[00:00:00] Speaker A: You'd like to think we've built the world's great content creation tool.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Our entire company motto is play simply, learn exceptionally.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: It makes sense mathematically and practically.
[00:00:11] Speaker C: I'm Richard Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker D: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard some snippets from our show. Do you want to know more about starting your business? Stay tuned.
[00:00:20] Speaker E: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it hard. Now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:38] Speaker D: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their business journey and also share helpful insights about the successes that they've had. We have a very special guest, 10x co founder Ian Utili, and he's a tech entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley, founder of Attention Live, a Web3AI innovation company and a producer for the Web AI3 Roundtable Summit.
[00:01:14] Speaker D: And then we have two amazing presenters. I'm really excited about this show today. We have Nelson Breton. He's a B2B marketing expert and he's doing chat in a different way and it's super effective for his clients. You want to hear about this? And then Courtney Peebles, who has been on the show before Solo Bow Toys. She is making toys for kids of all needs and ages. And her toys, she's blowing it out of the market, I'm telling you. So you got to hear what she has to say. And coming up later on, it's Noah's retrospective along with Secrets of the entrepreneurial Mind.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: But before we get to our distinguished guest today, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans want to start a business or are already business owners. And. And we'd like to ask our panel a question that our audience can relate to. So today the question is, can you please provide insights into the journey of building a successful business? Ian, welcome to the show. What insights can you provide regarding the journey of building a successful business?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: My advice to anyone that wants to start a business is to do it with another person or a team. I think partnership is vital and that may be a board of advisors, it may be a bunch of mentors, it might be employees that you hire to support you. Oftentimes, having other co founders is really really helpful so that each of you can bear each other's burden. I think there's something very powerful about doing it as a team and not being a lone ranger.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Courtney, My biggest secret that I tell people is knowing what the quote unquote rules are, but then following what you know is fitting for your business is really going to be the most beneficial thing.
[00:02:58] Speaker F: Nelson, you know, I'll talk a little bit about something that I learned about three or four years ago that I wish I learned way sooner. Just try to stay in that cool, even killed, calm, cool collective mindset. As time goes on, you'll look back on the bad things that happened and the good things that happen and you can still get excited about the good things, but the bad things, they seem insignificant as time passes.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: Those are really great approaches, so thank you for that. Now it's time for our featured guest. Ian Utili is an entrepreneur. He's a tech entrepreneur and as I mentioned, he's from Silicon Valley and he's the founder of Attention Live, a Web3AI innovation company. So I'm kind of curious about what a Web3AI innovation company is. And this company is protecting content creators intellectual property. That's a subject near and dear to my heart. Welcome to the show, Ian. So why don't you tell us a little bit about Web3AI and what that means? That's kind of a new term.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Sure. Well, Web three is a catch all term for distributed ledgers, blockchain, crypto. Many people think of it in terms of bitcoin around money. Businesses often think of it in terms of removing middlemen and supply chain management and how they can get things to go faster. Financial organizations often think of it as tokenizing physical assets into digital means so that you can transfer. That's the Web3 world. This allows distributed ledgers that are not controlled by Amazon's AWS or Microsoft Azure, their cloud servers, but distributed ledgers to support people. So it's technology for the people, by the people. That's kind of the Web3 mentality. Another easy way to think of it is if Web one was websites, brochures on glass and Web two was interactive websites, the Facebooks of the world, the myspaces of the world, which kind of started things. This is where you can post and interact. Web3 is where you can post, interact and own. Web3 is a model where the consumer owns their data, the consumer owns their assets, the consumer's in control. So to the element of IP protection for content creators, there's a big problem today for small and Large content creators, whether it's an individual podcaster or musician or teacher, or it's a massive university or a huge conglomerate, or it's some sort of massive institution, they're having trouble with proving ownership. And so part of this is that the terms, conditions of all of the social media sites that we love, the youtubes of the world, the Facebooks of the world, the Instagrams of the world, the TikToks of the world, their terms are that if you