[00:00:00] Speaker A: I would say I'm a true entrepreneur in the sense that I started with zero.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I just want to do this on my own. I'm tired of working for other people.
[00:00:06] Speaker C: Recovery is more than just putting down the bottle.
[00:00:10] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:11] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gerhart. You've just heard some snippets from our show. Do you want to know more about starting your business? Stay tuned.
[00:00:19] Speaker F: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:30] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerh Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:38] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:44] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories in the business world. We have an amazing guest. His name is Gordon Fraser. He's an award winning sales and creative marketing executive, internationally renowned speaker, coach, and philanthropist.
[00:01:03] Speaker E: And then we have Matt Strippelhoff, who is the guy that you want to call if you need a custom solution with your IT and somebody that'll follow up with you and help you after you start using it. He has Redhawk Tech. And then my dear friend Karen Rubenstein with karenrubenstein. Com. She has an amazing website that she's putting together, women in the rooms to help people that have been in rehab and are trying to get back into real life.
[00:01:30] Speaker D: But before we get to our amazing guests, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans own a business or are thinking about starting one. And we like to ask our panel every week a question about their business journey. So this week's question is how do you overcome fear in your business? Gordon, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about how you overcome fear in your business.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: I think you get used to challenges which still require effort and skill and time and preparation. If you're aware of that, then you're able to handle the challenges a little bit better. But in terms of fear, I don't think it's ever gone away from me.
[00:02:13] Speaker D: I would second that, too. I mean, that was very similar to my response. I once understood that Olympic athletes manifest the same fear as lesser athletes, but they just kind of stay with it and work through it better than other people. So I think no matter how far you get up the chain, there's always going to be Some of that there. Matt, maybe you have a different view. What is your thought about fear and your business journey?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: I agree with Gordon. I don't think I've ever shaken it myself. It changes. And based on the journey that I've had over the past 17 years in owning and operating Red Hawk, what I'm afraid of changes or maybe even manifests itself differently. But I think the secret for me has been to recognize it early and do what I can to prepare as best as I can. Reading, sharing the experiences with other entrepreneurs, participating actively in peer groups really helps to make decisions as to how to address whatever it is that's coming that has me most concerned and are a lot of common fears, but they tend to come and go.
[00:03:20] Speaker D: So what are the types of things that you're fearing these days as opposed to when you first started?
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I've recognized that continual investment and developing my own skills as a leader, as an experienced business professional, learning from other people's experiences as much as I can helps me my journey. But we've had exponential growth over the last three years and now I'm looking at other new challenges, including acquisitions. So we bought another company in October of last year. I was a little fearful about how that was going to go. That was a first time experience. Now we think we might buy another company per year, each year for the next five years. So what is that integration of those companies, of the, the people, the culture? How do we maintain culture? So I think that's part of the thing that I think about a lot. I don't know that I use the word fear anymore. I would describe it as more anxious, but that's something I'm. It's a little easier for me to embrace and overcome through study, reading, and again through communicating a lot with other business owners.
[00:04:24] Speaker D: One of my other entrepreneurial friends uses the term positive stress.
So it's a good way to say, okay, I'm kind of jazzed about this and there's a little uncertainty there. But it's, it's not like fear of the world's gonna end. It's more like I'm really into this and I'm excited about what's coming next. I love that term.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: I think also anxiety and excitement comes from the same root. So you can, the body can get confused between the anxiety and excitement of the situation that's presenting itself.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Especially if you're in a leadership role. I think zoom's been great because you can hide behind the zoom and nothing's going to happen. But when you actually have to stand on a stage and address your peer group or influence your team or your organization, wherever it might be, then there's an expectation placed upon which can be both exciting and fearful at the same time. So I think that'd be a good example. But you are not going to die is the main thing.
[00:05:22] Speaker D: Excellent point, Karen.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Fear has actually been coming up quite a bit recently because I'm starting a new venture and I'm deciding to have my launch date March 8th with my online women's recovery community.
Yeah. So I'm excited. But yeah, I, I've learned that I get into a fear mode if I think too far in the future, then I get overwhelmed. So I'm in recovery. So I do it one day at a time. I do just the next right thing. I focus on the day, what can I accomplish? And that way I don't get overwhelmed and I don't get like stalled in fear. So a little sniggle of fear is great. That is exciting and everything and it keeps me motivated. But for the most part I have the tools that have move me forward from fear. Always going to have it. Just learned how to deal with it.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: Elizabeth, how do you handle fear in your business journey?
[00:06:13] Speaker E: Really? I think for me, I do get afraid and anxious, but I think about the worst things that we've been through could have possibly been through. Surgeries, 2008, financial crisis, issues with the law firm where things weren't going well and it's like, well. So I just kind of think, well, look at all the things I've gotten through. So this can't be worse than some of that.
[00:06:35] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't think I completely lose my fear or anxiety or excitement or positive stress, whatever you want to call it. But sometimes keeping it in perspective helps reduce it. The takeaway message I guess is, you know, do the best you can to live with what you've got and persevere. So now it is time for our featured guest. I'm really looking forward to speaking with Gordon. Gordon Fraser is an award winning sales and creative marketing executive, internationally renowned speaker, coach and philanthropist with 500 million plus in accumulated retail sales, not a small number. Gordon is an accomplished entrepreneur who's inspired, mentored coached and motivated leaders around the world. So welcome to the show. Gordon, I think your story is really informing so maybe you could kind of start from the beginning.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Thank you. And thank you for having me in that wonderful introduction. In terms of starting the business, I would say I'M a true entrepreneur in the sense that I started with zero experience in the industry that I started my business in with zero proven record and success really started with nothing. And built the sales organization to the global success that it was not on my own, but with obviously an amazing team. But it started with me. I was the first person you mentioned.
