[00:00:00] Speaker A: How do you reframe the way you think? You've got to really look into yourself.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: So it was aha moment for me realizing most of fashion companies are designed for people who are into fashion.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: I thought, my God, we have to do that in horses, where nobody's done anything like that.
[00:00:14] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:15] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard some snippets from our show. We had amazing people on. Listen for the rest of it.
[00:00:23] Speaker F: Ramping up your business.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: The time is near.
[00:00:26] Speaker F: You've given it hard. Now get it in gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:34] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart, 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 do marketing for Gearhart Law. And I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a content creation studio with the focus on podcasting.
[00:00:52] Speaker D: Are the old rules of leadership dead? We'll find out soon because our guest today, Carolina Stokes, thinks so. She's a leadership strategist and author of Aftershock to 2030, is offering CEOs a bold new playbook to reinvent their organizations.
[00:01:10] Speaker E: And it seems like we're really into the software today because our next guest, Amya Chang, has taken AI to help dress men better. And boy, we love this.
[00:01:20] Speaker D: I don't need any help. I dress just fine, thank you.
[00:01:24] Speaker E: And then Jeffrey Cedar has taken data science to analyze racehorses and predict which racehorses are going to win.
[00:01:33] Speaker D: That sounds very interesting to me. Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their business journeys. And now it's time for your exciting new business Journey two and five Americans. Our business owners are thinking about starting a business. And so we're going to be asking our panel, what was the biggest challenge you you faced when turning your idea into a business and how did you overcome it? So, Jeffrey Cedar, what challenge did you face when turning your idea into a business?
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Credibility and the ability to be persistent. I ended up with the nickname Dogzilla. That's my handle in the wagering room. But credibility in the racehorse business, you know, it's full of baloney. I mean, it's just full of traditional stuff and a lot of jargon and a lot of misinformation and very little real science. And even the people who pretend to be scientific who've tried to copy some of our stuff with cheap imitations, it's mostly garbage. But how do you separate yourself It's a very small clique. They're very wealthy people who are often in it to win. They don't care about the money, and it's all relationships. And I was coming with no relationships and no money and with a completely new approach that, by the way, would devalue the inventories of all the major players by de emphasizing pedigree. So I was not welcome.
So to develop credibility took a long time and a lot of money and ended up I finally got a break. And when I did with one of the big stables, we immediately had world champions and Kentucky Derby horses.
[00:03:02] Speaker D: That's great. Anya Chang, welcome to the show. What did it take to turn your idea into a business?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I think the biggest challenge is believe in yourself. So when I started, I went on a startup competition to practice a competition. I find 42 formal judges.
So when I went on the competition, my pitch was Perfect. I practiced 42 times with previous judges.
But when the judges asked me the questions, I stunned because I wasn't trying to answer the question all in my head. I was thinking, oh, Practice judge number 37 asked me this question and he told me the answer, which I put in appendix number 92. I didn't believe that I could answer the question.
I always thinking someone else told me. So I think believing yourself when you're starting a business, extremely important.
[00:03:50] Speaker D: That's great. Caroline, welcome to the show. Caroline Stokes, from Aftershock to 2030. New book out there, so definitely check it out. What about turning your business idea into a business?
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Turning the idea into a business. I mean, we all have lots of ideas, right? But in my particular situation, this idea was actually probably created back in the 90s, but I had to go through so many different world experiences, living in different countries, working for different businesses, being in various different parts of the business to be able to get to the point where I was able to do what I'm doing today.
[00:04:28] Speaker D: I guess the moral of the story, going from idea to business can be a challenge sometimes, and it's something that you just really have to stick with. Now it's time for our distinguished guest, Caroline Stokes. As I mentioned, she's the author of Aftershock to 2030, and her approach is that it's time to reinvent yourself as a leader. Caroline thinks because the world is changing so quickly that the old rules of leadership are dead and that we have to reframe the way we think about leadership. So very interesting topic I'm really curious about. How do you reframe the way you think?
[00:05:04] Speaker A: How do you Reframe the way you think. You've got to really look into yourself, which sounds very, very hard for most people that run very, very quickly all day long. And they're focused on what they have to do to obviously make a living and to survive and to, you know, pay the mortgage and do all of those things. And really, we need to rewire the way our brain works to be able to work and to live and to evolve in this era that we're living in. And when I say that it sounds a bit strange, I have to admit, just the words coming out of my mouth is like, what the heck am I saying? But when you take into consideration the changes in AI, you had a guest on quite recently, his name was, I think, James Barud, and he was talking about agentic AI, and he was talking about the changes there.
Just looking at that as a perspective, when you take into consideration how quickly that will happen, and this is before quantum computing makes everything even faster, we're looking at our world changing so much. Think about it. Past two years, we're now using ChatGPT or any other system really rapidly. And the way that we use it, it's actually changing us, it's changing our brain, it's changing our ability to communicate and to ideate and to problem solve. And in instances, it's impacting our ability to be critical thinkers.
So that's just one aspect. The other aspect in the book that I talk about is climate change. As you know and as we know, with regards to climate change, we're in this challenging situation where we're looking at the headlines, we're looking at the news. It doesn't look particularly positive out there. We have a global expectation that we need to get to net zero by 2030, and in some countries it's 2035. But there have been various global agreements for this to happen, and corporations, governments, the Institute of Justice in Brussels and various other institutions and climate activists and scientists have all been driving towards this particular movement. For industry, organizations, leaders and consumers to change the way that we consume, and that requires us to change our mindset in the process, because we have these habits ingrained. We will go and buy things as we would normally do it because we're attached to that. There's a nostalgia associated with it. There are lots of different aspects.
We don't want to give up that privilege that we've worked really hard to deserve.
So there's a lot of change there. And then on top of that, all of that disruption is changing society as a whole. And that is creating a lot of unrest at work, it's creating unrest in schools, it's creating unrest, you know, at the Thanksgiving dinner table, whereby just being. Being able to create the kind of conversations that we need to create, to create the level of let's equity that I think we're all looking for, to be heard and understood.
That trifecta, as I like to call it, is a lot to deal with. And a lot of people will say to me, hey, Caroline, can't we just deal with one at a time? Not really, because they're all converging all at the same time, and we need to be able to see how we are interacting as individuals, interacting with that. So if you're a CEO, how are you interacting with that? How are you interacting with your team? How are you interacting with your consumers and all of the stakeholders? There's a lot going on there.
[00:08:27] Speaker E: The problem is, it's all happening so fast. I was talking to a psychology professor this morning. She happens to be my neighbor, long story, but she studies these interactions, and one of the biggest problems that she sees right now is we're only fed the information that we want to hear. So if you don't want to believe in climate change, you don't have to, because there are a lot of people that'll say it's fake when data and science show that it's real. Right. And if you don't want to have to use AI, there are people that will say, that's okay, but you're only going to really hurt yourself.
[00:08:59] Speaker D: I am curious about. When we're talking about changing our mindset, let's give you the opportunity to change my mindset, Caroline. What would I be like after my mindset has been changed? What would be the difference between Richard now and Richard after a changed mindset?
[00:09:16] Speaker A: You may not be prepared to hear this.
[00:09:18] Speaker D: I'll do my best.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: Okay? I'm gonna be happier. You're gonna be happier. There are so many different scientists, psychologists, that will say there's a lot of psychological proof out there, there's a lot of scientific proof, and a lot of environmentalists that will also say, you know, if you're able to adapt your mindset to understand that, you know, you're actually richer than you think internally, and you're able to see that where we are in society, in the world, in the environment, in the economy, where we are, we're actually really. I'm going to use the term blessed.
We're fortunate we have our health if we don't have our health. I know that that's a very different situation. And you know, if somebody's listening and they're saying, but I feel sick, I'm in constant pain from whatever, you know, they're going to think I'm talking total and utter garbage. So, you know, in, in the instance that, you know, somebody is doing well, they're comfortable, they have an income, they're able to plot their forward, you know, that's a pretty happy life. You know, a lot of Buddhists might speak in that particular way, but in general, the mindset shift would be, there would be a centeredness. And it comes from understanding that what got you here requires us to reinvent ourselves quite significantly. And this is why I don't think anybody's going to really appreciate this or want to hear about it, which is that we have to. And this in my very first chapter, we have to do a mea culpa for what we have done and a mea culpa for what we are about to do.
