[00:00:00] Speaker A: You are trying to get people to commit to your cause.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: All these amazing prospects were basically back channeling your tool.
[00:00:07] Speaker C: I've always rooted for the underdog. My team hears me say this all the time.
[00:00:10] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:12] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard some snippets from our show. It was a great one. Stay tuned to hear tips about how you can start your business.
[00:00:22] Speaker F: Ramping up your business.
[00:00:23] Speaker D: The time is near.
[00:00:25] Speaker F: You've given it heart, now get it in gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:32] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:40] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. I help Gearhart Law with their marketing and I run a podcast and content creation studio and provide podcast consulting.
[00:00:48] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and their business ventures. What does it take to be an entrepreneur? Joining us is Caroline Winnett, the powerhouse executive director of Berkeley Skydeck, UC Berkeley's world renowned startup accelerator that's helping entrepreneurs launch their moonshots and take innovation to new heights.
[00:01:13] Speaker E: And then we have two amazing entrepreneurs. This is gonna be such a great show today. Braden Young with slash experts is doing something for B2B businesses I have never seen before. This is brand new. Stay tuned. I'm not even going to try to explain it because it, it's so cool. I'm just going to let him do the whole thing. And then we have Clint Lotz, track star AI revolutionizing the lending world. He's using AI for both lenders and for consumers to help them get data, insights, among other things, and very cool stuff. I mean, who doesn't care about their money?
[00:01:48] Speaker D: I care about mine for sure.
But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey 2. And Americans are business owners or thinking about starting a business. And so today we're going to ask our panel, what's the one rule of business you had to break to succeed? So, Caroline, welcome to the show. What was the one rule of business that you had to break to succeed?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, hello, and I'm really delighted to be here. And I would love to answer that question for my two big adventures in life, my startup and then my program, Berkeley Skydeck at UC Berkeley. So I'll give a quick summary for both. So my startup, Neurofocus. I wouldn't say so much that we broke a rule. It's that we did something that was incredibly hard to do that. Many have tried and failed, especially in the industry we were in. So at Neurofocus, we use medical grade eeg, we put a cap on your head, measure brainwaves and use those insights to, to guide large brands. How are people thinking and feeling and reacting to their products and messaging?
And to do that right required hardcore science lab testing using gold standard scientific protocols. It is really hard to bring that to a market, especially where you're talking about essentially at the end of the day, how consumers are reacting to consumer products.
That was a long bridge to gap and several had tried to do that in this industry that we basically created called consumer neuroscience. But we did it. We did it with Berkeley scientists, and we did it because we absolutely refused to compromise our scientific standards. And that, at the end of the day, is what made a great product. So that's what we did. Did it break a rule? I would say it broke a barrier.
[00:03:39] Speaker E: It sounds like science fiction.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: That's exactly what customers would say. And then we would dig into the science and bring our, our chief science advisor, who was a professor at Berkeley, and eventually they would go, okay, this is real, this is real. But it took some doing and it took a lot of scientific credibility. So that was lots of fun, I would say, for Berkeley. Skydeck, we are UC Berkeley's startup accelerator. We are the flagship program on campus. And here's what we've done. That broke again, a really a big custom. Usually at universities there are wonderful incubators where startups from the university come and develop their learnings. Perhaps they might have maybe a consumer product, but mostly they're trying to spin out from the university. And those are wonderful programs and we have those at Berkeley. But what we did at Skydeck is we brought really the full culture, operations and mindset of what is typically a private company, A private company raising money from investors, investing in the startups, accelerating them really fast. Demo day, all of that. We've done that being completely 100% a Berkeley program.
And we've done that by partnering with a venture fund to fund our startups. Because brief story about the origins of Skydeck. When I started 10 years ago, there was no accelerator and no fund. So we decided to start an accelerator. You need money to accelerate, right? Can't move fast without money at that time. This is going to change over time. But at that time, Berkeley said, we just can't do that. We're a public university. It's just not something we can do. So I said, okay, I'll go out and find a fund manager. And we did.
That fund is the Berkeley Skydeck Fund. It's like any other private venture capital fund with a general partner, limited partners, all of that. But here's what's unique. That fund has a legal agreement with UC Berkeley signed by lawyers that says the fund general partner will donate half of the carry, and that just means half of the fund profits back to Berkeley. That single piece of paper means that a private venture capital fund and then a public university overlap. And we're working towards the same goal, which is to find great startups at Berkeley or outside of Berkeley, accelerate them and make all those investors happy in the fund, and also bring funding for education.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: You certainly broke a rule there, so that's great.
[00:06:10] Speaker D: I mean, that's how innovation happens, right? Sometimes breaking rules, challenging assumptions, the status quo, what's happened before. And I think that's a great example because it ultimately resulted in moving the entrepreneurial environment forward. So thank you very much for that. Braden Young, tell us about a rule that you broke to make your business succeed.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: I think I'll start from the beginning. And the big one for me is I went to state school, I went to Chico. So I tried to get into Berkeley. They didn't let me go there, but I tried hard. But then I graduated, went into sales. So I've always been from the sales go to market side of the house. And so is my co founder. And we never had a technical founder, so we've never had somebody who knew the engineering side, knew the product side. We've always done that abroad.
And that is very different for the Bay Area where I am typically, it's like, hey, you have someone who comes in, works engineering and then you have someone who helps with like marketing product.
The thing that got us there was because we were both go to market and the first company, Sendoso, we had a lot of sales very quickly and had product market fit really quickly. So that allowed us to have really high revenue to then go and raise money, which was probably why we were able to break that rule for the new company, Slash Experts, which we help customers and prospects talk as we're the first steps in the sales cycle. The big rule there is it's not the way sales has been done the last 20 years. So it's a different way to approach it. And so I think the whole company, the whole hypothesis we have has been.
[00:07:49] Speaker D: A rule break in itself right from the beginning. That's great. And what you said about starting with sort of a marketing sales bent as opposed to having A technical founder rings true because lots of times the companies evolve from technical innovations and the marketing piece is almost secondary. Right? Yeah. Many have this philosophy of build it and they will come. Well, it's not that easy. And so I do see how that's innovative. Thanks a lot. So, Clint Lotz, founder of trackstair A High Tell us about the rule you broke.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: Well, there's several, but I'll start with one that I initially was told you really shouldn't do, which is taking a problem and kind of turning it on its head. When folks go and apply for something using their credit and they're declined, it's usually at that point they become reactionary. Right. And they try and figure out what went wrong. What can I do? How do I make this better? And I just thought that was so backwards. And that's how Brady could probably speak to. This is sales and marketing has gone on forever. Right. It's a referral process. And you here's my client. I can't do anything with them. Maybe you can. I thought that was silly. I thought I should take this and turn it completely on its head and take this solution and bring it directly into banks and lenders and put it directly in front of the consumers at the time that they need it, which is before they apply for credit, before they ding their credit, before they go through this entire process and end up getting a letter in the mail that helps them with nothing. Right. And I spoke to many investors over the years and getting started, and they look at me as, you know, a startup then. They didn't follow the mission. They didn't understand what it is I was trying to do. And when they hear my story and they understand it a little better now, it's really taken off. And when you give this power to the people and you empower lenders to provide this information to their clients in a holistic, free manner, it really changes the game.
[00:09:48] Speaker D: That's great. Thank you so much for sharing, Elizabeth. You're a regular rule breaker, aren't you?
