[00:00:00] Speaker A: Give us 30 days. You will have a book.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: We create what we call tribes, something.
[00:00:04] Speaker C: Called the communication waterfall.
[00:00:06] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:07] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard some snippets from our show. It was a great one. Stay tuned. Especially if you want to start a new business.
[00:00:17] Speaker F: Ramping up your business.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: The time is near. You've given it hard, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:28] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firms specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:35] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:42] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit the road to entrepreneurship where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their businesses and their solutions. We have just an amazing guest, Brian Seth Hurst. He's an award winning multidisciplinary producer, strategist and writer and we really look forward to speaking with him.
[00:01:02] Speaker E: And then we have two really cool inventions. I love these. Ryan Sobel with life flow lifeflowstate.com He's a financial advisor, but this is kind of a different thing for him. But they all kind of tie together in the end. He's helping people get into the zone where they can live their best life. Just cutting edge stuff. You just have to hear him talk. And then we have Joshua Lee with Tribe Money. This is something that really fills a hole in the market. It helps people that are in groups that maybe don't want to deal with a bank account or whatever, but need to put money towards stuff. It gives them a place to do that and he'll explain more about it. But I think it's really innovative.
[00:01:37] Speaker D: Both of these things sounds like fun. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans own their own business or are thinking of starting one. And so we like to ask our panel questions that our audience wants the answers to. So this week's question is what is the best mistake you've ever made in business? So I'm going to go to Brian first. What is the best mistake you've ever made in business?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Being a control freak, not accepting help, feeling that I had to do everything myself. And learning coming out of that into the future was recruiting people and bringing people in that have your back, understand your vision, your purpose, and understand what their responsibilities are and then being willing to trust them. Actually, I just want to say, Ann Sweeney. She was a great mentor of mine. She was president of ABC Disney. And she once told me, put the absolute best people in the position that you want them in and where their expertise is and let them run. She said that. It took me a long time to get that, but now I have, and it is absolutely correct. When you can trust someone to do the job that's on vision and on purpose, it's much better than stressing out and losing sleep.
[00:02:54] Speaker D: That's amazing.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: My management style is learn how I think. If you can solve the problem yourself, great. If you can't, then come to me. So I think it's a balance and you have to make sure that people are reporting in, obviously. But I wouldn't call it a control freak now. I would call it a superior project manager, perhaps that you're just making sure that everybody's hitting their marks and that they're. There are performance reviews along the way. But I don't have to control everything. As an entrepreneur, being willing to trust other people, I think is really important. And in that case, you have to trust your gut. I've learned a lot of lessons with bad partnerships.
[00:03:34] Speaker D: Joshua, what are your thoughts?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: I actually very similar to what Brian said, but a little bit different in my mistake I made was that when I first started this business, I tried to do everything by myself. I was a little bit stubborn. I figured that. I read a few books, I took a few lessons here and there, and I thought that maybe that would be enough for me to, you know, get my business started. But as I come to find out, as I really start to build the business, there was a lot of things that I think I wish I had really leaned more towards with other people.
[00:04:01] Speaker D: For example. Like what?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Just even as simple as, you know, how to incorporate a business, all the legality that has to go into, all the documentation that needs to go into it. I think that, you know, just a book gave me a very high level of what I had to do. But as I come to realize, it's a lot more complex than something you just read from a book. And there's a lot of unique situations in, you know, how to start a business, from even building a product to identifying what more market you want to step into.
[00:04:23] Speaker D: As an attorney, I have to jump in and agree with you that getting some good professionals behind you, accountants, attorneys, you don't have to spend a lot at first, but at least get the knowledge and the advice and some things you can do yourself. Sometimes you need the service providers, but I think that that is Also really good.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Ryan, I was going to say something else, but now that you're talking, I had a kind of different mistake, which was being so focused on the business and not taking care of your health. During the first year of my startup company, or maybe it was probably second year of this one, I was so laser focused on getting stuff finished, I wasn't paying attention to the quality of food that I was eating. I was getting doordash delivered, I was having noodles all the time, I was having rice. I was barely cooking. Eventually it kind of started to mess up my concentration. I ended up getting some blood sugar issues like hypoglycemia, had some anxiety, and I really had to decide to slow down and like, okay, look, if I keep operating like this, one of the things I learned is that my business is not a sprint. It seems like a sprint every month, but actually this is going to be going on for years and I can't act like it's a constant sprint every month. And so start cooking a lot more, eating a lot more salads, and really making health more of a focus was one of the best mistakes because now I'm way more healthy.
[00:05:38] Speaker D: That's great. We often hear about entrepreneurs sort of working themselves to death and really negatively impacting their health, but this is one of the first real concrete examples we've had on the show. So thank you for that and I couldn't agree more. As important, as wonderful as your new business journey is, it's not worth sacrificing your long term health for. And that kind of discussion helps make people aware of how important it is. Elizabeth?
[00:06:07] Speaker E: Well, my best mistake was telling Richard, if you start your own law firm, I'll do whatever you need me to do.
[00:06:14] Speaker D: I don't see how that was a mistake.
[00:06:15] Speaker E: So now I have a patent agent's license, I can draft patent applications. I know way more than I ever wanted to about trademarks and copyrights. Though I don't practice in there, I went into the marketing. So I became as much a marketing expert as a self taught person can. And then we got this radio show based on the law firm. So it has turned out to be a good mistake. I've learned so much, otherwise I don't know what I would be doing with my time. It's pretty exciting, all the media stuff and I have a podcast studio now and I have, you know, just a lot going on that I really enjoy.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: So yeah, I mean, I don't, still don't see how that was a mistake. Brian, thank you for all that you do. So my best business mistake first part, the mistake was not getting along with my boss in corporate. I worked for a big company and as a result of that poor relationship, I ended up leaving the company and of course with Elizabeth's help and encouragement, started our own gig here. And it turned out to be the best decision of my life. One of the nice things about entrepreneurship is that you have the freedom, a lot of freedom that I didn't have before, freedom to work with the people that you like, freedom to manage your time. What little there is just financial freedom to the extent that you earn what you're sort of worth, I think. So it turned out to be a great mistake not getting along with my boss.
[00:07:36] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth.
[00:07:39] Speaker D: Gearhart Brian Seth Hurst is a well regarded international entertainment professional and prominent figure in the world of media. He also has held industry leadership positions at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Brian is also co author with the late Olivia Newton John of the best selling children's book A Pigtail. Today Brian is here to talk about his books whole and also the whole companion workbook which is just recently released. These books are about going from a life in the past to a life in the future. I think is a quick way to summarize that. So welcome to the show. Tell us about the whole and what it's all about.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: The origin of it was that I had a television show in development with Buena Murray Productions, Reality television. It was called Determination. And what had happened was I lived on the Illinois Iowa border, so I would go to the rallies for president during Obama's run and I would notice that the media was not talking about what they were talking about and what I was seeing. And I felt like it was time to have somebody disintermediate the so we thought that we would recruit millennials at the time to be direct on the ground reporters. Well, the show crashed and burned during that first election. Then it crashed and burned again the second time when it crashed and burned the second and I'm telling you, this was something I had put my whole heart and soul into blood on the field, as they say. And I was sitting in an airport. I got the news actually by email and I was sitting in the airport and I was going, what do I do now? And I've always been a spiritual guy. I've always been intuitive. I've used my intu in my entire life and I literally heard give us 30 days. And at the end of 30 days, you will have a book. And the name of the book is whole. And I did that and I finished it in 30 days. I had what I call an accountability buddy. Very important if you're setting goals, to have someone that you can answer to and share with. And it was a series of essays about life, whether it was money, whether it was about personal transformation, mostly about beliefs and how our beliefs serve to create the reality we live in. And that the one power we have is to change our mind and to change our mindset. And I knew that that was not new information. But even though it's not new information, the way it's delivered depending upon people's personalities and books, that's why certain people attract certain books to them and they come into their lives because it's in a language that they understand.
