welcome to
the show again.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's nice to be here.

Speaker 7 (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, Well, what is the biggest lie that entrepreneurs
tell themselves?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Oh my goodness, they think that if they put CEO
in their business card and automatically because they quit their
job last night and all of a sudden, they're free.
That is supposed to feel good right away, and it doesn't.
Entrepreneurship is hard, it is difficult. It is feast or famine,
and it's not for everybody. I tell folks all the time,
stay in your cubicle if you do not want these problems,
because you are chasing a different type of animal. So

(02:26):
the biggest lie they believe is that it's going to
feel good right away and everything's going to be solved
because they've become an entrepreneur.

Speaker 7 (02:31):
Couldn't agree with you more because I've seen that and
heard that myself, Melissa, what's the biggest fly entrepreneurs tell themselves?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
One of the biggest lies that they tell themselves is
that the first client that they sell to is going
to be every client that they sell to going forward.
Who wants to buy their products and services changes over time.
Their business evolves, what they want to deliver evolves, and
staying married to the idea of the business that they

(02:59):
have had before they started will ultimately stall growth and
lead to failure long term.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
Great advice, Derek, welcome to the program. Thank you for
having me. It's going to be Beck.

Speaker 7 (03:08):
What's the biggest lie entrepreneurs tell themselves that success has.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
To be a lonely road. If you're not truly passionate
and it is not solving people's problems and fulfilling you,
that's when you actually feel lonely, because then you're just
chasing the dollar, the attention, the clout. So tying it
back to your passion, does this fulfill me? And does
it actually change lives and connects to something from your past?

Speaker 5 (03:28):
That's really well said. Thank you for that, Elizabeth.

Speaker 6 (03:31):
Mine is sort of like Derek. So it's like success,
how do you define success? It's not just how much
money you make. A successful entrepreneur isn't necessarily the one
who's making the most money. It's the one who has
the richest overall life.

Speaker 7 (03:44):
I agree with that. It's all about balance and enrichment.
I was going to say that the biggest lie entrepreneurs
tell themselves is that their project is going to make
them rich, and sometimes that happens, but sometimes you end
up making other people rich, right, And so it's very
important though to keep it in perspective, and part of
being a good entrepreneur is understanding your market and making

(04:05):
some reasonable assumptions about what your product or service can do,
and if it can sustain you, that's great, but you
may not get rich right off the bat.

Speaker 6 (04:14):
Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 7 (04:16):
Now it's time for our guest, Dave Anderson. He doesn't
sugarcoat anything, and he's known as the business bully. He's
a twenty one time best selling author and former radio executive.
But in any case, he believes that business is a
blood sport and most people fail because they're too soft.
So today we're going to hear from him, and I
want to ask everybody wants to win in business, but

(04:38):
if you are ready for the fight from your perspective,
what separates the dreamers from the doers doing?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I know plenty of brilliant broke people. I know plenty
of talented broke people. I know plenty of people who
have phenomenal ideas, but they have horrible execution. It does
not matter how smart you are, it does not matter
if you've got a mense opinion, doesn't matter who your
daddy was. If you are not going to put in
the work behind the mission, the mission will ultimately fail.

(05:08):
And that's what it is. It's a very binary sport,
you know, And I trein entrepreneurship like it is a sport,
because that's what it is. Every day I'm fighting to
keep my championship alive. And I know better than I
think most people that the truth is we've got to
get ourselves out of this Kevin Costner mindset. If you
build it, they will come is a lie. If you

(05:31):
build it, you built it, Now go market and promote
it like it's your last thing you will ever do.
And people don't tend to do that. They think that
it's just going to be sweet and they fail. Just
because you showed up doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 7 (05:44):
Yeah, I mean execution is really important. Getting things from
point A to point B is the entrepreneur's skill, or
one of the most important ones, because you can talk
a lot, you can think about it, sure, but you
have to take action. And then you have to take
action that's actually going to get you somewhere right, and
then that's moved the football down the field right.

Speaker 6 (06:04):
And I want to comment on something Dave said. When
I worked in corporate, I was in the chemical plant
and it was like, why does marketing get all this
huge budget? Well, now I know so people overlook marketing
and I never thought marketing was epic of a deal'll
start doing it. A lot of marketing is data analysis, right, yes,

(06:26):
but it's.

Speaker 7 (06:26):
A little bit different than you know. Working in corporation
is different from being an entrepreneur. Doing a job where
you do certain assigned tasks on a regular basis is great,
it can be fulfilling, but if you're an entrepreneur, you
have to constantly be moving forward and achieving new things
and setting new goals and hitting those targets if you
want your business to grow.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Absolutely. The thing that I think a lot of people
miss to your point is in marketing, it's not I
need thirty thousand billboards tomorrow, I need this radio ad tomorrow.
It's answering three simple questions that every human being had
when they come in contact with you or your brand.
Who are you, what do you have? Why should I care?
If you're not daily answering those questions before they ask them,

(07:09):
you're going to lose. McDonald's is the largest land mask
owning corporation on the face of the planet, and they
advertise thirty two thousand times in a twenty four hour span.
Not because nobody knows who McDonald's is. It's because they
want to make sure they keep top of mind awareness
because while you're worrying about whether the color scheme looks
right or if the website is perfect, somebody's actually executing.

(07:32):
You build and you continue to build upon your foundation,
and top of mind awareness is how you do that.
That's why marketing is important, right, and.

Speaker 6 (07:39):
It's changing with the LMS, and now people are asking chat,
GPT instead of asking Google. I mean, they're doing both.
And to be on top of the LMS, you have
to be everywhere on the Internet because they are not
just looking at your website, although they are looking heavily
at your website, but they're looking at your whole presence
on the Internet. And that's why being in media is important.

(08:01):
That's why having social media, being on podcasts, I don't
know how much TV affects it, having a strong website,
what do you think?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
So here's the thing. I take a little mermaid approach
to everything. I want to be where the people are.
So if the people are on social media, I'm on
social media. If people are on podcasts, I'm on everybody's podcast.
If people are listening to radio, or they're not listening
to radio, but they're watching the interview, clips. I'm gonna
be on that show. I am not going to outthink
my audience. If that's where my audience is getting their information,

(08:31):
why am I going to get a billboard that does
not make sense. The other thing that I think people
miss out on is the importance of being consistent and
creating real moments. Are you solving a problem? What are
you doing to show people that you are the most
obvious choice to solve their problem? There's a million in
one personal trenders, but they don't look that handsome hysteric

(08:54):
looks like the product. He looks Yeah, I look like
what the hell there? But in all seriousness, nobody wants
a fat personal trainer. Nobody wants to take marriage advice
from somebody who's been divorced three times. So are you

(09:14):
embodying the brand? Are you making those impacts happen? And
you have to be where they are now? TV to
make sure that I tie this in. TV is extremely important,
not because of the reach, but because of the credibility,
because we are creatures of habit, and until such time
as the Boomers and the gen xers die off TV,
for people's like oh I saw you on TV, even
if they just saw you on the clip of the

(09:34):
TV show. They're like, oh, that person's on TV. That
automatically gives them a certain level of credibility transfer. So
you need a nice combination of everything. It's like having
a nice plate. It needs to look like the rainbow.
Your media presence should look like the rainbow.

Speaker 7 (09:48):
So, getting back to execution, that's one of my favorite
topics because I think it is so important. Give us
some examples of an entrepreneur who's executing, tell us about
the types of things that they're doing.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
So there is a young man in Orlando named Kallio
Jung and he is a financial services kid. He's maybe
early thirties at best, and he literally is on YouTube
making shorts and talking in very simple terms to his
audience about building your credit, creating business credit, getting yourself
a trust, what it looks like to build an LLC.

(10:23):
He's talking about financial literacy on a level that people
can understand. That's what he's saying. What he's doing is
showing up like a rock star. He's a big honking guy,
he's swollen. He makes you look like a stick. But
again I'm pointing to Derek for.

Speaker 7 (10:36):
Those of you who but no no question, but you
have slimmed down quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, but I digress. He is looking like a rock
star while he's giving that information. And I don't mean
rented Lambeau and fake house. I mean he looks like
he has got his credit together and he's showing people
what it looks like. The other part of that is
Richard's personal question. Elizabeth, may make sure you keep him honest.
How often do you bathe every day every day? Why

(11:05):
it's a habit and you don't want to stink?

Speaker 7 (11:07):
And well, I don't care if I sink, but I
know other people do.

Speaker 6 (11:11):
I care. After he works out, you better get the
stack in the shower in the next d every day.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Exactly good thing. If people treated their email marketing like
they treated their bathing routine and their hygiene, they would
make a lot more money. We think things have to
be sexy and fancy, and I need fifteen thousand bots,
and I need many chat and I need this, and
I have all of those things. However, I have a
list of thousands of people who already know, like and
trust me, and I am giving them value. I'm not

(11:40):
coming to them when I just want to sale. I'm
giving them things that they can work on, things that
they can think about to continue to drill in that
type of mind awareness. That's what my most successful clients do.
They make sure that they're keeping the line of communications open.

Speaker 7 (11:53):
But going back to the Financial Planner, he's posting every day. Yes,
he's doing his YouTube videos every day, and he's very
consistent about it.

Speaker 5 (12:01):
And so you have to have your act together to
do that right.

Speaker 7 (12:03):
You have to have a plan, you have to know
what you're going to talk about, you have to get
the videos done, you have to have them edited. There's
a lot that goes into that, and so you have
to be organized and you have to be consistent about
what you do right.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
But see the other part of that, Richard, that nobody
likes to talk about is everybody is so concerned with
their plan. Everybody's so concerned with how they look that
they sit there and they develop stage four analysis paralysis
and they never move because I'm planning and I want
the stars to align just a certain way. Buckle up, Buttercup,
it is time for you to start moving. I did

(12:36):
not wait until I got to two hundred and ten pounds.
I came waddling through this studio at five hundred and
sixty one pounds and what it was? Yeah, fo sixty
one last time you set.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
You're a big guy path. How did you lose all
that weight?

Speaker 8 (12:47):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
God, krabmagd kempo gallon of water a day, prioritizing protein,
eating carbs, no eating carbs. After three I lift heavyweights
and I put him down swings, being able to chase
after my ten year old and I went through therapy.
I had medically supervised weight loss. I did everything I
possibly could because my doctor told me I was going

(13:09):
to not see my fiftieth birthday if I did not
lose a significant amount of weight, and that scared me.

Speaker 6 (13:15):
Wow, and now you're selling fat free water.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, I am. Drink fatfreewater dot com January twenty twenty six.
Drink fat freewater dot com. It's delicious, it's vegan, it's wonderful.