[00:07:55] Speaker D: That your training was as an actor.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Yes, it was. And also I feel that the stack, the probability of success was kind of stacked against me. I grew up in the west coast of Scotland and my mother used to call it a one horse town. So there wasn't much going on in this town. It was a. The whiskey industry was in decline at that particular time. And my father was an entrepreneur, but he had lost his business and he had turned to managing his depression, et cetera, with alcohol. So he was a raging alcoholic. So that was the background that set me up for my future. Survival skills were something that I learned very, very young. And those situations I had in childhood are part of my success as an adult. Because you're always. For me, certainly I was always looking for the exit in every room I'm being in is that how do you get out of here? How do you survive? So having any opportunity that's presented to, to me is really one of how do I make this work and how can I make this successful for me, because it has to work. Because I don't have a degree or a formal education to fall back on. So sales and entrepreneurial ship is a great avenue for somebody who hasn't gone the traditional route of education and climbed the corporate ladder. So that's the start point. But in terms of my business, it came to me through a very random situation. I was an actor, I still am an actor. I trained as, but I'm not earning my living as an actor. So I wouldn't maybe describe myself in that way. I like to describe myself in a way that where you're making your money from, where does your profit come from? So right now I'm not making money as an actor. I might be called a resting actor. But it's interesting through that route is how I came across this business. So I don't know if any of you recall a pop star by the name of David Cassidy from the Partridge Family. Partridge Family, yeah. So his wife. So I'm 52 years old, I'm no spring chicken. His wife is always the ex wife, I guess. His former wife is one of my very good friends. And it was her that came to me with the business opportunity that I ultimately jumped into. And she said, well, obviously your acting career isn't going in the right direction, really, is it? You need something else. And I was offended, of course, because I was like, no, no, this is what I've chosen to do with my life. This is where I'm going. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she went, well, you should take a look at this. And I did take a look at it. I said no several times. It's not where I see myself going. It's not what I want to do. It's a complete U turn and I've given up everything to be an actor. I'll be a failure if I stopped and all the rest of it. And she said, well, you got to do something. Time is going to pass. We're living in a new world of entrepreneurship where you can't just be that one definition, you know, it's a slash. Person is the future of like, you do this, you do this and you do this. You just don't define yourself with one particular job or one career anymore. I went, okay, I trust you, I'll jump in. And I did. So that's how I started my journey. And I got into the health and wellness industry and I figured that people were all broke, right? But no one wants to be broke and ugly. So I thought everyone's going to have to wash their hair and take a shower and look in the mirror. So I might as well get into that game.
[00:11:14] Speaker E: Yeah. So now you're coaching people, right? And that's one of the things that you're doing. You have a few things going on I see here. But what I really like here is this quote in the notes that I got about you where you say that success is a mindset. I think that is one of the most important things to a person's success, honestly.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Single mindedness, I think starting with the end in mind certainly is. Where do you see yourself? I think it's called fourth dimension. Goal setting is starting with that end result. Where do you see yourself and have that goal setting plan. But you can't quit before payday and you don't know when payday is. It depends what your goals are. I think. I believe in audacious goals because I think too many people set low goals and then unfortunately meet them. I wanted to have a global business. I wanted to have a scalable business. But also the most important thing is I wanted to have a residual aspect to the business that I had. And you can't get a residual income when you're trading Time for money. I think it's really understanding what it is. You've got, what you want and how you're going to get it. So I couldn't quit. I knew what payday looked like. I didn't know when it was going to happen. You know, it's like the bamboo shoot is like you water it. You water it for like whatever. I don't know, it's like three years or something. Nothing happens. Then on the fourth or fifth year, it grows 70ft. You don't know when the 70ft is. In many businesses, all big businesses are time leveraged. I started my business myself basically trading the 24 hours of the day that I had by the money that I made from the sale. So on my own, that's all I could do. It could be like a hairdresser or a trucker. You're driving your vehicle. It's you that is responsible for making the money. There's nobody else. Maybe like a franchise even is you have a coffee shop franchise on your own, you're still trading your time for money, even if you have a staff, because you only have that one business. But if you can magnify that so you buy. If you're able to reinvest your money into more coffee shops or you're able to save up money to buy another truck or another salon, then you're able to leverage in your time. You're multiplying your time through the efforts of somebody else. And that's what I chose to do.
[00:13:34] Speaker E: I think you brought up a really good point though, is you did have somebody on the outside looking and I think that's where coaching and I know you're a coach and I have a coach who I adore. She's amazing. Just having that outside look at what you're doing and saying, yeah, you know, this is what you should be doing, or, you know, you're taking on too much focus in on this. I think anybody who can afford it should definitely get a coach and you have to find the right one for you. There's a ton of coaches out there, but. And you click with the right person. Right. And they also have to be aligned with what you're trying to do. But I think that's a big part of anyone's success, personally.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are people in your environment who can operate in a coaching manner without having to lay out expense. Because I know when you're starting anything new. Certainly for me, I had no one acting as a coach. For me, I didn't. I couldn't even afford to have a coach. Frankly, when I started, I was really was scraping the bottom of the barrel. But there can be people of influence around. You can act in a, in an accountable way rather than a coaching way perhaps. I don't want you to tell me how to do what I'm doing. I just need you to me accountable to making the calls, putting in the work, doing the reading, applying what I've read, et cetera.