Then did a revision of the book, by the way, just before the book was published. My 20 year relationship came to an end. My mother passed away, everything crashed and burned. And so a friend of mine said to me, you know what? This book wasn't written from you, it was written for you.
And I had friends quoting me my own book when I was going through stuff. You ought to read chapter nine. And then I did a revision and a friend of mine and PR said, you know, I can't market a book that's over a decade. You should do a workbook. And there are these prompts. When you're an entrepreneur or you're about to create something, I think the universe sends you prompts and a bell goes off whether you follow them or not, that's up to you. I knew that was a prompt. I said, okay, great, that's a great idea. So we took each chapter. I asked for 50 volunteers from my coaching business to do the exercises with me in the book. They are deep exercises of self discovery. I consulted with therapists to make sure it wasn't sending anybody over the edge. And that book took a lot longer. And we had an audiobook that I had done and we waited to release that. The audiobook was a whole. The books work in conjunction with each other, but the whole companion workbook works as a standalone. And to be honest, I did all of the exercises in the book as well so that I could make sure. And that was a process for me. Now I have people that have bought the book that said, okay, well, I'm going to do this book once a year. I'm going to do it at the start of the year. And so I know my purpose, my purpose right on my Whiteboard there is to connect and engage authentically and inspire. And that's my job, is to serve. And I believe that if I serve, I will be served. That if I contribute that the contribution will come back to me. And I hope that whole makes the difference in people's lives that I think it can make and that the volunteers have told me it has made, that in some cases it was life changing.
[00:12:11] Speaker E: Well, that was what I was going to ask you about. So do you have a community built around this? Somewhere where everybody can talk to each other and talk to you?
[00:12:17] Speaker A: You know, if you aren't the 10th talk about prompts from the universe, you aren't the 10th person to mention that. And it's like, okay, you know how when you're expanding your business and you have to prioritize and you have to think this is one of those moments. So thanks, Elizabeth. There is a community, I think what was so interesting, you know, I just. Our community at Sierra Madre, we're at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and we were evacuated. And to be honest, the fire was stopped within a thousand feet of our home. So we were very, very fortunate. But the outpouring of support through Facebook, I'm talking about hundreds of people responding because I was providing updates to be helpful and also to make sure that people knew where they could help us.
[00:13:02] Speaker E: I think that people need that right now. They're. They're yearning for that sense of community and connection right now. That's kind of where everything is going. So people are having Facebook groups and they're doing podcasts where all their podcast subscribers get together and they can talk to each other. And I think it's the shared experience. And if somebody goes through your book and they find out something profound about themselves, they want to tell somebody else who understands. Right.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: So insightful. When we did the. The focus groups, the volunteers, it was over a summer of weekends, and they were in groups of between five and seven people. And so they were all sharing what their experience was because I was trying to get feedback and they were all telling their stories and someone would say, you know, I had the same experience. Or someone would say, boy, that's really useful. So, yes, I believe you're right on. For me, it's like there is an investment of time and energy that you are going to put into something, and I have to make that evaluation and at the same time, to be completely honest. And you can go to briansethurst.com for this. After the pandemic, I decided to return to my first Love, which was performing because I had left the theater and performing behind. I ended up doing. Talk about having a great team behind you. My musical director, Michael Orland, my director Lee Martino. I ended up doing a one man show which premiered in Palm Springs. And now I continue to do it. It brings me so much joy. So it's like, how do I balance these two things? Which is here I am a writer that wants to contribute and make the world a better place, and here I am a performer that also wants to tell stories and connect with people. It's a scripted and musical adventure. I used to be a songwriter and other people sung my songs and I didn't, so I did that. But it's that balance. And I think sometimes if I didn't meditate, I think I would have spun off the planet years ago. So I think meditation and journaling, which is actually part of the workbook, those things are really important to gauge where you are. And the one thing that I have had to learn to do in business and in my personal life is not compare myself to others. Very, very dangerous. It's just not good for one's well being. But if that person inspires me, I always say I'm not going to compare, I'm going to be inspired. What am I inspired by with that person that I was busy comparing myself to or that business that I was busy comparing myself to?
[00:15:27] Speaker D: So, Brian, I want to ask you, I want to go back to the subject of transformation because I think it's an interesting subject and it seems to me like there's different ways that our life can be transformed. Sometimes through living experience, sometimes it's transformed through working with a book. And it usually means that like the light kind of goes on, right? Something happens and all of a sudden you feel differently or you feel a past experience has been resolved that was painful. Maybe you can talk a little bit about transformation and the different ways it can occur. How much of it is good?
[00:16:06] Speaker A: I think it's all good. I think it's hard work. I can only speak from my personal experience. You know, I, I was a childhood sexual abuse survivor. That trauma kind of defined my life for many years. About not trusting people, about being hurt, about trying to placate things and then going to work to discover what beliefs had come out of that experience and then saying, okay, I can change those. One lesson I have learned, and this is not a negative thing, is that going back to what Ryan said, it's not a sprint. You never arrive. You learn, you grow. This I'm speaking From my own experience, I've learned I've grown. There's a lot of celebration in that. And then you look up and you go, oh, my God, there's another mountain to climb. How am I going to do that? Well, I have a lot of skills from climbing previous mountains. Let me call upon those skills now. So transformation is sometimes there is an instantaneous aha moment, but you can't, at least in my experience, sometimes you can't make that a rule for life. It's an aha moment, but you gotta come back in the present. I, I, I say, you know, if I'm obsessed with the past, I'm busy looking over my shoulder and I can't see what's ahead of me. If I'm obsessed with the future, I'm looking so far ahead, I'm likely to bump into something or trip over what's ahead of me. So getting back to the present, that's where the point of transformation and the point of power exists. To me, it's in the present, and it's fear for me that exists in the past. Oh, my God. I'm afraid that'll happen again. Or I haven't resolved that, or, you know, how do I fix that or way in the future, which is, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen? And to come back into the present, to have gratitude for what I have at the moment, especially this week, given the fires, to have that gratitude and to be able to center. I mean, to me, that's the point of, of both books and the audiobook is how to get to that place. And you know what? You might occupy it for a minute before you're knocked off your feet. You know, when we were kids, I'm the oldest one here, but we had these things. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. They were these little toys. And I sometimes say my affirmation is, I'm a weevil, but I'm not falling down. And if I do fall down, I'm going to accept help to get back up.
[00:18:31] Speaker D: How do you feel when you're in the present? What's that like for you?
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Peaceful. Really peaceful. It's like I was a prisoner of to do lists.
