[00:00:00] Speaker A: What it boils down to for most people is there is an emotional connection to money.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: What if I could actually make a skincare brand using these great ingredients and actually make a business out of it?
[00:00:10] Speaker C: I was going to go back to work and my husband said, absolutely not. You are a monster. What else can you do?
[00:00:14] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:15] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard some great tidbits from our show. Stay tuned for the rest.
[00:00:22] Speaker F: Want to protect your business? The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear. It's passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:34] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:41] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I work at Gearhart Law doing the marketing. And I have my own startups.
[00:00:47] Speaker D: Welcome to passage to profit, everyone. The road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with startups, small businesses, and discuss the intellectual property that helps them flourish. We have a very special guest. It's Adam Carroll, the founder of the Shred method, and he's going to tell us how to improve our money management. So really looking forward to that.
[00:01:07] Speaker E: And then, who doesn't want to be more beautiful? Aha. Busalu with viking beauty secrets. Really incredible formulation. So stay tuned if you want to hear more about this, which I know you do. And then we have Katie Santoro, who has river city virtual assistants. And if you haven't ever used a virtual assistant, you probably should at some point. And you definitely want to hear what Katie has to say about it. So stay tuned.
[00:01:31] Speaker D: Sounds great. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for IP in the news. And the story today is about copyrights and how all of these favorite Disney characters now are coming off copyright. Their copyright is expired. And as you may appreciate, if you're a copyright holder, then you get to hold your copyright from the time of publication for a period of 95 years. Well, the original copyrights for Disney for the Mickey Mouse were held in 1928, and so it's been 95 years, and now the copyright for Mickey Mouse has expired. So I don't know whether to cry or to jump with joy.
[00:02:11] Speaker E: I am crying because people are doing horrendous things with these, like turning into horror movies and stuff. But yeah, anybody can use the figures that used to be copyrighted in their own works of art. But then really, you're just a copycat.
[00:02:22] Speaker D: I know, but as you mentioned, there's all sorts of different ways people can kind of capitalize off of Disney's goodwill. It is important to note, though, that it's not all of the Mickey Mouse characters that are going off copyright. So it's only the original steamboat Willie, which is a black and white figure, and he's very famous in the steamboat Willie cartoon, and you can see him driving a ship at the helm. So that's a very famous picture. But other pictures where he's in color, his shape has changed over his time. He's had personality. So it's really just the original copyright that is going off copyright.
[00:02:59] Speaker E: But you have to be really careful because, first of all, the article we were reading had some things in it that were wrong. So copyright law can get really confusing really quickly.
[00:03:08] Speaker D: Copyrights have changed over time, and right now the law reads that if it was published before 1978, then it expires 95 years from the date of publication. But prior to that, there were rules from 1928 to 1978 where it was the life of the author plus 50 years. And especially with some of the old copyrights, it's really kind of hard to get that information. So anyway, if you're in the copyright field and you want to copyright and use character or somebody else's work, make sure you get permission or at least contact an intellectual property lawyer to figure out if really the copyright is free or whether you should get a license. So, time now for Richard's roundtable and welcome to the show. Adam Carroll, what do you think about all this?
[00:03:55] Speaker A: It's really sad what they're going to do with Steamboat Willie. He's going to be in horror movies. He's going to be in video games. Kids are going to be able to tear his arms off his body and things like this. This is what's going to happen. We're going to see that likeness all over the place in the next two to five years. We'll see him in t shirts. It'll be on lunchboxes. It'll be everywhere. And so, on the one hand, kudos to the people who are going to take advantage of that and go make money on an expired copyright. The downside of this for me is having created a lot in my life, from documentaries to books to software. Now, it makes me nervous to know that there are folks out there that as soon as the copyright's gone, somebody's going to pick it up and they're going to make money on your work. So, yeah, I'm a little conflicted, but I'm interested to see where it goes in the next several months.
[00:04:43] Speaker D: When Winnie the Pooh went off copyright, they made the movie Winnie the Pooh, blood and honey. When they take it to the extreme, it sort of destroys the appeal of the character.
[00:04:52] Speaker E: No such thing as childhood innocence anymore.
[00:04:54] Speaker D: I guess not. That's the world we live in. Kenya. What do you think?
[00:04:58] Speaker C: Well, I have to agree with Adam. I think that it's definitely going to be detrimental to Mickey down the line if they take his character and likeness and do something crazy with it. But I actually had a question for you, Richard. Because the copyright expires, it's good for 95 years. What legal right does the original creator have to recopywriting something like that? And is that even a possibility?
[00:05:22] Speaker D: There is no way to renew your copyright. So once you get your 95 years, that's it. 95 years, to me, though, seems like a long time, right? But if you're Disney and you've been around for a while, it's not. But most intellectual property expires after a certain period of time. And the reason that it does that is because the society gives somebody the exclusive right to use something for a period of time, and then that encourages people to be creative and create new works. But then after the ip expires, it's dedicated to the public, and then the public can use it and profit from it. So that's sort of the trade off in intellectual property. You get exclusivity, but then eventually it goes over to the public. And so the founding fathers thought that that was the best way to encourage innovation, and that's the system that we have. Ava, what about you? What are your thoughts?
