[00:00:00] Speaker A: Oh, you got a little business. That's so cute.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: I'm an accidental entrepreneur having that ability.
[00:00:05] Speaker C: To say, you know what? I feel like there's a gift here.
[00:00:07] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:09] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Are you thinking of starting a business or have one you're trying to grow? Stay tuned.
[00:00:16] Speaker F: Ramping up your business.
[00:00:17] Speaker C: The time is near.
[00:00:19] Speaker F: You've given it hard.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: Now get it in gear.
[00:00:22] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:26] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm special specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:34] 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.
[00:00:42] 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. Today we have the business bully himself, Dave Anderson. He joins us to drop raw truth, crush excuses and reveal what it really takes to turn hustle into a seven figure business.
[00:01:01] Speaker E: And then we have Melissa Franks. How do you go from being an assistant to running your own multimillion dollar company?
[00:01:09] Speaker D: Good politics.
[00:01:11] Speaker E: I think it was a little more than that.
And then Derek Johnson, who's really got an incredible story. If you can't get fit with Derek's help.
[00:01:19] Speaker D: I get fit just looking at him. I know he's great.
[00:01:22] Speaker E: He's inspirational. Just looking at him, we want to hear his whole story. And coming up later on it's Noah's retrospective. A little along with Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
[00:01:33] Speaker D: Studies show that 2 in 5Americans want to start their own business. So we're gonna ask our panel today on your new business journey, what's the biggest lie new entrepreneurs believe about success and how can they overcome it? Turning to our guest du jour, Dave Anderson. Welcome to the show again.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: It's nice to be here.
[00:01:50] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, what is the biggest lie that entrepreneurs tell themselves?
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. They think if they put CEO in their business card and automatically cause they quit their job last night and all of a sud they're free. That it's supposed to feel good right away and it doesn't. Entrepreneurship is hard. It is difficult. It is feast or famine and it's not for everybody. I tell folks all the time, stay in your cubicle if you do not want these problems because you are chasing a different type of animal. So the biggest lie they believe is that it's going to feel good right away and everything's going to be solved because they've become an entrepreneur.
[00:02:22] Speaker D: Couldn't agree with you more because I've seen that and heard that myself. Melissa, what's the biggest lie entrepreneurs tell themselves?
[00:02:29] Speaker B: One of the biggest lies that they tell themselves is that the first client that they sell to is going to be every client that they sell to going forward. Who wants to buy their products and services changes over time. Their business evolves. What they want to deliver evolves. And staying married to the idea of the business that they had before they started will ultimately stall growth and lead to failure long term.
[00:02:55] Speaker D: Great advice. Derek, welcome to the program.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. It's good to be back.
[00:02:59] Speaker D: What's the biggest lie entrepreneurs tell themselves?
[00:03:02] Speaker C: That success has to be a lonely road. If you're not truly passionate and it is not solving people's problems and fulfilling you, that's when you actually feel lonely because then you're just chasing the dollar, the attention, the clout. So tying it back to your passion. Does this fulfill me and does it actually change lives and connects to something from your past?
[00:03:19] Speaker D: That's really well said. Thank you for that, Elizabeth.
[00:03:22] Speaker E: Mine is sort of like Derek's. It's like success. How do you define success? It's not just how much money you make. A successful entrepreneur isn't necessarily the one who's making the most money. It's the one who has the richest overall life.
[00:03:34] Speaker D: I agree with that. It's all about balance and enrichment. I was going to say that the biggest lie entrepreneurs tell themselves is that their project is going to make them rich. And sometimes that happens, but sometimes you end up making other people rich. Right. And so it's very important though to keep it in perspective. And part of being a good entrepreneur is understanding your market and making some reasonable assumptions about what your product or service can do and if it can sustain you, that's great. But you may not get rich right off the bat.
[00:04:04] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:04:07] Speaker D: Now it's time for our guest, Dave Anderson. He doesn't sugarcoat anything and he's known as the business Bully. He's a 21 time best selling author and former radio executive. But in any case, he believes that business is a blood sport and most people fail because they're too soft. So today we're going to hear from him and I want to ask Everybody wants to win in business, but few are ready for the fight. From your perspective, what separates the dreamers from the doers?
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Doing I know plenty of brilliant broke people.
I know plenty of talented broke people. I know plenty of people who have phenomenal ideas, but they have horrible execution. It does not matter how smart you are. It does not matter if you've got a Mensa pen. It doesn't matter who your daddy was. If you are not going to put in the work behind the mission, the mission will ultimately fail. And that's what it is. It's a very binary sport, you know, And I treat entrepreneurship like it is a sport because that's what it is. Every day I'm fighting to keep my championship alive. And I know better than I think most people that the truth is we've got to get ourselves out of this Kevin Costner mindset. If you build it, they will come is a lie. If you build it, you built it. Now go market and promote it like it's your last thing you will ever do. And people don't tend to do that. They think that it's just gonna be sweet and they fail. Just because you showed up doesn't mean anything.
[00:05:35] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, execution is really important. Getting things from point A to point B is the entrepreneur's skill or one of the most important ones. Because you can talk a lot, you can think about it, but you have to take action. And then you have to take action. That's actually going to get you somewhere. Right. And then that's move the football down the field. Right.
[00:05:54] Speaker E: And I want to comment on something Dave said. When I worked in corporate, I was in the chemical plant and it was like, why does marketing get all this huge budget? Well, now I know, right? So people overlook marketing. And I never thought marketing was that big of a deal until I started doing it. A lot of marketing is data analysis, right?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:16] Speaker D: But it's a little bit different than, you know, working in a corporation is different from being an entrepreneur. Doing a job where you do certain assigned tasks on a regular basis is great. It can be fulfilling. But if you're an entrepreneur, you have to constantly be moving forward and achieving new things and setting new goals and hitting those targets if you want your business to grow.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. The thing that I think a lot of people miss to your point is, is in marketing, it's not, I need 30,000 billboards tomorrow. I need this radio ad tomorrow. It's answering three simple questions that every human being has when they come in contact with you or your brand. Who are you? What do you have? Why should I care? If you're not daily answering those questions before they ask them, you're going to lose. McDonald's is the largest land mass owning corporation on the face of the planet and they advertise 32,000 times in a 24 hour span. Not because nobody knows who McDonald's is. It's because they want to make sure they keep top of mind awareness. Because while you're worrying about whether the color scheme looks right or if the website is perfect, somebody's actually executing you build and you continue to build upon your foundation. And top of mind awareness is how you do that. That's why marketing is important, right?
[00:07:29] Speaker E: And it's changing with the LLMs. And now people are asking ChatGPT instead of asking Google. I mean they're doing both right? And to be on top of the LLMs, you have to be everywhere on the Internet because they are not just looking at your website, although they are looking heavily at your website, but they're looking at your whole presence on the Internet. And that's why being in media is important. That's why having social media, being on podcasts, I don't know how much TV affects it. Having a strong website, what do you think?
[00:08:00] Speaker A: So here's the thing. I take a little mermaid approach to everything. I want to be where the people are. So if the people are on social media, I'm on social media. If people are on podcasts, I'm on everybody's podcast. If people are listening to radio or they're not listening to radio but they're watching the interview clips, I'm gonna be on that show. I am not going to outthink my audience. If that's where my audience is getting their information. Why am I going to get a billboard? That does not make sense. The other thing that I think people miss out on is the importance of being consistent and creating real moments. Are you solving a problem? What are you doing to show people that you are the most obvious choice to solve their problem? There's a million and one personal trainers, but they don't look that handso.
No, Derek looks like the product. He looks like Taftor.
I look like what the hell. But I'm getting there.
[00:08:51] Speaker D: But he wants the talk.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: In all seriousness, nobody wants a fat personal trainer. Nobody wants to take marriage advice from somebody who's been divorced three times.
So are you embodying the brand? Are you making those impacts happen? And you have to be where they are now TV to make sure that I tie this in. TV is extremely important. Not because of the reach, but because of the credibility. Because we are creatures of habit. And until such time as the boomers and the Gen Xers die off, TV for people like, oh, I saw you on tv. Even if they just saw you on the clip of the TV show, they're like, oh, that person's on tv. That automatically gives them a certain level of credibility transfer. So you need a nice combination of everything. It's like having a nice plate. It needs to look like the rainbow. Your media presence should look like the rainbow.
[00:09:38] Speaker D: So getting back to execution, that's one of my favorite topics because I think it is so important.
Give us some examples of an entrepreneur who's executing. Tell us about the types of things that they're doing.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: So there is a young man in Orlando named Kallio Young, and he is a financial services kid. He's maybe early 30s at best. And he literally is on YouTube making shorts and talking in very simple terms to his audience about building your credit, creating business credit, getting yourself a trust, what it looks like to build an llc. He's talking about financial literacy on a level that people can understand. That's what he's saying. What he's doing is showing up like a rock star. He's a big honking guy. I mean, he's swole.
[00:10:23] Speaker D: He make.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: He makes you look like a stick. But again, I'm pointing to Derek for.
[00:10:27] Speaker D: Those of you who are listening. But he wasn't pointing at me.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: No, no Russia. But you have slimmed down quite a bit.
[00:10:32] Speaker D: I've lost weight, but I got.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: He is looking like a rock star while he's giving that information. And I don't mean rented Lambeau and fake house. I mean, he looks like he has got his credit together and he's showing people what it looks like. The other part of that is. Richard, personal question, Elizabeth, make sure you keep him honest. How often do you bathe?
[00:10:53] Speaker D: Every day.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Every day. Why?
[00:10:55] Speaker D: It's a habit.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: And you don't want to stink.
[00:10:58] Speaker D: And. Well, I don't care if I stink, but I know other people do.
[00:11:01] Speaker E: I care if he stinks. And I always tell him after he works out, you better get in the.
[00:11:06] Speaker D: Shower the next 10 minutes every day, because that's a good thing.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: If people treated their email marketing like they treated their bathing routine and their hygiene, they would make a lot more money. We think things have to be sexy and fancy, and I need 15,000 bots and I need ManyChat and I need this, and I have all of those things. However, I have a list of thousands of people who already know, like, and trust me. And I am giving them value. I'm not coming to them when I just want a sale. I'm giving them things that they can work on things that they can think about to continue to drill in that type of mind awareness. That's what my most successful clients do. They make sure that they're keeping the line of communications open.