[00:18:41] Speaker D: Guilty. Yeah.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: And that can be. I thank my mother for that. She was an amazing television producer. She was actually the first woman producer in Philadelphia. So I was a prisoner of that. And to give myself a break and to say, you know what? I don't have to be accomplishing something all the time. I can take a break. It's kind of what Ryan talked about. It's like you've got to be centered on your well being. You come first. There's a reason everybody says this. Put your own oxygen mask on first on the plane or you won't be able to help anybody else. So being present is about self care for me, it's about self compassion. It's about validating feelings. Whether I'm upset about something. Okay, let me see where those feelings are in my body because the feelings are working to get me to be present.
[00:19:29] Speaker E: And I want to say to that I love that. Don't be going a hundred miles an hour all the time, because Richard is much more like that than I am. But I find that when I slow down and take a break, that's when my creativity kicks in. That's when my brain takes all these different pieces and puts them together and comes up with a new idea. And you have to be present to do that. You can't be worrying about, well, will anybody like this? Or what happened in the past. So I think that's really good advice for me.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: The secret here, you know how when you go to work, you take the same route, you come back the same way. Now I work at home, but when I go out to either the gym or something, I always take a different route and I always take a different route back because it forces me to be present and it forces me to look around and to see things. It also was very lucky because I knew all the side streets in terms of the fire of where I could go. But to be present is to kind of upset your routine. It's important, I think, to have a routine, but it's important to vary that routine so that you can be present. So I agree with you. Slow down, look around. You never know where help is going to come from. If you're focused, if you're laser focused with blinders on, there could be help to the right or the left that you might not even see. But if you slow down and you like take the blinders off for a minute, you go, oh, maybe I need to make a right turn. Right now I'm feeling I need to make a right turn. Let me trust that gut instinct, oh, look, there's someone there to help me.
[00:20:59] Speaker D: I have been trying to sort of transform myself and get to a point where I'm maybe more in the moment and more appreciative of the world around me and not just so focused on the practice. In order to survive in the legal business, though, you've got to be on it and you have to keep up. But if you're not, then if you're.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Not in spiritual shape, you might not be able to keep up. And not to just like shamelessly self promoting here, but actually the workbook will help you do that.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: We're looking forward to it. I mean, I think that could be a great tool. Is it available now?
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Yes, you can get it. It's really interesting because there were so many obstacles. Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors in his book. The obstacle is the way there were so many obstacles to publication. It was amazing. And I just kept having to reapply myself, had to step back and take a breath. So if you go to Amazon.com and you search Brian Seth Hurst, everything will come up. But the title and the COVID had to be different on Amazon.com because they didn't want consumers to be confused. And so there were a lot of changes and approvals that I had. And you don't get to talk to anyone on the phone. It's all by email. So you can get that there. You can also get
[email protected] where it is called the Whole Companion Workbook. And Whole is available there too. And if you just don't want to go through all that, you can just go to wholelifebook.com and click on Buy the Books and it will take you where you need to go. I'm so very grateful. I just want to say this to Andrea Ryder, who was the typesetter of the book who just never failed. I mean, talk about having a great team around you. We constantly had to make changes. And also Elisa Klinger, who had actually volunteered to be the editor. She was part of the focus groups and volunteered to be the editor, which is what she does because she loved the material, material so much and she, she did an amazing job. So going back to the original question, having that great team around you and being able to rely on them and knowing that they're going to take care of what needs to be taken care of is amazing. And I think that the book talks about these things as well. Both books, the workbook allows you to really, it's interactive. You get to do the exercises and they're real world exercises that you take into the world. Something as simple as learning the name of your waiter or waitress, the person that's serving you that humanizes the relationship and allows you to be in relationship with that person and to make their day better or maybe they make your day simple things that can change your life.
[00:23:29] Speaker D: That sounds great. We have to take a Commercial break BRIAN we'll be right back. You are listening to Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt. Our special guest, Brian Seth Hurst, who has a lot of interesting insights. But we'll be back with more of Brian and the rest of the show right after this.
[00:23:48] Speaker G: Commercial break Let me tell you a story about Bill. Bill was a normal guy in his 50s. He had back surgery about two years ago. Bill was in a lot of pain. He dealt with his pain by taking the Percocets his doctor prescribed for him. Bill took more and more and more of them to help with the pain until one day the prescriptions weren't enough to get rid of Bill's pa. Then one day, Bill found someone to help him get rid of the pain with illegal drugs he didn't need a prescription for. Fast forward to today. Bill lost his job and his family. The only thing he does have is his drug dealer. If you know Bill's story and you don't want to end up like Bill, call the Detox and Treatment Helpline right now to get away and get treatment. 8009-8017-6180-0980-1761, 900-1061. That's 800-980-1761. Are you running a small business with two or more employees struggling to find affordable health insurance? Well, help is just a call away. Whether you're a restaurant owner, retail store manager or a gig worker with staff, we've got you covered. Get quality health insurance plans starting as low as $120 a month. Our custom comparison tool finds plans tailored specifically to your business. We know it can be tough to find the right coverage. That's why we're here, to make the process seamless and stress free. Our plans include health, vision and dental coverage, all at unbeatable rates. Call the Small Business Health Insurance Hotline now. We'll compare top providers to get you the best deal in one quick phone call. Don't wait. Secure the benefits you and your employees deserve today. Call now. Rates may vary based on location and coverage options. 8024-912084-80249-1208-4802-4911-2084. That's 802-491-20. 84.
[00:25:49] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and our.
[00:25:54] Speaker E: Special guest, Brian Seth Hurst. And you spell his last name, H U R S.
Brian has written a book which has a workbook called Hole W H O L E And a lot of people are seeing amazing benefits from it. We just want to continue the conversation with Brian. How did earlier events in your life help you formulate this book?
[00:26:16] Speaker A: You know, when I was a kid, I was very intuitive. I can remember saying to my mother when we were driving home, when we turned this corner, there's going to be a father and son. I was like seven, father and son playing catch. And we turned the corner and sure, that's enough. What we saw. And then unfortunately, unfortunately, I dreamt the death of both my mother's brothers exactly as it happened. And so I thought I must have caused that. So I completely shut down. Then all of a sudden it started to come back. In my late 20s, which I talk about in the introduction to Hole. And I was in a piano bar in New York and this gentleman was sitting next to me and I said. And we started talking and I said, do you have a French last name? He said, yes, it's Archambeau. And then I was hearing 311-33-3113 in my head. And I said, Is your birthday January 3rd? And he said, no, it's March 1st. And I was like, well, this is really weird. And then there was this intuitive and town named Linda Waldron. And I was in the entertainment community and everybody was to her to get readings. I walked in the door and she was wearing a muumu. She'd come from Hawaii and she had a little flower in her hair and she called herself the Butterfly Fairy. And of course I'm thinking, this is nuts. And one day she said, look, I'm supposed to go to this party and do readings and I don't feel well. Will you go and do them for me? And I said, I don't know how to do that stuff. And she said, oh, it's easy. Just close your eyes and say what you see. So I went to this party and I had this little sign that said readings. And it was at 8 o'clock I went and at quarter to 11, it was supposed to end in 15 minutes before this woman came up and she sat down. And I just closed my eyes and said what I saw. And I opened my eyes and she was this New Yorker, she was about 5ft. And she went, garrels, Garrels, Garrels. You have to talk to this guy.
[00:28:12] Speaker C: You have to talk.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: That's how the whole thing started.