create content in their app and you post it there, they own the content and they simply give the creator a license to use their content. So what we've done is we've allowed people to send their content through our application, which is a traditional software application that anybody would be used to, but we've tied it to the blockchain to web3 in order that when the content is distributed, we prove the ownership for that content creator. So that's the first problem that we solve. We also allow the content creator to better connect with their community. We provide lots of automation tools so content creators can automatically make more money from their content. And so we solve a ton of problems. We'd like to think that we've built the world's great content creation tool, and we anticipate having billions of people around the world use it. So when we think of the future of content creation and IP ownership, we think about the 3 billion people in the world that don't have the Internet. Many people in the audience may not realize there's 3 billion humans that don't have the Internet. They may.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: I don't know whether that's a blessing or a curse.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: I mean, I'll tell you this, the five of us on this conversation, we've had the advantage of having the Internet introduced to us. And then we had pagers introduced to us, and then we had laptops introduced to us, and then phones introduced to us, and then machine learning, which we call AI. Amazon, Alexa had a speaker, and then Siri comes on our phone and we've had this slow, progressive experience. And then all of a sudden, decentralized finance. Bitcoin's here. So we're learning slowly over time what it means to own the data of our own, what it means to leverage something like large language models or AI. We learn how to use these hardware devices. The 3 billion people that are going to hit the Internet, they're not going to have to learn any of that. They're going to have a pair of glasses sent to them, they're going to have a watch sent to them. They're going to have a ring sent to them, and that device will be connected to the Internet, and they'll simply talk to their ring in their own native language in the jungle, and that ring will be able to decipher what they're saying into a common language and then speak back to them in their language. And now all these people that have come online, they're going to say, okay, what can I do with my life now that I'm connected to the world to do better than $2 a day? And some of the things that they'll be able to do is give their attention. Our company's called Attention Live. So I envision a world where people give their attention live to content creators and are compensated for that attention, because attention is so valuable.
[00:08:12] Speaker D: You know what? It's almost like they're going from the 1960s to Star Tre.
Describe it. Right? Like Star Trek, the Next Generation even. Right.
[00:08:24] Speaker C: It'll be interesting to see how they would cope, though, with such a huge change. Right. I mean, that would be. Like you said, we have had sort of a warmup into technology, and now all of a sudden, it's just on you.
[00:08:35] Speaker D: That's the problem. So my understanding of Web3 when it first came out, my very rudimentary understanding was that you would get paid for what the marketing agencies just are taking now, or for what they're just taking now, and you would actually get paid for them. So if they say, okay, she's a female in New Jersey who has cats or whatever, then they have to pay me for using that. Is that kind of how it started?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: That and so much more. Because it's the Internet for the people, by the people, because it's the tech for the people, by the people. The people will decide how they leverage it. And I think this is the important aspect. Another thing that I want to share with the listeners is there's a reason why I love radio. I've been doing radio interviews for a couple of decades, and I continue to. And there's a reason for it. I don't believe that the future of digital engagement is visual. I think TikTok and YouTube stories and Instagram reels have an end in terms of their dominance. The future is audio. And the reason for that, number one, bandwidth. No matter how fast Starlink is and no matter if the Internet bandwidth is free for people in the jungle, there's still a bandwidth issue. And so the ability to have video come to somebody and video to go back up to the Internet, there's a problem in terms of infrastructure costs. So that's a big deal. The second thing is content creators don't always want to be seen. Right behind me is the Pacific Ocean. I have the grace of living on the sand in California. Now I'm on a balcony, so you can't see people's faces. But if I wasn't like high and away from people, you know, I'd be worried like, well, who's back there? What are they doing? Is it okay that they're on my video? And so as a content creator, I'm not just concerned about me and how I look, but I'm also concerned about other people behind me. And most importantly, it is so demanding to watch videos. How many of us go to a YouTube video, set our phone down and listen to it? How many of us put on a YouTube video on the TV, turn the volume up and don't look at it? Why? Because we don't want. Exactly. We don't want the content creator or the platform to demand our 100% undivided attention. We want to give our passive attention.