[00:11:44] Speaker D: But going back to the financial planner, he's posting every day. Yes, he's doing his YouTube videos every day. And he's very consistent about it. And so you have to have your act together to do that. Right. You have to have a plan, you have to know what you're going to talk about. You have to get the videos done, you have to have them edited. There's a lot that goes into that. And so you have to be organized and you have to be consistent about what you do.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Right. But see, the other part of that, Richard, that nobody likes to talk about is everybody is so concerned with their plan. Everybody's so concerned with how they look that they sit there and they develop stage four analysis paralysis. And they never move. Because I'm planning. And I want the stars to align just a certain way. But buckle up, buttercup. It is time for you to start moving. I did not wait until I got to 210 pounds. I came waddling through this studio at 561 pounds.
[00:12:33] Speaker D: Is that what it was?
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it was 561 last time you saw it.
[00:12:35] Speaker D: You were a big guy back then. How did you lose all that weight?
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Oh, God. Krav Maga, Kenpo, gallon of water a day, prioritizing protein, eating carbs. No eating carbs after three. I lift heavy weights and I put them down. Lot of kettlebell swings.
Being able to chase after my 10 year old. And I went through therapy. I had medically supervised weight loss. I did everything I possibly could because my doctor told me I was going to not see my 50th birthday if I did not lose a significant amount of weight. And that scared me.
[00:13:06] Speaker E: Wow. And now you're selling fat free water.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yes, I am.
Drinkfatfreewater.com January 2026 drinkfatfreewater.com it's delicious. It's vegan, it's wonderful.
[00:13:18] Speaker E: But you did say that you had to solve some traumas.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:21] Speaker E: And I think that that's why a lot of people are overweight, honestly, is because if you ever read Bessel van der Kolk, he says that you trap these traumas in your body. You have to move to get them out.
[00:13:32] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:13:33] Speaker E: You have to go through therapy to get them out. And the traumas are what are holding you back.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. People don't realize. Here's the thing. Food never lies to you. Food doesn't cheat on you. Food doesn't tell you you're not worthy. Food is always there. If you. Especially in America, if you look at any moment, there's food. Birthday party cake, huge fat honking cake. Ice cream on top of cake. What happens when you win the soccer game? Pizza. Everything is food. When my grandmother died, I eulogized her and I felt miserable. But then we went down to the church basement and I had the best repast fried chicken of my life. Everything is food. And we tend to eat emotionally. We eat our feelings because we don't know how to process our feelings.
[00:14:18] Speaker D: I'm a total stress eater. If I'm stressed about something, my remedy is to go get some food. I just get up from the sofa like four or five times an evening and I head over to the refrigerator.
[00:14:29] Speaker E: And well, he likes chocolate.
[00:14:30] Speaker D: That's been my downfall recently.
So the issue for me isn't so much managing the weight, it's managing the stress.
[00:14:36] Speaker E: So are you helping people with this journey lose weight? I know Derek is helping people get fit. Are you helping people do that too?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I tend to help people who come to me like, I'm not a professional. I don't have any certifications or anything like that. I've just lost £343. There are people who are morbidly obese that nobody is talking their language. Because if I saw superstar, rock star, beautiful personal trainer man over here, I'm immediately intimidated. But most people you saw, it was just walking around here, seeing people I've known 20, 30 years who didn't know who I was.
It's different when you know that the guy has been there. And I had three chins and I had a 72 inch waist and a 7x shirt. I know what that feels like. So I can speak to the feeling and I can say, this is what I've done. But I think you need to talk to your doctor about what it looks like. Get your blood panel, do all the. And so I walk people through what that process should look like. Should you look at doing a gastric sleeve? Should you look at doing a lap band? Or do you want to try and get it off naturally? What does that mean? When you drop a significant amount of weight, are you going to do plastic surgery? There's so many things that nobody talks about because all they see from a weight loss journey is 600 pound life. And that's compacted into an hour. It took me four years to get here.
[00:15:48] Speaker E: Wow. Yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, I talk to folks, but not In a professional capacity.
[00:15:52] Speaker D: Dave Anderson here, the business bully. Dave, it's great to have you on the show. You often talk about killing yesterday.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:58] Speaker D: What does that mean?
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Killing yesterday is a good friend of mine named B.F. nkrumah wrote a book. And what happens is we get stuck on two things. The first is we get stuck on who we used to be and we sacrifice who we could be based on that baseline trauma and that image of ourselves. The second thing is you also have to automatically kill the disrespect. And here's what I mean. A lot of people, just humanity in general, cannot respect you beyond the level at which they met you.
[00:16:27] Speaker D: What does that mean?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: For example, have you ever sat down as an entrepreneur and told your family, hey, I'm starting this business? Oh, you got a little business. That's so cute. Nothing little about my business. I have 300 employees. What are you talking about? But they only see Little Richard, not woo. But you being.
[00:16:44] Speaker D: I mean, when I started the law firm, my mom was like, what, you.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Like whole law firm by yourself?
[00:16:50] Speaker D: I wouldn't call that especially supportive. But that was her reality.
[00:16:53] Speaker E: No, she was not supportive.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: But you also have to understand that that's a parent's way of caring. They're doing that based upon their limitations and how they see the world. And they don't want you to get scuffed up by it. The world is scary.
[00:17:06] Speaker D: Yeah. So killing yesterday means trying to put all of that behind you.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Behind you.
[00:17:11] Speaker D: How do you do that?
[00:17:12] Speaker A: You do that by having very hard conversations with the people who actually matter, who actually care, who know that they love you. And then you have to have a very hard conversation with yourself about what you will longer tolerate from other people, but most importantly, what you will no longer tolerate from yourself. Right. I made a decision every day that I am no longer going to be fat. Not because I cared about how I looked, I care about how I lived. And I made a decision that I am never coming back to radio. I love radio.
[00:17:39] Speaker D: Wait a minute, you're on radio right now.
But I'm not getting paid to be here.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: I'm retired. This is fun. I can do this. And I'm going to go right back. I'm going to sit on my couch. But coming back to the grind of being an executive, coming back to dealing with top tier talent and everything that comes with that, I'm not going to do that because it's not good for my mental health. I made myself promises that I will not back down from. You gotta be honest and brutally honest. With yourself about what you will tolerate and what you will no longer tolerate. And you hold yourself to that. And if you can't, you find accountability partners who can. And that is the most important.
[00:18:16] Speaker E: Yeah. I did want to ask one question that relates to the weight loss again, that I thought was fascinating and really nice, is that you had extra skin.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:27] Speaker E: And what happened with that extra skin?
[00:18:29] Speaker A: So they took off approximately 13 pounds of excess skin from my waist. I had stage four Dunlaps disease, meaning my belly Dunlap over my belt.
What happens? People don't understand this. In 1993, my father's house burned down almost with me in it.
And the one thing that I learned very early on was they don't have a lot of skin for African Americans. So they'll try to take some from your thigh or whatever, but you've already been so traumatized. So I donated my skin to causes that help burn victims so that African Americans who have been burned can use that skin. Cause I don't want it back. So instead of just putting it in an incinerator, they're actually able to take it and make graphs of it and allow people to get some of their skin back that they may have had from second and third degree burns. So, yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker E: That's awesome.
[00:19:18] Speaker D: Well, that in and of itself is a reason to lose weight, right? I mean, that's a great story. So tell us about business being a blood sport. We mentioned that earlier in the introduction. You think of business as a blood sport. What does that mean?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: I will do anything for my family. Right. Just within the letter of the law, of course. But this is kill or be killed. This is dog eat dog. If you have ever seen an account executive in radio go for a new client when another account executive is trying to go for that client, even if.
[00:19:46] Speaker D: It'S the same company, Even if it's.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: The same company, it's a blood sport. They are fighting for it. I know good and well. I know enough personal trainers. I can't speak for Derek, but I guarantee you he's fighting for every single client. He's fighting against everybody. And he's fighting against huge, big honking corporations that have infomercials and absolutely everything else. You are moving towards success every single day. And you have to do everything it takes within the letter of the law. And being absolutely ethical, do not take my words out of context.
[00:20:14] Speaker D: I'm glad you said that.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: I'm gonna make sure I speak correctly in front of attorneys.
[00:20:19] Speaker D: So it's important. It's all being recorded.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: No, it's important that you do whatever it takes because everybody else will do whatever it takes. And my whole thing is my children have never been homeless. My children have never been hungry. I my wife does not know what it is to suffer. And I'm going to keep that up because my family are addicts. They're addicted to heat. They're addicted to indoor plumbing. They're addicted to three hots and a cot. And that's what it means. Because this is a fight not only for attention but for credibility and relevance. And if you're not prepared for that fight, prepare to lose it.
[00:20:51] Speaker E: And I do want to say along those lines later in this show. We have the segment coming up, AI in business. And I'm going to ask everybody how they're using AI in their business.
And I'm telling you, that is a huge knife in this fight.
So if you're not using AI to compete in business, you're going to be in trouble.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:21:09] Speaker D: We're here with Dave Anderson, the business bully. He's an author. What has been your most recent book?
[00:21:13] Speaker A: My most recent book is called the Real Black Agenda because black America kept asking me, well, what's the solution? Dave, you always talking about problems. What happens to the black community? What's your solution? So I wrote, you know, 32.
[00:21:24] Speaker D: That's the solution.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: The solution is very simple. When you look at every other group in America, they make sure that they are protecting their culture and they are doing business with each other. Right. If you look at the Delhi district, the diamond district, Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Italy and anywhere, USA Group economics is a way of life. It's not a slogan. It's not a hashtag. Group economics starts not just within your community, but it starts at your dining room table. You have to have family meetings. You treat your children like heirs and not liabilities, and you make sure that you're setting them up. Statistically, black Americans tend to start at zero when the matriarch and patriarch of the family dies. So they're starting from ground up.
The least insured group in the United States are black Americans. So we have to get insurance. People talk about slavery and the Industrial revolution, but the quickest way the largest segments of society in this country generated wealth was through life insurance. We've got to get insured. We have got to get healthy. We've got to start making sure we're growing and at least buying organic foods so that we don't get caught in the valley of the food deserts, you know, so those are quick, practical solutions. And I go Very, very in depth into that. And of course, there's sell it like Jesus pitch Close up, sell, repeat, and 101 Ways to Get ish Done. So I've got 22 books and I'm very excited. But.