[00:28:15] Speaker D: Brian Seth Hurst. Brian, tell us again how people can find you. Find your book and more about you.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: I think whole life book.com is where you can find out about the books that you can go to Amazon, you can go to Lulu, but they're available everywhere, I think. Pretty hard to get a workbook out there, though. It's a whole different format. But just go to wholelifebook.com and if you want to know more about my life, you can go to briansethurst.com you can get on a mailing list there. You can help build community at Elizabeth's suggestion, and we'll see where that goes. But yeah, wholelifebook.com and briansethurst.com and so honored to have had this discussion with you.
[00:28:54] Speaker D: Well, thank you. And speaking of inspiration, what inspires me is intellectual property. And so it's time now for Intellectual Property News. One of my favorite segments of the show, of course, being an intellectual property attorney. And that means working with patents, trademarks, and copyrights. So what is in the news today, Elizabeth?
[00:29:13] Speaker E: Well, Snooki lost out to a cat.
[00:29:16] Speaker D: You mean the Snooki from Jersey Shore?
[00:29:18] Speaker E: She doesn't have her name trademark because of the cat.
[00:29:21] Speaker D: Well, please, can you explain further?
[00:29:24] Speaker E: Well, there was a cat that was featured in these children's books named Snooki the cat.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:29:29] Speaker E: And the trademark office decided that her Snooki would be too close to the Snooki the cat books and there would be confusion. So she didn't get her trademark.
[00:29:38] Speaker D: So I just want to say I find that really odd that the trademark office would zap her on her trademark because of a cat book. I'm not saying that these things don't happen at the trademark office. It's entirely possible. But it does seem like they're kind of traveling in different channels of commerce. Right. So one of the things that the trademark office looks at is the similarities of the names and then also the types of goods that are being sold. So Snooki was probably looking to merchandise her name, also protect it for entertainment purposes. Cat book, that's usually, you know, books are usually typically in different categories. So I remember looking and seeing that there was a fair amount of social media from Snooki on this. I think she was pretty frustrated, but at least she took advantage of the PR opportunity that this rejection provided for her. But the interesting thing, too, is that names are protectable with trademarks. And so if you are really out there and you want to protect your name and your name is an important part of your brand, then you can protect those with trademarks.
[00:30:47] Speaker E: Is there a place where people can go to find out more about trademarks?
[00:30:50] Speaker D: Which, funny you should ask. You can go to learn more about Trademarks.com and you can download a free trademark booklet that will tell you a lot about trademarks. Or you can go there and book a consultation with me or one of the attorneys at Gearhart Law and we can help you with your trademarks or your patents or your copyrights. So it's an excellent educational resource and it's important for your business that you protect your name because if you don't protect it, somebody else could start using it and create a lot of confusion.
[00:31:25] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:31:28] Speaker D: Stay tuned. We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up soon, and you don't want to miss that. Our special guest today, Brian Seth Hurst, back right after this.
[00:31:38] Speaker H: Learn how thousands of smart homeowners are investing about a dollar to avoid expensive home repair bills. John, a former non customer said, my air conditioner broke and I had to spend nineteen hundred dollars to fix it. Jeff A customer wrote, my air conditioner broke and I got a new one at no out of pocket cost. Mary a former non customer, wrote, my heating system stopped running. I had to spend $3,000 to get a new one. Lisa A customer wrote, my heater stopped working. I got it fixed at no out of pocket cost. For about $1 a day, you can have all the major appliances and systems in your home guaranteed fixed or replaced. Call now. If the lines are busy, please call back.
[00:32:19] Speaker G: Call the Home Warranty Hotline now at 8002-5549-4080-0255-4940.800, 255-4940. That's 800-255-4940.
[00:32:36] Speaker F: Are you looking for the cheapest prices on car insurance? Then call the Cheap Car Insurance Hotline right now. You're guaranteed to save money on your car insurance. Most car insurances can be canceled at any time. That means if you find a better deal, you can switch right away. We're not just one company. We offer most brands of car insurance. We're like a discount supermarket for car insurance. And it doesn't matter if you have a good record or a bad driving record. Our agents are experts at finding you the right car insurance for your needs. Our average customer saves hundreds of dollars a year when they call us to switch. So why don't you make this 100% free? Call right now and see how much you can save on your car insurance.
[00:33:21] Speaker G: 8004-3067-2280-0430-6722.
800-430-6722. That's 800-430-67-2,2.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:33:41] Speaker D: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard across the country on the Radio America Network and on iHeartradio. Passage to Profit is also a popular podcast. We are ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally and have been named as a top 10 interview podcast by Feedspot database. So we're very proud of those things and we're very happy to bring all of this wonderful information to our audience. It's now time for Elizabeth's segment. So take it away, Elizabeth.
[00:34:16] Speaker E: Thank you. We're going to start with the Medical minute. So people are always interested in medicine. So we research on the web and this one I found made me so happy because guess what? Milk is good for you. Again, they did a study, they did it on women and they looked at the role of calcium in preventing colorectal cancer, and they found that there was a correlation.
[00:34:37] Speaker D: What was interesting, I read a little bit about the study, too, is that they looked at 540,000 women over the last 17 years. So, like, who does that, right? I mean, that has got to be one heck of a job, right?
[00:34:51] Speaker E: And this was done and published in the journal Nature Communications. The article was written by Corey Pelk on January 10, 2025. And I think it's great because milk is being blamed for causing inflammation, which maybe milk does, but the calcium is really important for people. And I never thought there would be a correlation between calcium and colorectal cancer, but here it is.
[00:35:15] Speaker D: And of course, that didn't spring to my mind immediately.
[00:35:17] Speaker E: You know, of course, guess what other changes you can make to help reduce your risk? Quit drinking, quit eating red meat, quit eating processed meat, being a healthy body weight, taking part in physical activity, you know, all the other things. But they actually, they did a very long, very comprehensive study and found this correlation between calcium and health.
[00:35:35] Speaker D: Well, I think that's amazing. I guess the solution to eating more meat is to drink more milk because they offset each other. Now we have a solution to that.
[00:35:44] Speaker E: Steak with a glass of milk.
[00:35:45] Speaker D: I'm, I'm an older guy. I still like drinking milk and cookies. I'm still like, that's like my favorite snack in the evening. I just get all loaded up on sugar. And then I wonder why I can't sleep at night. But it really is great.
[00:35:58] Speaker E: So now it's time for the update on the things that I'm doing. So I was just going to gloss over, but I guess I should be a little specific. So I started a meetup Group with Stacy Sherman, and it's called podcast and YouTube creators community. We do it once a month. We've been doing it online lately because it's winter here. We do have some in person sometimes we do hybrid, and it's just been growing and growing. And right now our next event is in a week and we already have over 500 people registered, so.
[00:36:23] Speaker D: Amazing.
[00:36:24] Speaker E: There's a lot of interest in the podcast, which is good because the reason I started this group was to see if Richard and I should remodel our podcast studio and rent it out. And I think the answer is yes.
[00:36:34] Speaker D: I think that's a great thing.
[00:36:36] Speaker E: Studio is nearly done. Richard's been buying tons and tons of equipment and we have a meeting with a videographer to help us set up the video studio. Because a lot of podcast now or video podcast.
[00:36:47] Speaker D: Yeah, we're going to have a video studio, an audio studio, a green room, and also a production studio.