[00:06:22] Speaker B: I think it was Beethoven who first started the copywriting of his music. Right. So it's been a long time, hundreds of years. An issue that is both positive and negative. I mean, at the same time, all the classical music, most of it we can use, were also as. And some famous american songs have used and have not given credit to. So that's one. So now Mickey joins that part, and then it just goes on like everything else. However, it is also an opportunity to bring kind of attention to the importance of copyright and importance of the other things that are copyrighted and intellectual property. I mean, in recent years, it has really become a wild west. I mean, even if you take, like, Instagram, right? And as a brand, I market on Instagram, and because I used to write music, I am very respectful to not use somebody else's images and somebody else's work. However, I see so many brands and businesses literally using somebody else's images. Like, even let's say a major supermodel. Somebody let Vogue magazine paid $100,000 to this big shoot in the Caribbean, and now we just use this image and say, hey, it's our vibe and it's okay. So I think there's a lot of conversation that should go around it. And then, of course, if you add.
[00:07:48] Speaker D: To it, AI, one question we could ask ourselves is, would Mickey Mouse have been so successful without the copyright? Was that protection instrumental in creating this huge famous character, or would, over time, once it got sort of famous, would have been diluted by a bunch of other creators who were copying it and maybe not doing such a good job. Right. So I guess it's really hard to tell in the end whether the copyright helps, but the assumption is, I guess, that it does. Katie, what are your thoughts?
[00:08:18] Speaker C: I think it's going to be something interesting to watch. I just heard about this last night, actually, in a conversation with my husband, and you don't really hear right away that it's this one specific character. So I'm interested to see what's going to happen with kind of the layperson hearing, hey, Mickey Mouse is out of copyright, what other characters they're going to start to copy and what kind of legal fallout there might be on the side of Disney. Like, how much are they going to have to monitor that and see what's going on with people recreating things?
[00:08:45] Speaker D: That's a great point. Somebody, a normal person hears, well, Mickey Mouse is off copyright. They may think that all the Mickey Mouse characters are off copyright, and they may just, without even thinking about it, start copying the most recent ones that are still protected, and then that creates a big headache for Disney. I guess the moral of the story is get your copyrights right and protect what you can with copyrights. And now it's time for us to turn to our featured guest, Adam Carroll, who is going to be talking about money things. And we're really excited about that because we all love money. Let us know how we can improve ourselves.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: My program itself, the shred method, is all about teaching people how to create more efficiency with their money. To explain that the two greatest expenses that most people have in their life are taxes and the interest expense on debt. Years ago, someone said, if you can figure out how to minimize taxes, and you can figure out how to minimize the interest paid on the debt that you have incurred, then wealth building is a bygone conclusion. What we do is we teach people how to create efficiency with their income and blast away their debt in record time.
[00:09:51] Speaker D: So how do we do that?
[00:09:53] Speaker A: The key is what you do with what's left over. One of our core philosophies with shred when we coach individuals is you have to have more money at the end of the month, not more month at the end of your money. And for business owners especially, the number one reason businesses go out of business is they're under capitalized. They don't have enough money to weather a financial storm here or there. And so what we do is we teach people, number one, how to create a surplus at the end of the month. So you have money left over. And then secondarily, what do you do with that? To make sure that it's the most efficient use possible. And I'll give you guys an example. Elizabeth, I'm going to pick on you, if you don't mind, from time to time. Elizabeth, would you say that there is extra money, either in savings or checking.
[00:10:34] Speaker E: From time to time? Yes, I would say that.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: And when that money is there, what do you find?
[00:10:40] Speaker E: It generally goes to, it generally goes to debt. It goes to pay off the credit card.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:47] Speaker E: That doesn't mean that I didn't charge up the credit card again.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Well, and where I'm going with that is most people, if there's extra money sitting there, it generally goes out somewhere. When money sits in our account, we see it. It makes us feel good. It also lures us into this false sense of, well, I have it. It's extra, quote unquote extra. So when we walk into Costco, we end up walking out with things we didn't really need going in. There were just things that were like, oh, that's cool. And my wife jokes that I'm the only guy who can walk into Costco with a shopping list and walk out with a kayak.
[00:11:18] Speaker E: Well, I will say I do do the impulsive buying sometimes.
[00:11:23] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Speaker E: And I do think that that can add up quickly.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Let's say one of the things that we teach at the shred method is it's not magic. It's math. And when you understand the mathematics of how a debt is paid off over time and you begin to play the bank's game against the bank, which is really what we're doing in the form of software, the question that I often ask clients is, if you had an extra 15,000 or $20,000 a year, would it be life changing for you? And the answer typically is yes. Even that amount of money, even if it's five grand for some or less, can be a life changing amount. We often see our clients will claw back 20 or 30 or 40 grand a year in interest costs that they would normally spend. That is now going to build their own wealth. And so, Richard, to your point, taking a great vacation or taking your wife out for a really nice dinner from time to time, all those things become infinitely easier when you're not sending that extra ten or 15 or 20 grand to the bank or an interest.
[00:12:19] Speaker E: Well, I have to agree. I hate paying interest to the bank, and I hate paying interest on the mortgage and all that stuff, but the mortgage is at least lower. But, like, credit cards are the devil.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: When we have a client that may have some level of credit card debt, student loan debt is another one that can be seven, eight, 9% or higher if it's private, for sure. We go after those debts first in order to free up whatever the monthly payment was on those debts. And so many of our clients find that as they get older and older and make more and more money, their expenses actually are ratcheted down as opposed to going up. And in our society, what happens is we make more money and we spend more money. And so the more we make, the more our expenses become. And it just kind of keeps us on this trajectory that makes it not easier to live, maybe the same level of difficulty to live or more difficult to live. And in our philosophy, the goal should be that as you get closer and closer to a retirement age, your expense profile actually is going down, so that retirement becomes super easy. It's a non issue.
[00:13:19] Speaker E: I think it's fascinating that you have software that helps address this. So what is the role of software in helping people change these bad habits?