[00:22:49] Speaker D: Yeah, which one was the hardest to write?
[00:22:50] Speaker G: Whoo.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: The Real Black Agenda was very hard to write. I went to make sure. I hired three different fact checkers to make sure everything I was saying was factually sound because it's different than writing a business book. I know business from my perspective and I'm allowed to have that opinion. But when you're talking about 40 million people, by and large, you gotta make sure you're walking that line, you know, that is as factual as humanly possible and making sure that you're hitting all of those issues and then providing viable, actionable steps and solutions for that. So this latest book was definitely the hardest.
[00:23:24] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:23:25] Speaker E: Where are you selling this book?
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Oh, you can get the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but
[email protected] oh, good.
[00:23:32] Speaker E: So you have a website?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: I do. I have a website for everything.
DrinkFatFreeWater.com coming in January.
[00:23:39] Speaker D: Well, we're here with Dave Anderson, the business bully. We have to take a commercial break, but we'll be back with more Passage to profit. And don't forget to experience more of Passage to profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, 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. And coming up, we're going to have intellectual property news and everybody's favorite secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. So stay tuned.
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[00:26:06] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: Again, Richard and Ellen Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:26:11] Speaker E: And our special guest back from many years ago, Dave Anderson, the business bully. But he didn't bring.
[00:26:17] Speaker D: He is a repeat offender, is he not?
[00:26:18] Speaker E: Yes. But he didn't bring everything back because he's lost so much weight.
[00:26:24] Speaker D: A shadow of his former self.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:26] Speaker E: Through sure will and determination. No. Diet drugs?
[00:26:30] Speaker A: No.
[00:26:31] Speaker E: And just because you don't want to die early.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: No, I don't want to die.
[00:26:35] Speaker D: That's a pretty good reason.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: That, and my wife is really, really hot. And the idea of her hooking up with a pool boy after I've worked so hard just really burns me. Sorry, we're on the air.
[00:26:44] Speaker D: You know, I think we can say that.
[00:26:47] Speaker E: So I think you've proven that when you set your mind to do something and lay out a plan, nothing stops you. So now you're coaching entrepreneurs.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:58] Speaker E: Are you trying to teach them to do that same thing, not necessarily lose weight, but, you know, with their business?
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Here's what I've learned since the last time I've been on this show. I was very relentless. I was very, very harsh. And I still am. Don't get it twisted. However, my wife pointed something out to me that I didn't understand. She said, dave, do you know what's different about you than any other human being I've ever met? I said, no. She said, you had parents that wouldn't let you quit anything. So you don't know how to quit anything.
And I said, okay. And she said, no. Most people don't have that. I didn't have that meaning when I was a kid. If my mother said, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to play every brass instrument except the trombone. She says, okay, cool, go do it. And then I would do it. If I decided to quit, I could never pick it up again until I became grown. And that's how I tackle things. Most people are not built like me. Most people will go, but they'll stop at a certain level. I don't know what stopping is. I know the final level is death. And until they call me home, I am going to keep going. So what I've done is I've taken a I want what you want approach. I'm going to help you get to where you say you want. If when you get there, you realize that this might be too much for you, I'm taking you too funky, too fast. No problem. However, there's a lot. I had a client who shall remain nameless because he's very, very famous. And he said, I want to make a shift from what I used to do. He was a pro athlete and he said, I want to do standup. And he's very, very funny. I secured him a multiple six figure comedy tour. And after that he was like, I think I want to go back to like signing cards and, you know, doing photo ops because this, this is just too much for me. I wished him well. I got my money. I don't want you to be miserable because the vision that you said you have, I taken and I expanded and it's too much for you. Everybody doesn't have that. So what I'm teaching you is this is what you think, think it is. This is what it looks like. Do you want that? Yes. If you decide you don't, that's cool too. But I would rather give you what makes you happy than what's going to make you money, if the money that comes with it is in exchange for your happiness.
[00:29:03] Speaker D: Dave, do you feel like you've discovered your purpose in life now or are you still searching?
[00:29:09] Speaker A: My purpose in life is to make sure that I have raised two very beautiful, responsible, functional women who are self sufficient, not strong and independent, but self sufficient and understand that they are going to leave the world better than they found it. Anything beyond that is just a means to an end for that purpose. Now, from a professional standpoint, I think my goal and my purpose is to empower people through my example and the fact that I am dyslexic, the fact that I have dyscalculia and I have a speech impediment and I speak, I write books and I help my youngest child with math and homeschool shows you that there is no limit to what you can do when you put your mind to something, regardless of what a piece of paper or a test result or an exam says.
So I want to make sure that I'm living and walking my talk. That's my only purpose. It's no longer, oh, I wanna make this much money. Cause I've learned money doesn't make you happy.
I get happy when I walk through that door and the first person to greet me is my 10 year old and she's daddy and she's running to me, honey, I was just here seven hours ago. But she doesn't care like it's daddy and she wants my time. The fact that I can get up when I want to do what I wanna do and, and be there for every game, every karate tournament, every single, you know, video game that she wants to play with me, I can do, I can die a very happy man.
[00:30:42] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, enjoying your relationships with your family is, is, is key. It's like the most, one of the most important things, I think.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:30:50] Speaker D: How could your younger self kind of ever conceptualize where you are now? When you were a kid, what did you think was going to happen as you got older?
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Do radio date models, move to another town, repeat. That's what it was.
And you realize that gets old very quickly and it's very shallow and it's very hollow, but that's how a kid thinks.
When I, you know, when I was a child, I behaved as a child. I thought as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.
So yeah, young twenties me would really hate 48 year old me. Like, you're lame, you're corny.
Yeah, but we won.
You know, you're going to get there. You know, like Shakespeare says, second thoughts make liars of us all. And that's what it is with growth and maturity. You realize the things that you thought were goals were just stepping stones to get you to the real things that you value in life.
[00:31:40] Speaker E: Have you done the exercise that we encourage everybody to do, which is to really peel back the layers and find your ultimate why?
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Oh yes.
[00:31:49] Speaker E: Yeah. And what is your why? Is it your family?
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. Since the last time we were here, my brother, cop, super guy, wonderful dude, he had a heart valve issue and he died in 2022.
And we had all of these plans, we had all these things that we really wanted to do. I was going to retire him, and he was just going to be my security. We were going to travel. We're going to build a security company. It was going to be great. And God called him home. There were things that he would say to me, like, I call him. He'd be like, what are you doing? I said, I just finished doing a breakfast club. Cool. Call me when you do cnn.
[00:32:23] Speaker H: Click.
[00:32:24] Speaker D: You know, it was that type of thing. Typical brother.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: And I'm like, hey, I just did cnn. Cool. Call me when you're in Forbes. Hey, I did Forbes and Entrepreneur magazine in the same month. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty dope. I don't have anything else right now but go do something bigger.
So now that he is watching over me, it's not just my kids, it's not just my wife, it's my brother. It's my dad.
You know, I'm making sure that I do all of the things that they envisioned for me to do to be the best version of me. I take this gift every single day of going to bed and waking up as a phenomenal chance to make an impact on somebody's life and a phenomenal chance to make sure that all of my family sacrifices for me to sit here are worth it.
So my ultimate why is my family living and past.
[00:33:17] Speaker D: Isn't he an amazing guy? I think that.
[00:33:20] Speaker E: I think people are successful when they're aligned with their why, you know, yeah.
[00:33:24] Speaker D: He is amazing and, you know, certainly on your own terms, one of the most successful people I've ever met. So we're very appreciative. How can people find.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: It's very easy. I'm on all social media platforms. Hebusiness Bully, except for X or Twitter or whatever Elon's calling it this week. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what Elon's calling it, but it's dabusiness Bully on X. Other than that, you can find me at thebusinessbully.com www.thebusinessbully.com and I'm doing speaking engagements, I'm touring, I'm doing book signings. And I just want to be able to help those who are serious about this entrepreneurial journey and everything that comes with it. Good, bad, and indifferent.
[00:34:00] Speaker D: You have so much to offer. I would encourage our audience to reach out.
[00:34:04] Speaker E: Passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:34:07] Speaker D: Now it's time for AI In Business. So, Elizabeth.
[00:34:11] Speaker E: Yes. So now we are going to our AI In Business segment, and I want each of our guests and Richard and myself to tell us one way they're using AI in their business, and then we're going to have a little discussion about AI.
[00:34:24] Speaker D: Boy, are we going to have a discussion.
[00:34:26] Speaker E: So I'm going to start with you, Dave Anderson. Thebusinessbully.com how are you using AI in your business? One way.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: One way I'm using it is I'm training it to understand my voice. So all 23 of my books are uploaded. Transcripts of every single interview I've ever done has been uploaded for two reasons. First, I want that machine to know how I'm thinking and how that process evolves over time. And when I am writing my books, one of the things that has saved me tens of thousands of dollars is the fact that I will let AI edit my book and then I'll just shoot it to my editor, pay her very, very small invoice just to make sure everything is lined up. And I make that distinction when it comes to making sure that the AI understands my voice. Because what a lot of entrepreneurs don't do is they don't plan for their death. Upon my death, six books will be released. After that, there will be books that I would have written, conceptualized the entire nine based on what I've already put into my AI avatar and my intellectual property. My AI version of myself is automatically willed to my daughters. They control that. And so that they can continue to pump out Dave Anderson style books, you know, for as long as they live and as long as their kids live.
[00:35:46] Speaker D: See, I think that is so cool. I mean, Elizabeth and I talk about the legacy that you can leave in the world now. YouTube videos, podcasts, blog posts, whatever it is, at some point, AI would almost be able to recreate us right? As people. And if my parents were here and they had had the chance to put all of that content out there, I could be talking with them right now. Right?
[00:36:12] Speaker E: I mean, it's pretty complaining about me.
What'd you marry me?
[00:36:18] Speaker D: We would fix that part of the program maybe a little bit. But I mean, you think about it, it's almost like a weird, creepy kind of immortality, right? That could come from that.