Speaker 6 (13:27):
But you did say that you had to solve some traumas. Yes,
And I think that that's why a lot of people
are overweight. Honestly, is because if you ever read Vessel Vanderkock,
he says that you trap these traumas in your body,
you have to move to get them out. Yes, you
have to go through therapy to get them out, and
the traumas are what are holding you back.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Absolutely, people don't realize. Here's the thing. Food never lies
to you. Food doesn't cheat on you, Food doesn't tell
you you're not worthy. Food is always there if you
especially in America, if you look at any moment, there's food.
Birthday party cake, huge fat honking cake, ice cream on
top of cake. What happens when you win the soccer game? Pizza?

(14:09):
Everything is food. When my grandmother died, I eulogized her
and I felt miserable. But then we went down to
the church basement and I had the best repass fried
chicken of my life. Everything is food, and we tend
to eat emotionally. We eat our feelings because we don't
know how to process our feelings.

Speaker 7 (14:27):
I'm a total professional. I'm a total stress eater. If
I'm stressed about something, my remedy is to go get
some food. I just get up from the sofa, like
four or five times an evening, and I head over
the refrigerator.

Speaker 6 (14:38):
And well, he likes chocolate.

Speaker 7 (14:40):
That's been my downfall recently. So the issue for me
isn't so much managing the way. It's managing the stress?

Speaker 6 (14:46):
Yep, are you helping people with this journey lose?

Speaker 9 (14:49):
What?

Speaker 6 (14:49):
I know? Derek is helping people get fit? Are you
helping do Yeah?

Speaker 2 (14:52):
I tend to help people who come to me like
I'm not a professional. I don't have any certifications or
anything like that. I've just lost three hundred and forty
three pounds. Are people who are morbidly obese that nobody
is talking their language? Because if I saw Superstar Rockstar
beautiful personal trainer man over here, I'm immediately intimidated. But
most people you saw it just walking around here, seeing

(15:15):
people I've known twenty thirty years who didn't know who
I was. It's different when you know that the guy
has been there, and I had three chins and I
had a seventy two inch waist and a seven X shirt.
I know what that feels like. So I can speak
to the feeling and I can say this is what
I've done. But I think you need to talk to
your doctor about what it looks like, get your blood panel,
do all those things. And so I walk people through

(15:37):
what that process should look like. Should you look at
doing a gastric sleeve? Should you look at doing a
lap band? Or do you want to try and get
it off naturally? What does that mean when you drop
a significant amount of weight? Are you going to do
plastic surgery? There's so many things that nobody talks about
because all they see from a weight loss journey is
six hundred pounds life and that's compacted into an hour.
It took me four years to get here.

Speaker 5 (15:57):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
So yeah, I talk to folks, but not in a
professional capacity.

Speaker 7 (16:01):
Dave Anderson here the business Bully. David, it's great to
have you on the show. You often talk about killing yesterday.

Speaker 5 (16:07):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Killing yesterday is a good friend of mine named BF
and Krumer wrote a book and what happens is we
get stuck on two things. The first is we get
stuck on who we used to be, and we sacrifice
who we could be based on that baseline trauma and
that image of ourselves. The second thing is you also
have to automatically kill the disrespect. And here's what I mean.

(16:31):
A lot of people, just humanity in general, cannot respect
you beyond the level at which they met you.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (16:38):
For example, have you ever sat down as an entrepreneur
and told your family, Hey, I'm starting this business. Oh,
you got a little business that's so cute. Nothing a
little about my business of three hundred employees. What are
you talking about? But they only see little.

Speaker 7 (16:51):
Richard not But when I started the law from my
mom was like what you yourself?

Speaker 5 (17:00):
Can call that especially supportive, but no supportive.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
But you also have to understand that that's a parent's
way of caring. They're doing that based upon their limitations
and how they see the world, and they don't want
you to get scuffed up by it. The world is scary.

Speaker 7 (17:15):
Yeah, so killing yesterday means trying to put all of
that behind.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
You behind you.

Speaker 5 (17:20):
How do you do that?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
You do that by having very hard conversations with the
people who actually matter, who actually care, who know that
they love you, And then you have to have a
very hard conversation with yourself about what you will no
longer tolerate from other people, but most importantly, what you
will no longer tolerate from yourself. Right, I made a
decision every day that I am no longer going to
be fat, not because I cared about how I looked,

(17:42):
I care about how I lived, And I made a
decision that I am never coming back to radio I
love radio.

Speaker 7 (17:48):
Wait a minute, but I'm not kidding.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
I'm retired. This is fun. I can do this, and
I'm going to go right back my couch. But coming
back to the kind of being an executive, coming back
to dealing with top tier talent and everything that comes
with that, I'm not going to do that because it's
not good for my mental health. I made myself promises
that I will not back down from You gotta be
honest and brutally honest with yourself about what you will

(18:16):
tolerate and what you will no longer tolerate, and you
hold yourself to that, and if you can't, you find
accountability to partners who can. And that is the most
important thing.

Speaker 6 (18:26):
Yeah, I did want to ask one question that relates
to the weight loss again that I thought was fascinating
and really nice. Is that you had extra skin, Yes,
and what happened with that extra skin?

Speaker 2 (18:38):
So they took off approximately thirteen pounds of excess skin
from my waists. I had stage four dun laps disease,
meaning my belly dune lapped over my belt and what
happens People don't understand this. In nineteen ninety three, my
father's house burned down almost with me in it. And
the one thing that I learned very early on was
they don't have a lot of skin for African Americans.

(19:00):
Try to take some from your thigh or whatever, but
you've already been so traumatized. So I donated my skin
to causes that help burn victims, so that African Americans
who have been burned can use that skin because I
don't want it back. So instead of just putting it
in an incinerator, they're actually able to take it and
make graphs of it and allow people to get some

(19:22):
of their skin back that they may have had from
second and third degree burned.

Speaker 6 (19:26):
So, yeah, that's awesome itself is.

Speaker 7 (19:29):
A reason to lose weight, right, I mean, that's a
great story. So tell us about business being a blood sport.
We mentioned that earlier in the introduction. You think of
business as a blood sport? What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (19:40):
I will do anything for my family right, just within
the letter of the law, of course. But this is
killer be killed. This is dog eat dog. If you
have ever seen an account executive in radio go for
a new client when another account executive is trying to
go for that client, even if it's the same company,
even if it's the same company. It's a blood sport.
They are fight for it. I know good and well.

(20:01):
I know enough personal trainers. I can't speak for Derek,
but I guarantee you he's fighting for every single client.
He's fighting against everybody, and he's fighting against huge, big
honkin corporations that have infomercials and absolutely everything else. You
are moving towards success every single day, and you have
to do everything it takes within the letter of the
law and being absolutely ethical. Do not take my words

(20:23):
out of context.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
I'm glad you said that.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
I'm I'm going to make sure I speak correctly in
front of attorneys.

Speaker 5 (20:28):
So it's important, No.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
It's important that you do whatever it takes because everybody
else will do whatever it takes. And my whole thing is,
my children have never been homeless, my children have never
been hungry. My wife does not know what it is
to suffer, and I'm going to keep that up because
my family are addicts. They're addicted to heat, they're addicted
to indoor plumbing, they're addicted to three hots and God.
And that's what it means. Because this is a fight

(20:55):
not only for attention, but for credibility and relevance, and
if you're not prepared for that fight, prepare to lose it.

Speaker 6 (21:01):
And I do want to say along those lines. Later
in this show, we have the segment coming up AI
in Business, and I'm going to ask everybody how they're
using AI in their business. And I'm telling you that
is a huge knife in this fight. And so if
you're not using AI to compete in business, you're going
to be in trouble.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Absolutely.

Speaker 7 (21:18):
We're here with Dave Anderson, the business bully. He's an author.
What has been your most recent book?

Speaker 2 (21:23):
My most recent book is called The Real Black Agenda?
Because Black America kept asking me, well, what's the solution, Dave?
You're always talking about problems, what happens to the black community?
What's your solution? So I wrote, you know thirty two thousand.
The solution is very simple. When you look at every
other group in America, they make sure that they are
protecting their culture and they're doing business with each other.

(21:44):
Right if you look at the Deli District, the Diamond District, Chinatown, Koreatown,
Little Italy, in anywhere USA. Group economics is a way
of life. It's not a slogan it's not a hashtag group.
Economics starts not just within your community, but it starts
to hats, to dyning room table. You have to have
family meetings. You treat your children like airs and not liabilities,

(22:06):
and you make sure that you're setting them up. Statistically,
Black Americans tend to start at zero when the matrearch
and patriarch of the family dies, so they're starting from
ground up. The least insured group in the United States
are Black Americans. So we have to get insurance. People
talk about slavery and the Industrial Revolution, but the quickest

(22:28):
way the largest segments of society in this country generated
wealth was through life insurance. We've got to get insured.
We have got to get healthy. We've got to start
making sure we're growing and at least buying organic foods
so that we don't get caught in the valley of
the food deserts.

Speaker 9 (22:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
So those are quick, practical solutions and not go very
very in depth into that. And of course they're sell
it like Jesus, pitch, close, up, sell, repeat, and one
hundred and one ways to get ish done. So I've
got twenty two books and I'm very excited.

Speaker 5 (22:58):
But yeah, which one was the hardest to write.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Who The Real Black Agenda was very hard to write.
I went to make sure I hired three different fact
checkers to make sure everything I was saying was factually sound,
because it's different than writing a business book. I know
business from my perspective, and I'm allowed to have that opinion.
But when you're talking about you know, forty million people

(23:20):
by and large, you got to make sure you're walking
that line you know that is as factual as humanly possible,
and making sure that you're hitting all of those issues
and then providing viable, actionable steps and solutions for that.
So this latest book was definitely the hardest.

Speaker 6 (23:34):
Wow, where are you selling this book?

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Oh? You can get the book right now wherever fine
books are sold, but especially at the Real Black Agenda
dot com.

Speaker 6 (23:41):
Oh good, so you have a website.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
I do. I have a website for Everything dot com
coming in January.

Speaker 7 (23:48):
Well, we're here with Dave Anderson, the Business Bully. We
have to take a commercial break, but we'll be back
with more Passage to Profit And don't forget to experience
more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on
Facebook and x and YouTube, or subscribing to our podcast
anywhere you get your podcasts. Just look for the Passage
to Profit show on any of these platforms, and coming

(24:10):
up we're gonna have intellectual property news and everybody's favorite
secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.

Speaker 5 (24:14):
So stay tuned.