[00:14:44] Speaker D: Gordon Fraser, award winning sales and creative marketing executive, internationally renowned speaker, coach and philanthropist. Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Stay tuned. We have intellectual property news coming up. And then secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. We'll be right back after this.
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[00:17:03] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit. Once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
[00:17:08] Speaker E: Our special guest, Gordon Fraser, who has incredible advice for entrepreneurs. If you're thinking of starting a new business, Gordon can really help you out. So, Gordon, we're just about to get into an incredible story that you had that you talked with Richard about yesterday.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: In order for me to see the success that I wanted, I had to make compromises. And I did want a scalable global business and I did want to make a significant earning. But I also knew that I didn't want to take the responsibility of being the person who developed the product. I feel that you've got to sometimes know your lane. So I wanted to have a business where I wasn't responsible for distribution, for imagining what the product might be, the infrastructure of the corporation. I just wanted to be part of the actual building out the network. So that's where I saw the asset and the value. And so that's what I did. So in order to do that, I had to sign a contract. And part of it meant that anything that developed to create distribution of the product through a sales and marketing channel became the intellectual property of the company that wasn't always exercised those clauses, and often they don't. You can create something that goes by the wayside and no one pays any attention. But I created a sales tool. The company when I started was already 25 years old and no one had really designed a tool to explain what it was, how it worked and how you made money. A beginning, a middle and an end. You need a tool that's standardized, that everyone can relate to and use, that can be trained and coached, and then someone can start their business immediately with this tool rather than having to wait to actually build a skill set, to be able to have the confidence to articulate what that is that we've got. So I created this tool and it did really well. And I think it was that when I brought it out, it was responsible for 100% of growths in my markets, which was UK, Australia, United States, Canada. And then the company got other leaders, global leaders were saying, can we use this? And I was saying, fine. So I am of the abundant mindset. Some said, take it, but as long as you don't fiddle with it, you can have it. So everyone started using my coaching tool by default. I wasn't taking any money for it. I was happy for people to use it. And everyone knew it came from me. And then the corporation decided that they were going to take ownership of it and standardize it with their branding, et cetera, rather than mine. And so I wasn't really happy with that because it had a specific arc to it. Also the imagery and the how. The language that I use was very specific to sales, but the legal team wanted to make it more, I would say, bland, but that's not what they would say.
[00:19:56] Speaker D: That's the lawyers for you. I mean, 100% growth in revenue in a short period of time, that's pretty spectacular.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: I was doing hundreds of percent year on year for, for, for many years.
[00:20:08] Speaker D: Since we are on the subject of intellectual property, it's time for Intellectual Property News. But before we go there, Gordon Fraser, award winning sales and creative marketing executive, internationally renowned speaker, coach and philanthropist. Great commentary. Gordon, how do people find you?
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Gordon Fraser G O R D O N F R A S E R CO that was great.
[00:20:31] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:20:34] Speaker D: Time for Intellectual Property News and we're going to be talking about one of our favorite subjects, artificial intelligence. Wow.
[00:20:41] Speaker E: The Empire Strikes Back.
Somebody actually lost a lawsuit where they used AI to steal somebody else's intellectual property.
[00:20:50] Speaker D: Well, it's about time. I mean, we love artificial intelligence, but were also with the creators and in this case the people who created the content sued the AI company that used the content and the content creators won. It so happened that the content creator was a pretty big one. Thompson, Reuters. Right.
[00:21:10] Speaker E: Yeah, they do a lot of legal.
[00:21:11] Speaker D: Stuff and the company they sued went out of business. So maybe it was an easy win, I don't know. But it's a foothold in the beachhead to get compensation for, you know, the humans who actually made the content in the first place.
[00:21:23] Speaker E: Well, they claimed fair use, which meant the content was out there. I don't know that whole legal definition, but basically you can use it because everybody else is using it. But I have some hope that people would get paid for people taking their original creative material and using it for themselves.
[00:21:37] Speaker D: Yeah, I'd like to get some other opinions on this decision. Karen.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Who knows what's the future with AI but for right now, I'm using it as a useful tool, but I can see how it's a double edged sword.
[00:21:50] Speaker D: Matt.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: I do wish that US government would establish some regulatory body to help protect the creative class and people who are generating original content.
[00:22:00] Speaker D: I don't know what the answers are, but obviously I'm pretty charged up about it.
Gordon, what are your thoughts?
[00:22:06] Speaker A: I do think you can't stop progress, unfortunately, and I'm wondering if this is just one of the prices that you pay for progress.
[00:22:13] Speaker D: Speaking of intellectual property, if you have an idea for an invention or idea for a trademark, you can contact us Gearhart
[email protected] We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire, entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights. And if you want to learn more, you can learn more about
[email protected] or if you want to learn more about trademarks, go to learnmoreaboutrademarks.com get a free white paper or sign up for a consultation with one of our attorneys. Passage to Profit. Stay tuned. We have secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up soon. You don't want to miss that. We'll be back right after this.
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[00:24:36] Speaker G: 8004-3067-2280-0430-6722.