[00:13:27] Speaker A: In my world, what I find is that most people are spending money not intentionally, but unintentionally. Big difference between, I know where my money goes to give me the biggest benefit for the majority of consumers. It's very unintentional. It just goes out the door. And at the end of the month, you find yourself saying, I have no idea where all my money went. I know I should have more than I do in my account. I just don't know where it all went. And so the software itself, we call a behavior modification tool, because it's literally just reprogramming your brain about where these payments go on a semiregular basis. And the metaphor I like to use is this. If I told anyone on the zoom today that your car is running in your driveway right now, what would you do? Don't turn it off yet. What most of us do is we park money in a checking account or a savings account for days or weeks or months on end. All the while, we're paying interest on amortized debts, like our mortgage, our car loans, our student loans, our credit cards. And so the shred method, what it does, the software, is it looks at how much is coming in, how much is going out, what are all the debts you have that you need to pay on. And then it says, based on how much you have available in either checking or savings or a home equity line of credit, in some cases, it's going to tell you to send a certain amount out to begin blasting away those debts faster than you would otherwise, which then frees up your monthly discretionary income, which then makes it easier to get out of debt. So it's kind of like a combination of the debt snowball and then this habit pattern of where does my income go? As it's cycling through my checking or my HELOC or my debt payments.
[00:15:01] Speaker D: This is not a budget, is it budget?
[00:15:04] Speaker A: I would call, like, the preliminary step, Richard, and what we do is we help people figure out what are your fixed expenses, what are your variable expenses, how much is your income, and where do we need to carve some of that out? Yeah, this is a broad brush statement, but I think most consumers could free up somewhere between 300 and $500 a month just by being more intentional, whether that means, like, repricing all of your insurances, calling your cable company to see if there's a better deal, calling your cell phone company to see if they're offering a different package or program. We can show people how to carve $500 out in no time. And then it's figuring out, what do you do with that extra 500 so it doesn't just go to target or Costco or dining out. What it boils down to for most people is there is an emotional connection to money. So some people are overspending because they have this mentality of like, well, I deserve it. The first question that we generally ask is, what is your earliest money memory? And when you ask someone what their earliest money memory is, what we presuppose is that your money personality is set by the age of nine years of age. The challenge with that is your parents may have had you when they were in their 20s, maybe in their 30s, maybe in their. Where they were at in their career might determine what your money relationship is. And so we go down and we help reprogram what someone's money scripts were from the time they were young to what they are today.
[00:16:22] Speaker D: Passage to profit our special guest Adam Carroll. And we'll be right back after this.
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[00:18:31] Speaker E: And our special guest, Adam Carroll, who is telling us all how to get rid of debt. Now, who doesn't want more money this year and make their money work harder for them? And Adam gave a TED talk, which he is going to talk to us about now. So, Adam, please.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: This is a topic near and dear to my heart, Elizabeth, because it involves my children. And I realize that when you have kids, you can run unsanctioned, unsupervised psychological experiments on them.
No one's wiser. So my kids love to play games, ball games, board games, dice games, but they love playing monopoly. And one day I came back from a speaking engagement at a college where it occurred to me that these college students were not really making real financial decisions. They were sort of making them in a vacuum or their parents were making them for them. And I'm watching my kids play Monopoly. And I wondered, are they playing this way because the money isn't real? And they were playing, like, outside the rules of the game and buying each other out of jail and things like that. And I thought, what if the money were real? And so I added up how much it would cost to play a cash game of monopoly and went to my bank the following Friday and pulled out $10,000 in cold, hard cash and went home and played a cash game of monopoly with my children that weekend. And it became the topic of this TED talk all about when money isn't real, which I think is what most young people are experiencing, is that money is Venmo, and it's PayPal and it's Zelle. And we're tapping our phones and our watches to pay for things. It doesn't ever feel real. So today, I'm teaching more and more families how to create the lessons and learnings they want to teach their kids around money, but doing it in a very real way.
[00:20:07] Speaker E: Our daughter was given a financial literacy class in, like, fifth grade. Our son didn't get that. And our daughter, to this day, has money in the bank. Like, she made enough money working for six months to support herself for another six months because she just saved it all and just used what little money she needed to. And I think that having the tools and the knowledge just that can make a huge difference. And it's great that you're doing it with kids, because that's where it needs to start.
[00:20:30] Speaker D: Kenya, do you have a question?
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Couples and money, do you find that you attract your polar opposite when it comes to money? Or do you maybe attract somebody who kind of spends like you? Because my husband is the total opposite.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: My wife, she grew up in the coupon castle with the coupon queen. And they didn't buy stuff unless it was on sale, and they had a coupon. And I grew up in a household where my dad would talk about abundance. Though I didn't know this. They didn't really have it at the time. And so it seemed like everything was possible for me, where nothing was really possible for my wife. And today, I would say we complement each other very well because I tend to play really good offense and she plays really good defense. I think couples that are both spenders, that is like a recipe for disaster. And so if you are married to someone who is a spender and you yourself are a spender, that's where I think you've got to get really clear on what money goals are and boundaries around how much is spent and things like that. Otherwise, you could find yourself somewhere down the road with a gigantic hole that you have to fill back in. We'll have couples ask each other, how much do you need in savings to feel safe and secure? And typically, I don't mean to be sexist about this, but generally speaking, a female's answer is going to be much higher than a man's answer. And whenever that is the case, if there is a spread between two couples and it's irrelevant of gender, there is always going to be conflict around money, because someone's going to feel stressed that there's not enough, and someone's going to feel stressed that there's too much sitting in that account. So at some level, somebody's got to capitulate, probably both of them, and meet in the middle and say, if we're both good on this amount sitting there, then we know we're good. But it's one of those conversations that's hard to have and probably not had enough in most couples.