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Speaker 11 (26:15):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again, Richard and
Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 6 (26:20):
And our special guest back from many years ago. Dave
Anderson the business bully.

Speaker 5 (26:26):
But he didn't have a repeat offender, is he not?

Speaker 6 (26:28):
But he didn't bring everything back because he's lost so much.

Speaker 5 (26:31):
Weight, a shadow of his former self.

Speaker 6 (26:35):
Yes, sure, will and determination, No diet, drugs, no, And
just because you don't want to die.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
No, I don't want to die. I that's a pretty
good reason that. And my wife is really really hot.
And the idea of her hooking up with the poll
boy after I've worked so hard just sorry, we're on
the air, you know, say that.

Speaker 6 (26:56):
So I think you've proven that when you set your
mind to do something and lay out a plan, nothing
stops you. So now you're coaching entrepreneurs, yes, are you
trying to teach them to do that same thing, not
necessarily lose weight, but you know, with their business.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Here's what I've learned since the last time I've been
on this show. I was very relentless. I was very
very harsh, and I still am. Don't get it twisted. However,
my wife pointed something out to me that I didn't understand.
She said, Dave, do you know what's different about you
than any other human being I've ever met? I said no,
She said, you had parents that wouldn't let you quit anything,

(27:33):
so you don't know how to quit anything. And I
said okay, and she said no, most people don't have that.
I didn't have that meaning when I was a kid.
If my mother said, well, what do you want to do,
I said, I want to play every brass instrument except
the trombone. She says, okay, cool, go do it, and
then I would do it. If I decided to quit,
I could never pick it up again until I became grown.
And that's how I tackle things. Most people are not

(27:55):
built like me. Most people will go, but they'll stop
at a certain level. I don't know what stopping is.
I know the final level is death, and until they
call me home, I am going to keep going. So
what I've done is I've taken I want what you
want approach. I'm going to help you get to where
you say you want. If when you get there you
realize that this might be too much for you, I'm

(28:17):
taking you too funky, too fast, no problem. However, there's
a lot. I had a client who shall remain nameless
because he's very, very famous, and he said, I want
to make a shift from what I used to do.
He was a pro athlete, and he said, I want
to do stand up and he's very, very funny. I
secured him a multiple six figure comedy tour and after
that he was like, I think I want to go

(28:38):
back to like signing cards and you know, doing photo
ops because this is just too much for me. I
wished him, well, I got my money. I don't want
you to be miserable because the vision that you said
you have I taken and I expanded and it's too
much for you. Everybody doesn't have that. So what I'm
teaching you is this is what you think it is,
this is what it looks like. Do you want that?

Speaker 5 (29:00):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
If you decide you don't, that's cool too. But I
would rather give you what makes you happy. Then what's
going to make you money? If the money that comes
with it is in exchange for your happiness.

Speaker 7 (29:12):
Dave, do you feel like you've discovered your purpose in
life now or are you still searching?

Speaker 2 (29:18):
My purpose in life is to make sure that I
have raised two very beautiful, responsible, functional women who are
self sufficient, not strong and independent, but self sufficient and
understand that they are going to leave the world better
than they found it. Anything beyond that is just a

(29:39):
means to an end for that purpose. Now, from a
professional standpoint, I think my goal and my purpose is
to empower people through my example and the fact that
I am dyslexic. The fact that I have this calculate
and I have a speech impediment and I speak, I
write books, and I help my youngest child with math

(30:01):
and homeschool shows you that there is no limit to
what you can do when you put your mind to something,
regardless of what a piece of paper or a test
result or an exam says. So I want to make
sure that I'm living and walking my talk. That's my
only purpose. It's no longer oh, I want to make
this much money, because I've learned money doesn't make you happy.

(30:25):
I get happy when I walk through that door and
the first person to greet me is my ten year
old and she's daddy, and she's running to me, Honey,
I was just here seven hours ago, but she doesn't care.
It's daddy and she wants my time. The fact that
I can get up when I want to do what
I want to do and be there for every game,
every karate tournament, every single you know video game that

(30:48):
she wants to play with me, I can do I
can die a very happy man.

Speaker 7 (30:51):
Yeah, I mean enjoying your relationships with your family is key.
It's like the most one of the most important things.
I think absolutely. How could your younger self kind of
ever conceptualize where you are now? When you were a kid,
what did you think was going to happen as you
got older?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Do radio date models, move to another town, repeat, that's
what it was, And you realize that gets old very quickly,
and it's very shallow and it's very hollow. But that's
how a kid thinks. When I you know, when I
was a child, I behave as a child, I thought
as a child. When I became a man, I put
away childish things. So, yeah, young twenties met would really

(31:29):
hate forty eight year old me, like, you're lame, you're corny. Yeah,
but we won. You know, you're gonna get there, you know,
like Shakespeare says, second thoughts make liars of us all.
And that's what it is. With growth and maturity. You
realize the things that you thought were goals were just
stepping stones to get you to the real things that
you value in life.

Speaker 6 (31:49):
Have you done the exercise that we encourage everybody to do,
which is to really peel back the layers and find
your ultimate why. Oh yes, yeah, and what is your why?
Is it your family?

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Absolutely, since the last time we were here, my brother Cop,
super guy, wonderful dude. He had a heart valve issue
and he died in twenty twenty two. And we had
all of these plans. We had all these things that
we really wanted to do. I was going to retire
him and he was just going to be my security
and we're going to travel, We're going to build a
security company. It was gonna be great. And God called

(32:24):
him home. There were things that he would say to me,
Like I called him, he'd be like, what are you doing.
I just finished doing a breakfast club.

Speaker 8 (32:31):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Call me when you do see an end click and
I'm like, hey, I just did see ann Cool. Call
me when you're in Forbes. Hey I did Forbes an
entrepreneur magazine in the same month. Yeah, that's that's pretty dope.
I don't have anything else right now, but go do
something bigger. So now now that he is watching over me, like,

(32:52):
it's not just my kids, it's not just my wife,
it's my brother, it's my dad, you know, I'm making
sure that I do all of the things that they
envisioned for me to do to be the best version
of me. I take this gift every single day of
going to bed and waking up as a phenomenal chance

(33:12):
to make an impact on somebody's life and a phenomenal
chance to make sure that all of my family sacrifices
for me to sit here are worth it. So my
ultimate why is my family living in past?

Speaker 5 (33:27):
Isn't the amazing guy? I think they?

Speaker 6 (33:29):
I think people are successful when they're aligned with their why.
You know, yeah, he is amazing.

Speaker 7 (33:34):
And you know, certainly on your own terms, one of
the most successful people I've ever met, So we're very appreciative.
How can people find.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
It's very easy. I'm on all social media platforms at
the Business Bully except for ex, Twitter or whatever Elon's
I'm not sure, but it's da Business Bully on X.
Other than that, you can find me at the Business
Bully dot com, www dot the Business Bully and I'm
doing speaking engagements, I'm touring, I'm doing book signings, and

(34:04):
I just want to be able to help those who
are serious about this entrepreneurial journey and everything that comes
with it, good, bad, and in different You.

Speaker 7 (34:10):
Have so much to offer. I would encourage our audience
to reach.

Speaker 6 (34:13):
Out passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 7 (34:16):
Now it's time for aim business. So Elizabeth, yes.

Speaker 6 (34:20):
So now we are going to our AI in Business segment,
and I want each of our guests and Richard and
myself to tell us one way they're using AI in
their business, and then we're going to have a little
discussion about AI.

Speaker 5 (34:33):
Boy, are we going to have a discussion?

Speaker 6 (34:36):
So I'm going to start with you, Dave Anderson, the
business bully dot com. How are you using AI in
your business? One way?

Speaker 2 (34:43):
One way I'm using it is I'm training it to
understand my voice. So all twenty three of my books
are uploaded. Transcripts of every single interview I've ever done
has been uploaded for two reasons. First, I want that
machine to know how I'm and how that process evolves
over time. And when I am writing my books. One

(35:06):
of the things that has saved me tens of thousands
of dollars is the fact that I will let AI
edit my book and then I'll just shoot it to
my editor, pay her very very small invoice just to
make sure everything is lined up. And I make that
distinction when it comes to making sure that the AI
understands my voice, because what a lot of entrepreneurs don't

(35:27):
do is they don't plan for their death. Upon my death,
six books will be released after that, there will be
books that I would have written, conceptualized the entire nine
based on what I've already put into my AI avatar
and my intellectual property. My AI version of myself is
automatically will to my daughters. They control that and so

(35:48):
that they can continue to pump out Dave Anderson's style books,
you know, for as long as they live and as
long as their kids live. See.

Speaker 5 (35:55):
I think that is so cool.

Speaker 7 (35:57):
I mean, Elizabeth and I talk about the legacy that
you can leave in the world now, YouTube videos, podcasts,
blog posts, whatever it is. At some point, AI would
almost be able to recreate us rights as people. And
if my parents were here and they had had the
chance to put all of that content out there, I

(36:19):
could be talking with them right.

Speaker 6 (36:20):
Now, right complaining about me.

Speaker 7 (36:27):
We would fix that part of the program, maybe a
little bit, but I mean, you think about it, it's
it's almost like a weird, creepy kind of immortality, right,
that could come from that.

Speaker 6 (36:38):
And it's interesting that you say that because I just
read today that Matthew McConaughey gave his voice to AI,
but then it was clickbait. But then if you go
further in the article, he's having some of his work
translated into Spanish and his AI voice will read the
Spanish version. So I thought that was pretty cool. So okay, So,

(36:58):
Melissa Franks melissapranks dot com, what is one way you're
using AI in your business.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
One of the ways is that we similar to what
Dave said, we are uploading all of our sales calls
into AI and asking it to do pattern recognition. So
what it's doing is it's finding hidden objections that are
coming through in those conversations, and we're asking it what
did we not address fully? So when we follow up

(37:25):
with the sales call, we already know here's areas for
you to continue to explore and exploit. And it also
helps us build proposals of like kind. So it's actually
teaching the model how to get us better with follow up,
engaging them and further conversation and handling objections to improve
our close rate.

Speaker 5 (37:44):
Wow, So can I ask a question about that. Yeah,
how easy has it.

Speaker 7 (37:48):
Been to build that model? And are you getting consistent results?

Speaker 3 (37:51):
What's easy is uploading the information. What's challenging is asking
it the right questions and prompts to deliver the information
that's useful for you to take action. And so this
is where the human element, the expertise, and the brain
comes in. If you have somebody doing what we're doing,
for example, that doesn't have any sales skills, has it
successfully sold millions of dollars worth of whatever widgets you're selling,

(38:15):
and then tries to train the model, You're not going
to have the same successes if you have somebody that's
the seasoned sales professional going through that.