[00:10:49] Speaker D: We have to confess to past sins and confess to future sins.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And we don't have to say that publicly. It can just be to ourselves because sometimes, you know, you're in the legal profession, so you may not necessarily want to publicly announce those things.
[00:11:05] Speaker E: There may be consequences.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: And I don't want to put people in that situation. So I recommend the. Then this is why I call it the inner work, or doing the work, as a lot of psychologists and therapists will say, say, which is to be able to say, okay, I have done all of these things, like for example, I've driven a gas guzzling car, I have had my air conditioning on for a whole week, and you know, there's been nobody on in the house or whatever. All of these things that may impact the earth or society or, you know, that make us feel quite guilty in some way, so we're able to go, okay, so how am I going to change the future? So let's. You could look at the example of something really basic like I left my air conditioning on for a week. You may do. Caroline, I apologize, but I'm gonna have to be accountable to myself and I'm gonna have to be more disciplined with myself and make sure I turn that off so my carbon footprint is less, which means that global warming is less likely to happen. That's just a little shift. That's a behavioral shift. I'm not talking about, you know, suddenly becoming a monk and going into, you know, a monastery and, you know, going through that kind of shift. We are, we are, you know, we, we have to live, we have to work, we have to be a part of society and, and things. But to those real moments of being able to sit down and go, okay, I need to make these shifts. So that's on a personal side, on a professional side. Let's say you're the CEO. Mercedes CEO this week is behind and encourages decarbonization. And that means from a decarbonization perspective, it's rewriting the rule book on how a car is manufactured, produced, distributed through the supply chains, and then ultimately it's brought to you. And essentially there's going to be a lower carbon footprint. If he was to do the mea culpa exercise, he would say, yes, we've done our part. Now we have to make dramatic, dramatic changes because we have these massive goals. And to make those massive changes, it's going to cause dramatic injury. And I'm thinking about your listeners right now thinking, you know, if they're truck drivers, they're going to think, hold on a second, why would I want my industry to be disrupted? Where am I going to get my finances from? Where am I going to get my revenue, my wages? So there's a lot to think about on that side. So we won't think about that. But when we're talking about CEOs and leaders, which is what this book is about, they have to think about the impact their current decisions are going to have on future generations. Because climate change, as you know, from the data that we see from data scientists, you know, in the news, in the news headlines, basically, since 2023, the UN has said that we've got until 2030 to reverse this kind of hockey curve that's going up on the climate increase which is causing the floods, the hurricanes, the freak weather conditions, and it's going to get worse.
[00:13:54] Speaker D: We're with Carolina Stokes right now and she's the author of Aftershock to 2030. You can find her at theforward cow. And we're having a really interesting discussion. I'd like to move the focus away from climate change right now and talk a little bit about artificial intelligence. So how does the mindset shift work then, if we are trying to cope with the AI?
[00:14:17] Speaker A: AI, as you know, it's the most phenomenal tool and we've been using or AI has been observing us for a very long time. You know, we use Netflix. We, our mobile phone knows, has known us better than we've known ourselves for a very long time. But since ChatGPT came around in November, December 2022, the world changed so dramatically. So we know that this is a fact. We know that robotics are coming through. We know that farming is now becoming more, I want to say roboticized. That's not the right phrase, but the fact is, is that we're using AI so much more. There's a lot of talk about, you know, certain generations or certain people not necessarily using critical thinking to be able to use AI in an effective way. They're taking the data, they're using it as gospel. They're then going down the path of using that data to make their life decisions without pushing back to AI, saying hey, I think this might be wrong. How about thinking about it in this particular area? So that's where ChatGPT5 is actually quite use because you're able to argue with it. There's a reasoning sense which is more drawn out, but I think from a critical thinking perspective is actually more useful.
[00:15:26] Speaker E: It almost feels like the advances in AI are helping us solve some of these other problems. Now we just have to get away from fossil fuels. But that may be something AI helps us do too because it really is steering us in order to feed itself to I think these renewable sources. Do you agree with that?
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Oh, 100%.
It's going to get there, I think, faster than we can imagine. We look at the headlines again that AI is a climate disruption in the negative sense. And I think there's, I know that there's a positive aspect associated with that. You just have to look at what Moderna did, for example, when they were using AI to build their Covid solution, the vaccine, very rapidly as, and I'm not sure what Pfizer did, but this really smart people that are smarter than me, that's what they do tirelessly. They, they look at the data, they try and work out exactly how to move that forward and they're looking at solutions. And I've also had conversations with people in the data center space and how many actually evolving from fossil fuels, diesel and looking at regenerative sources and the pace and scale of that. There's an urgency behind it for the simple reason that the AI boom is booming faster than we can even imagine because of our propensity.
I'm going to use the term which is going to be a little bit interesting, addiction to all of the fun things that we can do with AI with GROK at the moment with their Imagine. I mean the people are sending me stuff on Imagine and I'm thinking, hold on a second guys, you're using energy here.
I'm keeping silent, but at the same time thinking if everybody's doing five to ten of these videos a day because it's fun, how much energy is being used for that?
A lot.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:17:09] Speaker D: But I mean, hopefully too though, the content is helping people and so society is getting an advantage by using this energy. We're talking with Caroline Stokes and she is the author of aftershock to 2030. We have to take a commercial break. Stay tuned for Intellectual Property News coming up soon and Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. And don't forget to experiment. Oh, and don't forget to experience more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram X and YouTube or subscribing to our podcast. Anywhere you get your podcasts. Just look for the Passage to Profit show on any of these platforms. Passage to Profit show right back after this.
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[00:19:52] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and our.
[00:19:57] Speaker E: Special guest, Caroline Stokes, who has written the book Aftershock to 2030.
And we're talking about how do we adapt to all the rapid change in the world with AI and climate change and everything else that's going on.
And one question I wanted to ask her is can you tell us a story about a CEO who is effectively using AI, who will be the CEO of the future?
[00:20:24] Speaker A: I love that question because CEOs will never say it out loud that they are using AI to support their evolution because they're too proud. I'll be, I'll be, I'll be direct about that. But I'll give you this example.
So this story is about a CEO who, with me as their coach, became AI avoidant to AI Curious and now an AI super user for the simple reason that when they were AI avoidant, I was working with them as their coach. And I said to them, so I'm seeing that you're in this freeze state. You're not, you're in CEO freeze mode, which is an avatar system that I have in the book. And in that freeze state, you're leading in this particular way. You're avoiding all of the hard to discuss things, you're deflecting decisions, you're avoiding all of these really important, critical things that are actually going to, you know, submerge your company.
So why don't I play with AI with you so you can see how your behavior, your leadership behavior has been impacting your ability to lead. And I'm going to track for you what the various outcomes will be if you continue down this path. I provided that example. And just like that, he became AI curious. And he slowly and tentatively, week on week, started to get involved with the GPT and was able to see in the moment how his leadership was impacting other people. And then he got hooked. And I say that in an addictive way, but once you realize, and this is a neuroplasticity habit forming realization that we all have, once we realize that something is actually going to help us move through something that has made us feel very stuck. We get this feeling of like a runner's high, you're able to evolve really, really quickly. So then within, I'm not kidding you, within three months, this person became what I would term as a super user to be able to see how they could improve their presence in meetings, how they were able to communicate more effectively with people that they had issues with, that they there was conflict with, they weren't able to communicate more effectively with.
[00:22:41] Speaker D: So how would you use ChatGPT or another AI platform to communicate, communicate more effectively with somebody? If you were having an interpersonal issue, what kind of questions would you ask it?
[00:22:54] Speaker A: So first of all, your ChatGPT needs to have some kind of idea about who you are as a human, okay? Otherwise you're going to be getting a real basic overview. And often when you go to, let's say, Harvard Business Review or you go to Fast Company and you see these, or you read a book and you'll see all of these different tools, we're unable to connect with how we're able to evolve. So that's the difference between reading a book and then interacting with GPT.