[00:36:54] Speaker E: And it's going to be an event space, too. It has a kitchen and a bathroom. It's upstairs. And then I'm also still doing the Jersey podcast. Podcast, that's with Danielle Woolley. And Danielle is amazing. She should be podcasting 100% of the time, I swear. So that's still going. And then I have a few other things going on that I'm working on too, but I'm really in the podcast space mostly, and I'm doing the marketing for Gearhart Lawson. But enough about me. I am so excited to get to our next two guests. Really. The next one we're going to talk to is ryan Sobel with LifeFlow, Cutting Edge Software and coaching rooted in neuroscience. So welcome, Ryan. Please tell us everything, what you're doing. Sure.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: So I started this company at the beginning of 2023, and prior to that I was running two different businesses and then managing a rental property that was a huge handful. I was running a financial planning business, a different software startup, and then also my. My rental property. And I felt like I was being pulled in all these different directions. And I went to my business partner and said, hey, I feel like there's so much on my plate right now. I'm having a hard time managing all these different things. Could we stop working on the financial planning software and instead build something, a life management tool that I can use to manage all these. These different things. And over the last two years, we've been building and creating and developing that. It's now named LifeFlow, and it basically is how to be in a flow state continuously, even in the face of tons of different stuff pulling your attention. Multiple businesses, lots of stuff like that. And so we can work on that now pretty actively.
[00:38:18] Speaker D: So do you plug something into your brain that controls your brain patterns? Is that how you do this? I mean, please tell us more because it sounds like you found the secret to life here.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Not quite. Maybe at some point you might be able to do that. But the biggest thing in being in flow state one is to manage cognitive load. And most people are doing a very poor job of managing that. And cognitive load is effectively how much stuff is being kept on a person's short term memory. That's anything from to do, list items, commitments, emotions, thoughts, feelings. Brian was talking earlier about the importance of meditation and journaling and being present. That's kind of been a sort of reoccurring theme. And Elizabeth, you were even talking about how sometimes you get the best ideas that you have when you have the least going on in your life. Because when a person's cognitive load drops significantly, their ability to produce and the creativity goes through the roof. And the most important thing somebody can do to manage cognitive load is to immediately record stuff out somewhere outside their head. Basically continuous brain dumping. And if anyone's ever read David Allen's Getting Things Done, he's huge on this. Every single thing that comes in your head goes into a trusted system somewhere else because the amount of energy that it consumes, having that kind of stuff on a person's mind can be massive. So that would be the first thing. The second one is organizing neurotransmitters correctly. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and making sure that those are lined up correctly. And that can be done through managing our goals, for example, external circumstances. It's also really important that the task that we're working on is at the appropriate level of challenge to skill amount that the person has the challenge skills, balance. If something's too easy, we tend to get bored and not be in a flow state. It's too hard, we tend to get overwhelmed. So piecing all that together has been the core of the project.
[00:39:57] Speaker D: Wow, those are great insights. And just going back to cognitive overload, I really believe that there's a lot of truth in that because as my, my business has matured, I continually look for things to delegate because I find that the less I have on my mind, especially taking up mental space or the more trivial stuff, the better I can focus on the more important stuff and the more energy I have to work on things that are going to move the business forward. So how do you do that? I mean, how do you do that with software? Are you capturing the ideas or how does that work?
[00:40:35] Speaker C: Yeah, so a lot of it is capturing ideas. It's basically constant brain dumping. So if you had a thought, for example, Richard, hey, maybe I should delegate this task to this person before it's even delegated. That was an idea or a thought. It needs to go somewhere, into a trusted system, delegate this task to this person, and then you want to, ideally would want to review that. When you're in a flow state that's conducive to deciding how to best manage that task, very rarely is right away the best time to do it. And a lot of times people are jumping from this stimulus. That stimulus. This email came in, this person walked in my door. And being an. If you have a lot of things, you might want to delegate getting those all organized and doing that at the same time. Delegate this to John, this to Eric, this to Sally. Whatever it is can help a lot.
[00:41:16] Speaker E: And that goes to your other point a little bit. I think that if you delegate something to someone and they're not doing the task, I think it's typically because it's over their head, they don't know how to do it. So how do you find the right.
[00:41:28] Speaker C: Person that can be challenging. One thing that has helped tremendously is I have a virtual assistant working in the Philippines that is absolutely phenomenal. And one of his qualities that I like the best is he takes a lot of initiative. So he would rather go and take on doing the task. And even if he makes a mistake, I'd rather him go and take it on than to kind of hesitate and wait for clarification for me, just go for it. And there have been some things that have been done that I'm like, you know, I wouldn't have done it that way. But overall, I feel like it's better than him constantly waiting for my approval for stuff. So I would say someone in that, in that case is better take an initiative.
[00:41:59] Speaker D: I've also found that when you're offloading things to other people, it's important for them to understand what it is that you want. And so when I first started delegating things, I would say, just here, do this. And they really wouldn't know what the outcome was or the timeframe or the tools that they were allowed to use in order to get to the result. Now I'm much more careful about how I delegate and what I tell people I want done. If it's a new task that they haven't done before. I spend a lot of time talking with them to make sure that they fully understand what it is that we want. And you do want to give people freedom to approach the problem in a way that makes sense to them, but you also want clarity on what is going to be the ultimate output. Right. So I think that's also a really important piece.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: Yeah, you said an important point with that. Because people who are typically, I find they don't have any employees will tell you, oh, just delegate this thing. But they don't actually realize that sometimes it takes a significant amount of time on your end and a lot of neuroprocessing and thinking to how do I actually explain this in a way that makes sense and is going to have a good result rather than just shoving stuff over? And that was one of the mistakes I made before, is that, hey, figure this thing out. I was actually two hands off. Figure this out, figure that out. And eventually I'm like, you know, they're not set up to win in all these situations. And then sometimes it takes so long to delegate it, it can be better do it yourself. I hate to say something like that, but sometimes it is.
[00:43:23] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, the thing is, is it was always obvious to me, but that doesn't mean that anybody else knew what the heck I was thinking about. Right. I mean, how can you, like, you know, just one sentence or a short email do this?
[00:43:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:37] Speaker D: And then they're just kind of left hanging there.
[00:43:39] Speaker E: So, Brian, do you have a question or comment?
[00:43:42] Speaker A: I'm fascinated. I think it's so much in line with how you stay on purpose. I kind of look at flow state as Ryan defines it as, you know, how do you stay on purpose? And I think is your skill set increases, you're able to stay on purpose. But when you want to effectively delegate. To me, the addition I have there is I always consult other people. Do you know someone, Is there someone that I could hire that can do this better? And it's funny, my partner has an assistant in the Philippines and is so frustrated right now trying to teach that assistant how to edit video properly. And sure, it's been really, I think, a source of stress because it's about repeating things over and over and over again. So I think recognizing when someone just isn't going to get it and you have to cut them loose. But then the other thing I wanted to ask Ryan is if you are delegating, how do you get that person that you're delegating to understand flow state for their own sake?
[00:44:46] Speaker C: That's something I've definitely contended with. Obviously we're running a flow state company, It's a coaching program and also a software company. And it's how obsessive do I want to have my team be about them being in their own flow states?
[00:44:59] Speaker D: Right.