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[00:24:51] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:24:55] Speaker D: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard on 38 stations across the United States. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally, and we've also been recently named as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast by Feedspot database. So now it's time for Elizabeth's Spotlight. Elizabeth, tell us what's been going on.
[00:25:21] Speaker E: Yes, well, I have a few things going on. First, I want to give a shout out to my podcast partner for my cat podcast called the Jersey Pod Cats, which I started with Danielle Woolley to try to find a cure for a cat that was scratching his face off practically. And he's kind of got a cure, but he's holding steady, so that's good. So we mainly deal with medical issues for cats and talk about our cats, and that's a lot of fun. I also have a meetup that I'm organizing. It's called podcast and YouTube creators community. And we do a different topic every month. And some we do just on zoom, some we do hybrid zoom at the Gearhart Law Building. And the reason we do them at the Gearhart Law Building, the whole reason I started this was to see if there was anybody interested in learning more. And we have gotten quite a good response. But Richard and I had been working on remodeling the upstairs of the Gerhardt Law Building into a podcast studio, an event space 1400 square feet up there. We have a little bathroom and a kitchen. We have a video studio, we have an audio studio. We have a big room for people that want to do photos or short videos. And we have a green room for hair and makeup. So it's almost done. We've been working like crazy on it. The grand opening is April 28th of this year. It's in Summit, New Jersey. I'll be talking about it more. It's from noon till 8pm with cocktail hour at 5pm and we're going to let people use the equipment and kind of check it out. So really excited about that. So planning has started up for that, and the mayor of our little town is going to come and say a few words. So that's what I've been up to.
[00:26:56] Speaker D: That's great. That's great.
[00:26:57] Speaker E: And now for the medical minute.
[00:26:59] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:27:00] Speaker E: So I like a little bit of milk before I go to bed. I think it helps me sleep better.
[00:27:04] Speaker D: Right.
[00:27:05] Speaker E: And we like.
[00:27:06] Speaker D: But milk has a lot of sugar in it.
[00:27:07] Speaker E: Milk has sugar.
[00:27:08] Speaker D: And night, if you drink a lot.
[00:27:09] Speaker E: Of milk, also supposed to be inflammatory, but we love our dairy. But there's a new study that talks about this compound called Trikaprin and they did some research on it in Japan. So this was really only on Japanese people, but they think that it could affect the whole population.
And what they found was that there's this weird heart condition, triglyceride deposit cardiomyovasculopathy. This compound which is tricaparin, is found in coconut oil. It's a medium chain triglyceride, but it's also in milk. And that really helps people not die from heart failure when they take that compound. If they have this now this is a rare thing. They've just found it. So what they found out was the people that took the supplement Tricaparin had 100% 3 year and 5 year survival rates. And the control group that didn't take it had a 78.6% three year survival rate and a 68% five year survival rate. So based on this study, it seems like this chemical really does help people and I think it may help with other heart conditions. They're just getting started on the research with this. So it's okay to drink milk.
[00:28:21] Speaker D: Thank heaven.
[00:28:21] Speaker E: And coconut oil is a great coconut oil.
[00:28:24] Speaker D: That's always been good for us though. Right.
[00:28:26] Speaker E: So that's my medical minute.
Our next presenter has a service that everybody with small business needs. His name is Mike Strippelhoff. He has RedhawkTech.com that's Redhawk-Tech.com he helps companies solve their tech problems basically with programming and maintenance and workshops, all sorts of things. So welcome Matt, tell us all about what you do.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Sure. We develop, support, maintain custom business applications for SMBs and mid market clients all over the United States. Really what's special about the way that we operate is we're the first and only software engineering consultancy that treats it like a managed service. So we develop, support and maintain these custom solutions under a fixed monthly fee schedule so they get the financial and operational stability that they need to really invest heavily in innovation and compete with much larger organizations.
[00:29:18] Speaker D: So just to kind of expand on this, we'll tease it out for our listeners who may not be so familiar with these things. Most companies, like for example, Gearhart Law, we don't have an inside IT department. We hire somebody that comes in and they fix our outlook and they fix our email and they fix the OneDrive and you know, all that stuff when it breaks. Right. Sometimes big companies have to build software so that the two softwares can talk to each other. Right. And so your business now is to create a regular managed service for those built interactions. Is that a pretty accurate way to say it?
[00:29:57] Speaker B: It's a very accurate way to say it. And it's timely with regard to AI solutioning as well. Because most companies who want to leverage AI within their organization need data from multiple data sources, multiple software solutions that they're already paying for, that maybe they bought off the shelf. But you need to liberate that data from those systems, bring it into a centralized data warehouse, make sure it's governed properly, secure, et cetera. And then you can build things like custom AI agents that help their knowledge workers internally move faster, be more productive within their business. And sometimes you're developing field service applications. It might be a mobile app, it might be a web based portal. Things that they can't find off the shelf.
[00:30:40] Speaker D: Yeah, right.
[00:30:41] Speaker E: Well, it was tough. So Richard decided to put an enterprise resource program in erp. What it does is it ties a whole bunch of different parts of your company together, like the financials, maybe the timekeeping. For us, it's, you know, invoicing and client information, all that. And it's been hard because the software, as I had joked earlier, is always in beta. Right. And there's always an upgrade to the next version. And we have custom coding in ours because we took an off the shelf that you use for a plumbing supply business and tried to force it into working for a law firm. So there's a bunch of custom coding. So every time you want to do an upgrade, it costs a bunch of money. But the reason he did that was to get the reports he needs to run the business.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:24] Speaker E: And so that's kind of what you're doing for people. It sounds like, like helping them get the data they need so they can run their business better.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: That's correct. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times it's visualizing that data and executive dashboards, they can identify what those key performance indicators are that they need to see on a daily basis to make the right decisions that we're going to have long term downstream effects.