So my hack for that, my big secret for this is that what you do, you put in whatever leadership surveys that you might have that might include, may even include a Myers Briggs. It may include Emotional Intelligence 2.0 overview, a report, a leadership circle report. You can upload those particular reports or maybe actually do an overview with, or do a deep dive with ChatGPT to understand what your leadership style is. Maybe do some very, very quick and dir what I call radical listening with your team to say, hey, what, what would you like me to change? What would you like to see more of me? What, what challenges do you need me to solve in the next six months and just feed all of that data, all of that data into ChatGPT and then say, let's have a coaching session to determine how I can communicate more effectively with these people that present it in, that present their issues in this particular way. And you're then being coached in the moment. So when you're, you go into that meeting or you have that email or.
[00:24:25] Speaker D: Slack session, I mean, communication though, is always two way. We gear our conversation to the people that we're talking to, right? So we, we want to make sure that we can communicate. How does ChatGPT set it up so that it can kind of anticipate the audience or the person that you're trying to communicate with.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: The great thing about ChatGPT is that if you as a user of ChatG, you have some kind of understanding of some psychological terms and say, this person might be avoiding various issues right now. They may be overly stressed.
The person that I have conflict with may be overly stressed. They have, you know, family challenges, there's some health challenges going on. We are looking at the issues that are happening globally and it's going to impact our supply chain. We don't have a Runway for, you know, our Runway has been reduced. You know, if you put all of those compounding issues together so that you can create that compassion and that empathy to create the right kind of prompts that the human, let's say the CEO is able to create, then it works.
[00:25:37] Speaker D: I'm going to start putting information about Elizabeth into ChatGPT and this way I'm going to be able to figure this out because I've been working on this for a while. I think I have the secret now. Okay.
[00:25:50] Speaker E: You could use it for the law firm right now. Not all of the attorneys like to put their time in. In fact, most of them hate to put their time in that they do it. But I think it would be interesting to do a.
[00:26:00] Speaker D: They do actually have a program now that will calculate your attorney's billable time for them and upload it if you want to do that. I haven't tried it. I have no idea whether it works.
[00:26:10] Speaker E: GPT why do these guys hate putting their time in so bad? And how can I make it better? But maybe that's why I, you know.
[00:26:17] Speaker D: There'S a, there's a lot of issues there, let me tell you theirs. But in any case, we're with Caroline Stokes. Thank you very much for this segment. It's been fascinating. Where can people find you?
[00:26:27] Speaker A: People can find me on LinkedIn @O CarolinaStokes and @theforward.co.
[00:26:33] Speaker D: Well, now it's time for intellectual property news. And our topic today is guess what, AI and so we have had been following a court case recently with Anthropo.
In the first round of the case, the court decided that the use of copyrighted material was transformative enough to constitute fair use. Which means that Anthropic, when it's creating its stuff through their program perplexity, they're not violating anybody's copyrights. So phase two now of the trial, which is where Anthropic lost was the court said that, that you uploaded all these copyrighted books, millions of them, off of a pirate website and now you're going to have to pay the creators damages for taking their property without their permission or without paying them.
So obviously if they have to pay out to the creators, and it's potentially millions of creators here, that's going to be a pretty big chunk of money. And I think Anthropic is going to raise the price of Perplexity City. Right. How are they going to get that.
[00:27:44] Speaker E: Money back I just want to add here real quickly that I was researching some of this and I found that there are actually companies now. Talk about your cottage industry springing up. There are companies now that will help you get paid by big AI for your content. And big AI is paying people, especially if it's private content, to use their content. So it's almost like going to a book editor in the olden days. You know, here's my content and they're using it, but they are paying people. So. And there are companies that will help you do that.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: So.
[00:28:15] Speaker D: So maybe, maybe the system is improving from the content creator side. But the fact is, is if Anthropic or any of the other AI platforms have to pay money out, they may raise their price. So right now it's like 20 bucks a month. And maybe to pay off all these people, they have to raise it to 100 bucks a month.
[00:28:32] Speaker E: They're going to raise the price no matter what. Because what's going, what's happening is Google's going to Google Gemini.
[00:28:37] Speaker D: So the question is to our panel, would you pay more money, money to make sure that creators get compensated for their content? Even a hundred bucks a month more?
[00:28:47] Speaker E: Well, a hundred bucks a month is kind of steep, but if I was really serious about using it for business. Yeah, but I don't know. But yeah, you're going to have, it's going to go that way anyway. They're going to charge more regardless. I would rather see the creators get paid some of that.
[00:29:01] Speaker D: Okay, Anya, what do you think about this topic? Where do you fall?
[00:29:06] Speaker B: I think for me it's irrelevant that it's about creators, right or not. It's about that if I'm going to use a tool, what am I? My other solutions and is going to save me half an hour's time for my team to do some work. Was it worth 50 bucks per month or not? Is this solving a real problem for me? And is it worth it for me to do that? And if it's not worth it, that means they couldn't find a good business model. They have to iterate it. Maybe they find other revenue stream from corporations or something. But end of day is how much value that the tool is going to bring to us.
[00:29:40] Speaker D: Well, I think that's a very, very practical way to look at it. You're obviously an amazing businesswoman. Defre, what are your thoughts on all of this?
[00:29:48] Speaker C: Well, by scraping data in scientific applications, a lot of times you avoid the process of trying to figure out how to rigorously gather the data. So that you can isolate variables so that it's not just garbage in and garbage out.
So we try to use actual intelligence for AI and the only way it saves us time is if we're trying to research something, we say, get us everything written on X, everybody who published something on this and then we have to go look at it because the AI will doesn't know what was done by an idiot or what where what they, the method they used was, was flawed or it was to. To do a study, a real scientific study, to get a breakthrough, to prove anything is really, really difficult.
To isolate the variable properly and get to. It's just hard. And you can't just scrape data off the daily racing form of every horse that ever raced and all there and expect to learn anything, for example. So the only way it's worth it to us is to gather it and that saves time. If I can pay less money to somebody who can get me all that in a hurry, I'll pay for that. But I'm not going to pay for a lot of the data scraping because in my field it's a waste. I can explain that more detail later. It's a complete waste of time to scrape the databases of our racehorses. They're so compromised.
[00:31:10] Speaker D: Thank you for that. Caroline, what are your thoughts?
[00:31:13] Speaker A: I expect it to go up. I mean, it's been wild west, it's been a gold rush and everybody's trying to get the, get as much usage or the AI creators have been working on getting as much usage as possible to ensure that their data models are able to run in the, you know, in the, in the top leagues. And now it's a question of paying for it. I mean, Grok, for example, I'm in Canada, so I'm, I'm paying $500 a year for Grok, I pay 20 for ChatGPT. Would I pay more? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm with Anya, where if I'm able to do more in less time with that kind of reasoning and critical thinking and having a critical thinking thought partner know it's actually really good value.
[00:31:57] Speaker D: I agree. I think it's a lot like the cable business. A long time ago when cable was first introduced, you paid a monthly fee, but there were no advertisements. Right. And the idea was to get everybody hooked on the service. And the same thing with the Internet. You just paid a monthly fee. And gradually the platform owners figured out ways to work advertising into the process.
And I think the same thing is going to happen with the AI platforms. They're just getting us hooked on it now. Now they're keeping the barriers to entry low and eventually we're going to start seeing all sorts of ads that people are going to be paying for. It's just a matter of time. But great discussion. And if you have an idea or an invention that you want to protect, you can contact us at Gerhart Law. We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights. And you, you can visit learn more about Patents.com or learn more about Trademarks.com for a free consultation or download your free Entrepreneurial's quick guide to patents or trademarks and also book a consultation with a Gearhart Law attorney. We'll be back soon. We have to take a commercial break, but we have secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up soon, so stay tuned.
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[00:34:03] Speaker G: 8007-0511-9880-0705-1198.
800-705-1198. That's 800-705-1198.
[00:34:15] Speaker F: Hey, listen to me. I'm one of the credit cards in your wallet. I'm about to explode and pop like a balloon. You're using me and my brothers way too much.