Speaker 6 (38:21):
So there are the jobs for the next few years
at least right absolutely trying to figure out these prompts. Yeah, okay,
So Dereck Johnson fit with Derek dot Com. What's one
way you're using AI.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
One of the main ways is market research. So in
terms of as you all know, there's a lot of
trainers in life coaches, and the way I wanted to
stand out was focus on the mind first than the
body and helping people overcome trauma. So when it comes
to making content. Have a lot of ideas, wrote my
first book, but getting it out there knowing what people
are researching and it has helped way more than Google

(38:54):
or just word of mouth and just getting deeper into
the points to say, okay, is childhood's trauma that started
her on this bad dating cycle with him? It was
drinking with her, it was this vice and really peeling
back the layers that do that market research.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
It just gave me a rush.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
So having a decade of training people and coaching them
in the military and after the army, and then using
that information, loading it up into AI and then it's
spitting out to say, hey, based off your experiences the
results you've had, you should focus on this and that
way back and off of what they said is we
all have life experience. So when we put that into
the model first, it's going to give us a better

(39:29):
feedback than somebody that's starting with the blank slate day one,
or like, okay, how about make my first ten K.
That's awesome, But I love the fact that you can
put your life experiences into it and then it gives
you the main pain points to find what are the
main things and how can I repeat this a scale.

Speaker 6 (39:45):
Yeah, and you know what, whether you want it to
get to know you or not, it does.

Speaker 7 (39:50):
It's not probably know more about us than we do.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
Yes, I don't know ourselves.

Speaker 6 (39:55):
That is great. I love doing research with Chat and
the other ones, Perplexit and others. So Richard Gearhargheartlaw dot com.

Speaker 7 (40:03):
I've just had an AI epiphany this week. I've suddenly
decided that I'm going to use AI for as much
as I can, and I want our law firm to
be an AI augmented law firm. I was thinking about
AI driven, but I thought maybe from a marketing standpoint,
that would be too scary for some people, especially we're

(40:24):
coming to us with expectations of confidentiality. But I really
do think AI augmented and so I'm using AI to
try to figure out how to implement AI in.

Speaker 5 (40:37):
The law firm.

Speaker 7 (40:38):
And one of the things that I found out that
I didn't appreciate before is that different llms have different
security levels. So, for example, CHATGPT security is not so
great there, so we don't want to put any client
information or client names into the CHATCHPT because it could
leak out there some way. But Microsoft Copilot, on the

(41:00):
other hand has really high security standards and they call
our business your heart law a tenant by being a
tenant that keeps all of the information within one secure place.

Speaker 5 (41:14):
So now we.

Speaker 7 (41:15):
Have CHATCHEAPT for the outward facing things, and then we
have a copilot that we can use for internal things.

Speaker 5 (41:23):
And so that was a big learning for me.

Speaker 6 (41:25):
So one way I just started using it. As I said,
this segment here, Richard and I are going to turn
into its own podcasts called AI and Business Use Cases
from the Real World, and we're going to interview people
other places too, So look for that podcast to be
coming out pretty soon. We have a segment that's really
good from another show that we did, and I want
to use that as a first podcast. But I want

(41:48):
to make sure that it does well on YouTube, and
so I don't want to just throw it on YouTube.
So what I did was I asked chat GPT. I
had give it the transcript, maximize this for YouTube. Tell
me how to edit this so that I can get
the most listener time and watch time on YouTube, because
that's what's super important on YouTube. Well, it came back with, oh,
you know, cut here all the m's and o's, all

(42:09):
this and Dave as a video editor too. You know
that if you start chopping everything out, you're going to
get this mixed up mess, this mince meat, right, And
so it really takes a human editor who's done this
for a while, and we have a very good editor
who she and I are going to sit down and
go over these suggestions and pick the ones that we
think will be the least disruptive, like not make it

(42:31):
look like a mishmash a junk. Right. So yeah, so
I think we should just kind of discuss here, like
what do you like and what do you think could be.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
Improved or don't like about chat GPT or.

Speaker 6 (42:42):
Just AI in general.

Speaker 7 (42:45):
Well, obviously you have to be really careful about what
you ask. So the prompts, those are the instructions that
you give chat GPT. They have to be pretty clear
and so the more specific you are, the better the
answer would be. So unfortunately chat ChiPT can't read my

(43:06):
mind yet, and so it would be nicer if I
didn't have to think so much about the prompts. But
you really have to think about it.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
It's such a horrible thing that people just think that
because they have a tool that all of a sudden
they're a craftsmen, and it's like anything else. If I
gave you Tiger Woods golf clubs, you're not coming home
with that nice green jacket. If I gave you Michael
Jordan's basketball, you're not going to win six rings. It
comes down to how you use it. One of the

(43:34):
main things that I see to your point when it
comes to editing, like I have one of my YouTube
channels has six hundred and seventy five thousand subscribers. My
other channel is really really it's mince meat. It's tiny,
it's horrible. I don't really do a lot with it.
But the thing that I did do to help entrepreneurs
was I created a company called Xenoth Media Labs, and
it's a bunch of human editors that use AI suggestions

(43:57):
but have practical editing experience, and we create special effects
in those types of things. Because when you look at
the most successful content creators, they all have a style.
Alex Harmosi has a style. Gary Vaynerchuk has a style.
I have a style, and with that it is quick.
It makes sure that we're feeding that you know, two
second attention span and constantly changing images and those types

(44:19):
of things in order to make the message shine a
little bit. Those are things that nobody talks about that
AI is becoming the thing where people like, I'll just
drop it an AI. I'll just put out some opus
clips and that'll be fine. No, oh, my gosh.

Speaker 7 (44:33):
We had one where that the camera was showing on
the back of the guy's during the It just didn't work.

Speaker 6 (44:38):
So listen, Derek, what do you guys think.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
I do love that the more that you speak to it,
it knows your language and dialogue and bouncing off what
you've mentioned with the prompts, the more specific you are.
I realized that it was making my coaching calls smoother
because I'm so used to speaking to the prompts to
do my own work that I would speak to people
at a different way to simplify it for them. So
that way, if we're not talking about high level trauma
healing and psychology, we can break it down to a

(45:02):
third warid level. They get results within thirty minutes and
they could take action, and then I can feed it
back to AI and just love talking to it more
to see, Hey, it's thinking the way that I'm thinking,
and I make sure to say make sure you don't
do x y Z. So with your prompts, I would
challenge people to add an ending part to their prompt
to say do not include this or say that, and

(45:23):
then you'll actually train it to sound like you more
and you can use those prompts you advantage.

Speaker 6 (45:28):
Yeah, what do you think I'll listen? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
So, building on what Derek said, I have a tech background,
so I have been using machine learning for decades.

Speaker 6 (45:36):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
This is just putting a user interface on it that
everybody can use. The biggest mistake that everybody makes is
not showing what the end product of whatever they were
trying to achieve there was. So, for example, if you
are trying to improve your coaching calls, then upload a
coaching call after and say this is based on everything

(45:59):
that you told me, this is what I did, and
then you ask it pick up on the subtle cues,
pick up on my language, you know what could I improve,
and you start to give them the result the report
that you made or the presentation that you gave, and
then it will start to see the tweaks that you
made after it gave you the suggestion. So, in the
case of your YouTube video, take the editing notes back

(46:21):
and give it back to it and say thank you
so much for your suggestions. This is what we decided
to do. Well, that's a great Please remember this for
the future, and then when you come back and ask
it again, it's going to take that into consideration because
that's your style.

Speaker 6 (46:34):
Yeah, Because I want this to be a template, right,
So the first one is a good one. So I
want to get the first one as perfect as possible
and have that be a template for everything going forward
and chat GPT will be very good at handling templates.
But I love your idea. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
It's just like a child. You know, if you teach
a kid how to do something and then they don't
do it exactly right, like load the dishwasher, and you
never correct them. And then every time you go in
and you move the plates and bowls around because you
know it's actually gonna get washed the way that things
are stacked in there. Your AI tools the same way.
If you don't give it the minor corrections, it will
never know.

Speaker 6 (47:07):
Well, I'm glad you brought up. It's just like a child,
because I feel.

Speaker 5 (47:10):
Like i'm anymore. That's good.

Speaker 6 (47:14):
No, I'll say okay, do this, and it'll say okay,
and do you want me to do this? And I'll
say no, do this and I'll say, okay, but do
you want me to do this? And it's like a
kid saying why but why but why. It's like I
can't get it to give me the result that we've
gone through five of its stupid questions.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Right, absolutely, but that's exactly what it is. I mean,
you've got a three year old basically in front of
you with a massive processing power, so you have to
treat it like a three year old.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
Also, starting a new conversation with it can help. I
was deep into a flow one time and business model
and everything was going great, and then it would give
me generic answers like what just happened five layers before that?

Speaker 2 (47:52):
You were great with me?

Speaker 4 (47:53):
And I said, you know what, let me just start
a new chat and I explained it better and it
made me more thorough with my explanation the previous one.
Then I was like, huh, this happened for a reason.
I was kissed off for twenty minutes and I'm excited
where I'm like cool, let me tell my team this
and now we're taking action. But it's because I was
getting pissed off at chet GBT.

Speaker 6 (48:12):
Fights with it, like why aren't you? But Richard had
a good point earlier in the car when we were
talking about if you do a really good prompt like
people that are teaching themselves and just do really good prompts,
you might be able to protect that with intellectual property.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (48:30):
I mean, you know, one of the things that I've
begun to understand is that prompts can be a company's
best intellectual property right. And so ideally you're going to
create prompts for certain situations and then you're going to
save those someplace and so that every member of the
team can use it when it's necessary. Well, there could

(48:51):
be a good case for copyright protection on those prompts,
and that then becomes something that you can sell or
market or not, or you can keep as a trade seat.
If somebody were to leave the company and they were
to take those prompts with them, you would have legal
rights in those because it takes a long time to
develop good ones that really really work and that serve

(49:11):
your needs. So there is an intellectual property angle to this,
and I think businesses should take steps to make sure
that those prompts are protected.

Speaker 6 (49:21):
One thing I heard that was a little distressing, Melissa,
I'm sure you'll agree with this. I don't think the
men will get it. I was watching this webinar, the
taping the recording of it, of these guys talking about
using AI and use cases in business, and the one
guy said, well, even my wife uses it. She might

(49:47):
want a new recipe or something, or learn how to
clean the house. But it was just like we women
got some work to do, girl, I mean.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Efficiency. Let's be honest, the best multitaskers and efficiency makers
on the planet, and so you can best believe that
we also know how to use AI just as good
as everybody else does. We're just not talking about it.