[00:31:45] Speaker D: We installed our ERP and it cost a lot of money and took a lot of time and it was very disruptive to our business operations. But when I look at what we invested and then the information we got, we were able to use that to fix pretty big problems that we didn't know were there. And so it actually has really resulted huge leap in terms of profitability and collections and all sorts of different activities. And so it was worth the investment, it was worth the pain to go through it. And so I just repeat that story because if you are a business owner, having that data available is really important to make sure that you maximize your business.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, we've created a lot of really simple to use tools and not software specifically, but ways to think through what the opportunity is for the business. Sometimes if I'm talking to a client or a prospect and they're describing what they think the business outcome is on the other side of an investment like this, I'll challenge them. If they can't articulate what the return on investment is, if they can't articulate why it's worth investing in, then any investment we put in front of them in terms of what we think the budget and timeline is going to be, they're just going to see pure cost. So by being able to demonstrate and if any of your listeners are interested, they can go out to Redhawk Tech.com reach out via email or even find me on LinkedIn and I'll be happy to share this Excel workbook. But it's a really simple way to document what your routine manual activities are in your business. There's another worksheet in the workbook that has your employees. So total cost per employee, which is just salary times, call it 1.5 to get the burden rate on benefits, et cetera. That simple formula will calculate the cost per minute of that individual on the other worksheet where you're putting in the routine work they're doing every day that maybe you think the ERP is going to automate or streamline, it'll tell you exactly what you're spending today on those manual processes. So then when you look at an investment in an ERP or you look at an investment in a custom software solution, and you can estimate using the same Excel workbook, which I'm happy to give to anyone who's interested, you can put in what you think the outcome is if you make that investment. And it will tell you how much money you're going to gain back in terms of efficiency. Now you can take those same resources in house, those knowledge workers and put them on other more meaningful work.
[00:34:13] Speaker E: Right, because we have the attorneys doing stuff that they really shouldn't be doing because our systems aren't perfect yet. And it's like they could be doing billable time work instead of this. Right.
[00:34:23] Speaker D: So you can kind of switch things out a little bit. Matt, when we were talking before, I think you had a pretty interesting story about you've been in business for a while, right? About 17 years. But things really started to take off just a couple of years ago. So maybe you can give a little sense of what your journey was like in creating this company and some of the challenges that you faced as you were building it.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I started the company in 2008, just like Gordon did with his business, you know, and when the real estate market dropped and nobody had any money, I wasn't selling all the clever things that he was selling. But fortunately enough, we were able to carve out a lane for ourselves, myself and my business partner. I think this is true for a lot of entrepreneurs that decide they're going to go out and do something on their own. He and I were both high performers with regard to our individual skill sets. We decided we could do it better than the people we worked for. We had a slightly different perspective on how to get it done. Now. I didn't have vision beyond. I just want to do this on my own. I'm tired of working for other people. And by the way, I was fired from my two prior jobs, and there's no freaking plan B. It's like, I just have to do this on my own. And we'll talk about fear. Earlier, I was thinking a lot about financial stability. That was probably one of the earlier fears that I had. But we got started on that journey. We grew relatively quickly. We broke through our first million dollars in top line revenue in year two pretty fast. And we pretty much stayed around a million bucks in top line revenue until 2016. So it took eight years to get close to 2 million. We hit 1.6 billion. Now going into that stretch, we knew without a doubt we had a client concentration risk Time leveraged business. You're trading hours for dollars, and you add people to your team, and now you're keeping them busy as well. But you're serving a limited number of customers when you're a small business.
[00:36:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: The client concentration risk is a simple formula. Any and the way I think about it is any customer that is more than 10 or 15% of my total gross revenue, it's probably okay. But in this particular time in my business, I had a client that was 40% of my gross revenue. That's client concentration risk. So if something happens to that account, my company suddenly could lose 40% of my gross revenue. So in the spring of 2017, within all the same week, by the way, I got three phone calls.
My three largest accounts, number one, number two and number three. And the first two, the phone call was almost identical. They said, matt, you know how things go in a merger and acquisition. No one can know until the deal is done. I'm sorry to inform you that the work that we've been discussing for this next year is on hold indefinitely. So we expected about a million dollars in revenue and we were finally going to. We thought we might actually hit 3 million in 2017.
We'd barely broke a million dollars in 2017 and I had to lay off half my staff. And that was awful. You know, driving to work after getting a couple of those phone calls, trying to process what we were going to do, knowing that I was going to have to go talk to people that had been with me for some of them for eight years. I'm thinking about my responsibility to them and their families. Where are they going to get their next paycheck? Now the one thing I will say that I think is a testament to the character of the business. Myself and my, my partner, we made phone calls to competitors in our market in Greater Cincinnati to find out who was hiring. We made recommendations before we made any layoffs. Those people had places where if they were interested, they could go find full time informant. Everybody was working within two weeks of the layoffs.