[00:22:10] Speaker E: Years ago, there was this couple. I was reading about them in a magazine. They won the lottery, and they ended up divorced because the man wanted to live like he was a millionaire, which he was, and the wife wanted to live like they'd always lived. And she kept going to the goodwill. It's like, lady, you have millions of dollars. Why would you buy anything at the goodwill? And they ended up splitting up because they could not square their philosophies around this amount of money.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Where I would go with that, Elizabeth, is that question of what was your earliest money memory? Was one question, and the other one that I often ask is, and this is a weird one for everyone listening, if there was a knock on your front door and you walked to your front door and opened it, and money is standing there, personified money in human form is standing there. A, what do they look like? Who are they? And b, what is your relationship to them? Like, how does it make you feel to have them standing there?
[00:22:59] Speaker D: Speaking of wealth, I mean, what is your definition of wealth and financial freedom?
[00:23:05] Speaker A: I always like to ask people, if your current income stopped tomorrow, how long could you live your current lifestyle? That's wealth to me, the average american. If you ask them that, if your current income stopped tomorrow, how long could you live? They'd be like, well, let's see. Today's Wednesday. Sunday.
[00:23:21] Speaker E: Oh, my gosh.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: And I think financial freedom for me is the idea that when you have more money coming in passively than you have expenses, you're financially free. The goal should be to create massive, passive, permanent streams of income that supersede what your expenses are. And so long as your expenses are always less than whatever your passive income is, technically you're financially free.
[00:23:43] Speaker E: Passive income is key.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: There are the traditional ones that an advisor would probably talk to someone about, and those are going to be things like dividend paying stocks and etfs. And I've known folks who have retired having invested in one stock for the majority of their life. And Warren Buffett's a prime example. He bought Coca Cola in like the think, and his shareholders were kind of aghast at how much he spent on Coca Cola stock. And then fast forward to the year. I think it was 2004 or five. The dividend check on Coca Cola was the amount that he had paid for the stock 25 years earlier.
[00:24:17] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: That's a prime example of how to create it. Some of the less obvious ones are real estate investing. And if you're not wanting to be an active real estate investor, there are syndications where you could be a limited partner in a general partnership, where you might own 120 fifth of a hotel chain or of a multifamily apartment complex. We do those regularly where we'll put 50,000 or $100,000 into something, and it generates anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a month into the foreseeable future, knowing that three to five years out, you're going to get your original investment back, plus the profit when they turn that kind of deal. That's really where we're trying to steer our clients, is, first of all, let's shred the debt. Let's increase the amount of equity we have and what we own, and then let's deploy that equity in really strategic ways to begin creating that massive, passive, permanent stream of income that allows you to achieve financial freedom. It's really amazing. The majority of our shredders are out of debt between three and seven years, their mortgage included, and not changing their expense profile so quickly, how does this work?
[00:25:24] Speaker E: So let's say, for instance, my son and his wife, who we love dearly, but it seems like they never have any money, although they make really good incomes. Would we buy them the program and say, put this on your phone or your computer and do what it says?
[00:25:37] Speaker A: There is a course, a community, and the software are the three parts of what we do at the shred method. So if you are interested in them participating, a registration fee gets them into the course and the community, and then the software is a month by month subscription service, but they're getting emails and text messages that literally tell them what to do day by day and week by week with their money. So for folks that have a hard time kind of wrangling their spending or deciding what to do with the extra payment, this thing, literally in a mathematical algorithmic format, tells them exactly what to do in order to achieve that goal.
[00:26:09] Speaker D: That's great. It's really been amazing talking with you, Adam. Where can people find the shred method at?
[00:26:14] Speaker A: The best place to go is simply the shredmethod.com. There's a master class that people can go through, a free savings analysis that'll tell you how fast you can be out of debt. And our team is more than willing to jump on a call for 20 minutes and run your numbers and show you what's possible.
[00:26:29] Speaker D: Adam Carroll, the founder of the Shred method. You're listening to Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt on passage to profit, but we have to take a commercial break right now, but we'll be back after this.
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[00:28:43] Speaker D: Time for power move. Hey, Kenya, what's on for power move?
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Well, I'm really excited because it is the first official power move of 2024, and I'm going to give it to no other than Patty Labelle. So you all know Patty Labelle is a singer. She's gone from singing and moving her way or powering her way into the pie industry. I don't know if people know this about her, but she started her own pie dessert company, probably back, oh, my gosh, several years ago at the age of 64, and it's brought in over $200 million. So we've been talking about building generational wealth and using your gifts and your talents, and I just feel like she's a great example of that. I am a big advocate of her desserts, and she's our power move.
[00:29:26] Speaker D: That's great. Thank you for sharing that. Elizabeth, what have you been up to?