Speaker 6 (50:10):
We're just not talking about it. And the men are
the ones doing all the presentations, and I respect them.
And the men have wonderful ideas like we all, but
the women do too, Russia do and I'm not just
using it for groceryles. So anyway, with that, is there
anything else we need to say to finish off this segment,

(50:30):
anything that comes to mind.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
I would definitely create a syntax or framework so if
you have a team you canner repeat it. So an example,
I use a loom a lot loom dot comery can
do video recording and I'll record my screen And then
I used to just send it to a team and
say here, replicate this and you'll get the same end result.
And it worked, but I said they need more, so
then I would have the video. And I know a
lot of people don't have the attention span as you

(50:53):
mentioned earlier, and they're not going to watch a full video.
So I was like, I know he's lazy, So I'm
going to send a PDF and say you have the
framework in the syntax plus the video. So if you
don't get to jump out Tuesday, that means you didn't
try the PDF or the video. But having that it
inspired me to actually get that intellectual property to then
rinse and repeat for others where we say, hey, here's
hundreds of clients that we've worked with that have done

(51:15):
something similar. We got the result, whether that's cash flow
of results, overcoming traumas, getting into better shape. You could
follow this and we'll sell it to you. You can white
label it, you can do whatever you want with it.
But I love that you mentioned the copyrighting portion of that.

Speaker 7 (51:29):
Yeah, I it's not something that I think people go
to instantly, and you may want to keep it as
a trade secret. You wouldn't necessarily want to register a
copyright because it would be hard to enforce.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
You'd have to.

Speaker 7 (51:41):
Find somebody infringing yet and then but how would you know?
But still you have to see it as intellectual property.
I think that's the first step.

Speaker 6 (51:49):
Well, thank you everybody. This was a great discussion. I
know we're going to invite everybody back on the show
at some point. I'd love to get everybody back in
a year and see all the new ways they're using it,
because it's all going to be totally different by then.
Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearheart.

Speaker 5 (52:05):
Stay tuned.

Speaker 7 (52:05):
We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up soon,
as well as everyone's favorite intellectual property news.

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Speaker 11 (54:12):
Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 7 (54:16):
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(54:40):
subscribe to the Passage to Profit Show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and on the iHeart app. Now it's time for IP
in the news. The Trademark Office canceled fifty two thousand
trademarks gone overnight, and they did that because they were
fraudulently filed.

Speaker 6 (54:58):
It's quite an interesting story. Sorry. I do have to
wonder though. We were just talking about AI and the
Patent Office just sent an email to everybody that's registered
with them. I'm a patent agent, so I get all
their stuff too about how they're going to start using
AI to screen some things in the Patent Office for searches.
But I'm just wondering if they used AI for this.

Speaker 7 (55:18):
Well, this was one of the largest fraudulent trademark filings
in history, and there was a foreign network called the
Seller Growth Network Tech that was running a trademark factory
using stolen attorney credentials, forged signatures, and photoshopped evidence. In
one month, a single USPTO account filed nearly one thousand applications,

(55:40):
sometimes seconds apart. They even created fake buy now websites
with the USPTO called specimen farms to trick examiners into
thinking that products were real. So I think specimen farms
is like even a new word.

Speaker 6 (55:54):
A specimen is a proof that you're using the trademark,
So like a screenshop from your website or something.

Speaker 7 (56:00):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, And so this is like a huge
deal that so many people could file fake trademarks, and
some of the trademarks were just nonsensical. For example, one
was b tq r QTa for furniture. Does that sound
like a trademark to you?

Speaker 6 (56:18):
No, a name that anybody would use.

Speaker 7 (56:20):
Yeah, So anyway, like you said, they probably did use
AI to detect all of this. The sad part is
is that the Trademark Office is hopelessly backlogged, and fifty
two thousand fake trademarks just slows down the process for
everybody else, not to mention crowding out people who might
want similar marks, maybe not quite as goofy as the

(56:41):
one I just mentioned, but they're not able to get
them registered because there's another trademark there, and they get
rejections and they have to pay for that. So I'm
really glad that the Trademark Office found this. I just,
you know, found it amazing. In my twenty years of
doing this, I never heard of anything on such a
grand scale.

Speaker 6 (56:59):
Yeah, it happened before. But the other point that we
were talking about earlier when we were in the car
was that in order to file a US trademark, you
have to be a United States attorney. It used to
be foreign attorneys could file trademarks in the US, but
now they have to go through a US attorney, So
they just stole all these attorneys.

Speaker 12 (57:15):
You know.

Speaker 7 (57:15):
I think the attorneys agreed to it, but they didn't
know that their credentials were being abused. So we were
actually approached to do this, but we turned them down,
and after this I'm glad we did so. Anyway, now
it's time for our presenters.

Speaker 6 (57:28):
Our next presenter is Melissa Franks and we have Derek
Johnson coming up. Melissa, you are an on call chief
operating officer, but you weren't always that. You built this
business up. Can you tell us your story and how
you did this.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
I'm an accidental entrepreneur. That's how I coined myself. I
began as an administrative assistant inside of one of the
largest retailers in the world, and my curiosity grew my career.
So I was never really satisfied with this is just
the way we do things. I wanted to know why.
I was a bit like a small child that was

(58:03):
going to ask that question over and over again, and
that led me to learn that my nine months in
finance was a really bad decision. And then I went
to technology and operations, and eventually I found myself in
financial services, where I had the opportunity to sell multiple
multi billion dollar businesses. I got to learn all about

(58:25):
M and A and how to take things apart and
put them back together. And then my last three years
inside of the corporate ecosystem, I was the chief operating
officer of a startup was completely independent and was able
to do a couple of things there, one turn around
a half a billion dollar loss and grow the business

(58:46):
from fifty million to three hundred and fifty million dollars.
And when I left corporate, the only reason I did
it was because things were running smoothly and I was bored,
and so I a monkey, one hundred percent, like, I
can't do this for the next twenty years. It's been
a fun ride, guys, but you're in You're in good shape.

(59:07):
So I went to a startup which failed after nine months.
I think we've all heard that story about a million times,
and was left as a newly single mom with three
teenage boys and no income and a severance package she
thought she'd been smart to negotiate that didn't actually materialize
and had to figure out what to do. And so

(59:27):
I phoned a friend that needed a fractional COO. She
said yes, she was my first client. And here we
are two years later with a thriving business that has
hit the seven figures and as a team of fifteen wow,
and we help small business owners get unstuck, break plateaus,
turn their businesses around, and harness massive growth to realize

(59:49):
their potential and dreams.

Speaker 7 (59:50):
Well, first of all, what does a COO do as
opposed to maybe a CFO or a CEO.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
That's a great question because the answer is everything except
for finance and law. Really, what I say is it
a COEO is a bit of a chameleon. COO's responsibility
is to be strong where the CEO is weak. So
what we do is we provide complementary skills which allows
the CEO to do exactly what they're best at, or,

(01:00:16):
in this case, because we're talking small business, the owner
or the founder. We are not CPAs and we are
not legal professionals. So while we know a good amount
about business finance and a good amount of contract law
and some other things, we quickly defer to those that
are licensed and know how to do those things. And
so what that looks like is for any given business
as COO can be, sales and marketing can be, technology

(01:00:41):
can be operations with the systems and the processes, HR,
people management, and really what we do as we come
in and say, owner, what would you like to do
all of the time? If you could do that all
day long and love your business and love the time
that you're spending there, what would that be? And then
we do all the rest.

Speaker 7 (01:01:00):
Sounds great, sounds ideal, you know, to have that support
and what attracted you to the COEO role.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
I like to solve complex problems and operations is really
the spinal cord of a business. It's where all of
the communication gets wired and sent, so every single part
of the business is doing exactly what it's supposed to
do when it's supposed to be doing it at the
right time, and when operations is humming really well. It's

(01:01:30):
just like your central nervous system where you don't even
realize that you're giving yourselves commands to move your feet
forward as you're walking. You're just walking. So what I
realized very very quickly is that as sexy as marketing is,
as innovative and fun as technology, is what actually steers
the business, what actually determines if you're going to be
half a billion dollars in the hole or profitable three

(01:01:52):
hundred and fifty million dollars and reducing your prices while
you do it for your end clients is how well
your business is running systemically over time. And that's what
I wanted to do.

Speaker 6 (01:02:03):
So do you find it hard to convince the business
owner to make some of these changes? Like you come
in and you're seeing it from outside and you're like, Okay,
they definitely could do this differently, and the business owners like,
but I built the successful business.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
It's really fascinating because often somebody comes to us in
a full blown panic attack. They're overwhelmed by what's happening
in their business and they believe that they know what
the problem is. And so the very first thing that
we do, before I give them the hard truth about
what we have to fix and what part of their

(01:02:38):
baby is ugly, is we spend a lot of time
talking about why they started the business and what we're
working towards, what does their life look like when they
get there, whatever that is, Because nobody started a business
to run a business. I do not know one single
person that started a business because they're like I want
to be CEO and do all of the administration and

(01:02:59):
all people and look at all the reports. Nobody wants
to It's because you had a passion about doing something
and you wanted to be able to do more of that.
And so we once we know where they want to,
where they want to live, where they want to go,
that becomes the north star. And then every decision and
recommendation we make is it going to get us closer
to that or further away. So when we come in
and we say, hey, the way that you're managing your

(01:03:22):
sales process is leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.
And I know you want to take every call and
you want to touch every human and that's just you're
not the best salesperson.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
What she's saying is the absolute too. Sometimes people think
there's an old Wayne's skit on in Living Color where
they talk about this Jamaican family that do everything and
it's like, I'm the butcher of the bake and a
candlestick maker. I'm the air traffic controller and the pilot
at the same time. You cannot do that and be successful.
She's one thousand percent right. But everybody thinks their business
is their baby, And I tell them simply, if I

(01:03:58):
was a genie and I could turn your business into
an actual baby. And you've got three other kids, and
I say, one of them has to die who goes
well the business baby, that that's the one that doesn't
exactly you would never kill your child, but you have
to be willing to kill what's not working in your.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Baby one hundred percent. So it's it's just a matter
of trade offs. And so what I say often is
that data does not do drama. And so the first
thing that we do is get into the business so
that we can look at the data, and then that's
how we start making decisions. And then it just becomes
a matter of Look, your conversion rate, if we're talking

(01:04:34):
sales is ten percent, Sally's is seventy. Who should be
selling more often? Sally?