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[00:35:01] Speaker G: 8007-3853-3280-0738-5332-800738-53332. That's 800-738-5332. Paid four by zero debt.
[00:35:16] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:35:20] Speaker D: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard in 38 markets across the U.S. we'd like to do a shout out to our affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri, K I L S590. Thanks for listening. And also our podcast is ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally. We've also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast podcast. So subscribe to Passage to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and on the Iheart app. And now it's time for Elizabeth's update.
[00:35:55] Speaker E: Yes. Well, I have news that's very exciting to me and Richard. I started and it came as a shock. So right before COVID I was starting a video directory of small businesses online and it evolved and I interviewed a bunch of people during COVID on. Zoom was great.
And I was having the website done and ran into some. Got bogged down with that. But in the meantime, I drafted a patent application.
[00:36:17] Speaker D: So Elizabeth is a patent agent, so among her many skills.
[00:36:22] Speaker E: So I did have help from people at Gerhardt Law with the claims, which are, if you've ever looked at a patent, are the weird part. And we filed the patent application and then I just left it in the hands of the Gerhart Law attorneys. And Richard, of course and I were brainstorming back and forth about what else could go into this and he put in a bunch of good ideas. So both our names are on the patent application and we just found out that the patent was sent Allowed. Yeah.
[00:36:44] Speaker D: Yes. Well, congratulations to us.
[00:36:46] Speaker E: I announced it at our.
[00:36:47] Speaker D: It'd be pretty bad if as a patent firm we didn't get it allowed.
[00:36:51] Speaker E: Congratulations.
[00:36:52] Speaker D: It would pretty much sink our reputation, don't you think?
[00:36:55] Speaker E: And everybody was just like, yeah, so what? That happens every day.
[00:36:58] Speaker D: Yeah, right. They're like, oh, big deal. But we were happy.
[00:37:02] Speaker E: So that was our most exciting news. I'm still doing podcast and YouTube creators community meetup and the next one in September is online and in person. It's going to be really fun. Fun. We have Rob Greenlee. He's going to talk about chat GPT5, which I'm telling you, I am not so impressed with yet. Maybe I need to use it some more. And Then we have Stacy Sherman who's going to talk about customer experience.
And in terms of podcasting and YouTube, do people like AI generated content better or human generated content better? Can they even tell the difference? Where's that going?
[00:37:30] Speaker D: I'm sorry, But I think chat GPT5, the word is out on the street that it, it was a bomb. Nobody left likes it.
[00:37:37] Speaker E: Well, it's kind of weird to use and. Well, I tried having.
[00:37:41] Speaker D: It has no edge. It's like it's too nice or something.
[00:37:44] Speaker E: No, it's not. I had tried to have it generate images last night and an image of Richard and me on this thing and it, it gave me triple chins and added about 30 pounds.
And then also we're going to have David Pulski from Gearhart Law covering copyright, so. And then the studio, I'm getting more clients all the time, so. So that's pretty much my update. Now we're going to talk about the medical minute and again we're going to our friend AI. Can you hold AI and ChatGPT responsible for almost killing someone? This guy went online to ChatGPT to find some medical advice and instead of using salt, it said, oh, he could use bromide.
[00:38:22] Speaker D: What do you use bromide for?
[00:38:24] Speaker E: Well, I don't know. We used it in chemistry lab years ago. I don't even remember what for, but it almost killed, killed him.
[00:38:31] Speaker D: So he went on a bromide diet or something. Right.
[00:38:33] Speaker E: He replaced salt with bromide somehow. I don't know what he must. Some sort of bromide.
[00:38:38] Speaker D: This is what chatgpt told him to do?
[00:38:40] Speaker E: Yes. So it says there's little indication tech companies will be made liable for the harm caused.
[00:38:46] Speaker D: Of course not.
[00:38:47] Speaker E: But doctors can be sued if they give you bad information like this.
[00:38:51] Speaker D: And that's just, you know, this interesting point that doesn't come up too often with AI and that is if there's a human behind it, they can be held accountable. So there's a real motivation to make sure you get it right. Whereas if it's just chap GPT and it's shooting stuff off there, it makes a mistake. Oh, so what? But that guy nearly died, right?
[00:39:11] Speaker E: So for all of you out there, I love AI, I love ChatGPT and perplexity and all the other ones. But it's a love hate relationship because, oh yeah, they put 30 pounds on me.
[00:39:22] Speaker D: Well, when it works, it's great. But then you hear a story like that and you lose control, confidence.
[00:39:27] Speaker E: So the guests have been waiting here patiently and I'm really excited to hear from Anya Chang next about Taylor style. It's T A E L O R style. This is like a really cool innovation in the fashion industry using AI and science. And so welcome Anya. Tell us all about it.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: We use AI to pick clothes for busy men. So definitely not Richard. Richard's too fashionable.
[00:39:50] Speaker D: But look at I've got clothes that are 10 years old, they look great. And as I don't, you know, get me a subscription service that sends me a new pair of pants every decade, I'll be happy.
[00:40:01] Speaker E: No, his suits are fine, but his weekend clothes could use a little help.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: People tend to ask us who are your biggest competitor. We say usually they are wives. So customer they previously used wife to pick the clothes.
I got the idea when I was working for Meta. I helped build Facebook Instagram shopping and I was head of product for ebay before. So when I was working in those big tech company as a woman with cop color I feel a little bit impossible syndrome. I want to look great. But I realized most of fashion company either you have to pick thousands of garments and you browsing through and you pick your own thing or you have to own which you just e commerce you have to buy. And that means laundry, ironing, dry cleaning and then tidying up every year. Just lots of work. So it was aha moment for me realize most of fashion companies company are designed for people who are into fashion. Not for busy men or like me who are not into fashion but socially active. Getting a job, getting a day, close a deal. I don't care what I wear, but I care that I look presentable in the show. I look amazing in this deals conversation. I look great when I teachings and all other stuff. So Taylor was born with AI we change like traditionally only Hollywood celebrity can have their stylist to be clothes. Now everybody has AI as their personal stylist and we ask their high end way. But we don't use it a lot because most of guys think they are taller and thinner. So they put the fat formations in and definitely size small. No, no, no. Go to your closet. Oh my ah. My favorite shirt is extra large.
[00:41:39] Speaker D: Yeah, I've had that experience. This medium shirt doesn't fit anymore. It's only 15 years old.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Big shrink for sure is not because I gained.
[00:41:47] Speaker D: That's right. Blame it on the water washer.
[00:41:49] Speaker E: They don't have to buy these clothes, right?
[00:41:50] Speaker B: Yeah, they don't have in our model. They don't have to. It's rental. Just like you get a Uber, someone get on the car, you get A library and you pick a book and you read it. You go back to a library, your Netflix show. You don't own this dvd. In our model it's like rental Runway. You don't have to buy, but better than the rental Runway for women because then you don't have to pick. Our AI will pick for you. We specifically ask our customers to goal which is what they care most. They want to have this outfit that close a deal or this single guy that showcases their whatever body parts or best personalities.
So we focus on the goal and then you talk about the data points.
We actually purchased two companies, they have 10 years of styling data. We get their permission, we buy those data. They were a human pig before when they style customer and we fit into our AI.
So then our module has unique data but sitting on top of larger language model like OpenAI. So as they grow, we grow, but we always one step ahead.
[00:42:52] Speaker D: So if somebody returns clothes, I saw from the website, you have the option to buy the clothing if you really like it, but they return it. What happens after it's returned?
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Just like airport rental car, you return, we wash them in three hours, ship to other people like your dry clean business. But every time you pick is a different outfit and the clothes are still very new. Just like those airport rental car. Before it's too old, it gets sold on average renting three times the item already sold to the customer. And when people buy, it's secondhand. So good for the environment. But you don't have to spend a half an entire afternoon to go to a thread store.