[00:29:29] Speaker E: Too many things, really. So I have Blue Streak, which I've been talking about. It used to be fireside. It's a video directory of b, two b businesses. I'm still working on it. And in the meantime, I'm doing a lot of work with podcasts. And as we've mentioned on the show, we're going to podfest in Florida later in January, 2024. I'm really excited about that. But one thing I've done is I started a podcast. I'm doing all myself, and it goes stories. The flip side is the name of it, but I'm using it to find out things about how YouTube works, because it's a video podcast and kind of using it as a stepping stone to experiment with. So I'm really finding that valuable. And I really do want to say to people, if you do have a podcast, you really need to be on YouTube, because that's where it's at. That's where it's going to be at in the next couple of years. So I've really been studying YouTube videos and also podcasting from the other side to really put them together to figure out how to really blow things out of the water this year. So I have the Jersey podcast podcast about cats with Danielle Wooley, and we have passage to profit. And I have ghost stories of website, and I'm starting a new one. We're starting a podcast meetup here in summit, New Jersey, but it's going to be on Zoom too, with Stacey Sherman. And she and I are going to do a podcast after the meetup to kind of go through the high points of what people talked about at the meetup. So enough about me. This is a great way to kick off the new year. Aha. Busalu with viking beauty secrets. And I'm really interested to hear what she has to say. I did go to Iceland, and I did use some of the minerals there, and I see some of her stuff comes from northern Europe. So welcome. Aha. Please tell us what you're doing.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Viking Beauty Secrets is a nordic skincare brand which uses the nordic super antioxidant and vitamin rich berries, such as seaboktorin, cloud berries, and rovenberries, namely as main ingredients. Now, these ingredients have been used for wellness and skincare for centuries, hence the name viking beauty secrets. And our scrub that you mentioned, Iceland, it's true. It actually uses icelandic volcanic sand as the main ingredient, together with a raspberry seed oil to nourish. And roven berries, which is actually also anti inflammatory.
[00:31:47] Speaker D: That's really great. So what properties do the berries give the makeup?
[00:31:52] Speaker B: In reality, these berries are used widely in northern lands also for internally, which they are amazing. Like I mentioned, rowan berries have antiinflammatory properties. For example, seaboctorn is the only plant in the world that has all omegas, omega 3679. And old time Vikings were actually using the dried seaboktorn on their trips, and then they would eat them to nourish. But these berries, like pretty much anything, when we put it on our skin, we absorb some of these properties, and when we put something on our skin, we do absorb about 30% of it internally. Cloud berries from Finland. This one super berry, in the summer months, it soaks in so many vitamins. And like, for example, when you harvest at end of the summer, that little cloudberry has 16 times more vitamin C than oranges, for example. And those vitamins and antioxidants in those berries, they help to protect the barrier of our skin from the environmental and free radical damage. I mean, a lot of the problems we have, and I look at it together internally, and skincare is that there is so much harmful chemicals in, I'm sorry, but in America, in a food and in a skincare, and in reality, it's toxic to us. Maybe tiny bit here, tiny bit there, but then ten years of that tiny bit adds up and then you take 20 years and a lot of people have a lot of problems. And I grew up in northern Europe where organic and natural, that was just normal. We didn't think about, oh, you have to be using organic products because everything was kind of organic. Even now, European Union has banned about 1300 harmful chemicals from skincare, just from regular skincare, not even organic compared to America. Guess how many harmful chemicals has America banned?
[00:33:44] Speaker D: Probably not 1300.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Wow, it's still a long way to go. And I personally started modeling and then I started traveling a lot and I ended up in New York City. And I didn't know that my body wasn't used to these harmful chemicals and these preservatives and things. So I started having health problems and I started having skin problems, which is really bad if you're a model. And I also worked as a stand in and a double for famous actresses such as Nicole Kidman, Charlize Stern. So it really became a problem for me. And I started learning about what happened, right? And I was told also by my friends that, oh, no, you have to go to the health food store and buy those organic things and natural things. So I started really researching what are the ingredients that work for me. And for years I brought products from my country literally in my suitcase when I came back. And after a while, I was like, well, in this country, which is the land of opportunity, I was like, well, what if I could actually make a skincare brand using these great ingredients that work for me and my girlfriends want and actually make a business out of it?
[00:34:54] Speaker E: Yeah, I want to ask Kenya. She has a question.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: Well, actually, I'm glad that you mentioned where you're from. So you're from Estonia originally, right? You said you had come to New York City and that's when you started experiencing issues with your skin, which prompted your creativity for this line. There's a million different skincare options on the market, I guess. What would you say besides the ingredients and all these other things you're doing from like a competitive marketing standpoint to set yourself apart from everything that's kind of being pushed onto us in the marketplace?
[00:35:24] Speaker B: You're right. There is a million different options. And unfortunately, the consumer is really confused. And these days it used to be like, oh, well, organic is probably so expensive. It's really not. I mean, my products are very competitive. They're like $40 range. Right. But I think consumers don't know, for example, that when you have certified organic, we have to put the expiration date right on the box. On the box. And on the bottle or on the tube, it is written everywhere. So even if you throw out the box, you know when it expires, when you buy regular products, you don't have expiration date. You don't know if it expired five years ago because it's not written there.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:04] Speaker E: So are you exploiting that in your marketing? I think that's what Kenya's asking. Like, how are you getting that message out?
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Well, here I'm talking to you.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: I think that there is a lot of interest from the consumer, and especially the millennials. They really do look for the ingredients. They do care about what's harvested or how it was. I think their natural and organic product segment in consumer goods is actually growing tremendously, both in cosmetics and in the food service. And I think that people realize a lot of diseases in America. They're actually not really happening in some other countries. I hate to tell you, but honestly, in Estonia, I just don't happen to know a single person who has died or even had a colon cancer. Because if you think about those toxins and preservatives, they settle in our bodies.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: They do.
[00:36:56] Speaker E: Adam, did you have a comment or question?
[00:36:58] Speaker A: The first thing that came to mind is, is there a men's line? I want some of this.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Yes. I wanted to do. I wanted to do a men's line, and I got viking man. It sounds so good, right? And then I was, okay, slap it on. But in reality, we are unisex in a sense that, like the scrub, actually as many men buy it as women because especially men with bears or when they have rough skin, it doesn't dry, it suits, and it's invigorating. It's men friendly. And we also do market it, such as perfect present, perfect pair for Valentine's Day or whatever.
[00:37:31] Speaker E: So where are you selling your products? Do you have them in stores or anything?
[00:37:34] Speaker B: I have them in few smaller stores in America. Of course, we sell in Amazon.