Speaker 6 (01:04:40):
I agree one hundred percent. It used to be when
I went back, when I was in corporate, they tried
to make everybody be good at everything and co workers
and we sit around and say, why don't they just
let people focus on what they do best and just
let them have that and do it. And I think
that makes an organization stronger. And then you have to
have people too that are like, well he's good at sales,

(01:05:01):
but that's because he's stupid. I mean, you can't have
people to act like that right that they're superior because
they're better at tech than at sales or something.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
Leaning into your team member's strengths is critical. That's also
how you build culture in your organization. When you have
the right person doing the right role because they're the
right fit and they have the right skill set, then
everything works better. And so what that also means, and
this is where entrepreneurs struggle, is that you're going to
pick wrong Some of the times, you're going to pick
the wrong person. They're going to oversell themselves, You're going

(01:05:30):
to get into a real life situation where you're going
to have to make a bad call. The reality is
is that nobody comes to work to do a bad job.
So you're feeling bad, they're also feeling bad. They know
what you know what. Everybody knows it and so does
the rest of the team. And so where corporate misses
the mark, and I really, honestly, after being in corporations forever,
could just say everybody, go make sure you have some

(01:05:52):
gallop strength finders trainers inside your organization and make them
take all those things, because that tool tells you what
each person's strengths are, and if you put them into
a role where you could exploit their strengths, you're going
to have maximum productivity, efficiency, and police satisfaction and retention
is going to be through the roof.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
And that can be true in small business and it
can be true in large business. And instead of trying
to change somebody, just leverage what they're best at. And
if you can't use those skills, that's okay, wish them
well and introduce them to somebody that can.

Speaker 7 (01:06:22):
So we're here with Melissa Franks, the COO Extraordinaire, informing
us on a very good level about the value of COO.

Speaker 5 (01:06:30):
Dave, do you have any comments?

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
So, the one thing that I found fascinating when we
were talking off air is that you put fractional coos
in with businesses. What are the top three things you
look for in a fractional COO and how does that
work for you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
So the first one absolutely out of the gate is
emotional intelligence, because in the small business space, your business
is going to make or break your life. Literally, the
success of your business means putting a food on the
table or not. So that's number one. The second thing
with my business is been there, done that can taste it,

(01:07:06):
test it, touch it, reference check it. COO credibility. So
every COO on our team has worked at a company
significantly bigger than anybody that we're going to ever work with,
and we know that their credentials are legitimate and they
have the results to back it up. And then the
third for us is culture fit inside of our business.
So one of the things that we offer is a

(01:07:26):
very specific set of core values, which means that all
of the businesses that we work with align with those
values as well, and so we have to make sure
that the people that are coming in are aligned because
that's brand integrity and that ensures the quality of our delivery.
And then if I can add one more bonus one,
it's the willingness and the ability to do real work.
What we don't do is place coos that are going

(01:07:49):
to be talking heads. What we place is coos that
will advise and strategize and then actually make it happen
in the business, even if it means they're rolling up
their sleeves and doing the work. And those are really
the things that we look for.

Speaker 5 (01:08:00):
That's a great list.

Speaker 7 (01:08:02):
So just to share a little bit, We've recently put
together what we call a c suite team, and we
have a fractional CEO, a fractional COOO, and a fractional CFO.

Speaker 5 (01:08:14):
So the CFO handles the fust CMO and a CMO.

Speaker 6 (01:08:18):
She's always been there.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
I have always been there, so you're but she's also
on the team.

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):
That I get to sit on the meetings with them.

Speaker 7 (01:08:28):
And so we're trying now to kind of build the organization,
put some more strength in the structure and the administration
for the reasons you suggest, because we really can't grow
unless we have a solid base and a solid administration.
But one of the things that I find challenging is
kind of letting go and letting these team members do.

(01:08:51):
I haven't achieved the level of trust yet that I
probably would like to achieve. Most of what I'm seeing
I agree with, but there's still kind of you to
the organization. The CEO has been with us for a year,
the other two are just recently within the last couple
of months, and I get concerned that things aren't going
to go right or they're going to miss critical pieces

(01:09:12):
of information, and as Elizabeth can vouch, I've been stressing
over this a little bit recently, so I.

Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
Don't know any advice. I'd like to hear it from
the other side.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
So Brene Brown has this really great story that she
tells and this is how she does leadership training. So
she actually has a jar Annibal of marbles, and the
way that trust is built is by filling up that
jar with marbles, one marble at a time. And what
that looks like when you're talking about a COO is
them saying they're going to take something off your plate

(01:09:45):
and them actually doing it, and you can drop a
marble in the jar. So for you, it might be, Hey,
that employee needs to be on a personal development plan
and I don't have the time to check in with
them every two days to make sure they're getting things done,
and the COEO takes it and then you watch that
they're actually following up, they're working the plan, you're seeing
improvement of the employee. Marble goes in the jar. The

(01:10:05):
next one would be we can't track our data. We
don't have any understanding about the inquiries that are coming
in for new clients. What do we do? COO says,
I got it. I'm going to give you a report
every week. You get their report week after week after
week after week. It's another marble in the jar. So
instead of having immediate trust, because it's a little bit
crazy to trust a stranger immediately, especially with your business,

(01:10:26):
it's taking baby steps, and those small steps and they
can happen really really fast. We guarantee results within the
first thirty days for exactly this reason. We do two
weeks on boarding and then we say, okay, here's what
we can get done in this very first month. Can
we align on it? And the reason that we do
that is because we want to drop as many marbles
in the jar as soon as we can, and that's
by us delivering results. And so I think for you,

(01:10:47):
you've had a lot of changes. So the key is
to look for the marbles and and if the marbles
aren't moving into the jar, then it might be that
you just have somebody that maybe isn't the best fit.
And that's okay, because sometimes you've got a date you
to find who you want to marry.

Speaker 6 (01:11:01):
They're rolling very very slowly towards the jar.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Well, that could be a problem in and all this
help I mean, but that's one of the challenges. It's
one of the things that differentiates us so much is
that speed and small business is the differentiator. And when
you come out of a corporate environment, you can get
very comfortable to checks and balances and lacksadaisical movement. Corporate
moves really really slow, and so sometimes the people that
have the credentials don't have the ability to move with speed.

(01:11:30):
And so that's why we put these very specific targets
and marks in place in our business and we check
for it. That's one of the quality things that we
look for. Can you move with speed because you don't
have time to waste.

Speaker 6 (01:11:41):
So, Melissa, how much history should the COO find out?
Because we really haven't told our people some of the
history that affects kind of the way we feel about things.
Now should they hear like from when it started a
story or just do they want to start fresh now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
My strategy, and this is what I say to every
new client, whether I'm working with them or one of
my people is working with them, is that if in
the first two weeks we are not making you incredibly
uncomfortable because we've gotten into the closet, we're shoving all
the stuff. We've crawled into your attic and found all
of those things that you don't want people to know.
We found the hidden Christmas presents, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We're

(01:12:18):
not doing our job. In order for our COO to
be effective, we have to know everything. We have to
know the skeletons. We have to know where the bodies
are buried. We have to know where the clothes are
that don't fit anymore. They don't want anybody to know
that you have. We need to know all of that
stuff because otherwise we can't make informed decisions. We're actually
helping steer your business blindfolded, and you always have the
upper hand and you will always do it better because

(01:12:40):
you have information and context that we just don't have.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Listen, I'm with you one hundred percent. Two things I hate.
The trust thing, I absolutely do. Here's what I mean.
When I was a kid, my father's house caught on fire.
I had to trust strangers to put the fire out
and get me out of the house. Right when my
mother's Toyota Corolla got taken, I had to trust the
cops to come and find the thief. We trust people blindly,

(01:13:03):
every single day. The thing that I tell my clients,
and I'm with you on strategy, culture, everything like that.
What I tell my clients is I trust the paperwork.
Don't trust me. Trust the paperwork. If I don't do
what I say I'm going to do, sue me. You
know how many times I've been sued?

Speaker 5 (01:13:16):
Zero.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
You want to know why I do what I say
i'm going to do, And that's the thing. We've got
to stop being so emotional about it. Passionate, yes, and
strategically Cassius. Yes, But a lot of times, a lot
of entrepreneurs, you included, love you as I do, are
worried because, oh my lord, I've been burned before. Now
I'm on this dating app again and I just don't
know what to do. No, that's why you have things

(01:13:39):
in place. I hire fast and I fire faster. I
am not emotional about it.

Speaker 6 (01:13:44):
Well, that's an excellent point.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
But you got to ask her the most important question.
Do you know the most unique feature of her business?
She primarily deals with women entrepreneurs? Why that? And why
is it such a niche?

Speaker 6 (01:13:56):
Could it be because men think women don't know anything.
My life actually uses.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
Tag That's a great question. I was a c suite executive,
I didn't have peers inside of my business, but I
had developed a peer group of very accomplished, sea sweet
female executives, many of which left corporate jobs during COVID,
and they all started their own thing, and everybody, by
the time they hit the nine month mark had failed.

(01:14:21):
And I went to everyone individually, I'm like, what happened?
You're incredibly gifted. You're like, these women were incredibly smart
and highly accomplished. And their answer was, every single time
wrong partnership, trusted the wrong person, went too far with
the wrong idea and missed the mark, didn't have somebody
to advise me along the way. And I'm like, this
is just got to stop. More women need to own

(01:14:42):
portions of the entrepreneurial PI. I have a passion for
seeing more small businesses not fall over the five year
cliff and fail at that point. And so we're going
to take very real, credentialed professional people and we're going
to bring them to the small businesses so that they
can play just like the big boys and girls in
corporate do and when really big. And that's why my

(01:15:04):
team I was joking with them the other day, I
said we're like a masked a bunch of corporate dropouts.
We have a new person joining us next week from
pricewaterhouse Coopers, and she's coming to us after a very long,
storied management consulting career because she wants the ability to
do real work that provides real value to real humans,
that can move the needle. And she came to us.

(01:15:26):
We didn't go out looking for her, and that really
means that we're doing something good in this space, and
that's one of our missions here.

Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
That's great.

Speaker 6 (01:15:32):
Yeah, this has been Melissa Franks Melissa Franks dot com.
If you need a fractional coo, her approach sounds wonderful
to me.

Speaker 5 (01:15:40):
You probably need one.

Speaker 6 (01:15:42):
If you think you need one, you need one. Go
to her website, look at what she can do for you,
and then contact her.

Speaker 5 (01:15:48):
Passage to Profit with Richard, Analyst deer Hart.

Speaker 6 (01:15:50):
Derek Johnson Fit with Derek dot Com. Now we've all
been studio.

Speaker 5 (01:15:57):
Ready to go.