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: When we learn, you're right, you can listen in the car, you can listen while you're doing other things. I wanted to ask you, Ian, as a technology guy who's like, obviously devoted his life to technology, do you ever have reservations about that? Do you ever worry that maybe you're helping to push the world in the wrong direction? Maybe we should be relying less on technology.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: I think the world worries enough and I don't need to participate in the anxiety and stress. I think a lot of our concern is stemmed from media. So I think Terminators, Blade Runner, altered Carbon, Electric dreams, all the things out there that have basically built this narrative that technology is going to hurt humanity, it's going to harm humanity, it's going to wipe humanity out. It's much easier to create media that causes anxiety and fear because that's how you get people to hit on the next show, on the next season and wait for the next movie. That's how you get them to stay into the book, because the thrill has got their heart and their heart is pounding. What's going to happen? What we don't see a lot of today are Jetsons and Star Trek's anti dystopic view of society. Now, I don't think anybody that's reasonable believes in utopia, but I am an anti dystopic person. So I like the idea of Jetsons. I like the idea of families still being together and being in community and being connected with other humans, but having technology giving us flying cars and easy, quick meals and all the fun things. When you look at Star Trek, what's the premise of Star Trek? That there's not a universal basic income. No, there's a universal maximum income. Everyone has all of their needs and more covered. And so what do the humans do? Well, they have all their needs covered, so they want to go explore the universe and Captain Kirk wants to be in charge and the bartender wants to make drinks. Kirk is not better than the bartender. They both are making the decision that I want to go to space. One guy says, I want to take the responsibility of leadership, and the other girl says, I want to make drinks and make people happy up there. And so why does that happen? Because on Earth in this story, there's a universal maximum income where everyone's needs are already taken care of and therefore you go out to explore the heavens. And this is the type of mentality I want to maintain. Nothing new happens in the world. We repeat the same cycles, generation after generation for millennia after millennia. And because humanity's never destroyed themselves up to this point, I have no reason to logically or practically believe that we're going to do anything that would cause our destruction. The things we create will ultimately benefit humanity.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: I don't think we should be so optimistic. I think we should have careful optimism. But I mean, Bill Gates just came out the other day and said, AI could ruin us all in 10 years. To me, that's something that we need to be concerned about.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: The KUDs are real. A lot of people listening probably have some sort of faith orientation. Whether they believe it or not. Maybe they grew up with it. It's pretty well known that in the sacred scriptures, how does the Earth start? Creator of all things uses their voice to say, let there be light. Okay. And then you look throughout history, we look to great spiritual leaders, Muhammad and Buddha and Jesus. How did Jesus heal people? He said, lazarus, come out of the grave. Stand up and walk. There's something so powerful about our words. Our words destroy and build up. Our words are death, and our words are life. So I choose to protect the words that I personally say because it affects my life, it affects my family's life, it affects my businesses, it affects how I approach business deals. So I will continue to be the happiest person as destruction comes, that is the outcome, because I choose to use the the weapon of my voice to speak forth the things that I want to manifest in the world.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Ian Utile, tech entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: I'm going to give you this lead in. When I was growing up, we had a cat named Kiki. But Kiki was nothing like your Kiki.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: I'm glad that you brought that up. So Kiki is a emerging multi billion dollar IP universe. Kiki is the most viral cat in the world. It has been shared 12 billion times on the Internet. So this show is called Passage to Profit. So let me share a quick story that will hopefully encourage your audience to think about what it takes to be successful. Kiki was the mascot of an E commerce business. That E commerce business in Asia did $100 million a year. Wildly successful e commerce business. Well, the business folded during the pandemic and that's one of the risks of entrepreneurship. You could fail. But the mascot took off and the mascot went crazy and became this most famous cat, at least in Asia. And all of you, all four of you and many of the audience have used the cat. So if you ever tried to share a cute little cat with a white background, that was probably the Kiki cat. We acquired the ip. We thought about what can be done with it. We just launched the first of 15 video games, working on comic books, working on movies. We have major merchandising licensing deals with K pop bands and we have collectible deals that we're doing. We also, in addition to all that, we have a bunch of stuff with digital assets and we have two fast food restaurants that we also are working with. So we have a fast food