[00:43:27] Speaker D: I assume they're inspected. So if I were to like spill a chocolate shake on my shirt or something that would ever happen. Then you would pick it out and if you couldn't clean it, you wouldn't send it out.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Obviously we are almost like professional dry cleaning business. Right. So anything that dry clean can clean with no problem. But if it's really you cut off one short because you went to Vegas and you're too drunk, then of course we charge you. Given that we are subscription. So we have customers credit card say around $100 per month. Customer can wear like 10 clothes per month and then they return again next two months so they don't have to do any shopping or laundry.
[00:44:04] Speaker E: And what kind of brands do you have?
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we work with over 150 brand brands. All of name brands, you name it Marine Layer, Johnson and Murphy Bonobos. All major brands that you are aware of. But we also source globally the best brand. They are not yet available in the U.S. the brands in Italy, it might be number one over there, but they haven't entered U.S. market. Now they get instead of burning those unsold inventories or the latest collection they want to test for new market. We get lost inventory and then enter the market. So then we have to solve the problem that 30% of the clothes go directly from factory to landfill generating 10% of carbon emission for the world. But at the same time they also send us the latest collection that's not yet in the market because they want to know customer feedback. So customer our customer get both of those inventory. They are high quality but may not be available in the U.S. that sounds.
[00:45:00] Speaker E: Really cool to me.
[00:45:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it sounds great. We're with Anya Chang from Taylor Spelled T A E L O R A new way to use and experience clothing. So where did you come up with the idea for this?
[00:45:15] Speaker B: I was working for this big tech company and realized that I need these type of thing. We start testing of different customers and so when we launch just a landing page for just see if people join the wait list. You mentioned about how the challenges start a company like what do you get? How do you get your first customers? So we launched this landing page and then there was one. And one day a guy emailed me say hey, can you bump me back to the well list? I have been on there for one month. I thought he's a scam. I ignore him. Who really want this? Nobody websites that really want a service.
And then a month after that he called me.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Hi.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: Somehow he asked me on LinkedIn and I accepted and he found my phone number. He said I'm a real estate agent in San Diego. I really like the blue shirt on your website. I've been waiting for two months. You must be really popular. No, we had nothing. We just haven't launched yet. You must be really popular. Can you please bump me out to the let's say I want the service. We realized he's a real customer. We went to the store. He was doing Christmas vacation promotions. So bought a whole bunch of things from Macy's, went to post office and shipped it to the guy. He became our first customer. And from there we testing 100 people like these and we learn a lot. We know what's needed. We realize we need an AI to picking clothes. We need to work with fashion brands. We can work with them through revenue share model and provide insight to help them to do better jobs. We realized we will need me some others like the operational stuff and with the business plan we start raising and how this how we raised $2 million two years ago.
[00:46:50] Speaker E: That's awesome. So could a young man who had just graduated college say and was going to start maybe at a marketing company in New York, his first job is that kind of your ideal client. So he comes to you, he says, hey, I'm starting this new job in a New York marketing company. I have no idea what to wear. Would you be able to help help him for sure.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: I think our customers are guy who are socially active. They are either single guys, salespeople, consultant, pastor, recruiter, professors and lawyers. We work with actually multiple many law firm and also legal associations. People who are people facing but they don't have time where they don't have like strong fashion sense and they don't want to read GQ and research on it. If using analogy of a cleaning company, we are not selling cleaning supply. We are selling the main thing, service our customer. Really treat us more like the G guy behind a superhero. Like hey, you are ready to go. Or just like executive assistant. So they ask us, okay, I wear these good clothes. Do you sell shoes accessory Valentine's Day gift. Where do I do my haircut? So they really see as more of like black car service for them.
[00:48:00] Speaker D: So Anya, you grew up in Taiwan, is that right? So how did you get from Taiwan to the United States? States. And how did you start your business career in a new country?
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I from Taiwan originally. I went to Northwestern University to got my marketing degree and I graduated in 2008 when Lehman Brothers went bankruptcy. There was no job anywhere. So I my only job before I came to the US was a reporter. So I was way outside of other departments, like schools departments. And then as soon as they're hiring recruiters came out, I would deliver my resume just like the reporter hand over the microphone like, hey, this is my resume. I'm a student from marketing department, which we don't. I didn't even get the campus recordings possibility. So this is my resume and nobody talked to me. When people say this is too dumb. You shouldn't ambush recruiters. You should like actually networking. So I start knock on every single department's professor's the door networking. I kind of know those people. I pay tuitions, right? So I knock on every single door no matter she knows me a lot or not. And one day there was a professor, he said, I don't know you, I cannot get you any job. But tomorrow I have amazing talk from Richard Marissa and that's you is a panel that you can comment talk to the speaker. So I went, my English was so poor I couldn't understand anything. But I still said, this is amazing talk. Here's my resume. So the CEO is a farmer's magazine company company. She invited me to an interview in her company. I went on interview. It was a perfect job. A marketing job in a magazine company for someone who had a reporter media background. Two weeks went by. I called a recruiter. She says, stop calling me, I am laid off. Even the recruiter was laid off from the company. Since you have nothing to do, do you want to come out and grab a coffee? She said, sure, I have nothing to do. We had a coffee. She told me a lot about the company. Who was their competitor, who's their customers. And she told me one idea. Have you heard of New York? New York is a bigger city than Chicago. Bigger city, has more job. LA is a bigger city. So these are bigger cities. You should give it a try. So I went on a trip for two months sleep on different friends cultures every week I list 2000 alumni from the school. And I started approaching cold calling those people. And then one day I bought all the news the newspaper from the newsstand. Because they all say publisher name so and so Marissa and Richard. And if you want advertise, call this number. So I start calling each of them. And eventually I actually met with the CEO, New York Times and VP of cnn. But nobody was hiring. And I thought this is a great opportunity, but it's too slow. So I want to go to a conference, which you need ticket and really expensive.
So I call a magazine company in Taiwan, say I want to cover these amazing news in New York. Is it okay for free? I said okay. I called the conference, hey, I'm a reporter from Taiwan, Can I get into the press tickets? So then eventually was still get me with whole bunch of people, but no one was hiring. I went back to Chicago, was ready to pack and go home back to Taiwan. But I actually learned a lot in those two months. So I put together a business plan based on what the the day of the recruiter told me what your competitors say. And then I build out the dc if you want to do this type of thing the New York Times is doing will be great to hire someone who have some marketing background and probably not very senior. So you don't need to pay a lot. And I happen to know someone, her name is Anya Tran and would you like to hire that? And she asked me, my English was really bad. She asked me, do you want to be a contractor?
I said yes. I didn't know what contractor means. Went home and I googled contractor. I didn't know why she wanted me to be a plumber. And then I got my first job.
[00:51:56] Speaker D: In the US that is an amazing story and I. I really admire your drive and determination and you know, it's tough to find a job, especially when you're just starting out. You don't have a lot of experience during a difficult economy, but you did it. And then after that job, it seems like you've worked with some pretty prestigious companies. Meta and Tariq, Target, McDonald's. Right, all of those in marketing positions.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I started in marketing. It's actually data scientists and marketing. And then Sears come to me say, hey, this is for media company. You guys know how to do media buying? How about you do media selling? How about you do some media buying? And then when I was doing that, realized the best media will be using data just like Jeffrey, like how to predict raising cultures, probably data data. So then I get into the data scientist space and then get into Target. Target say, hey, you are doing these things. Would you like to be helping us here? But you have to come to Minnesota. So my dream at the time was working in Silicon Valley because as a leader in the tech teams seems a perfect match. But the Minnesota opportunity, I still say yes. So I told them that hey, if you one day have opportunity, I really want to move to San Francisco.
A week before I was on board, they call me, they say, hey, you mentioned about this before and your boss position was opening and now we found the guy, he actually live in San Francisco. He doesn't want to move to Minnesota so you can work for him in San Francisco. So sometimes opportunity is there when you a little bit open to when opportunity is not perfect. And my mom said Target is great, but I never heard heard of it back in Taiwan. So I joined my global business and by learning using something that I know of technology, but learning something new which is a global things. Yeah.
[00:53:52] Speaker D: Caroline, do you have any questions for Anya?