Speaker 6 (01:15:58):
Derek's a trainer and is in like the best shape
of anybody's life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
I don't care.

Speaker 6 (01:16:03):
Who it is, right, So Derek tell us your.

Speaker 4 (01:16:06):
Story A little bit about my story. Who you see
now is not who I was My father's African American,
he's from Mississippi. He's a farm boy. So the work
ethic came from my dad's side. My mother's German, and
if you know German mothers, they're in your face. So
our household was ran like a business. There was no hugging,
there was no I love you not to be sad
on morbid. But it just ran like a business, ran

(01:16:27):
like a sports team. And so I grew up the
mixed kid. I was skinny, I was insecure, I was bullied.
I had a big gap, I had a stuttering issue.
I was just the epitome of oh he's a little
pretty boy, let's all beat him up. And so my
parents had their own traumas, so alcoholism ran on both sides,
so they just repeated the generational curses. So I was
a quiet kid getting beat up, abuse at home by family,

(01:16:49):
and then also in school. And so my step one
into personal development was changing my physicality, where I said
enough is enough, not just to fight the bully, even
though I mean that did happens.

Speaker 5 (01:17:00):
But that time period was well, there's another one over here.

Speaker 4 (01:17:08):
And so that kid, I say, you know what, I
don't have control of my reactions to family or people.
I need to be more confident within myself. So it
started as fitness to elevate the physique, but more so
to know that whatever I said my mind to, I
will achieve and I will outwork anybody. So having that
ability to say, you know what, I feel like, there's
a gift here. So my job now is to help

(01:17:30):
people identify their gift outside of fitness, but in terms
of what is on the other side of your trauma.
When you sit down on your bed at night or
your couch, you stare at the wall or the ceiling
every single day at night. What is that thing that's
pulling you that you keep saying next week January first,
I'm going to do it. Then, So we unpack that
and say, all right, why did you push it away?

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
Abusive relationship, you got bullied as well, emotional eating. There's
some hidden layer going into the closet, into the attic
pulling that stuff out.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
What is that?

Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
So we get to the route, and that is why
my clients get amazing results. It's not the workouts, it's
not the coaching calls. We just get to the root
that they usually want to suppress. She has the body,
but why she have two divorces. He has the house
and the family, But why is he constantly drinking and
doing drugs? What is that real reason? So that's my
favorite part. So to connect it, the insecure kid became

(01:18:23):
the man that got into the army to face his
fear of heights, speaking and so forth. And then I
overcame that and I just fell in love with helping
people reconnect with themselves. So I don't necessarily change people.
I just get them reconnected to who was always there
before the trauma, before the business failure, before the rejection,
before the embarrassment, because that's usually when people drift and say,

(01:18:43):
you know what, God didn't have it in his plans
for me. And I think that's the most weakest cop
outline somebody could say. I say, no, you gave up quit.
You were that close at the tipping point.

Speaker 7 (01:18:53):
So, Derek, how did you overcome the trauma that came
from being bullied?

Speaker 5 (01:19:00):
What was it that happened?

Speaker 4 (01:19:02):
Great question? So I realized that I was running on empty.
I had no faith. So up until like the age
of thirteen, I consider myself personally an atheist. I just
was that kid. I was angry Why did bad things
happen to good people? If these people didn't do this
to my mother, she wouldn't beating me. Why did my
dad experience that he acts out that way towards me
because other things happen and they're great people. And I

(01:19:23):
was just angry, and I was like, why did this
happen to my friend? Why did this happen to my oma?
My grandma in Germany?

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
So I was just confuse.

Speaker 4 (01:19:29):
So Number one would be my faith because I realized
as a child and teen, I was running off of anger.
I was always a positive outwardly, but internally I was
like broken and lost. And everybody's in her child who
wants two things? We want to be heard and understood?
And I never felt heard and understood in my upbringing.
So I wanted to make other people feel that way.
So number one will be faith. Number two would be

(01:19:51):
the mindset. What information are you putting into your mind?
Like what are you listening to, what are you watching?
What are you reading? Because that's going to affect the
seeds that are playing, Like I don't watch the media
at all. Well, my friends asked me, hey, did you
see this? Like I flew here from Florida, They're like,
sure you want to fly. It's like I had no issues,
Like I don't watch the media at all. And so
the three things will be one faith, two mindset being

(01:20:13):
aware of what I'm putting into the mind. And then
third is what am I consuming? Is it fueling my body?
Is it energizing me? Or is it just masking an
aggression or some other emotion to escape reality or to
push it to the side. So faith, mindset, and then
also fitness with what we consume.

Speaker 6 (01:20:30):
Well, I have to agree, and to Dave, I've always said,
because I struggle with my weight, but it's not physical,
it's mental exactly. It's always mental. The brain is in control.
So if you can get through your traumas and figure
that out, Dave.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
So when you look at the big overarching thing that
you do that separates you from other trainers, what is it?
Is it the lifestyle, is it the mindset? What is
the thing that makes people say, you know what, I
gotta get fit with Derek.

Speaker 4 (01:21:02):
That's a great question. I appreciate that we get to
the core of why they gained the weight or we're boleimic,
or why they struggle in some area. We get to
the roots, so all people get to the root. So
I like to say therapy works, it's very effective, but
there's only so many times that we can talk about
the past. So my intent we talk about it maybe
the first two sessions, but then we focus on the outcome.

(01:21:23):
So I pride myself on I love when people come
to me and they're like, I've had a therapist for
three years. My motivation side says, well, what the hell
did you have them for? Because you should be over
this by now. So I come in and say, hey,
I'm glad you had one, but let's unpack it and
overcome this. So getting to the root to help them naturally,
holistically overcome that so they don't go backwards in terms

(01:21:43):
of that's not their identity anymore. They've been holding on
to I'm just a man that struggles with dating. I'm
just the woman who did this. I'm just whatever preconceived
notion or label somebody else places upon them.

Speaker 6 (01:21:55):
Do you have a success story without naming names that
you can tell us about.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Yes, for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:22:00):
So I had one of my clients.

Speaker 4 (01:22:02):
She had a severe crippling social anxiety where she always
had to be on the phone in public and it
was just to not make eye contact with people. But
the underlying issue was physical, mental, emotional, spiritual sexual abuse
in the past, and that was like a coping mechanism
in the protective space of when I'm shopping at Target,
I need to be on the phone or act like
I'm talking to somebody because I don't like looking at strangers.

(01:22:24):
And so it was affecting her sales and leadership. She
would crush it on numbers, was a great person, but
the small things going to target by herself to publics
would affect her. And the more that that would affect her,
it would affect her for the entire week of every
leadership conference or sales call. And I said, we got
to get to the root of that. And so once
we were able to unpack that and get her that confidence,

(01:22:47):
what was the missing piece? She didn't feel herd or understood.
So I said, we need to fill your own cut first,
because we are all our own source of happiness. The
kids can add to it. A beautiful girlfriend, she can
to our pitbull can add to a traveling I came
here from Florida. That stuff is a great experience. It
adds to it. But identifying where was the disconnect when

(01:23:09):
you stop being happy and pouring into your own cup.

Speaker 5 (01:23:11):
So we focus on that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
So just proud that an individual can overcome those things
so then it doesn't spill and they don't just neglect
it and just look forward to after work having the
drink to take the edge off. For anything else to
take the edge off.

Speaker 5 (01:23:24):
Well, we're here with Derek Johnson. Where can people find.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
You, Derek?

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
They can find me a fit with a Derek dot com.

Speaker 5 (01:23:30):
So I wanted to ask you a question.

Speaker 7 (01:23:32):
How do you manage the coaching piece or the counseling
piece with the fitness piece. We've talked a lot about
the counseling that you do, but then how does that
match with the workout routines?

Speaker 4 (01:23:44):
Great question. So the first thing I'll do is we
lower your cortisol level, your stress hormones. So a lot
of people are go getters, the are hustlers and all this,
but they're still bloating or they're still angry. I'm like,
you got a six pack, but you can't keep a
relationship to save your life, or you got the money,
but you can't do this that. So we get to
the root pretty quick and then their body changes they're like, dude,

(01:24:05):
all last ten pounds in a week and a half
and I didn't even do a crazy dot. I'm like, yeah,
you had to unpack a lot. I was like, you
were chasing the attention, the validation. So we lower cortisol
first naturally the stress hormone, and then your body can
fondly operate. Digestion is better. And the second thing I'll
focus on is teaching people that your gut is your
second brain. So what you eat affects your mental health,

(01:24:27):
and how you think affects your gut. And so most
people they're disconnected because I want to take the edge off.
So I'm going to eat or drink this. Okay, now
your gut feels it tomorrow. You have depression, anxiety, and
then they label themselves, I just have anxiety, I have
add I, PTSD, have.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
All this stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:24:43):
And I just pause and say, do you or are
you just constantly consuming things that are making you feel
that way? Because your body does that before the mind
does it, like they're always tense or scared or whatever
the body language is. So we get to the root.
So I focus on eighty percent mental, twenty percent physical.
I've been saying body transformations of clients. But it's because
they got free. They're not just looking for the validation

(01:25:06):
to make somebody jealous.

Speaker 7 (01:25:07):
So do you come up then with workout routines that
are very specific to the person that you're working with.
I would think that's part of the coaching.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
Yes, one hundred percent. So some of my clients they
have social anxiety at first to go into the gym,
but I know eventually they'll want to get into it.
Some they love to be outdoors, so I'm here to
meet people where they're at and make it personalized for them.
And I have some they love training at home. I'd
lose my mind trying to train at home. We did
that during quarantine. There's enough of that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
So in general, I meet you.

Speaker 4 (01:25:35):
Where you're at and say, okay, let's focus on three
days a week, let's go hiking, one day at home workout.
Then eventually, if you feel confident, we'll get into the gym.
So to answer your question, one hundred percent, it's just personalized.

Speaker 5 (01:25:45):
So you have a new book, tell us about that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
So my new book is called Mission Ready, Prepare your
Mind and Body for the Battlefit of Life. It is
a self help book. So if you've ever dealt with trauma, faith,
struggling with past things, it dives deep, and at the
end of every chapter I have writting prompts. So essentially
some would consider that shadow work, but they take themselves
in a journey to do therapy on themselves. So the

(01:26:09):
whole intent is to get you mission ready and basically,
let's unpack things on your own time and get your
power back, because we've given up our power to too
many things, too many people, too many mistakes or failures.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
I tell people all the time, the one thing that
I think is really, really horrible is that we don't
talk enough about food addiction because and again respect to
anybody who's dealing with any type of addiction, but Derek,
you know as well as I do, that it's different
than alcohol. It is different than drugs because when you're
addicted to the one of two things you need to survive.