[00:36:28] Speaker E: And it's interesting that you say that because I just read today that Matthew McConaughey gave his voice to AI, but then it was clickbait. But then if you go further in the article, he's having some of his work translated into Spanish and his AI voice will read the Spanish version.
So I thought that was pretty cool.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:48] Speaker E: So, okay, so Melissa franks with melissa franks.com what is one way you're using AI in your business.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: One of the ways is that we, similar to what Dave said, we are uploading all of our sales calls into AI and asking it to do pattern recognition. So what it's doing is it's finding hidden objections that are coming through in those conversations and we're asking it, what did we not address fully? So when we follow up with the sales call, we already know here's areas for you to continue to explore and exploit. And it also helps us build proposals of like kind. So it's actually teaching the model how to get us better with follow up, engaging them in further conversation and handling objections to improve our close rate.
[00:37:34] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:37:35] Speaker D: So can I ask a question about that?
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:37] Speaker D: How easy has it been to build that model and are you getting consistent results?
[00:37:42] Speaker B: What's easy is uploading the information.
What's challenging is asking it the right questions and prompts to deliver the information that's useful for you to take action.
And so this is where the human element, the expertise and the brain comes in. If you have somebody doing what we're doing, for example, that doesn't have any sales skills, hasn't successfully sold millions of dollars worth of whatever widgets you're selling, and then tries to train the model, you're not going to have the same success as if you have somebody that's a CC and sales professional going through that.
[00:38:12] Speaker E: So there are the jobs for the next few years at least, right?
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:15] Speaker E: Trying to figure out these prompts. Yeah. Okay, so Derek Johnson fit with derek dot com. What's one way you're using AI?
[00:38:24] Speaker C: One of the main ways is market research. So in terms of, as you all know, there's a lot of trainers and life coaches. And the way I wanted to stand out was focus on the mind first, then the body and helping people overcome trauma. So when it comes to making content, have a lot of ideas.
Wrote my first book. But getting it out there, knowing what people are researching and it has helped way more than Google or just word of mouth and just getting deeper into the points to say, okay, it's childhood's trauma that started her on this bad dating cycle. With him, it was drinking. With her, it was this vice and really peeling back the layers to do that market research, it just gave me a rush. So having a decade of training people and coaching them in the military and after the army and then using that information, loading it up into AI and then it's spitting out to say, hey, based off your experiences, the results you've had, you should focus on this. And that way backing off of what they said is we all have life experience, so when we put that into the model first, it's going to give us better feedback than somebody that's starting with a blank slate day one. They're like, okay, how do I make my first 10K? That's awesome. But I love the fact that you can put your life experiences into it and then it gives you the main pain points to find what are the main things and how can I repeat this? A scale.
[00:39:35] Speaker E: Yeah. And you know what? Whether you want it to get to know you or not, it does.
[00:39:42] Speaker D: They probably know more about us than we do. I don't know ourselves, but that is great.
[00:39:46] Speaker E: I love doing research with chat and the other one's perplexity and others. So. Richard Gearhart gearhartlaw.com I've just had an.
[00:39:55] Speaker D: AI epiphany this week. I've suddenly decided that I'm going to use AI for as much as I can. And I want our law firm to be an AI augmented law firm. I was thinking about AI driven, but I thought maybe from a marketing standpoint that would be too scary for some people, especially who are coming to us with expectations of confidentiality. But I really do think AI augmented. And so I'm using AI to try to figure out how to implement AI in the law firm. And one of the things that I found out that I didn't appreciate before is that different LLMs have different security levels. So for example, ChatGPT security is not so great there. So we don't want to put any client information or client names into the ChatGPT because it could leak out there some way. But Microsoft Copilot, on the other hand, has really high security standards and they call our business Gearhart Law a tenant by being a tenant that keeps all of the information within one secure place. So now we have ChatGPT for the outward facing things and then we have a copilot that we can use for internal things. And so that was a big learning for me.
[00:41:16] Speaker E: So one way I just started using it. As I said, this segment here, Richard and I are going to turn into its own podcast called AI in Business Use Cases from the Real World. And we're going to interview people other places too. So look for that podcast to be coming out pretty soon. We have a segment that's really good from another show that we did and I want to use that as the first podcast, but I want to make sure that it does well on YouTube and so I don't want to just throw it on YouTube. So what I did was I asked ChatGPT, I had given the transcript, maximize this for YouTube, tell me how to edit this so that I can get the most listener time and watch time on YouTube, because that's what's super important on YouTube. Well, it came back with, oh, you know, cut here, all the ums and ahs, all this. And Dave, as a video editor too, you know that if you start chopping everything out, you're gonna get this mixed up mess, this mincemeat.
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Right?
[00:42:08] Speaker E: And so it really takes a human editor who's done this for a while, and we have a very good editor who she and I are gonna sit down and go over these suggestions and pick the ones that we think will be the least disruptive, like not make it look like a mishmash of junk. Right, that sounds great. Yeah. So I think we should just kind of discuss here, like, what do you like and what do you think could.
[00:42:29] Speaker D: Be improved or don't like about ChatGPT or LLMs?
[00:42:33] Speaker E: No, just. Just AI in general.
[00:42:36] Speaker D: Well, obviously you have to be really careful about what you ask. So the prompts, those are the instructions that you give chat.
They have to be pretty clear. And so the more specific you are, the better the answer would be. So unfortunately, ChatGPT can't read my mind yet. And so it would be nicer if I didn't have to think so much about the prompts. But you really have to think about them.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: It's such a horrible thing that people just think that because they have a tool, that all of a sudden they're a craftsman.
And it's like anything else. If I gave you Tiger woods golf clubs, you're not coming home with that nice green jacket. If I gave you Michael Jordan's basketball, you're not going to win six rings. It comes down to how you use it. One of the main things that I see to your point when it comes to editing, like I have One of my YouTube channels has 675,000 subscribers. My other channel is really, really. It's mincemeat. It's tiny, it's horrible. I don't really do a lot with it. But the thing that I did do to help entrepreneurs was I created a company called Zenith Media Labs. And it's a bunch of human editors that use AI suggestions but have practical editing experience. And we create special effects and those types of things. Because when you look at the most successful content creators, they all have a style. Alex Harmozi has a style. Gary Vaynerchuk has a style, I have a style. And with that, it is quick. It makes sure that we're feeding that, you know, two second attention span and constantly changing images and those types of things in order to make the message shine a little bit. Those are things that nobody talks about. That AI is becoming the thing where people are like, I'll just drop in an AI, I'll just put out some opus clips and that'll be fine.
[00:44:20] Speaker E: No, I've seen some pretty bad opus clips.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:44:24] Speaker D: We had one where the camera was showing on the back of the guy's head during the. It just didn't work.
[00:44:29] Speaker E: So, Melissa and Derek, what do you guys think?
[00:44:31] Speaker C: I do love that the more that you speak to it, it knows your language and dialogue and bouncing off of what you've mentioned with the prompts, the more specific you are. I realized that it was making my coaching calls smoother because I'm so used to speaking to the prompts to do my own work that I would speak to people at a different way to simplify for them. So that way, if we're not talking about high level trauma healing and psychology, we can break it down to a third grade level. They get results within 30 minutes, they could take action and then I can feed it back to AI and just love talking to it more to see, hey, it's thinking the way that I'm thinking and I make sure to say, hey, make sure you don't do X, Y, Z. So with your prompts, I would challenge people to add an ending part to their prompt to say, do not include this or say that. And then you'll actually train it to sound like you more and you can use those prompts to your advantage.
[00:45:18] Speaker E: Yeah. What do you think, Melissa?
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So building on what Derek said, I have a tech background, so I have been using machine learning for decades. That's all this is, just putting a user interface on it that everybody can use.
The biggest mistake that everybody makes is not showing what the end product of whatever they were trying to achieve there was.
So, for example, if you are trying to improve your coaching calls, then upload a coaching call after and say, this is based on everything that you told me. This is what I did. And then you ask it, pick up on the subtle cues, pick up on my language, you know, what could I improve?
And you start to give them the result, the report that you made or the presentation that you gave. And then it will start to see the tweaks that you made after it gave you the suggestion. So in the case of your YouTube video, take the editing notes back and give it back to it and say, thank you so much for your suggestions. This is what we decided to do.
[00:46:17] Speaker E: Well, that's a great idea.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Please remember this for the future. And then when you come back and ask it again, it's gonna take that into consideration because that's your style.
[00:46:25] Speaker E: Yeah. Because I want this to be a template. Right. So the first one is a good one. So I want to get the first one as perfect as possible and have that be a template for everything going forward. And ChatGPT will be very good at handling templates. But I love your idea.
[00:46:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:39] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: It's just like a child, you know, if you teach a kid how to do something and then they don't do it exactly. Right. Like load the dishwasher and you never correct them. And then every time you go in and you move the plates and bowls around because you know it's not actually going to get washed the way that things are stacked in there. Your AI tool is the same way. If you don't give it the minor corrections, it will never know.
[00:46:58] Speaker E: Well, I'm glad you brought up it's just like a child because I feel like I am dealing with.
[00:47:02] Speaker D: So I'm not the only child in the house anymore. That's good.
[00:47:05] Speaker E: No, I'll say, okay, do this, and it'll say, okay, and do you want me to do this? And I'll say, no, do this, and it'll say, okay, but do you want.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Me to do this?
[00:47:14] Speaker E: And it's like a kid saying, why? But why? But why? And it's like, I can't get it to give me the result. And we've gone through five of its stupid questions. Right?
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. But that's exactly what it is. I mean, you've got a three year old basically in front of you with massive processing power, so you have to treat it like a 3 year old.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: Also starting a new conversation with it can help. I was deep into a flow one time and it's a business model and everything was going great. And then it would give me generic answers like, what just happened five layers before that? You were great with me. And I said, you know what, let me just start a new chat. And I explained it better and it made me more thorough with my explanation of the previous one. Then I was like, huh, this happened for a reason. I was pissed off for 20 minutes and now I'm excited where I'm like, cool, let me tell my team this. And now we're taking action, but it was because I was getting pissed off at ChatGPT.
[00:48:02] Speaker E: I get in fights with it. Do you get in fights with it? I'm like, why aren't you doing. But Richard had a good point earlier in the car when we were talking about if you do a really good prompt, like people that are teaching themselves and to do really good prompts, you might be able to protect that with intellectual property.