[00:09:54] Speaker E: So we kind of had a lot of people telling us that we were crazy and insane for starting a radio show with our marketing dollars for Gearhart Law. And I think that was a little bit back in 2018, before podcasts were so popular. It was a bit of a rule breaker. Like, law firms just don't try to go on media all the time, and they don't certainly don't have a show on the radio. That's just not how law firms behave.
[00:10:17] Speaker D: So we were misbehaving.
[00:10:19] Speaker E: We were misbehaving. We had so many people, people like, why are you guys doing this?
[00:10:22] Speaker D: I know.
Which was not exactly a vote of confidence, by the way.
[00:10:26] Speaker E: And it's been a lot of fun. But yeah, that was definitely unusual for a law firm.
[00:10:32] Speaker D: Yeah, it was. But we're, we're glad we're here. So it worked out pretty well, I think, I would say, for Gearhart Law. I kind of go back to the story a lot of times in our discussions here, so regular listeners will be familiar with this, but Gearhart law started in 2006 and in fact 20 years ago. And at the time I was told that law firms didn't get business from digital marketing, which back in 2026 was really the Internet. I was told that it would take seven years of constant networking to build a good legal practice. And we put up a website and we targeted entrepreneurs and startups. And it turned out that there was a real unmet need for providing service to those clients. And within weeks we, the phone was ringing off the hook. And based on that, we moved forward. I didn't have to look for another job.
And the rest, as they say, is history. So we're just glad it worked out and somehow, some way, we captured the digital wave before other firms did, and we're in a good spot because of it. So now it's time for our interview with Caroline Wynette. She runs one of the most powerful startup accelerators on the planet, Berkeley Skydeck, where world changing ideas either take off or crash under the weight of reality. She's helping entrepreneurs chase moonshots with UC Berkeley's full firepower. And she's not afraid to challenge the Silicon Valley status quo. If you think innovation only happens in the Valley, Caroline's here to prove you wrong. Caroline, what does make for a good entrepreneur?
[00:12:09] Speaker A: I love that question because I can answer it both for myself as an entrepreneur and the at this point, thousands of founders that I've seen. If you don't have a burning, I mean on flame, burning desire will to build your business, it's just too hard. You know, you won't break those barriers, you won't break those rules. You won't essentially do what a founder needs to do. A founder is like, I mean, we've got some sales solutions here. A founder is in a way a 100% of the time a salesperson. And you are trying to get people to commit to your cause. And those people are either your early employees, come join my mission. It's really important. I'm really committed. It's going to be great. Your investors, please invest in my mission. You'll get your money back and more so. And then your customers use my product. It's amazing. It's fantastic. Give up this product that you've been using for 30 years and is completely embedded in your giant organization and you can't change. So that's basically what a founder does all day. Right? So, of course you have to build something people want. You have to have the technical skills. All of that is true. But I think it's important to realize that founders are essentially out there convincing the world to join their cause and then build something legitimate.
[00:13:25] Speaker D: Of course, you know, that's really interesting that you would say that, because a lot of people talk about passion, and you. You brought that up. But for a founder, the passion has to be manifested in their ability to persuade people that what they're doing is worthwhile. So you don't often hear that extra element tossed in there. You may be passionate about your project, but if you can't communicate that the right way to the right audience, to the right people, then it's going to be a tough road to go. Do you think that a founder can, if that's not a strength, do you think that a founder can sort of find somebody who does that well and then rely on them? Or do you think it has to.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Come from the founder at the early stage? It has to come from the founder, and they don't have to be, you know, Martin Luther King of public speaking, but they have to be able to communicate well enough to those three audiences that, you know, come join my cause. I will say I've seen lots of founders, and this is something, you know, we admit founders at a very early stage at Skydeck, and sometimes they come and they really aren't very articulate. But there's a bit of an art to knowing is there something really there are the elements, there is the talent and determination there, and we just have to help that founder better articulate their vision. And we do a lot of that. I personally do a lot of that when we get towards investor pitching and demo day pitching to help them craft something that people really get excited about in terms of a narrative and a story.
[00:14:54] Speaker E: That is so important.
I think they need to be on media, too, eventually. Right?
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:14:59] Speaker E: It sounds to me like you're really looking for visionaries.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yes. A great founder is a visionary in that they see something that doesn't exist and they're absolutely determined to bring it into reality. And we often help them make that vision even bigger.
[00:15:15] Speaker E: That's awesome. I just had a question for you about your fund and your accelerator. What types of projects do you take? Do you take consumer products and tech and life sciences, the whole ball of wax?
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Or do you focus one gigantic ball of wax every startup in every industry? And we can do that because we have the resources and the expertise of UC Berkeley backing us. So whatever the product is, whatever the expertise that the founder may need, it's at Berkeley. Maybe won a Nobel Prize. We just got one in physics a couple of days ago, and today we're in chemistry. So we can support any industry.
[00:15:53] Speaker E: That's unusual too, I think, these days, because I think a lot of accelerators are focused, a lot of them on tech. Are you seeing a change in funding depending on the types of project? Like, is more of the funding going to AI projects now, or is it still across the board?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Certainly the AI firm at Sea is underway. No question about it. Does that mean money flows easily? Absolutely not. But is there funding for agents, for companies building interesting models, for companies who have some unique insight that they can build something for? Yes, and a lot of our portfolio is AI, is agentic AI in particular. And that will continue for a while, for sure. But we have seen really good funding results for our really deep tech companies. So we have a nice portfolio of companies building chips, semiconductors, sensors. They're doing very, very well. We have a number of life science companies in our portfolio. And we have quantum. I would say we take any industry, but we really can support in a unique way because of Berkeley, very deep tech companies who need extremely specialized expertise in everything from quantum to robots to hardware to chips, et cetera.
[00:17:09] Speaker D: So we're here with Caroline Winnett, the powerhouse executive director of the Berkeley Skydeck. Can you tell us a story about one of your favorite startups?
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I just mentioned one. I just. We were just talking about quantum. So we take startups who are both from Berkeley, from our labs and from around the world. And one of the ways that we serve society is what Berkeley does in general. Right. The university attracts great talent from around the world. They come to Berkeley, they join our network, they go out and they do wonderful things. We do that with founders. We had a founder come from Japan, graduates of the University of Tokyo, plus faculty from the University of Tokyo that are working on a quantum solution to break the code for lost bitcoin wallets.
[00:17:57] Speaker E: Oh, my gosh.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:17:59] Speaker E: Could you explain a little bit what quantum is?
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So quantum is just basically the next phase of computing that hasn't really been proven out yet. There's a lot of work around it, especially at Berkeley. We just launched a quantum center. The governor came and signed some legislation. We're all very excited about it. And it will enable a power level of computing that's unmanageable right now. I won't explain. I won't explain the technology. I'll just get to the application, which is. If you want to unlock a lost Bitcoin wallet right now with current computing resources, it will take hundreds of years. But if we can develop the quantum resources, all of a sudden that timeframe becomes human timeframe. And then something like a hundred billion dollars of Bitcoin stuck because people wrote down their keys.
[00:18:50] Speaker D: And then I was gonna. They didn't put it in their password files.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Wasn't right.
[00:18:54] Speaker E: Or some guy, like, he was like, one of the first ones we heard about a few years ago, like five or six years ago, he had something like half a million dollars and he forgot his password.
Remember that case?
[00:19:05] Speaker D: Yeah, I. I just use the same password for everything, so I wouldn't lose mine. But anyway, no, that is an amazing inn.
Hope they use it for more than finding lost passwords. Right. I mean, this technology has other applications, too.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: 100%. And at Berkeley, what is our charter at UC Berkeley? Teaching research.