[00:37:50] Speaker D: That's amazing. That's an amazing story.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: It was painful. I'm glad I did what I did and I'm happy for them, but it took us a while to recover. So that was, that's part of the journey. That's part of the risk of doing something out there on your own. And it's. If you embrace the lessons that you learn from those moments, you can have breakthroughs.
[00:38:09] Speaker D: So what were the takeaways from that?
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Well, the first one is mitigate client concentration risk early and often and find different creative ways to do that. In 2018, we got back to profitability. 2019, I had a vision for a new business model in this space which I talked about at the very beginning of the introductions. And that is how do we remove a lot of friction in the customer journey in the professional services space, specifically software engineering. And there's only two ways outside of what we're offering today that a customer can invest in custom software. It's either going to be through a staff software consultancy, which is, you got to get value out of butts and seats. They're going to charge you a minimum. You're paying for 40 hours a week for that team, for as long as you have that team, you got to get value from the team. The other is a boutique software engineering group that's going to charge time and materials for the work they're doing for you. But in both cases, you're going to find yourself in a break fix relationship at the end of the project. Because now you're only going to call them if something goes wrong. The work's done, you paid a fortune for it, you hope to get their intended return on investment, but now you're in this strange place where nobody's really properly supporting and maintaining it proactively. So you're waiting as a customer for one of three things to happen before you reach back out. And it's going to be either you want a new feature, which is great, or there was a security issue tied back to that custom software application that's bad, or it simply stopped working, probably because of an operating system, browser update, hardware update. That's a lengthy way of saying that that's how we figured out how to mitigate what we ran into in the past and create a managed recurring revenue model in the professional services space specific to software. So now, for example, this year we have a little over 2 million in revenue. That's, that's booked, scheduled, guaranteed recurring revenue.
[00:39:55] Speaker D: So how did you roll out this new program? So, you know, some people who aren't familiar with it might be reluctant to sign up. So how did you get it out there?
[00:40:05] Speaker B: The first step is to test the market. Is it going to work? We had an opportunity that presented itself in the fall of 2019 and this is a pervasive issue. In the mid market people have key person risks inside their four walls. There might be somebody who created something. It could have been a vendor, maybe it's an internal resource. They're dependent on whatever was created and now they're very concerned about how to support, maintain it if that person wins the lottery or if they just go away. So fast forward, I had an opportunity, I presented this model, they bought that way, they're still a customer today. We deliver service through fractional teams. So they have that financial and operations ability they need. So we just had to learn from the market and then we had to get really good at delivering this model over and over again. So we matured into it. Now we have a lot of processes and some of our own proprietary tech in house to get good at this business model. So we've doubled in size each year over the last three years and we'll double again this year.
[00:41:00] Speaker E: That's awesome. So how do people get ahold of you? I mean, it sounds like you're the go to guy. If somebody needs some software, yeah, they.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: Can visit redhawk tech.com they can also find me on LinkedIn. Just search for Matt Strippelhoff. I'll be happy to share the Excel workbook I described earlier. We have a tech innovation workshop that is a do it yourself solution. You can reach out and think through some solutions.
[00:41:21] Speaker E: Mike Strippelhoff, Redhawk Tech.com that's Redhawk-Tech.com thank you.
[00:41:27] Speaker D: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:41:30] Speaker E: Now it is time for my dear friend Karen Rubensy, who really has something, I think so super valuable for people who are trying to transition into life after having made a major change in their lives. So, Karen, please describe what you're doing.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a culmination of five years of sobriety. So I'm Karen Rubenstein. I am an alcoholic. My Sober date is May 25, 2020. A couple of years ago, I went back and I got certified as a transformation coach and a life coach. I had been told, oh, you'd be really good, like working with people in recovery. I'm like, or a life coach. So I was like, huh, you know, the transformational piece, I just loved it because it's finding the underlying beliefs that are holding you back. And basically somebody said the other day, recovery is transformation. So I've been focused on women in recovery and working with clients. And about three months ago, you know, it's just like you were talking about the little Tiffany box. I thought, oh, this is my life. This is my little Tiffany blue box. But I believe in a universal journey and a higher power. So I feel like this is an opportunity. I'm starting Women in the Rooms, an online recovery community for women. Because in the recovery community, going to a recovery meeting is called Going to the Rooms. And when I'm in the rooms, I'm always looking around going, where are the women in the rooms? Because it's 90% men and 10% women and I know we're out there. I was one of the people that avoided recovery rooms for years and they could have helped me. So I had to hit a very hard rock bottom. Five years ago, I was drinking about a half a gallon of vodka a day and barely existing. I felt hopeless. I went to rehab, went into the rooms, and I found out that recovery is more than just putting down the bottle. I thought, oh, if I could just stop drinking, everything's going to be great.
No, it takes a lot of work. It Takes a daily working of emotional growth. My spiritual growth physical. I have to take care of myself.
[00:43:44] Speaker D: So Karen, what motivated you to drink in the first place, do you think?
[00:43:48] Speaker C: Many factors. I really didn't have coping in life skills. I never felt comfortable in my own skin, really. I didn't have a sense of who I was. I grew up in a very turbulent household. There's a lot of different factors and everybody has a different story. But actually the one story I do hear over and over, I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin. They call alcoholism a disease of emotions. So if I was feeling fearful, like we discussed that the topic of fear, my thing was, oh, or stress. And society kind of pushes that. If you think about it. Oh, you're stressed, have a glass of wine. Oh, you might need meds. Oh, med, med. We've normalized drinking and over medication.