[00:37:39] Speaker E: Can they buy from your website?
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Absolutely, yes. Code viking beauty for 20% off.
[00:37:44] Speaker E: Okay. So is that your website, vikingbeauty.com?
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
[00:37:47] Speaker E: Well, thank you very much.
[00:37:49] Speaker D: Well, thank you very much.
[00:37:50] Speaker E: So now we're going to be talking to Katie Santoro with Rivercity, Va, which is rivercityba.com is her website, and she helps people by giving them virtual assistants to help do their work. So welcome, Katie. Tell us about your business.
[00:38:03] Speaker C: I am on a mission to create a world free of burnout. I suffered from burnout in my career and left my career and started another business. But this is my second business, we fulfill our mission by providing employment for parents and caretakers in the workforce. So that's kind of where we source people. And then on the second side of our mission is helping business owners and entrepreneurs avoid burnout by providing them with skilled administrative assistance. We train our assistants and we mentor them, and then we match them with clients that can use their help.
[00:38:35] Speaker D: Well, that sounds great. What made you interested in this? You said you wanted to help people avoid burnout. Certainly having some extra help can do that.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: So I started my career in the legal and insurance world, and while I was there, I decided I wanted to start a business. So I ran a business full time and worked full time. So I was teaching in a yoga studio. I was running the yoga studio, and I burnt out. I hit, like, full emotional, spiritual, physical burnout. I left my career, and I was running the yoga studio. And then in 2020, I closed it due to reasons of 2020, and I was going to go back to work. And my husband said, absolutely not. You were a mon or what else can you do? And I said, there's an opportunity to freelance in this virtual space. Let me see what that is. And I just kind of ran with it. And what I found is that other business owners were in the same place as me. They were extremely burnt out. They were trying to run their business in an ever changing world, and they couldn't find people who were reliant and consistent and who could handle the administrative tasks that they were throwing that at them, especially with the digital changes that we were going through. So I ran with it. We started helping people, and now I have a team of 17 employees.
[00:39:39] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:39:39] Speaker D: Congratulations.
[00:39:40] Speaker E: So did you see your business grow during COVID I mean, people kind of got used to doing things virtually, right? So that must have really helped a lot.
[00:39:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I started during COVID I started in 2020, so really took advantage of what was going on with people being virtual, and a lot of people were leaving their jobs and starting businesses because it was kind of this, I don't know, maybe the end of the world feeling right, and it just kind of opened up this space for us. So it was a perfect time to start, and we're definitely seeing changes now, but it's still something that people are really open to.
[00:40:10] Speaker E: So when you have somebody who needs a virtual assistant, looks like from your right on your website, you do a matching. I probably don't want to work with somebody who, I don't know, doesn't understand what I'm doing or our personalities clash or something. So I assume you have a way to match people up. We do.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: We have sourced primarily out of my network. We say parents and caretakers, which is predominantly women who have left their careers to be at home. And they come from diverse career backgrounds. They have tons of experience. So we will try and match based on skill set. But also what we do if they don't have the exact skill set that they need, is we have an internal mentorship and training program. So we train them in the things that they need. We match our team members with each other. So say we have Amy, who has an HR background, and then we have Jessie, who has a marketing background. And Jessie needs help to help her assistant with something HR related. We'll match those two together. We pay them for their time to train each other, and that gives everybody kind of more a well rounded background to help their clients. But we do. We match on skill set. We also match on personality. It's really important to have a good relationship with your assistant. You want someone that you can really trust and that knows your preferences.
[00:41:15] Speaker E: Adam, did you have a comment or question?
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Well, I, too, have been using vas for an extraordinarily long time. Like the last 15 years, I've had someone working with me off and on. I'm curious, Katie, if I have a number of tasks, does it make sense to have four or five vas that are separated on all of them? Like someone's doing marketing, someone's doing ops, someone's doing client retention and so on?
[00:41:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it depends on their skill set. Right. You want to ask somebody to do something super far out of their skill set. You also don't want to ask somebody to do something that they hate doing. Like, I know some virtual assistants who hate social media, and they'll say to me, I just don't want to work with this client. When you ask someone to work outside of their zone of genius, they don't do that great at it, right. So you want to make sure it's something that they want to do and do they have the capacity to do it? So think about when you task switch during your day. If you are going from balancing your checkbook to ordering your groceries, that takes so much thought process to just switch those two things. So are you overwhelming someone by asking them to do all that task switching during the day? So I think it really depends on the individual, their skill set, their ability to stick and pivot, and then your needs and how much time you need from them.
[00:42:24] Speaker D: Kenya, did you have a question?
[00:42:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I just was curious. What are some of the misconceptions that come when someone's considering hiring a virtual assistant. That's interesting. We deal a lot with how people see us. They see us as just a. Or, you know, maybe somebody who's just doing data entry. Our team in particular at River City virtual assistants is very highly skilled, very highly trained. We're not just an old school secretary. So while we can do things on the executive assistant level, like helping you with your travel plans and your document management, we also have the skills to help with things like social media, content management, really high touch client care, help you with your business development plans, and help you with strategy on those things as well. People see us as a staffing agency or just secretaries or bodies and seats. And I think that we, in particular, are way more than that.
[00:43:12] Speaker E: Yeah, I know. With our virtual assistant, there are some things she really doesn't want to do. And honestly, for me personally, I would rather somebody say, no, I'm not good at that. I don't want to do it, then try to do it and screw it up. And she'll say, I can find somebody else in the agency that could do this for you, because I can't. So I think that's one of the beauties of virtual assistants, too. And she has a backup. So it's not like if somebody in your firm goes on vacation for two weeks, you have to find somebody to do the work, because you'll find it as head of the agency.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. And we don't always give them backup because of that one on one relationship that they have. Imagine trying to have to teach someone how to run your calendar in just one week. It doesn't always make sense, but we can say, hey, if you have an emergency, we're here to support you. We've got your back, but we wouldn't necessarily give you, like, a stand in. You kind of lose efficiency there.