restaurant licensing deal in Europe and a different one in Asia. So we are building a massive IP universe. My friend and mentor bought the Batman franchise and it took him 10 years to make the first movie with Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. For 10 years, he suffered. He suffered through rejection after rejection rejection. He owned the license. And everybody thought Batman was a joke because they thought of the TV show Pow. Whack, Wham. And so Batman was a joke. And he took that and he said, I have a vision for the Dark Knight. I think Bruce Wayne is the story to tell. It's not about Batman. It's about this tormented man, Bruce Wayne. That's what humans will connect with. Well, in the same way we look at the Kiki IP and we say, how do we take this to the next level? How do we apply the principles that Michael Uslan used in Batman's development and how do we apply that here? And so what we did was we launched all these things. We also launched a tokenized community. And on the day one, we launched the tokenized community. The market cap went to $10 million. What a moment, right? We took something that didn't exist and we created $10 million of perceived value. And then the same day it went down to a million dollars. Oh, no, we failed. Everything's falling apart. That's the intensity of entrepreneurship. Then later on that week, in day six, we hit $100 million. And then we've gone through all sorts of cycles of experience in that process. And today we have a very streamlined team with a very clear mission and we know exactly where we're going and how we're going to get there and nothing will stop us. We are obsessed with the end result. We think about it, we talk about it. That is the prize that we're going after.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Ian Utile, tech entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley. You're listening to Passage to Profit, Everybody with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. And we'll be back right after this message.
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[00:19:58] Speaker E: Now back to passage to profit once again.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart with 10X Co founder Ian Utili. Elizabeth, you had a question?
[00:20:07] Speaker D: We were talking about Kiki before the break, and Kiki started as this little cat character, and now Kiki has been blown into a number of different things. And you have a vision where you want the whole Kiki universe to go.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Well, we see Kiki expanding well beyond Asia. To keep it very simple, if you are on your cell phone or you're on social media and you want to share a gif or a gif, the gif, the moving image, and you pull it up, the Kiki cat is one of the top things that's there at all times. If you ever typed in a word like happy, sad, excited, angry, then most likely one of the Kiki cat images will pop up as an example.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: It's an emoji.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: It's an emoji. So people love this emoji so much that they've shared it 12 billion times. But much like Batman had expressions through lots of comic books and lots of TV shows, that's not Batman. That's just expressions of Batman. And so Kiki is the core intellectual property that we own. There's been lots of expressions of Kiki that people have loved. And now we're creating new expressions through video games and through all sorts of ways that people can connect with it.
[00:21:18] Speaker D: So do you have trademarks or registered copyrights?
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So we own it outright. We paid a million dollars to acquire the intellectual property, which shows our initial commitment. We raised millions of dollars for the project, and the first thing that we did was we launched a tokenized community. Or many people would know this as a meme coin. Right? Many people are familiar with Doge, Shiba Inu or Pepe or these different meme coins. And on the IP front, let me say this. There have been three major meme coins that have come under IP lawsuits. Pepe grew to almost a $10 billion market cap. It turns out the people that launched it don't own the Pepe, and they had no connection to the owner. There's another one called Chill Guy. Again, independent people launched with somebody else's ip. They did not own it and they launched it. And then finally the Squirrel. Peanut the Squirrel. The story of the man that had the government come in and kill his squirrel. Somebody launched the Peanut the squirrel meme coin and they did not have any connection to the owner. So all three of those tokenized communities blew up to billion dollar value. Think of it as, you know, a collectible, but it's kind of like a stock. I mean, however you want to imagine it now under lawsuit and being said, they have to take everything down.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: But you own it, right? You own Kiki.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: We own it outright.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: If somebody wants to get into Kiki, is there a way for them to do that?
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I would have them go to Kiki Cat xyz, that's kikykat xyz. Or just go to X formerly Twitter or any social media site, type in K I K I and you'll see all of our stuff.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: So how can people find out more about you and your projects?
[00:22:53] Speaker A: I A N U T I L E that's Ianutilli. So I'm Ianutilli everywhere on the Internet.