[00:45:00] Speaker C: Because on one hand there's a balance between what's optimal for flow state and then one of the other flow triggers, which is autonomy. And I tend to be more on the autonomy side, whereas hey, use whatever system is working for you the best. And my workflow tends to be very different looking than the stuff I'm delegating to my va. Like for example, virtual assistant or personal assistant tends to it be more important for them to be available when emergencies happen that day. Hey, this flight got messed up. Fix this thing. Hey, call this bank. This issue happened. Whereas for me, where I need to split my time between doing the day to day tasks and also entering zones of really deep creative thinking, I have large blocks where I cannot be interrupted no matter what's going on. So their flows are actually different. And that's one of the nuances that, that we've been exploring and discovering as we've gone on is which the nuances of different people's workflow and brain chemistry are different from one person to the next.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: I think this is fascinating because you look at company culture and how important company culture is over time. I've worked with clients to help establish company culture, but if the culture includes flow state, I can only think that that would be so good for everyone who works for the company for their own well being. So it's just really interesting to say, okay, flow state and company culture, how do those two things combine?
[00:46:20] Speaker C: It's a difficult balance because a lot of companies are valuing somebody, responding immediately to emails, immediately to slacks, immediately to text messages. They think the faster that we're in tandem and synced up, the faster things will move. But when that happens, they're not actually able to get to those deep flow states. And there's different schools of thought around this. Jack Dorsey from Twitter, I recently listened to a book about how he would be constantly available, always around, door open, kind of policy, responding to different kinds of issues issues, and then on the far other side is hitting the deep creative spots. And I think that generally speaking, people are overly addicted to instant responses and instant communication. One of the concepts that we talk about is something called the communication waterfall. And the idea for maximizing deep flow state is to flow as deep down the waterfall as you can and it starts with the most consuming engagement, which is an in person meeting. And the second one would be like a zoom meeting. And then the third one would be a phone call, Then after that it would be a text message, then an email, then maybe a WhatsApp. And so ideally, you want to try to flow down the communication waterfall as much as possible so that you're being as little consumed by what's going on as you can. All the way to nothing. If you can get to nothing, is at the bottom of that.
The other thing that can be very helpful for flow state is intentionally doing things out of sync, asynchronous communication, which is when we message somebody, we actually don't want them to respond right away. We want to message all the things to somebody and then wait and then have all those responses come back. Because if you're kind of halfway synced, where somebody is sending you a response back, 60 seconds later, 90 seconds later, you're sort of in it, out of it, your concentration is shattered. So it's better to either be totally out of sync or fully in sync for flow state in many cases.
[00:48:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I remember I've always been interested in low state. When I was a young guy, I used to play tennis and there was this book called the Inner game of Tennis by Tim Galway. And he talked about how there were two selves, the self one and the self two. He was one of the first authors. The book was written in the 70s, early 70s, and talked about removing the ego self and getting into the self 2, which was the one that could perform without judgment. And that was how you were going to get your best tennis game. And at the time, it was a pretty revolutionary book for western culture. But you know, now today, umpteen years later, it's good to see that it's really important part of our culture. Besides unloading your cognitive brain from tasks, are there other things that you can do to get into the flow state?
[00:48:56] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So the second part of that is stacking our neurotransmitters correctly. And dopamine is one of them, which is the reward chemical that we get for doing something that's in align with our clear goals. So it sounds really basic, but goal setting stuff is really, really important so that we know when we're making progress towards something that we want oftentimes very much overlooked. So let's say that you are mowing a lawn. Every single time that you mow a new row, it actually releases dopamine into your brain because you have the direct goal of mowing the lawn. And then if you add on top of that, that, okay, I'm now getting paid for mowing the lawn. And I also have another goal of accumulating a certain amount of money per month. Month. It's going to trigger even more dopamine in order to get that done. And then maybe on top of that, if I'm trying to win a contest or how fast I can mow the lawn now I'm doing, doing more. You can keep adding things. If you were to then add a community around you and you have people cheering you on and you're in competition with a neighbor across the street and they're mowing the lawn, suddenly your neurotransmitters start going nuts and your ability to focus on that lawn increases exponentially. So it's how do we create that kind of an experience within a person's regular workday is the science and art.
[00:50:08] Speaker E: That's great. That explains to me, you just explained to me why I have to play wordle every day. There goes the dopamine. I got my wordle.
[00:50:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.
[00:50:18] Speaker E: So do you have a lot of people using this now? Have you just rolled it out or has it been around for a while?
[00:50:22] Speaker C: We have had two beta groups that have come out. Our first beta group had three users, then our next beta group had 13. And we're launching our third one in the, in February and we're looking to have 50 plus. We're trying to see how many we can handle and still create some of the small group flow dynamics. But yeah, somewhere, somewhere in that ballpark of is what we've seen so far.
[00:50:43] Speaker E: And are people reporting good results?
[00:50:45] Speaker C: Yes. So interestingly enough, this started off as a software solution for me trying to manage multiple businesses and I was set out to create the best way to manage some of these concepts. And then right before we start our first beta group, I'm like, you know, what we should do is have a flow coaching attached to the software. And the feedback that I got, which I wasn't, which I was surprised about, was that the flow coaching for many people was far more powerful than the actual software. It was things like turning off our notifications or actually managing blocking out all distractions for a certain two hour block every single day. That's become increasingly difficult behaviorally with the amount of notifications and emails and pings and other stuff. So the feedback was the software is great, but the coaching program actually moved a lot of things in my life further than just the software would have alone.
[00:51:34] Speaker E: That's excellent.
[00:51:35] Speaker D: It's kind of a paradox. You're controlling yourself so you can work in an uncontrolled way.
[00:51:39] Speaker C: That's a great way to put it. And you know, Brian was talking about, I think you said a prisoner of to do lists. Right. So you can be a prisoner to the to do list, as in they're controlling your life, or you can use that to clear your mind and actually use that as a source of freedom. It can. It can work in both ways.
[00:51:56] Speaker E: Absolutely. So we're running out of time, but how do people find you?
[00:52:00] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: Go to lifeflowstate.com there's our landing page and our registration is open for an expedit course if somebody's interested. And that'd be the easiest way to get in touch.
[00:52:09] Speaker E: Well, thank you very much, Ryan. That is just really cool.
[00:52:12] Speaker D: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:52:15] Speaker E: So now we're on to our final presenter, Joshua Lee with Tribe Money. And the way he describes it, it 1 account 0 awkwardness. So welcome, Joshua. Tell us all about it.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you for having me. So at Tri Money, what we are building is this shared financial management space where people can collect their money together and then from there they can manage those finances with their groups of all sizes. So this could be friends, families, roommates, relationships all the way up until clubs, as well as affinity groups like run clubs, pickleball clubs. Really a place where there's a lot of shared financial management needed, as well as a space to collect all your finances and really just be able to. To be able to transact and just see exactly how you're spending all your finances with your peers and more than anything as well, just also ensuring that you can actually have control over those finances and also the members within it as well. And, you know, outside of just that as well, you know, when people want to go out on trips with their friends, for instance, people oftentimes have to pull the money together, be able to budget what they want to actually use those shared finances for. And what our app really allows is for people to be able to, first of all, budget these expenses, which is. Is very difficult to do today if you're trying to collect money with your friends. Oftentimes, you know, what it would look like is that these funds really just end up in someone's personal account. It gets very mixed up as well, just because now you're having to manage the funds from the groups as well as for your own personal finances. And then you have to do all the tracking, all the Excel sheet You know, bookkeeping, so that everybody knows exactly what those funds are going to be used for and how much was used as well. And it's just a very manual and cumbersome, fragmented process. And ultimately what we were trying to provide is, you know, by having this one place where everyone can drop off the money, really also see as well what their spendings are, they can also budget better as well. You know, oftentimes in trips, people end up overspending without knowing exactly, you know, how much they're spending throughout the trip, because you don't really think about it as you're actually going through the activities, only to end up at the very end really having to sit down and, you know, understand and split the expenses and going, oh, man, I spent a lot more than I intended to.