So for me, what I've discovered and what I want to help people with is creating tools and skills for having a healthy lifestyle. I've grown so much. But also the transformation it really does take finding out why you were drinking. For me, it was all fear based and trying to escape and trying to numb pain. That was really why. And I feel like if there was a community like what I'm forming years ago, maybe I would have had a different avenue, a different resource to help me. But this is my journey.
[00:45:07] Speaker E: And I think one thing that's really good about what you're doing, the women in the rooms, is a lot of times if you're drinking and you're partying all the time, all your friends are doing that. They're all like, oh, let's meet at this bar down the street. Or you know, and then if you quit, it's like you may still have some of those friends or you may not. So where do you find friends that are on the same pathway that you are towards recovery? And so that's where I think your women in the rooms really has a lot of value.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: And it's funny, when I was drinking, actively drinking, that was my world. Those were my friends. A lot of people don't drink. That's more normal for them. And when I was actively drinking, I didn't realize that I thought everybody was drinking at that time. I had friends that were in the wine of the month club and they had wine cellars and they had wine parties and you know, I was like, oh yes, I, I like a such and such year of, you know, like everything sounded chic at the end. I was drinking from a box. I really didn't care. And, you know, it's so funny, you know, the people that do have a problem with me not drinking usually kind of have an issue themselves. People that don't have an issue with drinking, they don't even question that I'm not. And you know, it's funny, as I grow healthier, my friends seem to be healthier. I have a healthier community now, including my physicians.
[00:46:21] Speaker E: I feel so good because we became friends like six months ago or something. I know. But one thing I wanted to ask you. So, like, when the women go into the. You have a house?
[00:46:30] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:31] Speaker E: Can you describe the whole thing and what they find when they go into a room and what kind of rooms are there?
[00:46:36] Speaker C: This is what's so exciting. And we were talking about how do we get inspiration or where did things come from and life coaching or whatever. It was my client who in early December, she's like, karen, did you ever think of an online community? And then like, overnight we were in, the next day we were talking. And for a woman especially, or, you know, I'll speak for me, a home is like my haven. So I'm starting with just the basics, but I have a vision and I have a couple of people getting on board. So you go onto the welcoming front porch. And then for the early in sobriety, the women coming in is come into the parlor, and it's open discussion and skills and tools that they can learn. Just basic things like how to go to a party and not drink and journaling. Just little tips and things to keep you on a nice little steady foundation. Then as you move further into the rooms, there's the living room for emotional growth, which is the key for transformation. You know, like, that's how you really do put down the bottle for life. So emotional growth. Then there's the loft. Somebody said, oh, you have to have the spiritual growth in the attic. And I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound nice. So the loft for spiritual growth. And then dear friend, who's also a known author and she has a cooking school, May Friedel, she's like, Karen, she's so excited about. And Lisbeth knows her too, and she wants do a video every week with tips on nutrition and good cooking. So I have that. And then I found this lovely woman in Canada that I met last year, and I was telling her about it, and she's an engineer and she's got back into personal training. So we were talking about that, and I'm like, huh? How about a wellness studio in the home and she's like, I'll do it. And I'm like, oh, wow. So, like, little rooms for growth and inspiration. And I want to have a library, the home library, a nook. Have people I know, people that have written books on recovery, have people come in, like, once a month, have events or some people are afraid to go to rehab. And I have friends that are in the rehab business that run recovery houses. And I'm like, could you come on and speak? And they're like, yeah. So that the misery. I want to be out there to show people there is life after alcohol. And I was saying to Matt, before we began today, it's like, I'm a suburban housewife. I weighed 220 pounds. I was at the depths of despair, hopelessness. I turned it around and I didn't do it myself. I had community and support, and it's been a journey and there is hope. So I'm kind of like, I'm the person that you meet at the supermarket. Like, I like if I can do it, you know, anybody.
[00:49:14] Speaker E: You lost all the weight. You look beautiful now. You look incredible. And that's not how you were before you made this transition, right?
[00:49:22] Speaker C: No, actually, for most of my life, I was thin and then. But I went through a trauma in my 40s, a severe trauma, and I actually fled the state. I moved out of state. I moved up to Massachusetts. Thank God, My husband, who now we're celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary, thank God he stuck by me. That was when I really gave up hope. And that's when I just dove into a bottle. I. I didn't know what to do. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to turn. And my source, my only coping skill was wine, which turned to vodka. It was just not a healthy way of living. But I really didn't know any way else, and I didn't know any way out.
[00:50:03] Speaker D: So how do you know if you drink to the point where you really just have to quit for the rest of your life? I mean, what are the signs?
[00:50:10] Speaker C: There's an extra expression in the rooms. A cucumber can become a pickle, but a pickle can never go back to being a cucumber. There were points in my life I believe I was dangerously drinking or drinking too much to escape. But there is a point that I really did become addicted and my body chemistry changed. So when I actually moved back, when we moved back to New Jersey, and I thought, oh, good, you know, I've gotten through the trauma. I wasn't thinking that rationally, but I was like, you know what? I can stop drinking now. But I could not. That's when I crossed over. I had magnets taped to my head to, like, thump my brain and try to, like, I went to a hypnotist. I tried everything, everything to stop drinking. So it really took going into rehab for five months. And I look at the growth now and I'm like, I feel better now five years into recovery, better than I have in my entire life. And I feel comfortable the way that I'm speaking now. I couldn't even speak from the time I was like 15 to about five years ago. My throat would close up. I couldn't speak. So with work to be done and with the help and support of community and hopefully with places like women in the rooms, you know, people can really discover themselves and transform their lives. Like, that's what I really want to give back. We're not meant to live a life of, like, deception, despair or sadness or fear. Life is about joy and learning and growing. And so there's, there's things that we can overcome and tools that we can use. And again, honestly, nobody does it by themselves. We really need community.