[00:48:20] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that I've begun to understand is that prompts can be a company's best intellectual property.
[00:48:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:48:29] Speaker D: And so, ideally, you're going to create prompts for certain situations, and then you're going to save those someplace and so that every member of the team can use it when it's necessary. Well, there could be a good case for copyright protection on those prompts, and that then becomes something that you can sell or market or not, or you can keep as a trade secret. If somebody were to leave the company and they were to take those prompts with them, you would have legal rights in those, because it takes a long time to develop good ones that really, really work and that serve your needs. So there is an intellectual property angle to this, and I think businesses should take steps to make sure that those prompts are protected.
[00:49:11] Speaker E: One thing I heard that was a little distressing. Melissa, I'm sure you'll agree with this. I don't think the men will get it.
I was watching this webinar, the taping, the recording of it, of these guys talking about using AI and use cases and business, and the one guy said, well, even my wife uses it.
Wow.
[00:49:34] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: He wants to sleep on the couch tonight.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: Hey.
[00:49:36] Speaker D: I was going to say she might.
[00:49:38] Speaker E: Want a new ride recipe or something, or learn how to clean the house, but I mean, I was just like, we women got some work to do, girl.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: I mean, of efficiency, let's be honest. Like, women are the best multitaskers and efficiency makers on the planet. And so you can best believe that we also know how to use AI just as good as everybody else does. We're just not talking about it.
[00:50:00] Speaker E: We're just not talking about it. And the men are the ones doing all the presentations. And I respect the men. The men have been wonderful ideas, like we all. But the women do, too, right?
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Sure do.
[00:50:10] Speaker E: And I'm not just using it for grocery lists.
Anyway, with that, is there anything else we need to say to finish off this segment? Anything that comes to mind.
[00:50:22] Speaker C: I would definitely create a syntax or a framework. So if you have A team, you can rinse and repeat it. So an example I use loom a lot, L O O m dot com, where you can do video recording and I'll record my screen.
And then I used to just send it to a team and say, here, replicate this and you'll get the same end result. And it worked, but I said, they need more. So then I would have the video. And I know a lot of people don't have the attention span, as you mentioned earlier, and they're not going to watch the full video. So I was like, I know he's lazy, so I'm going to send a PDF and say you have the framework and the syntax plus the video. So if you don't get this dump out Tuesday, that means you didn't try the PDF or the video. But having that, it inspired me to actually get that intellectual property to then rinse and repeat. For others, where we say, hey, here's hundreds of clients that we've worked with that have done something similar. We got the result, whether that's cash flow, results, overcoming traumas, getting into better shape. You could follow this and we'll sell it to you. You can white label it, you can do whatever you want with it. But I love that you mentioned the copywriting portion of that.
[00:51:20] Speaker D: Yeah, it's not something that I think people go to instantly and you may want to keep it as a trade secret. You wouldn't necessarily want to register a copyright because it would be hard to enforce. You'd have to find somebody infringing it. But how would you know? But still, you have to see it as intellectual property. I think that's the first step.
[00:51:40] Speaker E: Well, thank you everybody. This was a great discussion. I know we're going to invite everybody back on the show at some point. I'd love to get everybody back in a year and see all the new ways they're using it, because it's all going to be totally different by then. Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:51:56] Speaker D: Stay tuned. We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up soon, as well as everyone's favorite intellectual property news.
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[00:53:48] Speaker H: 8007-3853-3280-0738-5332-800738-53332. That's 800-738-5332. Paid for by zero debt.
[00:54:02] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:54:07] Speaker D: We're a nationally syndicated radio show heard in 38 markets across the US and we'd like to do a shout out to our affiliate WKAL 1450am and 103.3 FM in Syra Hughes, NY. Also, our podcast is ranked in the top global 3% of podcasts and 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. Now it's time for IP in the News. The Trademark Office canceled 52,000 trademarks gone overnight.
And they did that because they were fraudulently filed.
[00:54:49] Speaker E: It's quite an interesting story. I do have to wonder though. We were just talking about AI and the Patent office just sent an email to everybody that's registered with them. I'm a patent agent, so I get all their stuff too, about how they're going to start using AI to screen some things in the Patent Office for Searches. But I'm just wondering if they used AI for this.
[00:55:08] Speaker D: Well, this was one of the largest fraudulent trademark filings in history. And there was a foreign network called the Seller Growth Network Tech that was running a trademark factory using stolen attorney credentials, forged signatures and photoshopped evidence. In one month, a single USPTO account filed nearly 1,000 applications, sometimes seconds apart. They even created fake buy now websites with the USPTO called Specimen Farms to trick examiners into thinking that products were real. So I think Specimen Farms is like even a new word.
[00:55:45] Speaker E: A specimen is a proof that you're using the trademark. So like a screenshot from your website or something, right?
[00:55:51] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And so this is like a huge deal that so many people could file fake trademarks. And some of the trademarks were just nonsensical. For example, one was BTQ R QTOA for furniture. Does that sound like a trademark to you? No.
[00:56:09] Speaker E: A name that anybody would use.
[00:56:11] Speaker D: Yeah. So anyway, like you said, they probably did use AI to detect all of this. The sad part is, is that the trademark office is hopelessly backlogged and 52,000 fake trademarks just slows down the process for everybody else. Not to mention crowding out people who might want similar marks. Maybe not quite as goofy as the one I just mentioned, but they're not able to get them registered because there's another trademark there and they get rejections and they have to pay for that. So I'm really glad that the trademark office found this. I just found it amazing. In my 20 years of doing this, I never heard of anything. I don't think that's ever happened on such a grand scale.
[00:56:50] Speaker E: Never happened before. But the other point that we were talking about earlier when we were in the car was that in order to file a U.S. trademark, you have to be a United States attorney. It used to be foreign attorneys could file trademarks in the U.S. but now they have to go through a U.S. attorney. So they just stole all these attorneys credentials?
[00:57:06] Speaker D: No, I think the attorneys agreed to it, but they didn't know that their credentials were being abused. So we were actually approached to do this, but we turned them down. And after this I'm glad we did. So anyway, now it's time for our presenters.
[00:57:19] Speaker E: Our next presenter is Melissa Franks and we have Derek Johnson coming up. Melissa, you are an on call chief operating officer, but you weren't always that. You built this business up. Can you tell us your story and how you did this?
[00:57:33] Speaker B: I'm an accidental entrepreneur. That's how I coined myself. I Began as an administrative assistant inside of one of the largest retailers in the world. And my curiosity grew my career. So I was never really satisfied with this is just the way we do things. I wanted to know why. I was a bit like a small child that was going to ask that question over and over again. And that led me to learned that my nine months in finance was a really bad decision.
And then I went to technology and operations and eventually I found myself in financial services where I had the opportunity to sell multiple multi billion dollar businesses. I got to learn all about M and A and how to take things apart and put them back together. And then my last three years inside of the corporate ecosystem, I was the chief operating officer of a startup, was completely independent and was able to do a couple of things there. One turn around a half a billion dollar loss and grow the business from 50 million to $350 million.
And when I left corporate, the only reason I did it was because things were running smoothly and I was bored. And so I needed a chance.
[00:58:50] Speaker D: I draw a monkey wrench in just.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: To liven things up 100%. I'm like, I can't do this for the next 20 years. It's been a fun ride guys, but you're in, you're in good shape. So I went to a startup which failed after nine months. I think we've all heard that story about a million times.
And was left as a newly single mom with three teenage boys and no income and a severance package. She thought she had been smart to negotiate that didn't actually materialize and had to figure out what to do. And so I phoned a friend that needed a fractional coo.
She said yes, she was my first client. And here we are two years later with a thriving business that has hit the seven figures. And as a team of 15.
[00:59:32] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:59:32] Speaker B: And we help small business owners get unstuck, break plateaus, turn their businesses around and harness massive growth to realize their potential and dreams.
[00:59:41] Speaker D: Well, first of all, what does a COO do as opposed to maybe a CFO or a CEO?
[00:59:46] Speaker B: That's a great question, because the answer is everything except for finance and law. Really what I say is that a CEO is a bit of a chameleon. CEOs responsibility is to be strong where the CEO is weak. So what we do is we provide complementary skills which allows the CEO to do exactly what they're best at. Or in this case, because we're talking small business, the owner or the founder, we are not CPAs and we are not legal Professionals. So while we know a good amount about business finance and a good amount of contract law and some other things, we quickly defer to those that are licensed and know how to do those things. And so what that looks like is, for any given business, a COO can be sales and marketing can be technology, can be operations of the systems and the processes, HR people, management. And really what we do is we come in and say, owner, what would you like to do all of the time? If you could do that all day long and love your business and love the time that you're spending there, what would that be? And then we do all the rest.
[01:00:50] Speaker D: Sounds great, sounds ideal, you know, to have that support. And what attracted you to the COO role?
[01:00:59] Speaker B: I like to solve complex problems. And operations is really the spinal cord of a business.
It's where all of the communication gets wired and sent. So every single part of the business is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, when it's supposed to be doing it at the right time. And when operations is humming really well, it's just like your central nervous system where you don't even realize you're giving yourselves commands to move your feet forward as you're walking. You're just walking. So what I realized very, very quickly is that as sexy as marketing is, as innovative and fun as technology is, what actually steers the business, what actually determines if you're going to be half a billion dollars in the hole or profitable, $350 million, and reducing your prices while you do it for your end clients, is how well your business is running systemically over time. And that's what I wanted to do.
[01:01:53] Speaker E: So do you find it hard to convince the business owner to make some of these changes? Like you come in and you're seeing it from outside and you're like, okay, they definitely could do this differently. And the business owner's like, but I built the successful business.
[01:02:08] Speaker B: It's really fascinating because often somebody comes to us in a full blown panic attack.
They're overwhelmed by what's happening in their business and they believe that they know what the problem is. And so the very first thing that we do before I give them the hard truth about what we have to fix and what part of their baby is ugly is we spend a lot of time talking about why they started the business and what we're working towards, what does their life look like when they get there, whatever that is. Because nobody started a business to run a business. I do not know one single person that started a business because they're like, I want to be CEO and do all of the administration and meet all the people and look at all the reports. Nobody wants to. It's because you had a passion about doing something and you wanted to be able to do more of that. And so we, once we know where they want to, where they want to live, where they want to go, that becomes the North Star. And then every decision and recommendation we make, is it going to get us closer to that or further away? So when we come in and we say, hey, the way that you're managing your sales process is leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. And I know you want to take every call and you want to touch every human and that's just, just you're not the best salesperson.