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Awesome. Well, thank you very much and we really appreciate your perspective and we wish you the best of luck with Kiki and authenticating footage and everything else. So now for something completely different. It's time for intellectual property news where we get to the meat and potatoes of the issue controversy brewing over what to call sirloin in different states. So in New York, it's been called New York strip steak going back to the 1800s. And now we have a challenger coming up, the state of Texas because they believe that they grow most of the cows the state of Texas, they want to call it Texas strip steak. And I think this has a lot of implications.
[00:23:47] Speaker D: Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas wants this one restaurant in New York to rename their steak. The restaurant's been open for four years and he said the change of boost estate's cattle ranchers and help better market Texas beef. But as Pete Wells observed, the way he framed the issue carried more than a whiff of red meat politics.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: He said the jokes just write themselves with this one. Right? I mean, Courtney, what are your thoughts here?
[00:24:12] Speaker B: I think I don't really see the way that you can actually like enforce that now.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: I don't think it's enforceable. So, Nelson, what are your thoughts?
[00:24:19] Speaker F: Call it whatever you want. Give me a big fat rib eye.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll see where this goes. I don't think at the end of the day anybody's going to care about it too. Much. But that said, if you have any questions about intellectual property, you can certainly contact us at Gearhart Law and you can reach us through our website, gearhartlaw.com and if you also have questions about trademarks, you can go to learnmoreaboutrademarks.com where you can download a white paper on trademarks. I guarantee we do not discuss the New York Strip State, Texas Strip state controversy. You'll have to get more information on your own for that. But you can download a white paper and also talk with a Gearhart Law attorney. And stay tuned. We have to take a commercial break, but pretty quick. We're going to have secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up and you don't want to miss that. So stay tuned.
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[00:27:10] Speaker E: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard on 38 markets across the United States. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% of podcasts according to Global Listen Notes. And we've also been selected now for the second time by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. So we're very proud of that. Now it's time to talk about Elizabeth's project. So spotlight on you, Elizabeth.
[00:27:44] Speaker D: Well, I still have my podcast, the Jersey podcats podcast about cats that I do with Danielle Woolley, and we're taking a little break right now because she's super busy at work, but we have so much to say. When we get together, we talk about cats and their health issues, and sometimes we interview people, and it's really a lot of fun. And then I have.
[00:28:03] Speaker C: Are you gonna talk about Kiki maybe on your next cat podcast?
[00:28:07] Speaker D: Probably would mention Kiki, say, I mean, cats are so popular, right. And there's a lot of cat podcasts, but they're not all the same. So that's another thing about doing your own creative thing. Like, you could do a cat podcast, and it would be completely different from mine. Right. Because that's the beauty of humanity as we're creators. And then I had the podcast and YouTube creators community meetup, which last time we did copyrights and trademarks, and we just had so many questions about that. And Richard was the star of that one. That was a lot of fun. And April 28, we are having the grand opening of our studio in Summit, New Jersey, where we're recording this right now. So we're renting out the studio to people, and I'm coaching people. I have a couple of clients right now that I'm helping start podcasts, so. Oh, I guess I'm also teaching a class right now on podcasting, which I'm really enjoying teaching. Class.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: Yeah. And the students love Elizabeth. They come early before the class. One student came an hour early just to talk with her. So that's the high esteem that they hold her in.
[00:29:07] Speaker D: We're really having a lot of fun. It's more a discussion group than a class because we sit around and they ask questions, go through my slides, but we all talk. So everybody gets a chance to participate, which is the best way to run a class, in my opinion. Yeah. So our studio's almost done. We're getting ready for our grand opening, and I'm pretty excited about it. But enough about Me now I am going to do our medical minute. This comes from Washington State University. It's a new artificial intelligence tool that could help prevent pandemics. They're training it right now on smallpox and mpox viruses so it can identify potential animal reservoirs in geographic areas. And then they can take steps to mitigate that. And then they're thinking that they can take this and also expand it to other types of viruses to try to nip it in the bud when a pandemic's about to start.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: How do they do that, though?
[00:29:57] Speaker D: One thing we've been learning going to these different meetings about AI is AI takes a tremendous amount of energy. I'm glad there's somebody actually looking at that problem or a bunch of somebody's. So enough about that. We're on to Nelson Britton, B2B marketing expert and president of Manufacturing Chats and Interchanges. And he has got a really great way to help companies make a lot more money. So welcome, Nelson. Tell us all about what you're doing.