[00:54:07] Speaker D: So how did you build your team to create this app and this company? What did you do?
[00:54:12] Speaker B: So, as a starting point, I myself worked at Zelle as a product manager for a little bit, just really trying to understand just consumer finance and data protection, just in data privacy as well, to be able to ensure that we could actually build this into the financial system. More so than that, we actually have some great mentors. So Hayley Kim, this person has been a personal mentor of mine and advisor to our startup. She helped launch Google Pay, Samsung Pay, as well as Zelle as the head of marketing, as well as Alan Hui, who was our VP of Product at both Zelle and at PayPal as well, who really provides us all the insights and knowledge to really understand how to build a consumer product and really serve them from a financial perspective.
[00:54:50] Speaker D: So you made it a point to have people in your orbit that had experience in these types of businesses and they could help advise you on which directions to take.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. You know, starting when I was first starting, as I mentioned, I tried to figure out a lot of this stuff myself. And trying to build a financial app is very difficult. There's a lot of regulations and a lot of different compliance standards that you have to match up to. And it's not a very easy space to navigate without really having too much experience and understanding of really the complexities that lie in the legality. And trying to build a financial application and so really having those really figureheads and people who are more well versed in the space who knew how to navigate it as well, really did give us the confidence to know that not only were we building something that could be applicable, but also wouldn't have, you know, me land up in jail as well.
[00:55:38] Speaker D: Yeah, that's kind of A key intention. Right.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: Joshua, is there a voting function? Can you explain how that works?
[00:55:46] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So it's very simple. You create what we call tribes inside our application, which is essentially the shared bank account, and you invite your peers, friends, whoever it might be, and you set approval, people who can approve of certain spending. So people would then have to request out of the shared bank account when they want to actually pull money out from there. The approvers can then just, you know, make the decision whether or not this vote can pass. And you set those thresholds as you create these accounts. And also more than just that as well, you can also set certain permissions to ensure, you know, this person can actually request money, this person can spend the money. So you set all those really up in advance. And then, of course, as you actually use the app, you manage this together. If you add more people, you can also change the rules, change the. The number of people that have to vote, and essentially just manage it all as you spend together.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: And do you have people that are using this as a fundraising application as well?
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Yes. So this is actually one of the things that we are hoping to build out at the moment. We have not built out the capabilities for fundraising, mostly just because we have to integrate a payment processor to be able to actually allow for people to be able to just drop off money without downloading the app. So we are actually working on building that right now. We did just launch the app about a week ago, actually from today. And so as we continue to get users and, you know, understand their needs as well, we plan on building out really a lot more of the functionalities that could help serve, you know, different groups for their different needs and their finances.
[00:57:02] Speaker E: So what are you doing to market this?
[00:57:04] Speaker B: So right now, really, we're trying to try a few different strategies since we did just launch one of the ones. Mostly that we're trying to do from the consumer side is really focusing on working together with different branding and digital marketing agencies that will help us promote our product through, you know, different social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Meta. Just trying to see if we can get some visibility as a starting point point beyond that as well, we've started to do direct outreach with organizations that might have groups that might need to use this as, you know, just as an example, someone that we've wanted to have and we've been having discussions with and still furthering discussions with is the Washington Youth Soccer League. And just a firm that overheads all the youth soccer clubs that exist right there in the state of Washington. And really what we were hoping for with that is, you know, because our product can help the parents who have to collect all the finances for their kids, travel for the hotel fees, for the tournament fees, because our app can really help that procedure. We're really hoping that they would could establish a marketing partnership with us. And this is just one of a few different examples of these larger overhead or management organizations for groups that we are really trying to start our conversations with at the moment to get over.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: That first hump that is where sometimes you have to take that deep breath, a few deep breaths. But that we see that as the first challenge, which is how do you get this out into the world in a way that people get it easily and say, oh, oh, I need that.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:58:22] Speaker E: What popped into my brain was the National Parent Teacher association because the schools, I mean, they're always getting money for everything. When my kids were little, the little field trip slip with the dollar bills table to it. I mean, I really feel like that could be a good fit for you if they're receptive.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And I think that for us it's again as you mentioned, Brian, it's for us really finding that first. I think that, you know, as people we've viewed by our financials very individualistically, but I think in reality there have a lot of shared finances. Humans are very social as creatures and especially leaving that very isolationism era from COVID You know, people want to get together, people want to do things together. And unfortunately with wanting to do things together it oftentimes requires finances. Although we do think things very singular transaction wise as far as, you know, trying to do our spendings. We do have a lot of shared finances where money comes together and we really do want to find that first, you know, one or two use cases that really help us, you know, be able to scale our product up, up and then eventually, right, just bring the visibility and just bring trust that we can also serve these groups and their needs for their shared financial management.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: You know, I was just thinking if you could use the app for your investors. In other words, the investors are using the app to invest money.
[00:59:32] Speaker E: That's a good idea.
[00:59:33] Speaker D: There you go.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: Hopefully a one day goal. Yes.
[00:59:35] Speaker D: So what kind of protections do you have around the app? There's so much fraud out there. How can people feel like the money is going to be saved?
[00:59:43] Speaker B: As a starting point, we are actually backed by a financial institution through a banking as a service. So our back end financial institution is Crossover bank, who does do a lot of These compliance and regulatory checks with us, prior to us even starting our beta testing, which was back in September, we had to go through a very stringent process of ensuring that, at least from a financial perspective, we've upheld all the different compliance and regulatory standards just held by all the different bodies that regulate this space. Outside of that, of course, we also have a partnership with Persona, which does a kyc, also better known as like Know youw Customer. Essentially, this is just a better way to check and ensure that people, first of all, say who they are. As we know with AI as well, there's a lot of synthetic personalities and people impersonations happening out there. So just first of all checking that you are who you are, and as well as if you've been caught for fraud or scam before, been noted as a bad actor, we keep you off of the platform. If you're on the OFAC list, you're also off the platform. We partner with Plaid as well to do the bank authorization to really just ensure that we do double check with the KYC and the bank authorization just to just ensure that we really know that this is the right person, who they are. And if they have had history of bad acting, they are removed from the platform. Of course, as we continue to grow the platform, we will also be building our own compliance and fraud engines to really ensure the safety of not only the money that's on the platform, but also all of the users who would be on our platform as well.
[01:00:57] Speaker D: Do you offer any kind of reimbursement if the app is hacked or anything like that?
[01:01:03] Speaker B: We're working very hard to make sure that that doesn't happen yet. Since we have just launched, I think we're at the scale where we will definitely be doing reimbursements if those issues do happen. And fingers crossed that that doesn't occur. But we will be continuing to build out measures to make sure that we do fight out any bad actors. And of course, if there are instances where a bad actor can abuse our platform, and more specifically the people using our platform, we do plan on remediating those issues, you know, at least by maybe refunding it as a starting point, but really, more than anything else, trying to get ahead of it before it even gets started.