[01:03:23] Speaker E: Dave, I see.
[01:03:25] Speaker D: Don't you have a comment, Dave, or a question?
[01:03:27] Speaker A: What she's saying is the absolute truth. Sometimes people think there's an old Wayans skit in Living Color where they talk about this Jamaican family that do everything. And it's like, I'm the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, I'm the air traffic controller and the pilot at the same time. You cannot do that and be successful. She's 1000% right. But everybody thinks their business is their baby. And I tell them simply, if I was a genie and I could turn your business into an actual baby, and you've got three other kids and I say, one of them has to die. Who goes, well, the business baby, that's the one that goes exactly. You would never kill your child, but you have to be willing to kill what's not working in your baby 100%.
[01:04:05] Speaker B: And so it's just a matter of trade offs. And so what I say often is that data does not do drama, right? And so the first thing that we do is get into the business so that we can look at the data and then that's how we start making decisions. And then it just becomes a matter of, look, your conversion rate, if we're talking sales, is 10%. Sally's is 70. Who should be selling more often?
Sally?
[01:04:31] Speaker E: I agree 100%. It used to be when I went way back when I was in corporate, they tried to make everybody be good at everything and co workers. And we used to sit around and say, why don't they just let people focus on what they do best and just let them have that and do it. And I think that makes an organization stronger. And then you have to have people too that are like, well, he's good at sales, but that's because he's stupid. I mean, you can't have people that act like that, right. That they're superior because they're better at tech than at sales or something.
[01:04:59] Speaker B: Leaning into your team members strengths is critical. That's also how you build culture in your organization.
When you have the right person doing the right role because they're the right fit and they have the right skill set, then everything works better. And so what that also means, and this is where entrepreneurs struggle, is that you're going to pick wrong some of the times. You're going to pick the wrong person, they're going to oversell themselves. You're going to get into a real life situation where you're going to have to make a bad call. The reality is, is that nobody comes to work to do a bad job.
[01:05:27] Speaker C: Right?
[01:05:28] Speaker B: So you're feeling bad, they're also feeling bad. They know it, you know it, everybody knows it, and so does the rest of the team.
[01:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:34] Speaker B: And so where corporate misses the mark and I really, honestly, after being in corporations forever, could just say, everybody go make sure you have some Gallup strength finders trainers inside your organization and make them take all those things. Because that tool tells you what each person's strengths are. And if you put them into a role where you could exploit their strengths, you're going to have maximum productivity, efficiency, employee satisfaction and retention is going to be through the roof. And that can be true in small business and it can be true in large business. And instead of trying to change somebody, just leverage what they're best at. And if you can't use those skills, that's okay. Wish them well and introduce them to somebody that can.
[01:06:12] Speaker D: So we're here with Melissa Franks, the COO extraordinaire, informing us on a very good level about the value of coo. Dave, do you have any comments or questions?
[01:06:22] Speaker A: So the one thing that I found fascinating when we were talking off air is that you put fractional COOs in with businesses. What are the top three things you look for in a fractional COO and how does that work for you?
[01:06:36] Speaker B: So the first one absolutely out of the gate is emotional intelligence.
Because in the small business space, your business is going to make or break your life. Literally the success of your business means putting a food on the table or not. So that's number one. The second thing with my business is been there, done that, can taste it, test it, it, touch it, reference, check it, COO credibility.
So every COO on our team has worked at a company significantly bigger than anybody that we're going to ever work with. And we know that their credentials are legitimate and they have the results to back it up. And then the third for us is culture fit inside of our business.
So one of the things that we offer is a very specific set of core values, which means that all of the businesses that we work with align with those values as well.
And so we have to make sure that the people that are coming in are aligned, because that's brand integrity, and that ensures the quality of our delivery. And then if I can add one more bonus one, it's the willingness and the ability to do real work.
What we don't do is place coos that are going to be talking heads.
[01:07:40] Speaker A: Right.
[01:07:41] Speaker B: What we place is COOs that will advise and strategize and then actually make it happen in the business, even if it means they're rolling up their sleeves and doing the work. And those are really the things that we look for.
[01:07:51] Speaker D: That's a great list. So just to share a little bit, we've recently put together what we call a C suite team. And we have a fractional CEO, a fractional coo, and a fractional cfo. So the CFO handles the function. I have a CMO and a cmo.
[01:08:08] Speaker A: I was about to say, where's the cmo?
[01:08:09] Speaker D: She's always been there.
[01:08:10] Speaker E: I've always been there, though.
[01:08:11] Speaker D: I've always been there.
But she's also on the team.
[01:08:15] Speaker E: But I get to sit down the meetings with them.
[01:08:19] Speaker D: And so we're trying now to kind of build the organization, put some more strength in the structure and the administration for the reasons you suggest, because we really can't grow unless we have a solid base and a solid administration. But one of the things that I find challenging is kind of letting go and letting these team members do. I haven't achieved the level of trust yet that I probably would would like to achieve. Most of what I'm seeing I agree with, but they're still kind of new to the organization. The CEO has been with us for a year. The other two are just recently within the last couple of months. And I get concerned that things aren't going to go right or they're going to miss critical pieces of information.
And as Elizabeth can vouch, I've been stressing over this a little bit recently, so I don't know. Any advice?
Yeah, I'd like to hear from the other side. So.
[01:09:15] Speaker B: So Brene Brown has this really great story that she tells, and this is how she does leadership training. So she actually has a jar and a Bowl of marbles. And the way that trust is built is by filling up that jar with marbles, one marble at a time. And what that looks like when you're talking about a COO is them saying they're going to take something off your plate and them actually doing it. And you can drop a marble in the jar. So for you, it might be, hey, that employee needs to be on a personal development plan. And I don't have the time to check in with them every two days to make sure they're getting things done. And the COO takes it. And then you watch that they're actually following up. They're working the plan. You're seeing improvement of the employee. Marble goes in the jar. The next one would be, we can't track our data. We don't have any understanding about the inquiries that are coming in for new clients. What do we do? COO says, I got it. I'm going to give you a report every week. You get that report week after week after week after week after, it's another marble in the jar. So instead of having immediate trust, because it's a little bit crazy to trust a stranger immediately, especially with your business.
[01:10:16] Speaker D: Right.
[01:10:17] Speaker B: It's taking baby steps and those small steps, and they can happen really, really fast. We guarantee results within the first 30 days for exactly this reason.
[01:10:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:10:25] Speaker B: We do two weeks of onboarding and then we say, okay, here's what we can get done in this very first month. Can we align on it? And the reason that we do that is because we want to drop as many marbles in the jars as soon as we can. And that's by us delivering results. And so I think for you, you've had a lot of changes. So the key is to look for the marbles. And. And if the marbles aren't moving into the jar, then it might be that you just have somebody that maybe isn't the best fit. And that's okay. Cause sometimes you gotta date a few to find who you wanna marry.
[01:10:52] Speaker E: They're rolling very, very slowly towards the jar.
[01:10:58] Speaker B: Well, that could be a problem in. And all of a sudden, I mean. But that's one of the challenges. It's one of the things that differentiates us so much is that speed and small business is the differentiator.
And when you come out of a corporate environment, you can get very comfortable to checks and balances and lackadaisical movement. Corporate moves really, really slow. And so sometimes the people that have the credentials don't have the ability to move with speed. And so that's why we put these very specific targets and marks in place in our business, and we check for it. That's one of the quality things that we look for. Can you move with speed? Because you don't have time to waste.
[01:11:31] Speaker E: So, Melissa, how much history should the COO find out? Because we really haven't told our people some of the history that affects kind of the way we feel about things now. Should they hear, like, from when it started a story, or just do they want to start fresh now?
[01:11:47] Speaker B: My strategy, and this is what I say to every new client, whether I'm working with them or one of my people is working with them, is that if in the first two weeks, we are not making you incredibly uncomfortable because we've gone into the closet, we're shoving all the stuff we've crawled into your attic and found all of those things that you don't want people to know. We found the hidden Christmas presents, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We're not doing our job. In order for a COO to be effective, we have to know everything. We have to know the skeletons. We have to know where the bodies are buried. We have to know where the clothes are that don't fit anymore that you don't want anybody to know that you have. We. We need to know all of that stuff because otherwise we can't make informed decisions. We're actually helping steer your business blindfolded. And you always have the upper hand, and you will always do it better because you have information and context that we just don't have.
[01:12:33] Speaker A: Listen, I'm with you 100%. Two things. I hate the trust thing. I absolutely do. Here's what I mean. When I was a kid, my father's house caught on fire. I had to trust strangers to put the fire out and get me out of the house.
[01:12:46] Speaker D: Right.
[01:12:46] Speaker A: When my mother's Toyota Corolla got taken, I had to trust the cops to come and find the thief. We trust people blindly every single day. The thing that I tell my clients, and I'm with you on strategy, culture, everything like that, what I tell my clients is I trust the paperwork. Don't trust me, trust the paperwork. If I don't do what I say I'm gonna do, sue me. You know how many times I've been sued? Zero. You wanna know why I do what I say I'm going to do? And that's the thing. We've got to stop being so emotional about it. Passionate? Yes. And strategically cautious. Yes. But a lot of times, a lot of entrepreneurs, you included, Love you as I do. Are worried because, oh my lord, I've been burned before. Now I'm on this dating app again and I just don't know what to do. No, that's why you have things in place. I hire fast and I fire faster. I am not emotional about it.
[01:13:34] Speaker E: Well, that's an excellent point.
[01:13:35] Speaker A: But you gotta ask her the most important question. Do you know the most unique feature of her business? She primarily deals with women entrepreneurs. Why that and why is it such a niche?
[01:13:47] Speaker E: Could it be because men think women don't know anything? My wife actually uses tack.