Right. And public service. So at Skydeck, we're looking for solutions to come to Skydeck, benefit from the resources of Berkeley, and then bring these great solutions to change the world. And we have lots of solutions that have come from campus. I'll tell you one, they haven't been through our program because they're just blasting out, but because today there was a Nobel Prize announced for a Berkeley faculty professor of chemistry named Omar Yagi. Very nice guy, great researcher, great personal story of coming to this country by himself for high school and working his way up to be a top researcher. Anyway, he's developed a new form of chemistry, and they are pursuing that as a solution.
And let me tell you what you can find somewhere if you Google it on the Internet. Omer and his team in Death Valley pulling water out of the air in Death Valley.
[00:20:21] Speaker D: They'll have to rename it to no Death Valley.
[00:20:24] Speaker E: I love that because. Yeah. I mean, that could do all sorts of different things. You could pull toxic chemicals out of the air.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:31] Speaker E: I mean, the sky's the limit with that kind of research.
[00:20:34] Speaker D: Absolutely. So we have to take a commercial break. We'll be back with Caroline Wynnette. Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt. Don't forget to Experience more Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram X and YouTube or subscribe to our podcast. Anywhere you get your podcasts, just look for the Passage to Profit show on any of these platforms. And coming up we have intellectual property news. And the ever popular secrets of the entrepreneurial mind will be back right after this.
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[00:23:05] Speaker F: Now back to Passage to profit. Once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
[00:23:10] Speaker E: Our special guest, Caroline Winnick. She is the powerhouse executive director of Berkeley Skydeck. They're the ones investing in all the futuristic programs that are science fiction today and real life tomorrow.
[00:23:22] Speaker D: Yeah, I really love all of the exciting technologies that Carolyn has been talking about. I mean this is like really super high level stuff. At the tip of the spear when it comes to innovation.
[00:23:34] Speaker E: Yes, the forefront of innovation. I do want to ask Caroline, we're recording this in October 2025. I do want to ask her, where do you see investment going in 2026, innovation going in 2026, what's kind of your overall look at the landscape?
[00:23:50] Speaker A: So we think about that all the time. We're a university, but we partner with a fund. And of course we want our startups to be funded. That's how they become mo.
So I'll. I'll say in one sense, it's kind of gotten back to normal. So we had the giant froth before the pandemic, then we had the pandemic, then everybody kind of freaked out and now we're back to kind of the normal. It's really hard to fundraise. That said, and also there's a macro environment where fund managers are really worried about their dry powder, their capital. Right. So they're being very cautious because they're not sure what's going to go on globally. And a number of funds that thought they could raise a fund one or a fund two can't.
So the funders themselves have their own challenges of pitching their own funds to investors.
And you've probably all heard there's so much. If you look at the absolute numbers of venture capital, they're pretty high. But it's because you got 100 billion here, you got OpenAI, you've got the gigantic startups sucking up a lot of that capital. So what does that mean sort of for everybody else? It's always been true that at the growth stage, investors want to see traction. That's what they want to see. I'm not interested in just your, your great vision. I need to see some customers. I say that's trickling down to lower stages at this point.
So investors are starting to ask more about traction than they did at the early stage. They're asking for more traction at the Series A. So that's a change.
And then I would say there is, as we talked about earlier, definitely lots of opportunity. If you've got a real crackerjack team of sharp builders who can code and build really, really fast, and they've got an interesting insight to use LLMs for some industry problem, et cetera. Those are interesting. Those sing to investors they're getting funded. And then we love hard tech at Skydeck.
So we see some nice, I would say it's just starting investment around robots, which is nice. We're hoping to see more of that. We've had several Robots in our portfolio. Life science is still tough. It's been a really difficult time the past few years for life science investments. Getting those products to market has been particularly hard. But overall it's tough. But there's opportunity. But the general cloud of the global economic situation, the situation that we all are familiar with, is making the LPs, the people who invest in funds, more nervous.
[00:26:22] Speaker D: So what do we say to maybe companies that have more modest technologies and maybe more modest aspirations? Are funds available for them? Even if it's not like going to have the big billion dollar payout, what can somebody who's in that position, who wants to raise money do if maybe they're not so focused on AI, but maybe a simpler product?
[00:26:49] Speaker A: It depends on the stage of the fund. So the big funds, the big fat, gigantic, multi billion dollar funds are only interested in the massive unicorn debit corn exits. The smaller funds will take a 3x4x exit. In other words, you don't have to go and, you know, blow up and be the next salesforce. So it depends on the fund size, I would say, and depends a lot on the industry.
So medical devices, life science versus enterprise software will impact that. I would say that no matter what stage you're at, if you can't show an interesting target market, and by interesting I mean at least a few hundred million as your initial target market, generally across the board a little bit, a little bit different for the hardcore life science, et cetera, and maybe some of the semiconductors. But if you can't show an interesting market, it's going to be tough.
[00:27:44] Speaker D: Yeah, that makes sense. So for those entrepreneurs who are out there beating the bushes for funding, what advice do you have for them?
[00:27:51] Speaker A: There's a benefit and disadvantage of kind of the climate right now. There's so much information, there's so many resources.
You can start and incorporate an interesting company in about five seconds, right? Using online tools, you can jump into all of the various models and do market research.
And there's lots of founder meetups to meet your co founders. Obviously where you are makes a big difference. So if you're in Silicon Valley. And by the way, Silicon Valley has kind of spread, right? It's not just really around that South Bay circle anymore. Berkeley is considered to be in Silicon Valley now. And Skydeck Berkeley, you know, we're right in Berkeley, of course, is now on the Silicon Valley tour. We get requests all the time.
[00:28:37] Speaker D: That's the ultimate test, by the way.
[00:28:39] Speaker E: That's awesome. So there are a lot of funds out there, right? Could an Entrepreneur type in to say one of the LLMs, whichever one they prefer. I like Perplexity the best myself. But could they type in, this is everything I have. Is there a fund that I should apply to that could possibly be a good match to me and have it go look for a fund for them? Would that work? Is there enough about the funds online that Perplexity would have something to draw from?
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, there's all the fund websites have some information, they've got the portfolio, something about their investment thesis.
[00:29:12] Speaker D: One of the things that comes up every once in a while is introductions to fund. Warm introductions, meaning that somebody knows somebody versus just kind of sending them an email introducing yourself. Here's my non confidential deck. Any sense about. I guess the warm introduction is always going to be a little bit better, but that doesn't mean that you can't just approach them directly.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: You can, and every investor with a giant portfolio will give you the story about the founder who sent them a cold email and they end up investing and, you know, went public and all that stuff. But obviously the warm introductions are the best. What investors really pay attention to in terms of a warm introduction is from one of their portfolio company founders. So if they get a warm introduction from someone they've invested in, hey, you should talk to this person. I know them. That is the warmest introduction that a founder can get.
[00:30:05] Speaker E: That kind of sounds like what Braden's.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Doing a little bit, but we'll get.
[00:30:09] Speaker E: To that pretty soon.
[00:30:10] Speaker D: So we're with Caroline Winnett, the powerhouse executive director of the Berkeley Skydeck. An amazing discussion. How can people find you if they want to reach out?
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Skydeck, Berkeley Edu. We're a Berkeley program, so of course we have that beautiful Edu website. That's how you can find us. If you just type in Berkeley skydeck, you'll find us. If you type in skydeck, you'll find us too. We're a part of a public university. We love sharing our learnings, especially with other universities. And applications open for our batches twice a year in February and in August. And we welcome founders of anywhere. Doesn't matter where they went to school, doesn't matter what industry, just if you have a burning desire to build something, please apply to our program.