[00:53:55] Speaker A: Anya, I want to say your hero journey or heroine journey is amazing. And the hustle absolutely outstanding. And if everybody had an ounce of that hustle to get what they needed to do, it'd be absolutely amazing. I think my question is you blend tech and a consumer or a customer need really, really nicely. What was your Aha.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I think when we started we thought we are selling clothes. But quickly we realized we are not. We are selling a dream, a chance to succeed. Our customer don't care what they wear red or blue, as long as they get to get a girlfriend or boyfriend. Right. So it's actually a selling a chance to succeed. That's what the customer really buying. It's about the convenience where when we started with thoughts for were international for fashion brand the biggest the best thing will be monetizing the unsold inventory. They burn out those inventory anyway. But quickly we discovered that's not true. They care even more so about the data which is inside. Oh, your pants one inch too short. That's why most of Americans are not buying your pants. Their actionable insights are actually a lot more valuable than monetizing their own inventory because they help them to be successful for for their next collections. So understanding of what real value that we deliver I think is how we were able to grow. And now we got investor from like Spotify, TikTok, hello kitties and founder of YouTube.
[00:55:22] Speaker E: Yeah. Congratulations. I mean it's approaching the problem from a lot of different angles and solving problems for different people in the whole thing. But this has been fascinating and I'll.
[00:55:32] Speaker D: Be showing Richard that I don't need any fashion help. No.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: Yeah, let's start that style R style.
[00:55:41] Speaker D: So Richard.
[00:55:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:43] Speaker E: T A E L O R style. Yeah, I, I. Yeah.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Anyway, use a code podcast25 to get 25 off.
[00:55:53] Speaker E: Like podcast25, podcast25 to get 25 off. That's a deal.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:55:59] Speaker E: So maybe that's one of your birthday presents. You never know.
So that was really fun.
[00:56:06] Speaker D: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:56:09] Speaker E: So now we are diving into just the glamorous world of horse racing with Jeffrey Cedar. And I'm just so excited to hear about this. It's E Q E F Y I Equine Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology. That's his website. Okay, Jeffrey, take it.
[00:56:28] Speaker D: What the heck is that?
[00:56:29] Speaker E: Take it away, Jeffrey.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: I wonder what Anya could do for Columbo. That was always kind of my hero was the guy who looked like he was shuffling in with looking like a homeless person who always caught the genius criminal that nobody else could nail. I was really interested in her persistence. That kind of reminded me some of my own. I spent the first 20 or 25 years and I had to have day jobs. I was successful. I invested millions of dollars in the research and nobody gave a damn and nobody believed in it until we finally, after like 25 years, somebody finally gave us a try and we were very successful and so we built it from there. But I mean it just the data, data that existed was useless. I started out, I was a Young lawyer and I worked with the beginnings of the Olympic Sports Medicine Committee when we were afraid in 1976. The East Germans bursting into all the medals, supposedly with mad scientists in kindergartens and things. And I learned a lot. And I learned that the elite athletes were as different in their data as normal is from injured. That's how much the elite were different. And so you had to get data from them. You couldn't just use the databases that existed out there.
And I thought, my God, we have to do that in horses where nobody's done anything like that. It's all eyeball and intuition. And we weren't interviewing the parents at the Olympics for tryouts, so we didn't use pedigree.
But the whole industry was built around it. It was all fads. And some horses got the, that were in fads, got the best of everything. And so they succeeded. And others were dealt with by idiots, so they didn't succeed.
[00:57:56] Speaker D: So your company attempts to try to predict, predict what horses are going to be the best horses is that only.
[00:58:04] Speaker C: Before they ever race, when they're youngsters. We have unique databases built over 30 years so we know the difference in the physical attributes and the way they move and in the thickness of the left ventricle of their heart and things like that. We had to develop the machinery to get that data.
It didn't even exist. We built the first portable ultrasound machine. You could go into it. So we could go into a stall and do echocardiography on Race Harden. So we should have patented that. We have other patents. So we built these databases and then we studied them and we found stuff that was predictive of performance. Most of it's not related to pedigree. And the entire industry is built around pedigree, the values. So we were outsiders and industry disruptors big time.
[00:58:45] Speaker E: I think that's how humans are too. Pedigree doesn't always matter and how smart you are. Right. But I wanted to ask you. So you developed, developed this program like massive method for predicting winners from the time they're born, practically. Are you selling your services to people to help them pick their horses to raise as racehorses? Are you giving them the software? How are you monetizing that?
[00:59:06] Speaker C: No, what we did was we. The way we monetized it was we couldn't give away the data. It cost too much.
So we would use it for them. We would go to the auctions and to the farms and go through thousands and thousands of these young horses and find which ones to buy. And then in the management of the, we learned about the management of the racehorses, which ones were good on the grass or the dirt or the mud, who could go long and who would go short. I got some great stories about that. You know, you can have a horse that never got a chance to do what it's really good at and they don't realize it could have been a world champion. I had a few of those, I switched them over. So that's what we did. And mostly the industry was really hostile.
[00:59:45] Speaker D: Why do you think that was? I guess part of horse racing is the mystique. There's sort of a mystique with horse racing and kind of an art, I guess, and people don't want to change that. But it's also about making money, right? And if you have a.
[00:59:59] Speaker C: No, not really, no. I just came from an auction where they had 15 yearlings, went for more than a million dollars. Most of them will earn nothing and be lousy. And they could have bought, they could have used technology. Instead of buying the 1,3 million dollar yearling, they could have bought like 20 horses, each of which would probably be profitable. But they don't do it because it's not fashionable and it doesn't make them a big shot. It's a very strange industry. It's an irrational industry and it's caught in 300 year old methodologies and the value of these, all these huge farms, these huge industries, all based on what's going to be debunked within the next 10 years. This pedigree stuff. And it's wild. So anyway, probably me, I mean I was arrogant. I had three degrees from Harvard and I was a smart guy, at least I thought I was. Although I also worked with leading trainers, you know, hall of fame trainers and mit. But I just couldn't get any business until finally I made a presentation to one old guy in Kentucky and he said, give me one recommendation. He had 200 horses, he was a leading stable and I was, you know, I had been losing money forever. And I said, you don't understand. It's a whole system and you have to manage it and you have to do this. He said, no, no, just give me whatever recommendation. So I went through his 200 horses and I recommended he put one young horse he had that hadn't won a race in one of the most prestigious, most important races in the world, a mud fluckier, and he burst out laughing. But he did it and it worked. The thing is a horse racing, when you see a horse running up the stretch in the dirt and he's passing everybody. He's generally not speeding up. He's slowing down the whole race. He's just slowing down less than the rest of them. And the fatigue curve, the velocity decay fits a logarithmic curve that's pretty much specific to each horse. And we got that from swimmers in the Olympics. So you can extrapolate out that fatigue curve from short distances to see what their time would be for longer distances. And so there was this, this horse was slow, but he didn't slow down. So his extrapolated time in this one, the Belmont Stakes, which is one of the long horses, none of the horses that had ever run that far. It was a mile and a half. So it's a real test and you don't know how they're going to be able to, to do it. And this horse was getting trounced at three quarters of a mile. And so I say, Dennis Lindley, he'll be right there. And so I went and the night before, the Daily Racing Forum and the articles where they said, this horse is good for this reason and this pedigree is terrific, it'll go long and blah blah, blah. And then there's the jokers and the idiots and that was us. And they never apologized.
And then so I get there and the qualifying trainer's there and he's telling the press he's not his fault, the owner's making him do it and blah, blah, blah. So I'm thinking this is either going to be, you know, ecstatic or catastrophic instead of getting the gate. And of course he comes out laughed out of the gate and he's trailing the field because he's slow. About halfway through the race, he starts to catch up to the pack. About three quarters of the way he's there and he's passing horses and by the end he's flying. And it was another two strides he to one.
And just to prove it wasn't a, a fluke, a month later he was in a million dollar race in Louisiana, Louisiana Super Derby. And he did the same thing, thing again.
So I was right. So then I.
[01:02:59] Speaker D: So that owner was pretty happy with.
[01:03:00] Speaker C: You having a worthless horse is it was by his new stallion. He was trying to promote out of the first crop of the new stallion. He had a classic multiple graded stakes placed horse. So then the next year I bought him like three horses and one was in the Kentucky Derby. Low odds. The next year I did it again.