[00:44:00] Speaker D: So how do you charge your clients for the virtual assistant services? How does that work?
[00:44:05] Speaker C: So we do flat rate packages. We do 1015 and 20 hours a week. We also go up to 30 for some clients, and that's kind of your minimum. So we do ask the clients to fill those hours, and we do that so that our assistants can block out their time. We ask them to block out the hours. They're not multitasking with other clients. It's dedicated specifically to that client. That also allows our assistants to rely on their income every week, which keeps them reliable and consistent. So because we've kind of set up that, I call it almost like a social contract. Right? Like the client agrees to giving this many hours a week to the assistant and keeping them busy, and the assistant agrees to blocking out their time to work these hours. We have clients that have been with us for years and we have assistants that have been with us for years. So it really creates trust and balance in the relationship.
[00:44:50] Speaker E: Do you try to match the time zones? Because that's always something, right?
[00:44:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Not only time zones, but also availability. So everybody on our team is us based. And because we work with parents and caretakers, it might be, hey, I have the best block of time in the afternoon to work when the kids are in daycare. Or it might be, I would really rather work in the evenings when my spouse is home to support me. So we match that availability with what the client needs. People who are in a typical nine to five business environment, they need the help during the day. And then your entrepreneurs, especially if it's a side gig, they'd rather have somebody on call in the evenings or on the weekends. So we try and match on kind of what everybody needs and the best way to support everybody.
[00:45:27] Speaker D: What are some tips that you would share about working with a virtual assistant? How would you help somebody get started with it?
[00:45:36] Speaker C: My number one tip is building a relationship. When we see relationships fail, it's because clients don't show up to meetings. They cancel meetings. They're not meeting with the assistant, they're not giving the assistant all of the information that they need. We have an onboarding process that we do with our clients so that we make sure we're getting everything that we need at the beginning to be set up for success. And then we kind of make it mandatory to have a weekly meeting between the client and the assistant so that the information can be exchanged. That's really my number one tip, is just making time, knowing that putting in an hour on a Monday is going to save you 10 hours in the rest of the week.
[00:46:11] Speaker D: What about trusting a virtual assistant with personal or sensitive matters? I mean, it's almost like you can't do anything now without a password, right? And so for the virtual assistant to be able to help you, you need to give them passwords and give them access to sometimes sensitive information. How do you make us feel comfortable with that?
[00:46:33] Speaker C: A couple of different ways. One of the ways is we use LastPass. So Lastpass is a program where you can put in all of your passwords and then you have a master password. So at any time you can turn that off, turn that on. If there is any information being stored, we ask our clients to set up, like a drive on their system for our assistant to have access to.
[00:46:52] Speaker D: So Lastpass is like a storage area for passwords. And then does the assistant see the passwords then, or do they just click on a button and go into the account?
[00:47:01] Speaker C: They're able to click on it. It's encrypted. So you would put your information in, and then you give them access to the passwords that you want them to have access to. So you could keep all your information in there and then say, okay, well, I'd only like Sarah to have access to these three accounts, and you can give them access to those ones. We also suggest setting up admin accounts on things if you can. So having another seat and having an admin account where you can limit their ability. So, for instance, if you have somebody updating your blog for you and you don't want them having access to your full website, you can set their ability on your website to just do the blog. And then, like I said, we also have them store all of the information. We just have internal policies where they have to store information on the client's drives, not on their drives. If it's in our drives, we provide the information back to them, and nothing ever goes on a hard drive.
[00:47:49] Speaker E: So, Katie, where can people find you?
[00:47:51] Speaker C: They can find us at Rivercity, Va, as in virtualassistant.com. So that's Rivercity, Va.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
[00:48:01] Speaker D: Katie Santoro, passage to profit. Our special guest, Adam Carroll. And we'll be right back after this.
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[00:49:05] Speaker D: Have you heard about Podfest yet? It's the world's largest continuous in person podcasting event in Orlando, Florida, and you got to check it out. Richard Gerhardt here. And I want to tell you about an event that we're going to that we're super excited about. Yes, Podfest Expo 2024 is coming soon, a huge podcasting festival in Florida, and it's their 10th anniversary. Go to podfestexpo.com and use the code Gearhart Law for your ticket. Whether you have a podcast and want to meet other podcasters, you're thinking of starting a podcast yourself or you provide support to podcasters. This is the place to be in 2024. Meet the people who are shaping and influencing the podcasting industry and join Podfest as they also host the podcasting hall of Fame. The dates are January 25 through the 20 eigth 2024 and we'd love for you to join us in meeting podcasters from around the globe. The diverse cast of speakers means there's something for everyone. The learning and networking will be amazing. Throw in a couple of parties just for fun, and you have the podcasting event of the year. Go to podfestexpo.com to get your ticket now. Use the code Gearheartlaw for a special discount. Elizabeth and I hope to meet you there. It's passage to profit now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
[00:50:11] Speaker E: Noah Fleischman is our producer here at passage to profit, and he just has a way of putting his best memories in perspective.