[00:30:55] Speaker D: And I would encourage our listeners who are looking for that kind of support to check into Skydeck. It's really a phenomenal organization, not just in terms of funding, but in terms of advice and support. And if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, I guess. Oh, now it's time for AI in business.
[00:31:15] Speaker E: Yes. AI in business. The purpose of this segment is to spread the word and give people ideas about how you can use AI in your business. I am going to start with you, Caroline. I know you have a million different use cases, but I just want what may be your favorite one. What is one way you're using AI in your business?
[00:31:33] Speaker A: We're talking about the business of Berkeley Skydeck, which is of course a university program, but we're using it for diligence for our companies, as all good investors are. So we get about 3,800 applications for 20 spots. We're more and more looking at using AI to help us better understand that deal flow, to help us understand that and to help us once they are selected for an interview. So we've got a fantastic team at the Berkeley Skydeck Fund. They've got a fantastic team of Berkeley MBAs. These are very sharp people, I must say, who are helping us with this initiative. Ask me in six months and we'll probably have more and even different insights and comments about it. But I'd say we're really just getting started. But at the end of the day, to pick a startup to invest in, it's humans talking to humans. You cannot substitute that.
[00:32:23] Speaker D: But wait until quantum computing comes along.
[00:32:26] Speaker E: I just want to point out to entrepreneurs here, people interested in getting seen. AI looks at everything about you on the Internet, every podcast, everything. And if somebody puts the transcript of the podcast on there, it reads the transcript. It looks at your LinkedIn, it looks at your face, it looks everywhere. So the more you can have a consistent message and talk about what you're doing, the better chances you are of getting a good profile on the AI. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more later. Anyway, thank you very much. That was really a new way. I hadn't heard before of using it. So now I'm going to go to Braden Young. Braden, what is one way you're using AI for your business?
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Yeah, this. So this is my third startup because I like the pain of 0 10. The very first two we scale. One we scale up to a couple folks. The other one we scale up to 700 people and the employees. And this one we. So a new metric we follow is like revenue per employee, which we did not track the first time around. And the reason we track that is because can we do we need to make this higher? Is it necessary? And so if we can find an AI that can do or an agent that can do that person's job that we know we need to hire, for example, entry level sales, like, do we need to hire someone to come and do that or can we find a tool that can do that for us? And if we can't, then okay, then, like, then, you know, we'll go and hire somebody. So that's a mantra we use internally a lot to make sure we can.
Like we're hiring when it's necessary and then like, will this impact the metric of our revenue per employee? Yes, if you go and hire for sure, yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker E: That's a great way to use it.
[00:33:59] Speaker D: So quick question. How do you come up with that number revenue per employee?
[00:34:03] Speaker B: I mean, it's one of those where, like, it's what your ARR is and like divided by the amount of employees that you have. And like, it was one that we didn't typically track in the past and it's our board asks for it now. I think it was one of those where, like AI companies, like very pure AI companies, they love that metric. Like, there's a lot of LinkedIn comments like we're a team of five and we do a hundred million in revenue. And so there's all those, you know, talking heads on LinkedIn, but it's one that we also report on.
[00:34:31] Speaker E: Excellent. Yes.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:34:32] Speaker E: Clint Lutz, Trackstar AI.
[00:34:34] Speaker C: I know you're using AI, but what.
[00:34:37] Speaker D: Was your first clue, the term AI in the company name?
[00:34:40] Speaker E: What is one way that you're using AI in your own company?
[00:34:44] Speaker C: Within our own company, probably the most beneficial use case for us is data crunching. Right. It's data analysis. As we've grown and we've really pivoted to large enterprise clients, we have even larger data sets that we ingest on a daily basis. And when our models are out there running, we crunch all the data that we receive. Not only just, you know, how accurate is it, how much it's performing, but we're also ingesting all the signals from the consumers and how they're being impacted by this type of solution. In addition to, you know, what KPIs we're driving for our clients, our lenders. Right. And we really use it to build that kind of holistic story. And I think the AI is really good at that. It's summarizing, you know, massive data sets is. It can within minutes tell me exactly what I'm doing for my client and how I'm affecting all their consumers in general. Right. And that is really what helps us tell the story for prospects and, you know, for investors as well, too.
[00:35:46] Speaker D: That's Great. So what is your level of confidence then in this output?
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Well, let me first start off by saying the AI is only as good as the data it's trained on and it really depends on where you start.
And the beautiful thing about AI and the adoption over the last, say four or five years is it's really matured and it's created this ability for people to build their own type of small LLMs or on prem LLMs you can get very specific, you can fine tune to a granular level on what it is that's important to your outcome versus what's just noise. Right, Signal versus noise is what they call it. And with that type of ability to really kind of comb through on a macular level, you can actually understand what's going on and predict what's going to happen in the future based on those trends. So when you have that type of understanding and deep rooted elements of the AI under your control, that's what brings us the most confidence.
[00:36:45] Speaker E: I've heard a lot of companies now are developing their own LLMs for in house users, feeding it their own data, having it be searchable, having new employees come in and the first thing they have to do is look at some of the data that's in there and learn the company. What about you, Richard Gerhardt?
[00:37:01] Speaker D: Well, my most recent use of AI was to review a vendor contract, not a client contract. I wouldn't put that into the AI data set because it's confidential information, but a vendor contract and provide a redline version of it. And I would say that it came up with about 70% of the changes I felt were good ones. I had to refine it, but it saved me a lot of time. It picked out a few things that I, I'm not sure I would have picked out without it. And so it was a great aid and a great time saver.
[00:37:35] Speaker E: I'm helping people start podcasts, starting my own podcast too. And I view podcasts as a digital marketing tool. You know, it's really hard to be the next like Star, right? But if you use it to direct people to your business, it can be very powerful. And there's a lot of reasons I'm not going to get into them. But I put marketing in from day one because that's what you have to do these days, especially if you're using a podcast for business. So I use ChatGPT and I use Perplexity. I sometimes use Google Gemini, although it's not very responsive sometimes. But I use it to figure out the SEO value of the content I'm creating, especially starting with the title. You know what's a catchy title? What's the SEO of this title? I use the different ones. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but I used to get kind of different answers from Perplexity in chat, and now it seems like the answers are getting closer and closer together, like they're drawing from the same data sets more and more. So that is kind of interesting. But yeah, so I use it for SEO. That's one of the main reasons I use it.
[00:38:33] Speaker D: Great. So we have to take a commercial break. We'll be back shortly with Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind and Intellectual Property news coming up. Stay tuned.
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[00:40:42] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:40:46] 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 K L I S A M 950 in St. Louis, Missouri and also our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally of podcasts. We've also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. So subscribe to the Passage to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and on the Iheart app. And now it's time for Intellectual property News all about intellectual property searching and those familiar with the patent process appreciate that an intellectual property search done before you file your patent application is an important part of the process because you want to determine whether your invention is patentable and you also want to make sure that somebody else doesn't have a patent that can block you. Once the application is examined at the Patent Office, the examiner there also does a patent search and they use that information along with the information that you submit as a basis to examine the application.