So at that point I got a call from a guy from Egypt who had not been in horse Racing. And he wanted to hire us to do a $40 million part project. And so away we went. And then within three years, spending a fraction of what his competitors did, he was a leading Stadler in the United States. And we had the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years.
[01:03:35] Speaker E: What was that horse's name?
[01:03:37] Speaker C: American Pharaoh.
[01:03:38] Speaker E: Oh, okay.
[01:03:39] Speaker C: And in the, in the New York Times the night before, it was on the front fender page center of the New York Times the day before he gets Triple Crown. And there was a whole story. If you turn in there, you'll see my picture. And they always had a quote of the day in the New York Times. And the quote of the day that day was for me. And it was, sell your house, don't sell this horse. The Egyptian pound, they had Arab spring and Egyptian pound was devalued 50%. And his businesses with an army there were going to hell. So he has selling the horse in Saratoga and we had done it. So I had to go to him and say, please, please, please, please don't. So he bought it back for 300,000 and it ended up worth about 50 million.
[01:04:12] Speaker D: Wow.
[01:04:13] Speaker C: Still, if you ask people on my website, EQB fy, I list all these sources we bought, how much we paid for them, what they did. You can verify it all with third party sources. You can call up the owners and stuff. If you look at that record, nobody can match that record. Big racing day. And ask everybody who the hell I am. I guarantee you they must have had no idea who we are or what we do.
[01:04:36] Speaker D: Yeah. What about predicting outcomes in average races?
[01:04:40] Speaker C: I got called Dogzilla. My name is Dogzilla in the betting world with some of the big wagers where I did some of that for him. Especially if the guy bought the horse and had never run long and he was stretching out, we would use those velocity decay logarithmic extrapolated curves to see what their time was going to be. Or if we saw something in the, in the film that was a problem with a horse when we filmed it at 500 pictures a second and we could correct it. We even had one horse where he had. They hang up hay in a bag at the stall and he ate the hay out of the bag and he got it up his nose. A big piece of hay like this long a them. Right. Nobody knew what was wrong with them. So they called, come look at our. We look at. The first thing we did was do a full blood exam. And they, they looked up there and they put this endoscopy and they go all the way down and look at the larynx. So we said, no, don't do that. Pull it back out and let's look at the whole area.
[01:05:29] Speaker D: And there it was.
[01:05:30] Speaker C: So we pulled out this thing like this long. And then in the next race, we all bet on it, and it won by a mile. It had lost, lost, lost, lost. So the stewards called us in and they said, what the hell do you guys do? So we, we showed them the picture of the, what came out of its nose. Some of it's simple.
[01:05:47] Speaker D: So the moral of the story is they're going to raise a horse, check its nose before it goes out on the track.
[01:05:52] Speaker C: The management is everything. And I also tell another story at Hialeah 40 years ago. So.
[01:05:56] Speaker D: But before you do that, I'd like to give Carolyn a chance to ask a question. So, Carolyn, do you have any questions for this amazing guy?
[01:06:03] Speaker A: So many questions. My goodness.
[01:06:05] Speaker E: So, Jeffrey, should I call you Jeffrey.
[01:06:06] Speaker A: Or you do Dogzilla.
[01:06:07] Speaker D: Prefer Pepsiilla.
[01:06:08] Speaker A: Okay, Dogzilla. So in terms of what you do with your Harvard degrees and all of that kind of stuff, what advice would you give people that are trying to get through this new era to, you know, for the long game so they can, they can run long?
[01:06:22] Speaker C: Well, if you're an entrepreneur, you're presumably, you're creating something new. And if you're looking at data, my, my secret was to ask people, how do you know? At simple question. You know, I went to the luminaries and the trainers and the veterinarians and the owners, and they would tell me everything. And then I would quietly try to get in there. How do you know? And I usually found out they had no idea where they made it up or they got it from somebody. To make the money, I had to spend $7 million in research. I had to earn it somewhere. And I, I, I did turnarounds and I completely rebuilt. Companies changed. I figured out who used data before there were, you know, PCs. I was in the tents and census data, figuring out how to turn around some chain of department stores In Los Angeles, 40 stores and stuff. And I was using census data to try and figure out what it was that they were good at. Right? And they were always trying to do something they weren't good at and what was successful and what wasn't successful in their stuff. You know, I just didn't believe what they told me. I had to go to the source data. I think that's, that's what I tell people ask, how do you know if you're trying to invent something, and probably if you go really, really find out how they. How to know those things, you'll get a new product.
[01:07:31] Speaker E: Great advice. Yeah. We're totally into data, and I should probably bring this up, but I have to constantly pound on the attorneys at Gearhart Law to give me marketing data. It's like, how did we get that client? Where'd they come from? But it's important.
[01:07:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:07:45] Speaker E: Don't have the data. You can't make informed decisions.
[01:07:48] Speaker C: And I think named world champion informed decision. It had the slowest workout at the auction, and they all. The more they faster they go, the more they sell for. And we bought this horse for a big stable, and it became the sprint champion of the world. And it was the slowest workout at the auction. They said, how the hell did you know? I said, because I look at how they go fast, not how fast they go. And I knew it was a phenomenal athlete. Wow.
[01:08:14] Speaker E: Jeffrey Dogzilla, Cedar Horse racing.
[01:08:17] Speaker C: We have, you know, and I live on a farm, and we have baby horses. I love it. I do what I love.
[01:08:24] Speaker E: Are you still near Philly?
[01:08:26] Speaker C: Well, I'm 45 miles west of there, nearly. When you're to Lancaster, next time, Richard.
[01:08:30] Speaker E: And I drive Bob, we want to go out and.
[01:08:32] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[01:08:33] Speaker E: And here are the rest of your stories.
[01:08:35] Speaker C: Anyway, I got one more story I want to tell you about racehorses. So it was 40 years ago. This is really important at Hialeah, and it was a normal race. And normally the horses at the end of the race are stretched out down like a quarter of a mile from the horse that's last of the horse. It's first or an eighth of a mile, and he's up the stretch, and they're coming around a turn, getting ready to come up the stretch. And somehow a collie, a dog got out on the racetrack and chased them. And they all ended up in a tight little bunch. You could have thrown a blanket over all 10 of them at the finish line. And I never forgot it. I said, oh, my God. That's what happens when they're all trying. That we had to try and figure out. You know, we had to find ways to find which animals were dominant, which is also important because some of the races are decided in the starting gate by the horses. Sounds silly, but it's true. And also, I bought one horse. He was in this huge field of yearlings, like, I don't know, 30, 40 yearlings, and they all had short tail from biting each other's tails. And there was one with a long tail. Nobody messed with his tail and we bought him and he was a fighter. We named it Pup Fighter.
[01:09:36] Speaker E: Wow. Well, I would love to hear more of these stories. We're kind of out of time for today, but this has just really been fascinating. So this has been Jeffrey Cedar and his website is EQB FYI.
And if you're in the market for a horse or just want to know more about this stuff and how data applies to horse racing, go on his website and take a look.
[01:09:59] Speaker C: We even give away a lot of data on the website. We have scientific papers on like 12,000 horses over 10 years and all kinds of stuff, pager to page. And we just give it away to show them. It's not our opinion. We're, we're actually data based.
[01:10:12] Speaker D: So we're going to take a commercial break.
Stay tuned. We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up shortly. You're listening to Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[01:10:23] Speaker F: I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged. If you've been involved in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or injured at work, you have rights and you may be entitled to money for your suffering. Don't accept an offer you get from an insurance company until you talk to a lawyer. And we represent some of the best personal injury lawyers you can find, tough lawyers that will fight to win your case. And they're so good they stake their reputation on it by only getting paid if you win. So if you've been in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or or hurt on the job, find out today for free what kind of compensation you may be entitled to.
[01:11:05] Speaker G: Call the legal helpline right now, 8004-9270-1480-0492-701484, 927014. That's 800-492-7014.
[01:11:22] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit.
[01:11:24] Speaker D: Now it's time, time for Noah's retrospective.