[00:50:18] Speaker G: I'll never forget that Friday night at 08:00 when I was nine years old and I watched this great concert on television. Bob Dylan and friends. Wow. I'll never forget it. There I was, seated in front of my little Panasonic portable tv in my bedroom, my slice of Sarah Lee pound cake for dessert. The show opened with this really cool commercial for Craig Audio, the people who made the eight track tape decks in those days. It was a wonderful evening. I didn't get to see that concert again until maybe 30 years later. But when I did, I discovered something. It wasn't Friday night at 08:00 that it aired. It was actually a Tuesday night at nine. How's that possible? I remembered it so well. I remember the television. I watched it on the dessert that I had, the commercial I watched. You know, if you're an advertiser and people can actually keep your name in their mind for that many years successfully, you've done something right. Anyway, it was a great evening overall. Bob Dylan and friends. Wow. I think that's who it was.
[00:51:13] Speaker F: Now more with Richard and Elizabeth. Passage to profit.
[00:51:16] Speaker D: We're just having a little bit of a discussion now about the question that Elizabeth is going to ask.
[00:51:22] Speaker E: So my question is, and I'm going to ask Adam first, what are your growth plans for 2024?
[00:51:28] Speaker A: I would say over the last year we've been doing a very organic marketing channel. I've done probably 100 podcasts in the last year. It's provided great organic traffic, not always exactly who we want as clientele. And so our growth plan for 2024 is really zeroing in on who exactly our product and program is for and doing some very specific direct marketing and retargeting to that group, which I think is going to really expand the traffic to our site and then the conversion, the pull through to appointments and folks that end up registering a much more targeted approach is our 2024 plan.
[00:52:02] Speaker E: I applaud you for that. That's really great planning and something that we're working towards too at Gearhart Law. Aha. What are your growth plans for 2024?
[00:52:12] Speaker B: I would like to just, first of all, we start out with bringing out a new product, a new peptide serum. So we are marrying the ancient great nordic ingredients with a little bit of modern technology so they would actually work on your skin. And also, I am just basically looking out for more retailers to sell our products in. And also this year, now that we made new year resolutions, I have decided that I want to breathe more, listen more, know, just jumping into things and that's how I deal with not getting overwhelmed. And so far it seems to be working excellent.
[00:52:52] Speaker E: Great. So, Katie, what is your growth plan for 2024?
[00:52:57] Speaker C: We spent all of 2023 setting up to really scale, so we feel really comfortable in doing that. One of my biggest challenges is that I'm an introvert and I do all of our business development. So a key role we hired for this year is a business development specialist to help me. Word of mouth is great for us, getting out, talking to people. Everyone we meet needs a virtual assistant, whether it's to help them in their business or just help them in their lives. So getting out and talking to people has been really difficult for me. I'm really comfortable being virtual and being at home. So we've hired someone to help us with that. We've hired an extrovert. We've been following the data too and looking at what's coming down. We pay a lot of attention to the economy and trying to figure out how to kind of pivot with those changes. And my growth plan for 2024 is to grow.
[00:53:42] Speaker E: So, Kenya, what are your plans for growth in 2024?
[00:53:46] Speaker C: Well, I felt like 2023 was also a year of scaling for everything that I've been doing, just from a content perspective, from a personal branding perspective, so I feel like 2024 is the year to implement all that, which I believe bringing other people on board to help will help me get to the next level.
[00:54:05] Speaker E: Great. So, Richard Gerhardt, growth plans for 2024.
[00:54:10] Speaker D: I guess I'm going to be more focused on content creation this year and really getting out there a little bit more. It's something that I enjoy doing, and there's just so many possibilities now with social media and YouTube, and I just want to take advantage of those. We're in a unique position where we can educate people about intellectual property and talk about entrepreneurship. And so I just want to keep going with that.
[00:54:34] Speaker E: I think you should. So my growth plans for 2024, I've been working on Blue Streak and I've been doing passage to profit and a couple of other podcasts, as I mentioned. But I really want to hone my expertise in YouTube and podcasting, as I mentioned before, and really get highly competent at that and help other people with it because I really feel like podcasting people are telling their stories, they're sharing their expertise and they're telling their stories. And I think we all need to tell our stories. I think it's a really great thing for people to be able to do all the time. So we're actually going to fix up the studio that we're in right now in our building in summit, New Jersey and make it really cool. So people want to come here and do podcasts and we're going to help them with that. And so it's a target for 2024 to start that new business and grow it.
[00:55:18] Speaker D: That sounds like an amazing adventure.
[00:55:20] Speaker E: Just to recap, everybody who was on the show, Adam Carroll was our guest with the shred method, theshredmethod.com. I know all of us probably waste at least some money. If you can take that money and use it better, this is going to.
[00:55:33] Speaker D: Help you get rid of debt and get rich.
[00:55:36] Speaker E: And then, aha.
Thank you. I'm going to leave it like that because you say it so beautifully with viking beauty, viking beauty secrets. And her website is vikingbeauty.com, really pure nutritious skincare. And then Katie Santoro with Rivercity Va.com virtual assistants. And it sounds like she has a really good way of making sure that you're going to be as pleased as you can be with your virtual assistant.
[00:56:01] Speaker D: Yeah, your virtual assistant is virtually there.
[00:56:04] Speaker E: Is virtually there. And then, of course, Richard Gearhart with Gearhart Law, patents, trademarks, copyrights. If you need intellectual property help.
[00:56:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:56:12] Speaker D: Contact us. And before we go, I'd like to thank the passage to profit team, Noah Fleischmann, our producer Alicia Morrissey, our program director. Our podcast can be found tomorrow anywhere you find your podcast. Just look for the passage to profit show and you can find us on Instagram and threads at passage to profit show and Twitter. Or if you're even more up to date, x at passage to profit and on our YouTube channel. Please also join us on our new Facebook group search for passage to profit show. Listener Community a new community space for our listeners and guests where you can post questions that you would like answered on the show and interact with the passage to profit team. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