So the uspto, not wanting to miss out on the AI revolution, has decided to start a pilot program where they use AI for patent searching. And it's kind of an unusual program and an unusual approach. They will do a search of your invention, hopefully confidentially, and that is they're not going to be putting your invention into the AI search engine. Hopefully they have some safeguards for that. But then they're also going to provide the applicant and their representative with patents that they find during this process. And unusually, the examiners won't be using this as part of their search and their examination. This search is being provided for information only. Part of the application process involves the applicant submitting all of the prior art, which is all the prior patents and journal articles and product information that they're aware of that could be related to the patent and the invention. We have a duty to provide this information. So if we get the search, I guess then we have to provide it back to the examiner if we think it's relevant. It's a little confusing. I think they're working it out. But the important piece here is that the Patent Office is beginning to incorporate AI into the patent examination process. And you know, one can foresee in the future that they would probably try to automate the examination process to a high degree.
[00:43:27] Speaker E: Yeah, with 70% accuracy. Right now, I don't know how that's going to work out. At Gearhart Law. You guys look at every patent that's close, at least the first page, right?
[00:43:37] Speaker D: Oh yeah. I mean that's part of our responsibility is to help the applicant determine patentability and we also want to keep our inventors free of third party threats. So AI is creeping into the patent examination process. This is really the first public statement that the USPTO has made about using AI in the patent process. And, and I'm sure there'll be more developments down the line.
[00:44:02] Speaker E: Well, thank you, Richard Gearhart. Very interesting. So now it's very exciting. We're going to go on to our next presenter, Brayden young with/experts.com welcome Braden. Tell us all about what you're doing. It's very cool.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah, so yeah, this was, this was a problem we had at my last startup, which was called Sendoso, which we were a B2B company and we had a lot of website traffic. But like any B2B site, when you want to convert that web traffic, it's take a demo and say like click, you know, come, you know, talk to sales. And we saw a lot of folks wouldn't do it. Like they would pop into a community and they'd ask questions like, hey, does anyone like this software? Like how are you solving X problem? So all these amazing prospects were basically back channeling your tool and the space that you live in and they were looking for answers and the only place they had to go were review sites which are great but like they, this didn't answer the question they needed and you were hoping they would come back if they got the answers they were looking for and then take a demo. So our thought was like, let's actually just make it easier. Let's. If a prospect comes to my website and they're not ready for a demo yet, let's serve up an expert. It's a customer. So we call our customers experts. And so your very first step in the process, as you're paired, you're matched using AI with a similar customer in a similar space and you book a time with them instantly. So your very first conversation can be with a customer versus talking to sales. Someone who's like minded, someone who is probably solving or trying to solve a similar problem as you. This is used a lot for top of funnel. It's also used a lot for mid funnel. If maybe you've taken a demo, maybe you've had that conversation but you're like, I don't know, this is the right tool for me. Like rather than a reference being at the very end of the sales cycle. Put it in the middle or put it towards the beginning. And so we see it converting incredibly fast. We're seeing deals close about 3x faster because you're essentially just putting this up towards the start, which is kind of cool. So as a million tools are built every day with AI making it easier, we're trying to build communities and try to help cured up your sales. Be it every B2B startup.
[00:46:10] Speaker E: So innovative. I have to ask though, are your current clients getting compensated at all for their time for this?
[00:46:16] Speaker B: They. Oh yeah, there's the question, right? Yes.
So if a customer takes a phone call, there's two things we do. One, they are compensated as a thank you and the company determines what that might be. Could be a charity donation in their name, could be an e gift, it could be cash. So when we built that like that, that was helpful. But the bigger item was that customer also controls their calendar. So they sync their calendar with the tool and they determine when they might take these phone calls.
So what we saw was like most B2B companies, people take reference calls. Like sometimes they take a discount on a piece of software. Sometimes they're like, hey, I love this tool. I'll be a reference for you. And it's really hard for that person to control their calendar. And they're like, I'll do one call a month or one call, I don't want a bunch of reference calls. And so they're able to control when they take these phone calls. And that was the bigger unlock for us where they're like, hey, I'll do one call a month and like that'll satisfy my contract where I took a discount.
And also like, I'll be a, you know, an advocate for you also. So it's been kind of cool to see like both those help with signing up more customers.
[00:47:18] Speaker D: So you've launched this product five months in?
[00:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah, five months in.
[00:47:22] Speaker D: And how, how's it working?
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Good. I mean like there's, we're up to about 40 customers, which is good. In five months, I'm selling a very similar profile as I sold Sendosa to. So it's marketing, it's Sales leaders, it's B2B technology to start. So I, I had a pretty good network there. So the first 40 were probably easier than they should have been. But it's been a lot of learnings. Two camps. We have Camp one. Folks are like, our customers love us. Let's put them out there, let's put them in the top of the funnel. They can help us with deals. Those the ones having success. There's a Camp 2 where people are a little afraid of their customer base. They're like, I don't want to poke the bear. Like, they like me. They pay me. I don't know if I want to put them front and center. Yeah, maybe they'll do case studies. Like, the Camp 2 is coming around to, like, hey, like, my demo button's not getting us clicked as much as it used to. I got to figure out another way to build pipelines, and I'm going to use my customers to do it. So it's. It's been good learnings. I think, like, my biggest. Our biggest learning has been when you go to our one of like the expert pages. Like, there's all these folks that are on there. Their faces are there and they can book a time with each of them is someone was like, hey, if I have an angry customer, if they have an open ticket or if they have a low MPS score, can you pull them from mistakes automatically? And we were like, yeah. So we built the integration that lives in Salesforce and HubSpot and they can get pulled until that ticket's closed, which is big and kind of cool. Little. Little tweaks to the system. Wow.
[00:48:40] Speaker E: It's so powerful. You know, I don't really trust online reviews that much anymore because I've been burned so many times. Like, yeah, I remember I bought this toaster. It's like, yeah, this is the best toaster. It toasts really fast. It's great. Well, the cord was about a foot long. I'm like, I can't even get my.
[00:48:57] Speaker D: We have an extension cord for a toaster. Wow.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Yeah, we've, like, we've not applied this to more consumer goods. We think it works there well because, like, people still need reviews there. And so, like, if there's a button that's like, hey, talk to real users of this or someone who bought this, we think that's applicable that like, down the road as to, like, how we might want to do that. Like, right now we're living at around a couple thousand dollars plus. But I think there's. When you go and buy a car, you're always asking your friends, like, hey, like, do you like this? Like, do you like the car that you bought? And so I think it live. Eventually we'll figure that space out.
I think it does have some use there for sure.
[00:49:31] Speaker D: So I have to put my lawyer hat on here and ask, well, what if somebody makes a recommendation and the person relies on that recommendation and it doesn't work out for the purchaser. And if they get upset and they want to blame the recommendation for their trouble because they said one thing and it didn't really work out. Do you have a plan for that?
[00:49:53] Speaker B: We do. I think, like most folks who are going through the process that are the customers are already part of a case study on most of these websites. So they've already talked about their use case of like this system. And then after an expert call usually takes place, that individual is sent to sales. So sales is still involved in the process of like, hey, we want to make sure this is someone who can actually use our tool properly. So there's still some vetting there to make sure. Like, hey, this is only a recommendation by this person. This was their use case, their problem. This is how they solved it. Your problems could be different. There's also a lot of, you know, legal language in there too, to be like, hey, is this something that maybe it'll help you, maybe it won't, but I think that you can only rely on, you know, someone, hey, this is how. This was my experience. Yours could be different.
[00:50:39] Speaker D: Caroline, do you have any questions?
[00:50:41] Speaker A: This sounds like a really interesting business and I like two things. I like that you're a former founder, so it's not necessarily going to mean that you're going to succeed, but you got a better chance. And we've seen that over and over again, so that's excellent. And I like that you're looking at a way. So what is a big problem? We've seen several startups tackle this problem, which is for enterprise software. It's a gigantic mess out there. The review sites are in most cases pretty unreliable and people go through this process of trying to pick things and then they end up just picking the big logo. Right?