[01:13:54] Speaker B: That's a great question. I was a C suite executive. I didn't have peers inside of my business, but I had developed a peer group of very accomplished C suite female executives, many of which left corporate jobs during COVID and they all started their own thing and everybody, by the time they hit the nine month mark had failed. And I went to everyone individually, I'm like, what happened? You're incredibly gifted. You're like, these women were incredibly smart and highly accomplished. And their answer was every single time, wrong partnership, trusted the wrong person, went too far with the wrong idea and missed the mark. Didn't have somebody to advise me along the way. And I'm like, this just gotta stop. More women need to own portions of the entrepreneurial pie. I have a passion for seeing more small businesses and not fall over the five year cliff and fail at that point. And so we're gonna take very real, credentialed professional people and we're gonna bring them to the small businesses so that they can play just like the big boys and girls in corporate do and win really big. And that's why my team, I was joking with them the other day. I said, we're like amassed a bunch of corporate dropouts. We have a new person joining us next week from PricewaterhouseCoopers. And she's coming to us after a very long, storied management consulting career because she wants the ability to do real work that provides real value to real humans that can move the needle. And she came to us, we didn't go out looking for her. And that really means that we're doing something good in this space. And that's one of our missions here.
[01:15:22] Speaker D: That's great. Yeah.
[01:15:23] Speaker E: This has been Melissa Franks, melissafranks.com if you need a fractional COO, her approach sounds wonderful to me.
[01:15:31] Speaker D: You probably need one.
[01:15:32] Speaker E: If you think you need one, you need one. Go to her website, look at what she can do for you. And then contact her.
[01:15:38] Speaker D: Passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth.
[01:15:41] Speaker E: Gerhardt, Derek Johnson, fitwithderick.com Now, we've all been.
[01:15:44] Speaker D: He's been doing push ups in the studio.
He's like, ready to go.
[01:15:49] Speaker E: Derek's a trainer. And Derek is in like the best shape of anybody's life. I don't care who it is, Right? So, Derek, tell us your story.
[01:15:57] Speaker C: A little bit about my story. Who you see now is not who I was. My father's African American. He's from Mississippi. He's a farm boy. So the work ethic came from my dad's side. My mother's German. And if you know German mothers, they're in your face. So our household was ran like a business. There was no hugging. There was no I love you. Not to be sad or morbid, but it just ran like a business, ran like a sports team. And so I grew up the mixed kid. I was skinny, I was insecure, I was bullied. I had a big gap. I had a stuttering issue. I was just the epitome of, oh, he's a little pretty boy. Let's all beat him up. And so my parents had their own traumas. So alcoholism ran on both sides. So they just repeated the generational curses. So I was a quiet kid getting beat up, abused at home by family, and then also in school.
And so my step one into personal development was changing my physicality, where I said, enough is enough, not just to fight the bully, even though, I mean, that did happen, embarrass him.
[01:16:51] Speaker D: But that time period was, well, there's another one over here.
[01:16:55] Speaker A: I'm a business bully. I don't fight that man.
[01:16:58] Speaker C: And so that kid, I say, you know what? I don't have control of my reactions to family or people. I need to be more confident within myself. So it started as fitness to elevate the physique, but more so to know that whatever I set my mind to, I will achieve and I will outwork anybody. So having that ability to say, you know what, I feel like there's a gift here. So my job now is to help people identify their gift outside of fitness. But in terms of what is on the other side of your trauma, when you sit down on your bed at night or your couch, you stare at the wall or the ceiling every single day and night. What is that thing that's pulling you that you keep saying, Next week, January 1st, I'm going to do it then. So we unpack that and say, all right, why did you push it away? Okay, abusive relationship you got bullied as well. Emotional eating, there's some hidden layer going into the closet, into the attic, pulling that stuff out. What is that? So we get to the root and that is why my clients get amazing results. It's not the workouts, it's not the coaching calls. We just get to the root that they usually want to suppress. She has the body, but why does she have two divorces? He has the house, now the family, but why is he constantly drinking and doing drugs? What is that real reason? So that's my favorite part. So to connect it, the insecure kid became the man that got into the army to face his fear of heights, speaking and so forth. And then I overcame that and I just fell in love with helping people reconnect with themselves. So I don't necessarily change people. I just get them reconnected to who was always there before the trauma, before the business failure, before the rejection, before the embarrassment. Because that's usually when people drift and say, you know what? God didn't have it in his plans for me. And I think that's the most weakest cop out line somebody could say. I say, no, you gave up and quit. You were that close at the tipping point. So.
[01:18:44] Speaker D: So Derek, how did you overcome the trauma that came from being bullied? What was it that happened?
[01:18:52] Speaker C: Great question. So I realized that I was running on empty. I had no faith.
So up until like the age of 13, I considered myself personally an atheist. I just was that kid. I was angry, angry. Why do bad things happen to good people? If these people didn't do this to my mother, she wouldn't be beating me. Why did my dad experience that? He acts out that way towards me. Because other things happen and they're great people. And I was just angry and I was like, why did this happen to my friend? Why did this happen to my Oma, my grandma in Germany? So I was just confused. So number one would be my faith because I realized as a child and teen I was running off of anger. I was always a positive outwardly, but internally I was like broken and lost.
And everybody's inner child wants two things. We want to be heard and understood.
And I never felt heard and understood in my upbringing, so I wanted to make other people feel that way. So number one would be faith. Number two would be the mindset. What information are you putting into your mind? Like, what are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? Because that's going to affect the seeds that are planted. Like, I don't watch the media at all. When my friends ask me, hey, did you see this? Like, I flew here from Florida. They're like, you sure you want to fly? It's like, I had no issues. Like, I don't watch the media at all. And so the three things would be, one, faith, Two, mindset, being aware of what I'm putting into the mind. And then third is, what am I consuming? Is it fueling my body? Is it energizing me? Or is it just masking an aggression or some other emotion to escape reality or to push it to the side? So faith, mindset, and then also fitness with what we consume.
[01:20:21] Speaker E: Well, I have to agree and go to Dave. I've always said because I struggle with my weight, but it's not physical, it's mental.
[01:20:30] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:20:30] Speaker E: It's always mental. The brain is in control.
So if you can get through your traumas and figure that out, Dave.
[01:20:37] Speaker A: So when you look at the big overarching thing that you do that separates you from other trainers, what is it? Is it the lifestyle? Is it the mindset? What is the thing that makes people say, you know what, I gotta get fit with Derek?
[01:20:53] Speaker C: That's a great question. I appreciate that. We get to the core of why they gain the weight or we're bulimic or why they struggle in some area. We get to the roots. So all people get to the root. So I like to say therapy works. It's very effective. But there's only so many times that we can talk about the past. So my intent. We talk about it maybe the first two sessions, but then we focus on the outcome. So I pride myself on. I love when people come to me and they're like, I've had a therapist for three years. My motivation side says, well, what the hell did you have them for? Because you should be over this by now. So I come in and say, hey, I'm glad you had one, but let's unpack it and overcome this. So getting to the root to help them naturally, holistically overcome that so they don't go backwards in terms of that's not their identity anymore they've been holding on to. I'm just a man that struggles with dating. I'm just the woman who did this. I'm just whatever preconceived notion or label somebody else place upon them.
[01:21:46] Speaker E: Do you have a success story without naming names that you can tell us about?
[01:21:50] Speaker C: Yes, for sure. So I have one of my clients, she had a severe crippling social anxiety where she always had to be on the phone in public. And it was just to not make eye contact with people.
But the underlying issue was physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, sexual abuse from the past. And that was like a coping mechanism in the protective space of when I'm shopping at Target, I need to be on the phone or act like I'm talking to somebody because I don't like looking at strangers. And so it was affecting her sales and leadership. She would crush it on numbers. Was a great person.
But the small things going to Target by herself to Publix would affect her. And the more that that would affect her, it would affect her for the entire week of every leadership conference or sales call. And I said, we got to get to the root of that. And so once we were able to unpack that and get her that confidence, what was the missing peace? She didn't feel heard or understood. So I said, we need to fill your own cup first because we are all our own source of happiness.
The kids can add to it. My beautiful girlfriend, she can add to it. Our pit bull can add to it. Traveling. I came here from Florida. That stuff is a great experience. It adds to it. But identifying where was the disconnect when you stopped being happy and pouring into your own cup? So we focus on that. So just proud that an individual can overcome those things so then it doesn't spill and they don't just neglect it and just look forward to after work having the drink to take the edge off or anything else too. And take the edge off.
[01:23:14] Speaker D: Well, we're here with Derek Johnson. Where can people find you, Derek?
[01:23:18] Speaker C: They can find
[email protected] so I wanted.
[01:23:21] Speaker D: To ask you a question. How do you manage the coaching piece or the counseling piece with the fitness piece. We've talked a lot about the counseling that you do. But then how does that match with the workout routine routines?
[01:23:34] Speaker C: Great question. So the first thing I'll do is we lower your cortisol level, your stress hormones. So a lot of people are go getters or hustlers and all this, but they're still bloated or they're still angry. I'm like, you got a six pack, but you can't keep relationship to save your life or you got the money, but you can't do this. Why is that? So we get to the root pretty quick.
[01:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:23:54] Speaker C: And then their body changes. They're like, dude, I lost ten pounds in a week and a half and I didn't even do a crazy diet. I'm like, yeah, you had to unpack a lot. I was like, you were Chasing the attention, the validation. So we lower cortisol first, naturally, the stress hormone, and then your body can finally operate. Digestion is better. And the second thing I focus on is teaching people that your gut is your second brain. So what you eat affects your mental health and how you think affects your gut. And so most people, they're disconnected because I want to take the edge off. So I'm going to eat or drink this. Okay, now your gut feels this it. Tomorrow you have depression, anxiety, and then they label themselves. I just have anxiety, I have add, I have ptsd, I have all this stuff. And I'll just pause and say, do you or are you just constantly consuming things that are making you feel that way? Because your body does that before the mind does it. Like they're always tense or scared or whatever the body language is. So we get to the root. So I focus on 80% mental, 20 physical. I have insane body transformations of clients, but it's because they got free.
They're not just looking for the validation to make somebody jealous.
[01:24:58] Speaker D: So do you come up then with workout routines that are very specific to the person that you're working with? I would think that's part of the coaching.