(01:26:43):
How do you get somebody to understand moderation? How do
you get somebody to understand nutrition? How do you get
somebody to understand putting the emotion out of sustenance and
maintaining themselves?

Speaker 5 (01:26:56):
Great question.

Speaker 4 (01:26:57):
I focus on not looking at food as good or
bad because in their mind. They first compartmentalize, oh, my
coach is going to make me take.

Speaker 5 (01:27:04):
A picture of my fridge.

Speaker 4 (01:27:05):
Then I gotta go on my pantry and they're already
overwhelmed and like, no, let's just start with this. What
are you missing first? So we focus on hydration and
minerals first, because most physical and mental health issues start
from severe dehydration and mineral deficiency. So most people are
running on the constant roller coaster of the triple threat
of caffeine high drop, sugar high drop, and then you

(01:27:28):
crave the carbs and you drop again. You're like, now
need another coffee. So he's this has been a two
cup show for me. So food is not good or bad.
We just have to eat moderation. But also, let's get
you hydrated and minerals first to give them the win
of I actually feel refreshed, my skin's looking better, I'm

(01:27:49):
not having those cravings whatever those things are for that person.
So first it's not good or bad hydration and minerals,
and then getting away from the triple entendre of sugar
high crash, caffee or carbs, and then realizing like you're
running off of those three but you don't have enough water, minerals,
or protein, so we focus with the basics first.

Speaker 7 (01:28:09):
Sometimes it's easy to forget that the mind and body
are intertwined to such a large degree.

Speaker 5 (01:28:14):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:28:15):
One of the things that I've been working on lately
is trying to get more sleep. I do pretty good
with the exercise, not as well with the diet as
I'd like to, but getting enough rest and waking up
feeling reasonably good in the morning makes a huge difference
in my life. And I find that the exercise makes
me sleep better. Right, So it's all interrelated, And you know,

(01:28:36):
it's great that you're bringing us to people and helping
them with the mental part, which I think is obviously
the most difficult.

Speaker 5 (01:28:42):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:28:43):
I appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:28:44):
What kind of minerals are people normally low on?

Speaker 4 (01:28:47):
The main thing they're low on or the trace minerals,
so potassium, magnesium, also fiber iron. So a simple tip
that I give people is every morning, in your first
cup or glass of water, I recommend it having spring water.
The number one thing I recommend is one teaspoon of
pink Amalayan salt in your first glass of water. Just
stir it up for some that's too salty, and I

(01:29:09):
just I make them pause. I'm like, you used to
take shots alcohol to the face, like you can take saltwater.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
They'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (01:29:15):
So adding that mixing it starting their day with the
minerals first. If you do that daily consistently, it costs
you between seven ten bucks for a big bag. You're
gonna feel more stable you're blood sugar. You're also going
to feel a better pump when you're actually lifting weights
because of blood flow. Besides that, if somebody does have diabetes,
they'll notice that their blood sugar doesn't spiker drop as much.

(01:29:36):
But front loading their morning with more hydration and more
minerals first and just testing that out to have their
own experience.

Speaker 7 (01:29:43):
Yeah, I usually do my workouts like at six am,
and probably having that salt would probably help on a
lot of levels.

Speaker 5 (01:29:51):
Right, So I love.

Speaker 4 (01:29:52):
That idea one hundred percent.

Speaker 5 (01:29:54):
We're here with Derek Johnson.

Speaker 6 (01:29:56):
How do people find you again?

Speaker 4 (01:29:58):
People can find me a fit with Derek dot Co
or they can search Derek Johnson on social media. The
kind of content is just in your face and make
you think. We get right to it and they're like, oh,
he's talking to me. So there's no fluff, but I'm
here to empower people, so fit with Derek dot Com
if they're interested in and help to get to the
next level and getting unstuck.

Speaker 6 (01:30:16):
Okay, definitely look that up. So listeners who are listening
to the Passage to Profit Show with Richard and Elizabeth Garhart.
Our special guest today Dave Anderson, the Business Bully. We
have just had amazing conversations with three super super great
entrepreneurs here, but now it's time for a break.

Speaker 12 (01:30:33):
I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of
lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
If you've been.

Speaker 12 (01:30:39):
Involved in a serious car, truck, or motorcycle accident or
injured at work, you have rights and you may be
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(01:31:00):
to win your case, and they're so good they stake
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So if you've been in a serious car, truck, or
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Speaker 9 (01:31:18):
Eight hundred four nine two seven oh one four, eight
hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight hundred
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four nine two seventy fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:31:33):
It's Passage to Profit.

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.

Speaker 6 (01:31:38):
Noah Fleischmann is our producer here at Passage to Profit,
and he just has a way of putting his best
memories in perspective.

Speaker 8 (01:31:45):
A good friend of mine was sitting with his six
year old granddaughter the other day. They were admiring a
butterfly together. It was adorable. She said, Granddad, what makes
the butterfly's wing so pretty? He said, honey, I couldn't
tell you, but I know that there are people who can.
If you ask your school teacher, if you ask your
school librarian, they can send you to the books and
the information you need that'll answer all of your questions
for almost anything. All you have to do in this

(01:32:08):
world is ask If more people in this world asked
more questions, it would be a better place to live.
That's When our dad walked in holding the invoice from
the garage on the car repair, he said, hey, Dad,
look at this. I don't think they charged me for
the oil change. Got to call them and ask them why.
He said, don't you dare just pay it and be
done with it. Don't ask a pile of questions? What

(01:32:29):
is this with the questions? If less people asked less
questions in this world, it would be a better place
to live. You know, when I was that little girl's age,
a lot of people used to tower over me, saying,
don't trust anybody over thirty. I think I know why
those people never want to ask any questions. It's a
wonder they know anything.

Speaker 11 (01:32:46):
Now more with Richard and Elizabeth Passage to Profit.

Speaker 6 (01:32:50):
Our special guest today, Dave Anderson, and now it is
time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. So Dave Anderson,
the business Bully, the business bully dot com. What is
the secret you can share with our audience?

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Okay again you can, and Derek will attest to this.
You can run twenty six point two miles on a
treadmill and then when you get off, guess what. There's
no trophy, there's no metal there's no accolades. You just
ran in place, so you did all of this work,
but you have nothing to show for it. In other words,
if you don't have a system, if you're not in

(01:33:26):
the right environment, if you're not doing the things that
you want, all of the hustle does not matter. Systems
will automatically beat hustle when hustle can't perform at the
level you needed to. And no one wants to have
that conversation because everybody has this glorified hustle mentality and
hustle culture absolutely sucks. So that is one of the

(01:33:48):
biggest secrets that I've learned that I've been trying to
impart with everybody to come across.

Speaker 6 (01:33:52):
Well, thank you so, Melissa Franks with Melissa Franks dot com.
What's your secret?

Speaker 3 (01:33:57):
You're never gonna be ready. Whatever you're trying to do,
You're just never going to be ready. And where the
real lessons are is in the doing. So often a
lot of business owners that we meet with, they come
forward and they say, I've got this idea and I
want to try this thing, and I've been thinking about
it for three years, and it's like, you're never going
to know if it's the right next thing unless you try,

(01:34:17):
unless you get out there and you have real conversations,
and so nothing else gets out to the masses today.
It's if you have an idea, take the next step forward,
because there's never going to be a right time.

Speaker 6 (01:34:30):
That's great advice. And Derek Johnson with fit with Derek
dot Com, what's your secret?

Speaker 4 (01:34:35):
The secret will be to remind you that there's two
types of motivation. There's the push, as you mentioned the
hustle culture. We can push, push, push our way into depression,
into anxiety, into burnout. The other one is the pull.
So I challenge people to ask themselves, what is my pool,
your why is it your grandmother? Is it your family legacy?
Are you breaking generational courses? Because we can push ourselves

(01:34:56):
out of bed, But the rare moments where I don't
feel like doing something, I think of my oma in
Germany who survived the Holocaust and hit in the attic,
and then I pause and say, do I not feel
like getting up? Like I compare my I don't feel
like it to experiencing that or on my father's side
in the state of Mississippi African American and having land
and all the stuff that they've been through. And then

(01:35:17):
I pause and I'm like, this is irrelevant what I'm
feeling right now or what I went through, Like it's
everything I've experienced is not half as bad as families.
So challenging people to look at two types of motivation. Yes,
we need to push in the hustle, but also what
is pulling you? Is it the legacy, is it your faith?
Is it your kids? But letting that guide you, because
when that is guiding you, you can actually do more

(01:35:37):
sleepless and still have a social life somehow. I don't
don't know how that works, but you're pulled towards something
bigger and you're just running off that high like it
gives you chills.

Speaker 6 (01:35:45):
I love that advice. Richard Gearhart with Gearhart Law dot
com What is your secret?

Speaker 7 (01:35:51):
Well, this week, my secret is going to be use AI.
You'd be surprised how many people haven't tried it, or
they're scared of it, or for whatever reason, they don't
want to embrace it. And I've told you about my epiphany.
I've gone and completely embraced AI. Now it's going to
be running through the veins of our law firm. We're
not going to mishandle any client confidential information. But it's

(01:36:13):
gotten me excited about the future, and so I see
all the possibilities that it can offer, even if it's
not perfect, and I've gotten enthusiastic about running the law
firm again, and because it has helped me solve a
lot of issues that I didn't know how to solve,
just by asking the right questions. And the output isn't perfect,

(01:36:34):
but it gives me a starting point I can go
through and make adjustments to it so that it is
really something useful. So my secret this week is use
AI at least try it.

Speaker 6 (01:36:45):
And my secret is for the entrepreneurs listening to this show,
remember who you are. Remember that you take risks, you
find opportunities, go forward when people are trying to pull
you back. And part of the reason I say this
is because Richard and I are the only ones in
the law firm who really want to use AI. Nobody

(01:37:05):
else does right, and we're forcing it, but we just
want to keep forging forward, and entrepreneurs are risk takers
and that's what we do.

Speaker 5 (01:37:14):
That's great.

Speaker 7 (01:37:15):
Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show pairing
in thirty eight markets across the US. In addition, Passage
to Profit has also been recently selected by feed Spot
Podcasters database as a top ten entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank
you to the P two P team, our producer Noah
Fleischman and our program coordinator Alisha Morrissey, our studio assistant

(01:37:39):
risicat Busari, and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabarees. Look
for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our
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can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, x and on
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program is believed to be correct, never take a legal

(01:38:01):
step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearheart Law
is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You
can find us at gearheartlaw dot com and contact us
for free consultation. Take care everybody, Thanks for listening, and
we'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.