[00:51:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: So I like what you're doing because it will help startups.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: There's a. There's like the enterprise software. Like, you bring up a good point. We're seeing companies build expert pages just for their big enterprise deals. So like a take a land and expand type method. We're like, hey, we got into Salesforce. Isn't that great? But like, you could spend all day there trying to sell other departments. So build a page with just your Salesforce users on there and use that internally to sell. Because the first question you always get is, like, who's using you at this company? And like, that's been kind of cool to see, like that motion build and just make it easier for folks to get the information they're looking for inertia.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Is one of the world's most powerful forces. And so that often is just the simple reason large enterprises won't try a startup is just that there's too much inertia.
[00:52:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I. We recently, well it's not recently anymore but we invested in an ERP system to help us with our accounting and invoicing and project management.
And I'm not sure it was really the best fit for us. It was recommended to us by, you know, consultant and if I had had the opportunity, I think to talk with other users, I would have gotten a different perspective on it. It probably and potentially would have made a different choice.
Friend of mine says that software is always oversold.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Oh, I see.
[00:52:35] Speaker D: And I kind of fell into that trap and you know, this provides an easy way to do more diligence and hopefully make better decisions.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the thing we all need to remember in software too is you don't want everything going out the back door in terms of like churn, right? So, so you want to bring on the right great customers at the beginning because you might churn at the end of your contract and that's not good for the software tool at all. So you want to make sure. I mean that's why betting, that's why disco is so important before you close any deal and your customers helping you do that. So you're scaling your team with your customers, which has been cool to see grow.
[00:53:14] Speaker E: So what industries are using your software now?
[00:53:17] Speaker B: A lot of marketing and sales tech are like the two primary ones we're living right now. We're experimenting with because we're five months in. We're experimenting with with a couple other tools. Finance is one that we're playing around with like a financial advisor because that's a big commitment you're trying to figure out, hey, is this someone I want to talk to? So we're trying a few of those working with a few banks too at the same financial idea. So it's a lot of like mid market and SMB. We've just barely scratched the surface of enterprise type deals of companies who have five or six different product SKUs. And so they would need a bunch of different, different expert pages for that. So we're just starting to get into that world which has been pretty cool to see grow.
[00:53:58] Speaker E: Seems like it'd be pretty hard to convince them to use a new tool. How are you getting them on board?
[00:54:04] Speaker B: It's a lot of like. So most marketers and salespeople like sales leaders right now Their biggest concern is pipeline. It's like, we don't have the pipeline that we used to have, and I still need to hit these projections. So if I come to them with like, hey, you have an entire pipeline you're not even reporting on on because you have people that are doing research on you. You have people that are reading reviews, maybe they're coming to your site, but you don't really count them until they press take a demo. So my thought is, hey, like, let's look at these folks who are doing research on you who are looking for information and make it easier for them to find the data they're looking for so they can become pipe. So that's typically the model. And most folks are like, yes, like, I need pipeline, so I'm going to go ahead and try this.
And so that's one. The other way is the reference is a very messy process. It's like usually the very last step in the sales cycle and someone's like, I need a reference before I can sign.
And you're like, oh, okay, who should I send you? It's always the same two people that you send to that deal. And so by cleaning that up and putting that towards the beginning, deals are going faster, and we're able to prove that now. And so if I can go to a sales leader and say, hey, I'm going to give you more pipeline that you're not seeing, and two, your deals are going to go four times faster. It's very like, okay, I'll try this. I'll experiment with it. We have done a lot of pilots because it is a new kind of process. So that has been a lot of our growth because we plug into folks, their CRMs, we're able to see deals that come in from an expert and close, which is always great. It's always very helpful as a founder too, because we're doing QBRs. You're like, hey, you're paying for us. You're having success there, there. So I think we've seen a good amount of deals come in via experts and those deals close. My first company or my previous company, Sendoso, like a lot of the reps, they're using it, and it's great to see them having deals come in where they've already talked to a customer, then those deals close. Those are the best ones for us because we, we can easily help them scale. They're having success using the tool.
[00:56:02] Speaker E: This is excellent. This is definitely something new. And it sounds like people jumping on board now are going to be way ahead of the game in a year from now, right?
[00:56:10] Speaker B: We hope so. The goal is to just make it easy for people to get the information they're looking for.
[00:56:15] Speaker E: So how do people find you?
[00:56:16] Speaker B: I am the only Braden Young which is B R A Y D A N.
My parents got creative with my name spelling so I'm the only Braden Young on LinkedIn so connect me there. And then it's slash experts and/experts.com is the company too.
[00:56:31] Speaker D: Passage to profit with Richard analyst Gerhardt.
[00:56:34] Speaker E: So now we have another innovation which is is really great. Finding hidden data. I love that. Flintlots, can you tell us all about what you're doing?
[00:56:43] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You know, as a kid I grew up below the poverty line and credit was just one of those things that other people had.
It didn't really click to me until I was in college and working for Community bank in their mortgage software that I realized that we weren't the only ones. You know, there were a lot of people out there that didn't fully understand how credit worked and how to use it to their advantage and most importantly how to care for it. Right. And how it could really impact their lives going forward.
And so that's really what's been driving me pretty much my entire career is working in and around credit and I've kind of been an underdog. My team hears me say this all the time. I've always rooted for the underdog and that's where I get my passion to really drive myself into this organization. What we really do is we took a SaaS platform and collected credit remediation data from all across America. Tens of millions of dispute outcome records.
[00:57:41] Speaker D: What is credit remediation?
[00:57:43] Speaker C: Think of anytime there's a error on your credit report. One in five consumers, 20% of Americans have a material error on at least one of their credit reports.
[00:57:54] Speaker B: Reports.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: Most of those are 50 to 75 point. I call it discounts. Right where, where they shouldn't be penalized for something like that. Most folks don't, don't even realize that they can challenge errors that are on their credit report. Most of them just think they're there, right? And they're going to be there for five, seven, ten years.
But because of this, there's this entire cottage industry that you know, developed over the years. And that's what our SaaS platform powered for a long time which was, you know, mortgage and real estate professionals. They have clients, you know, that need credit services, need help improving it. They white label our platform so that they could be prepared for that major purchase they were trying to do.
So we took all of that data nearly 20 years at this point, and through AI, we developed this really interesting model that we call Revolar. And what Revolar does is it reveals errors and credit reports in real time.
And so now, instead of saying, you're declined, have a nice day, we can't do business with you, you're now saying, this is something you should pay attention to before you even apply.
And that's where we put this information directly in front of the consumer.
[00:59:04] Speaker D: I love that because there have been circumstances where there were errors on my credit report and they only came up in the middle of a transaction. And then trying to get it fixed, the credit agencies, it might take a month or two, which didn't square with the timing for the transaction, right? And so we ended up, you know, having to pay a higher interest rate. And if I had paid more attention, if I had known about these issues could have been addressed much sooner and rectified. So aren't there credit reporting agencies now that are sort of doing this? I think I, I signed up for some agency that's supposed to be monitoring my credit. What's the difference between. Difference between that and what you're doing?
[00:59:45] Speaker C: The credit monitoring is, as an industry standard, tracking changes, right? Changes in your score. When you apply for something, there are new inquiries or new, new lines of credit added. What they don't do is unveil any type of these errors. And that's where we come in. And that's where our data searches through it can identify these errors based upon, you know, historical data, based upon those 30 million dispute records that we use to power our solution.