[01:25:06] Speaker C: Yes, 100%. So some of my clients, they have social anxiety at first to go into the gym, but I know eventually they'll want to get into it some they love to be outdoors. So I'm here to meet people where they're at and make it personalized for them. And I have some, they love training at home. I lose my mind trying to train at home. We did that during quarantine. There's enough of that. So in general, I meet you where you're at, that and say, okay, let's focus on three days a week, let's go hiking, one day at home, workout. Then eventually, if you feel confident, we'll get into the gym. So to answer your question, 100, it's just personalized.
[01:25:36] Speaker D: So you have a new book. Tell us about that.
[01:25:39] Speaker C: Yeah, so my new book is called Mission ready, prepare your mind and body for the battlefield of life. It is a self help book. So if you've ever dealt with trauma, faith, struggling with past things, it dives deep. And at the end of every chapter I have writing prompts.
So essentially some would consider that shadow work, but they take themselves on a journey to do therapy on themselves. So the whole intent is to get you mission ready. And basically let's unpack things on your own time and get your power back. Because we've given up our power to too many things, too many people, too many mistakes or failures.
[01:26:11] Speaker A: I tell people all the time, the one thing that I think is really, really horrible is that we don't talk enough about food addiction because and again, respect to anybody who's dealing with any type of addiction. But Derek, you know as well as I do that it's different than alcohol. It is different than drugs. Because when you're addicted to the one of two things you need to survive. How do you get somebody to understand moderation? How do you get somebody to understand nutrition? How do you get somebody to understand putting the emotion out of sustenance and maintaining themselves?
[01:26:47] Speaker C: Great question. I focus on not looking at food as good or bad because in their mind, they first compartmentalize. Oh, my coach is going to make me take a picture of my fridge. Then I got to go in my pantry and they're already overwhelmed. Like, no, let's just start with this. What are you missing first? So we focus on hydration and minerals first.
Because most physical mental health issues start from severe dehydration and mineral deficiency.
So most people are running on the constant, that roller coaster of the triple threat of caffeine, high drop, sugar, high drop, and then you crave the carbs and you drop again. You're like, now I need another coffee.
[01:27:22] Speaker A: So all day long, he's not talking to Richard.
[01:27:25] Speaker D: This has been a two cup show for me.
[01:27:29] Speaker C: So food is not good or bad. We just have to eat in moderation. But also, let's get you hydrated and minerals first to give them the win of, I actually feel refreshed, My skin's looking better. I'm not having those cravings, whatever those things are for that person. So first it's not good or bad. Hydration and minerals, and then getting away from the triple entendre of sugar, high crash, caffeine or carbs, and then realizing, like, you're running off of those three, but you don't have enough water, minerals, or protein. So we focus with the basics first.
[01:27:59] Speaker D: Sometimes it's easy to forget that the mind and body are intertwined to such a large degree. You know, one of the things that I've been working on lately is trying to get more sleep. I do pretty good with the exercise, not as well with the diet as I'd like to, but getting enough rest and waking up feeling reasonably good in the morning makes a huge difference in my life. And I find that the exercise makes me sleep better. Right. So it's all interrelated. And, you know, it's great that you're bringing us to people and helping them with the mental part, which I think is obviously the most difficult.
[01:28:33] Speaker C: Right. I appreciate it. Thank you.
[01:28:34] Speaker H: Yeah.
[01:28:35] Speaker E: So what kind of minerals are people normally low on?
[01:28:38] Speaker C: The main thing they're low on are the trace minerals. So potassium, magnesium, also fiber, iron. So a simple tip that I give people is every morning in your first cup or glass of water, I recommend having spring water. The number one thing I recommend is 1 teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt in your first glass of water. Just stir it up for some that's too salty and I just, I make them pause. I'm like used to take shots of alcohol to the face. Like you can take salt water, you'll be fine. So adding that, mixing it, starting their day with the minerals first. If you do that daily, consistently, it costs you between 7, 10 bucks for a big bag. You're going to feel more stable. Your blood sugar, you're also going to feel a better pump when you're actually lifting weights because of blood flow. Besides that, if somebody does have diabetes, they'll notice that their blood sugar doesn't spike or drop as much. But front loading their morning with more hydration and more minerals first and just testing that out to have their own experience.
[01:29:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I usually do my workouts like at 6am and probably having that salt would probably help on a lot of levels. Right.
[01:29:42] Speaker C: So I love that idea 100%.
[01:29:45] Speaker D: We're here with Derek Johnson.
[01:29:47] Speaker E: How do people find you again?
[01:29:48] Speaker C: People can find
[email protected] or they can search Derek Johnson on social media. The kind of content is just in your face to make you think we get right to it. And they're like, oh, he's talking to me. So there's no fluff. But I'm here to empower people. So fitwithdrek.com if they're interested and help to get to the next level and getting unstuck.
[01:30:06] Speaker E: Okay, definitely look that up. So listeners, you are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest today, Dave Anderson, the business bully. We have just had amazing conversations with three super, super great entrepreneurs here. But now it's time for a break.
[01:30:23] 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 hurt on the job, find out today for free what kind of compensation you may be entitled to.
[01:31:06] Speaker H: Call the legal helpline right now, 8004-9449-2701-4800-492-7014. That's 800-492-7014.
[01:31:23] Speaker F: It's passage to Profit.
[01:31:25] Speaker D: Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
[01:31:29] Speaker E: Noah Fleishman is our producer here at Passage to Profit. And he just has a way of putting his best memories in perspective.
[01:31:36] Speaker G: A good friend of mine was sitting with his six year old granddaughter the other day. They were admiring a butterfly together. It was adorable. She said, granddad, what makes the butterfly's wings so pretty? He said, honey, I couldn't tell you, but I know that there are people who can. If you ask your school teacher, if you ask your school librarian, they can send you to the books and the information you need that'll answer all of your questions for almost anything. All you have to do in this world is ask. If more people in this world asked more questions, it would be a better place to live. That's when her dad walked in holding the invoice from the garage on the car repair. He said, hey, dad, look at this. I don't think they charged me for the oil change. Gotta call him and ask him why. He said, don't you dare. Just pay it and be done with it. Don't ask a pile of questions. What is this with the questions? If less people asked less questions in this world, it would be a better place to live. You know, when I was that little girl's age, a lot of people used to tower over me saying don't trust anybody over 30.
I think I know why those people never want to ask any questions. It's a wonder they know anything now.
[01:32:37] Speaker F: More with Richard and Elizabeth. Passage to Profit.
[01:32:41] Speaker E: Our special guest today, Dave Anderson. And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So, Dave Anderson, the business
[email protected] what is a secret you can share with our audience?
[01:32:54] Speaker A: Okay, again, you can. And Derek will attest to this. You can run 26.2 miles on a treadmill. And then when you get off, guess what? There's no Trophy. There's no medal, there's no accolades. You just ran in place. So you did all of this work, but you have nothing to show for it. In other words, if you don't have a system, if you're not in the right environment, if you're not doing the things that you want, all of the hustle does not matter. Systems will automatically beat hustle when hustle can't perform at the level you need it to. And no one wants to have that conversation because everybody has the. This glorified hustle mentality. And hustle culture absolutely sucks.
So that is one of the biggest secrets that I, I've learned that I've been trying to impart with everybody I come across.
[01:33:43] Speaker E: Well, thank you. So, Melissa FRANKS with Melissa franks.com what's your secret?
[01:33:48] Speaker B: You're never going to be ready. Whatever you're trying to do, you're just never going to be ready. And where the real lessons are is in the doing.
So often a lot of business owners that we meet with, they come forward and they say, I've got this idea and I want to try this thing. And I've been thinking about it for three years and it's like, like you're never going to know if it's the right next thing unless you try, unless you get out there and you have real conversations. And so nothing else gets out to the masses today. It's, if you have an idea, take the next step forward because there's never going to be a right time.
[01:34:20] Speaker E: That's great advice. And Derek Johnson with fitwithderick.com what's your secret?
[01:34:25] Speaker C: The secret will be to remind you that there's two types of motivation. There's the push, as you mentioned, the hustle culture. We can push, push, push our way into depression, into anxiety, into burnout. The other one is the pull. So I challenge people to ask themselves, what is my pull? Your why is it your grandmother is your family legacy? Are you breaking generational curses? Because we can push ourselves out of bed. But the rare moments where I don't feel like doing something, I think of my OMA in Germany who survived the Holocaust and hid in the attic. And then I pause and say, do I not feel like getting up? Like, I compare my. I don't feel like it to experiencing that. Or on my father's side in the state of Mississippi, African American and having land and all the stuff that they've been through. And then I pause and I'm like, this is irrelevant. What I'm feeling right now or what I went through like it's everything I experience is not half as bad as family. So challenging people to look at two types of motivation. Yes, we need the push and the hustle, but also what is pulling you? Is it the legacy? Is it your faith? Is it your kids? But letting that guide you because when that is guiding you, you can actually do more, sleep less and still have a social life somehow. Don't know how that works, but you're pulled towards something bigger and you're just running off that high like it gives you chills.
[01:35:36] Speaker E: I love that advice. Richard Gearhart with gearhartlaw.com what is your secret?
[01:35:42] Speaker D: Well, this week my secret is going to be use AI. You'd be surprised how many people haven't tried it, or they're scared of it, or for whatever reason, they don't want to embrace it. And I've told you about my epiphany. I've gone and completely embraced AI. Now it's going to be running through the veins of our law firm. We're not going to mishandle any client confidential information.
But it's gotten me excited about the future and so I see all the possibilities that it can offer even if it's not perfect. And I've gotten enthusiastic about running the law firm again because it has helped me solve a lot of issues that I didn't know how to solve just by asking the right questions. And the output isn't perfect, but it gives me a starting point I can go through and make adjustments to it so that it is really something useful. So my secret this week is use AI. At least try it.
[01:36:36] Speaker E: And my secret is for the entrepreneurs listening to this show, remember who you are. Remember that you take take risks, you find opportunities, go forward when people are trying to pull you back. And part of the reason I say this is because Richard and I are the only ones in the law firm who really want to use AI.
Nobody else does, Right? And we're forcing it, but we just want to keep forging forward and entrepreneurs are risk takers and that's what we do.
[01:37:05] Speaker D: That's great. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the U.S. 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, Risa Kat Bussari, and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcast. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram 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. Gerhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
[01:38:06] Speaker E: Weekend.