[01:11:27] Speaker E: Noah Fleishman is our producer here at Passage to Profit. And he never stops trying to make sense of the future by looking at the past.
[01:11:36] Speaker H: An entrepreneur needs to be ready for anything, especially success. My mother could have told you about that. It was over 60 years ago that she and some friends of hers decided to open up a small night spot in Brooklyn. The big question was how do we advertise our opening? The leader of the pack said, well, we'll take out a newspaper ad for a week. My mom said, no way. That's way Too expensive. Expensive. And I have a much better idea. We're going to create a trendy ad on a piece of paper. We're going to xerox about a trillion of these things and then we're going to hire a couple of young kids to hand these out to people outside the subway station as they come home at night for about three weeks straight.
[01:12:08] Speaker E: He said, are you kidding?
[01:12:09] Speaker H: They're not going to keep those ads or even retain them. They're just going to toss them. Well, when those folks tossed them, the ground was decorated with ads for the opening of this new night spot. For at least three weeks on open night, they had a line outside the place five blocks long. It was a crazy night, but it was a great one. When you're an entrepreneur and you're starting up a business, you got to be ready for everything and anything. Think outside the box and be ready for that box when it opens.
[01:12:35] Speaker F: Now more with Richard and Elizabeth passage to profit.
[01:12:39] Speaker E: And our special guest today has been Caroline Stokes. We also had Anya Chang and Jeffrey Cedar, otherwise known as Doug's.
Now it is time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. So Caroline, what is a secret you can share with our audience?
[01:12:55] Speaker B: Well, I want to give you a.
[01:12:56] Speaker A: Secret for everybody to get their head around ChatGPT5.
I'm hearing the word on the street that people aren't that happy right now. So my secret for that is ask ChatGPT how you can improve and to ask for ChatGPT to give you a 90 day program on how you can evolve your critical thinking and how to create a better relationship, create the outcomes you want out of chatgpt5. Wow.
[01:13:21] Speaker E: I love that. And if you want to see Caroline's website you can go to theforward Co.
Okay, Anya Chang with Taylor style T A E L O R style. What is the secret you can share with our audience?
[01:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I have a social media post that is pictures that I'm on the business class with Sean Pen. The copy is about the amazing trips in New York and meet such amazing investors and founder and such love my journey entrepreneurship journey. The behind the thing of the pictures was that I was in New York raising money for the company. I slept on friends couches for multiple different day. It was a heat wave 100 degree. I wear the high heel with hop onto the poa banner for the evening's conference and hop on the trains. When I hop on the train the moment I realized I was on the wrong side, get off and run over the other side side got on the train and Then electricity went off because it was heat wave and stuck on the train for like three hours.
Eventually get to the New Jersey and the guide then shows up and the next meeting the restaurant was electricity went off again because the heat wave again. So we were talking in the candles with 100 degree with sweatings. And then when I back to the hotel on for a dinner I realized I signed up for a wrong plan because it's cheaper for the ticket. So I actually was not allowed for any meal of the school three days so I couldn't eat anything. Things go on and on just like for three days and eventually the last days and I was in the meetings and was beating all of the change all the business cards and I realized that the lunch went by so quickly. I realized I didn't eat anything when I back to my seat. So the person next door was very kind and put all of the noodles in those to go like Chinese box for me. I went to the airport, it was again heat wave. So electricity went off. So waiting online for two and a half hours to check my back and the flight was gone. So I went back to the line and wait for another two hours to rebook my flight. When it's my turn they say sorry, you have to rebuy the flight and I start crying. I realized this was totally not my day for the last few days. And I went back to my friends and begging him to please allow me to stay in your living room one more night. And next day morning I went to airport waiting like 4 o' clock in the morning for standing by because they said that's the only flight they might have chance to stand by. And eventually I got on the last one more seat which was a business class.
So people, the secret is that when people are glamorous in their startup life, don't believe it.
[01:16:00] Speaker E: That was awesome. Jeffrey Cedar Dogzilla Website EQB FYI, what is the secret? You can share.
[01:16:09] Speaker C: My secret is you want to do this, you want to be the entrepreneur, especially in a new area. Break in something or you're going to be a disruptor. You better be prepared for grueling time, money, work. If you bruise easily, forget it and you better love it. I did it because I loved it. I'll tell you how I got started. I was 26 years old, I didn't know what the hell I was going to do with myself. And I went on a blind date on a rental to rent horses with this girl. And instead of falling in love with the girl, I fell in love with A horse. I went crazy and I was taking lessons and I bought a horse. I get.
How can I make a living doing. And when I finally rented a farm and put my horse on my farm, I threw open my arms, Tony, we're living together. And I meant was a big deal. Meanwhile, I was taking this to Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School at the same time. And I had to do a thesis. And it was like March and I hadn't done it. So I had to go into my advisor. And it was Archibald Cox, the big guy from the Midnight Massacre with Nixon, the famous lawyer. And he was a famous guy. He was a big Harvard dad. I had to go in. He's in the studio stacks. So you go through a bazillion rows of books in the middle of nothing in this huge building. And there's this desk near a window. And I sit down. He says, well, how's the thesis coming along? And I'm kind of looking at the floor. And he says he got the picture right away. He says, well, what are you interested in? And I looked at the floor again. I said, horses. And I thought he was going to throw me out. And he turns around, takes this big book off the back of the shelf and he drops it on the desk and the desk and he says, this is the book that. The statute that governs horse racing in Massachusetts. Nobody has ever looked at it here in Harvard. I want you to do it. And I did. And I said, that's where I'm going. I'm going into racing. And I'm too big to be a jockey. I don't have any money and I'm too old. I'm not connected. But I was pre med at Harvard, so I have scientific stuff and I have business stuff. I'm going to change it. It's not going to all be the same way it was 300 years ago. And then I started, started on this, what probably was ridiculous journey. It took 20 years of poverty and working, working day jobs. I was taking data, I had it on big discs. I was going up to New York because a buddy of mine who was from Harvard was a doctor at the hospital at Mount Sinai. And I would go up with this huge disc and at midnight and go. He would get me on their computer and I would run everything on. And then by 7am I was off an app. You know, it was just. I was like her, like, like Anya. I was crazed. We invented stuff. We finally got a break and God, thank you, God, that horse did what he was. We thought he'd do.
[01:18:40] Speaker E: That's great. You know, Jeffrey, you've got a lot of podcasting in you.
You can start your own podcast anyway. Richard Gearhart, what's your secret? You could share.
[01:18:50] Speaker D: I would say one thing that's really important for entrepreneurs, even when they're first starting out, is to stay current. So I think one of the challenges I faced when I was starting Gearhart Law was with all of the things going on, I found it challenging to stay on top of the latest trends, technology, law, cases, all of those things, especially on the accounting side. I did not keep my books quite the way they needed to be kept. But I do think that even if you're starting out, you're at the early stages, you've got way too much to do and not enough enough time. It's worth it to spend a little bit of time every week just staying current in your industry and staying current with other things that are going on, because you're going to have to be aware of that technology or that trend in order to steer your business in the right direction. Fortunately, it gets easier as you go along and you have more resources, but I think it's really important when you're starting out, too.
[01:19:52] Speaker E: Yes, very well said. Well, I'm going to go in the weeds little bit because we do this every week. So I'm going to talk about marketing and videos. And before this show, I looked for each of these three guests on YouTube and I found videos of each of them. And I'm not the only one doing this. So I feel like if you're a serious business person, you need to have at least one video of yourself out there on YouTube or somewhere on your website, wherever it is of you speaking. And the other thing that you have to do with those videos, too, for ChatGPT and the other search engines is you have to transcribe them, and there's software that will transcribe them. And there are a couple different ways you can handle those transcripts. They have to be online and visible to the search engines, and those are really going to help you define your brand. And I think if you pair that with Caroline's exercise of putting everything about yourself in there and asking how you can improve, ChatGPT is going to see that. And when people ask about you, that's the stuff that's going to come out. Out. So, anyway, video and transcriptions.
[01:20:55] Speaker D: 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, our studio assistant Rishiket Bussari and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X 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. Consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