And so some of the credit monitoring platforms that we work with today are now taking our solution, implementing it, and sending that email out. And I'll use Braden as an example here, right? You get an email that says, braden, we just implemented this new AI and it found something suspicious on your credit report. You're going to open that email, you're going to go check out and see what it has to say. And our KPIs prove that we have 70% open rates, 30 to 40% click through rates. I mean, this is something people really respond to.
And what we're doing is we're putting that information to the forefront of the conversation. Like you just said, you usually don't find out until you're in the middle of the transaction, which is the wrong time. You want to try and address this.
[01:00:50] Speaker D: Issue, but in this case, the individual you're reporting to doesn't have to be a member or have an account with your company. You're finding these and then just reaching out to people.
[01:01:00] Speaker C: Our clients are the lenders, the credit monitoring platforms, the fintech lenders. We even work with, you know, some others, anywhere there's credit. Right. Involved in any type of transaction or monitoring service. Those are our clients directly. We're primarily B2B and it's their consumer clients that are really reaping the benefits of all of this because they're now empowering them to go take action forever. Like you're just talking about right now. Credit monitoring has always been read only, right? It's just been kind of a static type situation that you're paying for on a monthly basis that shoots you an email once a month and says congratulations, you're, your score increased three points. Right. But you're paying for this service a lot of times now. We're, we're taking it and we're making it actionable. We're surfacing these errors that are in people's credit reports. And mind you, 69% of these reported errors are coming from low to moderate income communities, they're coming from minority communities.
And so if you're a lender and you're trying to expand your portfolio and you're what you're lending to into these communities, we're the perfect fit because we're not introducing any additional risk. We're simply highlighting or surfacing these errors and then providing those free tools, the consumer to address those.
[01:02:11] Speaker D: Caroline, do you have any questions or comments?
[01:02:14] Speaker A: So it sounds like the value proposition for your customer because your customers is the lending business, right? Or the credit business, is that they have a higher success rate when they're reaching out to their customers. Right. So they spend a lot less time evaluating applications that fail, is that correct?
[01:02:31] Speaker C: That's one piece of it. Right. And we were talking about, you know, AI and marketing and we're in this new zero click marketing space. Nobody goes to page two on Google anymore. They read the AI summary at the top of the screen and they that's it, that's as far as they go. And so you have marketers, a lot of lenders, fintech lenders in particular, who are spending fortunes on Google AdWords and trying to drive traffic.
And we recently did a proof of value with a fintech lender, nationwide lender that funded, you know, several billion dollars in 20, 23 and 24. And they had 20 million records in their database of people that applied with them over the years. In our proof of value we found about three and a half million consumers with errors sitting in their database. Whether they actually did business with or not, they're giving them this information and providing free tools so that they can address these issues. Because, you know, bad credit just doesn't fix itself overnight. You know, this isn't something that just resolves itself. So there's a whole host of consumers that are in their database they're not even doing business with, but they incurred all those costs, including marketing costs, pulling credit. Going through the whole process that lenders are required to do this gives them an opportunity to start lowering that cost without going and spending additional dollars on marketing.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: You have an agent that works with the person whose credit has an error to help them fix it. How does that interface work with the customer? With the end customer, but the consumer.
[01:03:57] Speaker C: We're going to be embedded in our partner's platform. And so we're pretty much white labeled. Right, Your credit monitoring platform. We're going to be the ones that show up and trigger that tape. Our AI found this to be an error. Right. And then we provide them the steps and the tools to follow through, mostly through free channels. Right. So the consumer isn't incurring any costs to go resolve this error. And we walk them through that process step by step and track their progress to make sure they get the resolution that they're seeking.
[01:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that looks like an opportunity to build something really sticky. There's a ton of AI being thrown, certainly at this industry. Nothing's really rising to the top yet. But that if you make that customer experience, if not joyful, but at least not so painful, I think that will be great. So great product. I hope you really scale.
[01:04:45] Speaker C: Thank you very much. And we have seen that a lot lately. The customer lifetime value increases. The stickiness, as you mentioned, is extremely important.
We do surveys and we ask. Consumers have gone through the process.
Did you file a dispute with the Bureau? Yes, we did. How often are you checking that dispute?
And they're consistently around some version of never. And we follow up, we're like, why aren't you checking with the bureau? The responses are really pretty similar to say, well, they have an error, they've been a mistake, or I always knew that was wrong, you know, and what we find through the tracking of the marketing or the tracking of the usage of our solution is that engagement goes through the roof for consumers because they'll go file a dispute, they'll come back to your platform, your monitoring platform, your financial health platform, and refresh on a daily basis and just wait for that three digit number to change.
And the minute that it changes, you literally have a customer for life. Because now not only are they able to qualify for more, but you can offer them more products and services and then from there it becomes your Net promoter score. How many times can you tell other people about this solution that nobody else has ever offered to them before?
[01:05:57] Speaker E: Are you working with banks? Are they your customers as well as other financial institutions?
[01:06:01] Speaker C: Yes, banks, lenders, fintechs, monitoring platforms, consumer platforms. We're actually in discussions right now and setting up a proof of value with a fully digital AI based credit card company. And they use all types of alternative data points to approve consumers. They obviously have a sponsor bank that actually does all the underwriting. But for their application process it's 100% automated. And we're now seeing this since AIs matured more, we're seeing that we talked about agentic AI, they're running agents inside, right inside their VPC, their virtual private cloud, their secure environment. So no data leaves any of these organizations. It stays right there. What our solution does is it works inside of an agent and it'll scan the credit and let's say they fit all the boxes for criteria, right? Income, employment, so on and so forth. But, but the credit score doesn't meet a certain threshold or they're not what they fit into what they call a scorecard. Right. So maybe they're 640 as an example and the cutoff may be 680. Well, if our solution says this particular collection is most likely an error and doesn't belong here, are they really a 640? Are they performing more like a 720? Now that's a question most likely for an underwriter if you're in a banking situation.
But with a fully digital credit card company, if our solution says that there's something on there that doesn't belong there, they're going to use that to rescore internally and say, okay, yeah, they are meeting the criteria, let's move forward. They shouldn't be penalized for this error that's been identified by our solution. And so now they're approving even more folks.
[01:07:37] Speaker E: That is wonderful.
[01:07:39] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:07:40] Speaker E: And I mean not just moving forward, but you might get a lower interest rate.
[01:07:43] Speaker C: Great. Absolutely.
[01:07:45] Speaker D: Yeah. It's good for the consumer.
[01:07:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean that, that's kind of what I touched on earlier is one of our very first pilots that we did. We ran it across that database of 20 million consumers. They built that campaign around and started out do the outreach again when you Put this in front of people, the market responds. 160% increase in engagement just in six months. And this is a financial health platform that they give away for free.
It's kind of a funnel, if you will. Right. Because they know 50% of the people that sign up will apply for a product within six months. So when you have this type of outreach for the lender, it unlocked a nine figure lending opportunity that was sitting in their database and that's why they put so many resources around it. And today we're about a year into the process and I can comfortably say that we've added over seven figures up to their bottom line without them having to spend one additional dollar in marketing.
[01:08:40] Speaker D: That's great. So Clint, where can people find you to learn more about your company?
[01:08:45] Speaker C: Well, we are the only company that does this. We're the only company that uses our solution and the latest in technology to go and identify errors. And you can find
[email protected] of course. My name Clint Lotz. L O T Z. I'm the only one as well on LinkedIn. We're happy to connect and, and have a conversation to see if this is something that could really help improve your business.
[01:09:07] Speaker D: Great.