[00:51:46] Speaker E: I think it's going to be super successful. Is your website launched or when does it launch?
[00:51:51] Speaker C: I have a website I started. There's an online community platform that is wonderful. It's called Mighty Network and it has, like, I have the ability to go in and create these little rooms and differentiate. So I launched it. I sent a couple of invites out. So that's where the meetings are going to take place. Right now I have the website karenrubenstein.com R U B I N S T E I N so we can find information also. Oh, right now I have a great recovery guidebook that's also like, if you go onto my website, you can find that, too.
[00:52:25] Speaker E: Karen Rubenstein, thank you. You are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest today will be back right after this for Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. Don't go away, man.
[00:52:36] Speaker F: I had a rough night's sleep, boy. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday and I. I just couldn't sleep, man. I'm dying here. Somebody help me. IRS problems affect more than just your finances. If you're ready to take back control of your life and you owe more than $10,000, you need to call the tax doctor. Their expert staff can immediately protect you from the IRS and state collectors and get you the best possible tax settlement guaranteed. The IRS has recently released new programs geared in helping struggling taxpayers where you may qualify to settle your tax debt and wipe out up to 85% or more of what you currently owe. If you owe $10,000 or more in back taxes, call, call a tax doctor right now. See if you qualify to pay less.
[00:53:19] Speaker G: 8002-6219-2680-0262-1926.
800-262-1926. That's 800-262-1926.
[00:53:35] Speaker F: It's passage to Profit.
[00:53:36] Speaker E: Alicia Morrissey is our program coordinator here on Passage to Profit, and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passagetoprofitshow.com website and check out her album. Now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind, and we are going to start with Matt Strippelhoff. Matt, do you have a secret or something really profound you can share with our listeners?
[00:54:02] Speaker B: I will just say that based on our topic today, I think resonates as well, is embrace the fear. Embrace like professional athletes. If you can convert that sense of anxiety into fuel and use that to prepare for what's next, you'll be successful.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: I think that's excellent.
[00:54:20] Speaker E: Karen Rubenstein, what is your secret?
[00:54:22] Speaker C: This is what's so exciting. And we were talking about how do we get inspiration or where did things come from and life coaching or whatever. It was my client who in early December, she's like, karen, did you ever think of an online community and for a woman especially, or, you know, I'll speak for me, a home is like my haven. So you go onto the welcoming front porch. Right now I have the website karenrubenstein.com R U B I N S T E I N and it's open discussion and skills and tools that they can learn, which is the key for transformation.
[00:54:56] Speaker E: Gordon Fraser, what's your secret?
[00:54:58] Speaker A: My secret is connected to fear and it's public speaking. And so it's clench your butt cheeks.
[00:55:05] Speaker D: You know, I've noticed a lot of actors doing that.
[00:55:08] Speaker E: So that's helped you get toned back there, too. So that's a double whammy.
[00:55:11] Speaker D: Yeah. Wow.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: I believe in audacious goals because I think too many people set low goals and then unfortunately meet them. I wanted to have a global business. I wanted to have a scalable business. But also the most important thing is I wanted to have a residual aspect to the business that I had. And you can't get a residual income when you're trading time for money. I think it's really understanding what it is you've got what you want and how you're going to get it. So I couldn't quit. I knew what payday looked like. I didn't know when it was going to happen. You know, it's like the bamboo shoot. It's like you water it. You water it for like whatever. I don't know, it's like three years or something. Nothing happens. And on the fourth or fifth year, it grows 70ft. You don't know when the 70ft is. In many businesses, all big businesses are time leveraged. I started my business myself basically trading the 24 hours of the day that I had by the money that I made from the sale. So on my own, that's all I could do. It could be like a hairdresser and, or a trucker. You're driving your vehicle. It's you that is responsible for making the money. On your own, you're still trading your time for money, even if you have a staff, because you only have that one business. But if you can magnify that so you buy. If you're able to reinvest your money into more coffee shops, save up money to buy another truck or another salon, then you're able to leveraging your time, you're multiplying your time through the efforts of somebody else.
[00:56:37] Speaker C: Excellent.
[00:56:38] Speaker E: Richard Gearhart, what is your secret?
[00:56:40] Speaker D: My secret is don't jump to conclusions when you don't have to. Sometimes you have to make a gut decision. But if you can do a little bit more investigation sometimes and try to get a better idea of what's really going on, then you don't do as many stupid things.
[00:56:54] Speaker E: Well, my secret is a well known saying which is kind of hard to put into practice sometimes. But don't put off till tomorrow what you think you should do today. So I, I was like, okay, I'm gonna order some business cards for this meetup or this meeting that Richard and I are going to tonight. So if I would have done it yesterday as a possibility, I would have got them today. And I thought about it yesterday, I just didn't do it. So I'll find another way to get them done. I already have a backup plan.
[00:57:18] Speaker D: That's great. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer, Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishikeb Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