[01:01:32] Speaker E: What range of values can it take? Like, can you go up to a million dollars with it, or is it like capped at 10,000? I mean, because I would imagine that'd be a lot of money to handle.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: Yes, right now, just from a singular transaction perspective, very similar to any other P2P applications such as Venmo PayPal. We do start off with a $2,500 limit to how much you can put in at a singular moment or take out as a singular moment. This is really just to fight money laundering as well. It's a huge issue in the financial space. Something that we really worked on fighting over at Zelle and I'm sure at every fintech company that does payment processing as well too. But I think what we will start to understand better as we continue to develop the app is also how we can build trust scores for our users as well to see how we can start to increase that amount. Of course, we will also be also building out capabilities for businesses to be on our application. So going through a whole kyb or know your business, which does open up the doors for much larger size transactions.
[01:02:20] Speaker E: Wow, that is awesome. How do people find you?
[01:02:23] Speaker B: Find us at Tribe Money. That is our website. You can also just search up Tribe Money Pools on Google. There was a whole trademarking thing that I'm sure you two really understand that made it a little bit hard to just acquire Tribe Money. And so we are under Triboney Pools, so please find us there. We're also on the App Store as well as the Google Play Store so you can type out Tribe Money Pools and our application is there.
[01:02:41] Speaker E: Excellent. Thank you. That was Joshua Lee. Listeners, you are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest today, Brian Seth Hurst. Two amazing presenters and we will be right back with Secrets of the entrepreneurial Mind. You don't want to miss that.
[01:02:57] Speaker F: Man, I had a rough night's sleep, boy. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday and I. I just couldn't sleep, man. I'm dying here. Somebody help me. I IRS problems affect more than just your finances. If you're ready to take back control of your life and you owe more than $10,000, you need to call the tax doctor. Their expert staff can immediately protect you from the IRS and state collectors and get you the best possible tax settlement guaranteed. The IRS has recently released new programs geared in helping struggling taxpayers where you may qualify to settle your tax debt and wipe out up to 85% or or more of what you currently owe. If you owe $10,000 or more in back taxes, call the tax doctor right now. See if you qualify to pay less.
[01:03:40] Speaker G: 8002-6219-2680-0262, 1926.
800-262, 1926. That's 800-262, 1926.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: It's passage to Prophet.
[01:03:57] Speaker D: Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passage to profitshow.com website and check out her album.
[01:04:11] Speaker E: We have just had an amazing show with I love the innovation, the cutting edge innovation that we get on the show. Now it is time for Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. I'm going to ask each of our presenters for a secret that has helped them or hurt them. Their choice. So I'm going to start with Brian, Seth Hurst. Brian, what is a secret you can share?
[01:04:30] Speaker A: I think it's twofold. Number one, get great mentors and don't be afraid. I know a lot of times they say fake it till you make it, but I think you must admit to yourself what you don't know. And then the other thing is being purpose driven. I mean, being very, very clear. That's the main thrust of the books and the coaching program. Just being very, very clear about what your purpose is. And then using that statement. It's not a mission statement because purpose is the context for what you do, not what you do, but using that statement as a filter to help you decide the decisions that you make that are on purpose or not on purpose.
[01:05:12] Speaker E: Wow, I love that. Ryan Sobel, what is your secret?
[01:05:16] Speaker C: Well, let's see here. There's two things I was thinking about sharing. I would say that the one that's having the biggest effect right now is being generous with ownership interests. I'm working on another venture called Flowmaster Chef, which is Flow State in the kitchen, it's all about cooking. I'm not getting too into that, but I had a software developer who's very talented starting to help me build the app. And we were talking about an ownership split or a revenue share. And he was saying, hey, I think maybe I deserve between 15 and 40%. And I'm thinking in my head, okay, well, I don't know what's fair here. And I went and talked to a friend of mine's father who is a very successful businessman. I was basically talking to him about this arrangement. And I'm thinking, how do I negotiate? He never split the difference. How do I get the most and give them the least? And he's like, how about you do this? Give him more than he thinks he deserves. How about 50%? I'm like, and if you do that, do you know how hard this guy's gonna work compared to if you give him a sliver? And he's like, his belief was someone's gonna work harder for themselves than they'll ever work for me. And I'm like, you know what? I never thought to do that. And then it totally changed my perspective. So I did that in that business and also in my other business. The key though is that make sure you do this with the right person. They can't be a schlub, obviously, but it's been great. Things are going unbelievably well. Things are accelerating at a rate I didn't think was possible. They're working unbelievably hard. They're very talented. And that's not something that was not intuitive to me at all.
[01:06:37] Speaker E: Wow, me neither. But that's really impressive.
[01:06:40] Speaker D: Yeah. I remember reading a book about management. I can't remember the name of the author, but one of the things that he said was overpay your people. And a lot of businesses try to underpay their people because it saves costs, but it's also demotivating, like you said. And I think sharing more creates more abundance in the long run.
[01:07:01] Speaker E: So, Joshua Lee, what is your secret?
[01:07:03] Speaker B: I think this is something that I had wish I had realized earlier when I started this business. And it's maybe something that we had talked about a little bit earlier before too. And you know, with investors we worked with as well, they've said the same thing. But for new founders and new entrepreneurs, I think that, you know, we have a lot of good ideas and I think that first time founders and entrepreneurs really focus on building this wonderful product. But second time founders learn and they know that the most important thing isn't the product itself, but it's distribution. You know, really knowing who you're going to serve.
[01:07:29] Speaker C: Right.
[01:07:29] Speaker B: Who needs this, this product, Right. It's not just a nice to have, but a need to have. And how are you going to get it out there? Right. There might be people who need your product, but if you can't get it out there, then you built this amazing thing for nothing. And it's one of those things that, you know, I wish I had learned a little bit earlier. When I first started my journey, I was, I spent so much time just trying to build this product. Right. I could help people. But eventually we came to a point in just thinking, how are we going to get it to the hands of the people now? And again, as it's something that we did discuss earlier, but it's absolutely something that I wish I had focused on a little bit earlier as well.
[01:07:56] Speaker E: Yeah, marketing is. Is that devil in the details, right? So, Richard Gerhardt what is your secret?
[01:08:03] Speaker D: My secret is to never underestimate the value of going unplugged for a week. Elizabeth and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. We went to Costa Rica. I turned off the cell phone. I do have to admit I looked at it twice, but for me, that's pretty good. And I came back with just a whole new perspective on so many things. It was so refreshing. And it's the first time I've done that in a long time. So I think I'm going to try to do it more often because everybody needs a break.
[01:08:37] Speaker E: And mine is if you're trying to figure out how to do stuff and pay the bills, you can take advantage of the gig economy. So, for instance, I love Canva. It helps you create images and, well, it started helping you create images years ago when it first started. And that's when I started using it before COVID and now it's just exploded. You can do so much with it. It's a program that you can do presentations, you can do videos, all sorts of things. It's very powerful platform. And I am like, I've been using Canva for years and I've been researching it and I talk to people and they don't know how to use it. And so I'm thinking while I'm getting this podcast studio up and running, maybe if I want a little bit of money for some other things, I could go and help people use Canva and not necessarily teach them, because then I would do a udemy course, which. Which is another good thing. If you know something really well, you could do a udemy course for added income. But to actually sit down and teach them one on one, which is kind of not happening so much anymore because everybody expects you to just be able to learn stuff, and that's hard if you don't have that kind of brain.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: So.
[01:09:41] Speaker E: So take advantage of the gig economy if you need some extra money while you're building your business.
[01:09:45] Speaker D: Good advice. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer, Noah Fleishman, and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishikeb Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcast. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram at, and on our YouTube channel. 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.