[01:09:07] Speaker E: Is there a way to find out which banks are using this? Like if I was looking for a new bank and I wanted a bank that would use this, is there any way to find that out or do I just have to ask them?
[01:09:17] Speaker C: You can ask, of course, but we also have a short list of those that we can share publicly. We have a lot that are still in that pilot phase coming from community banking. Banks are very conservative, as they should be. Right. And they always interested in new technology, but it has to be proven. So your, your normal sales cycle obviously for lenders is much longer. Even if you sign the agreement, they still want three, six, nine months to really test this out before they feel comfortable shouting from the rooftops. But we're getting to the point now that we're mature enough and AI is mature enough that that cycle is shortening because they're starting to see us grow in the marketplace and their competition starting to get ahead of them by using a solution like ours.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: Excellent.
[01:09:59] Speaker E: Thank you listeners. You are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard Elizabeth Gearhart and our special guest Caroline Winnett. We'll be right back.
[01:10:07] 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. 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 hurt on the job, find out today for free what kind of compensation you may be entitled to. Call the legal helpline right now.
[01:10:52] Speaker G: 8004-9270-1480-0492-7014.
800-492, 7014.
That's 800-492-7014.
[01:11:07] Speaker F: It's Passage to profit.
[01:11:08] Speaker D: Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage. Passage to Profit. And she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passageprophetshow.com website and check out her album.
[01:11:22] Speaker E: And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. And we are going to start with Caroline Winnett. What is a secret you can share with our listeners? I don't know if this is a.
[01:11:33] Speaker A: Secret, but most entrepreneurs who are successful are just a little bit. What's the word? Unusual.
[01:11:39] Speaker E: That's a nice way to put it.
[01:11:41] Speaker D: So strive to be weird.
[01:11:42] Speaker A: That said, I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who would be classified as normal, fairly normal people. Myself, I think I'm. I think I'm normal mostly, but there's a level of determination that you just have to have. I'll use myself in this as an example. I like to do things pretty intensely, so I learned to play the violin. My first career was professional violinist. I took up rock climbing. I climbed El Capitan. I took up triathlons. I did an Ironman. And when I look at the backgrounds of my founders at skydeck, so many of them come to Skydeck, they're coders or, you know, they're. They're inventing some technology or they're building a robot. But then you ask them about their personal life and like, yeah, I became fluent in Japanese at the age of 12. I was on a competitive sports team. I volunteered at a food bank, and I ended up running it. I was in the military. Right. That takes incredible dedication and discipline. There's almost always something in there that shows that when they do something, they do it. So I would say when you're talking to your founders or you're assessing a founder, ask them about their personal history, not just what they're building because you might find some interesting things. You might find some obstacles they've overcome. I mean, it's very interesting to hear Clint's story. Clint had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get to where he is today. So we have a question on our forum. Please describe some obstacles you overcame. And it's pretty extraordinary what we see in there.
[01:13:12] Speaker E: Wow, That's a great secret. Thank you. Okay, now we'll move to Braden Young. What's the secret? You can share.
[01:13:19] Speaker B: And Caroline stood right there. I was trying to think of, like. Like, things that I get into, like, hobbies. I'm like, why? Why am I buying the best stuff possible? And I. Yeah, anyways, all right, I'll give two.
So I think are the best. So the first one is most entrepreneurs, for me, like, I love the early stage, and I love talking to other entrepreneurs. So reaching out to, like, I say you're building or you're thinking about building something in industry, find, like, who the winner is in that space and message every founder, CEO, and be like, hey, like, I'm thinking about building X. I saw you've done it. Are you willing to give me 15 minutes so I can ask you questions and people get back to you? I think, like, that's one of the biggest things. Like, if you're thinking about doing whatever it is, like, have lots of conversations with folks who've gone down that path, reach out on LinkedIn.
I'm willing to have that conversation. I think that's. I love that. Like, I think that's, like, the fun part of most entrepreneurs is thinking about new ideas. So that's one. The other one. And I did this. We did this a long time ago. I have a. So my. My wife, who's in tech, too, we have a certain, like, mantra of, like, I'm having a bad day.
We'll go for a walk. And I'm like, man, I'm having a bad day. And there's two. She's like, right, what speech do you want? Do you want, like, the, you know, suck it up, make it happen sort of speech? Or do you want the Man? You're right. Like, it's a really hard day, and so, like, you have to pick which one you want on the walk. If you want, like, the, hey, like, it's time to, like, get down. Like, like, you wanted this. Go build it. Or do you want that? Yeah, I feel so bad for you. And so you gotta pick which one you want.
And, like. And, like, that's, like, the. The pep talk. You're Given and. And that helps. So I usually pick, like, the hey, like, suck it up speech cakes. That's what I respond to. So I have that, like, with your partner, your other half, like, have some sort of. Because, like, they're in it with you too. I think it's important to remember is, like, your family is going along this journey with you if you're going to be an entrepreneur. So make sure they're ready for it. Make sure you have, like, a. At least with me, it was helpful to have a speech or a motivational speech.
[01:15:17] Speaker E: I love that. Absolutely. Okay, Quitlotz, what's your secret?
[01:15:21] Speaker C: I would agree with Braden. Having a support system around you is really important.
But I also understand where Caroline is coming from. You know, to be an entrepreneur can be very isolating. You can feel very, very alone a lot of times.
And there's one phrase that we always hear a lot of time, which is, money never sleeps. But I do. I get my full eight hours. I do everything I possibly can, from pink lighting in the evenings to reading as much as I possibly can. I have to disconnect.
And if I don't get my eight hours, I learned to power nap because sleep is my superpower. And if I'm going to maintain the energy level that's required for me to continue to have the tenacity and the craziness to go through this founder journey for the rest of my life is the basic of the way I look at it. I have to be able to have the energy to do so.
And you have to make time for yourself, whether it's just, you know, walks with your partner or 15 minutes break that you're taking for meditation, whatever it may be, find or make time to make sure that you're taking care of yourself.
[01:16:29] Speaker E: I love that.
[01:16:30] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[01:16:31] Speaker E: So, Richard Gearhart, what is your secret this week?
[01:16:34] Speaker D: I think I'm going to say be strategic in your networking. So networking takes a lot of time, and there's a lot of benefits to it, but you want to make sure that you're spending your time in the right places with the right people. So, for example, we like to network with innovator groups because we're in the business of supporting and fostering innovation. The local chamber of commerce may not be such a great place for me to network. And so if you're going to invest in networking, which is obviously a marketing opportunity, you want to make sure that you're spending your time with the right groups of people. So it's very basic. But I think, too, that some beginning Business people need to make sure that they take that into consideration. And sometimes it takes a little bit of time to find the right groups that you want to participate with. So be patient, but be targeted.
[01:17:28] Speaker E: We've been talking to a lot of people about AI and different things, and one thing that's come up is train your AI to speak in your own voice.
You can do that. So when you're sending out emails to people you know, you don't want it to look like somebody else wrote it.
[01:17:44] Speaker C: Right.
[01:17:44] Speaker E: And you can really tell somebody's using ChatGPT because there's emojis all over the place.
[01:17:49] Speaker C: Right.
[01:17:50] Speaker E: So it drives me crazy. But really, there are ways that you can train it to know you and to send out an email that sounds just like you. And you guys probably already all know this that are on this call, but. But I don't think a lot of people have thought that far yet. So that's my secret.
[01:18:06] Speaker D: Great. Well, that's it for us this week. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the US and one international market. We recently had Seshan Nguam join us as an affiliate. 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, Rishikep 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. Gerhardt Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find us at gearhartlaw. Com and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