[00:30:21] Speaker F: Yeah, almost 22 years now, I've been helping B2B companies generate more sales leads and quote requests. It's been a fun journey.
[00:30:29] Speaker D: What is different about your chat?
[00:30:31] Speaker F: Many, many years ago, you know, 20 years ago, we started a website design firm. Then we started doing SEO, you know, search engine optimization to make people rank on the first page of Google so that people could find them. And we started doing email marketing and then we started doing ads on Google and that was driving traffic to the website. So we had all those services and we realized, hey, we're getting people to the website. We just, we need them to take more action. So we build out our live chat infrastructure. You've all seen websites where the little box pops up in the bottom of the website. So we started, we built our chat infrastructure, you know, almost 20 years ago, it's worked. It started converting people at a much higher rate. We started getting more opportunities from the people that were landing on the website. Google has an algorithm that ranks different aspects of your website from content to usability to link structure. There's a whole list of things that the algorithm looks at to determine, hey, does this website belong at the top of the page for these keyword phrases? Think of search as motivation driven. Right? People are searching for something because they have a need. It ties into their motivation.
[00:31:26] Speaker D: You say on your website that you have live people doing the chats. You don't have the bots.
[00:31:31] Speaker F: The bots, Correct. Yeah. We are a real human 24.7chat team. We bid out our Call center infrastructure years ago. Because in the industries we work in, people buy from people. You know, most of the companies we work with, they're relationship driven. So we've suggested since day one, never force your customers or potential customers into automation. Don't force them to deal with a bot. Just like in an ideal situation, when people call into your company, you don't want them having to go through a phone Tree and press 1 for this and 2 for that. They want to talk to somebody, a real human. The same thing happens online. People want to chat with people. So we train up chat teams for our customers. Our customers get anywhere from 3,000 visitors a month to 150,000 visitors a month to their website. And we train up the necessary chat teams, put them in three shifts, and we promise response within seconds 24 7, so those conversations can take place.
[00:32:19] Speaker D: So what does that look like for a company, say that didn't have that six months ago and has had it now for the last six months. What do they expect to see as an increase in their sales?
[00:32:28] Speaker F: It depends on how they deploy it. But with us, our 20 years of data, we typically see a 50 to 150% increase in engagement.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Wow, that's amazing.
[00:32:36] Speaker F: Yeah. More people prefer this method of communication. Me, it's funny, I sell it, but I don't like using chat. I like to, I like to pick up the phone and call and talk to somebody. Right. That's my communication preference. Somebody.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: Well, why do you think that is? Why do you think people like the chat?
[00:32:49] Speaker F: People have preferences. We deal in the B2B space. Most of my customers are, you know, industrial manufacturers of heavy equipment, pumps, boilers, more complex sales environment. I would suggest that an AI bot that has access to your inventory and to your data on your website would probably be a better solution for consumer products that don't have a high average sale but have a high volume of visitors. The goal of a chat team, or should I say the role of a chat team in our B2B customers, where it's a more complex sales cycle, you know, three months to six year sales cycle. You don't want to have the sales process take place during a chat on the website. You don't want to answer every question the visitor has during a chat on the website. So we want to basically engage the visitor that chooses to chat because that's their preference for communication. We want to find out who they are, where they are, are they a current customer, and then some top level information about their facility, their project or their specific application. And then we say, all right, great. One of our experts is going to get back in touch with you for more information. So it's short, sweet, boom. And then we send that chat transcript to them within about five to 10 minutes.
[00:33:53] Speaker D: So you also have interchanges. What is interchanges?
[00:33:56] Speaker F: So interchanges, as I mentioned, the company where we do the websites, the SEO, the search engine marketing, the email marketing, we still have some legacy customers there. We don't really chase that business anymore. It's very much red ocean where lots of people are battling over those type of customers. We did a hard pivot about seven or eight years ago where we said, who are our favorite customers to work with? And this is a huge entrepreneurial lesson. Don't be afraid to pivot. It was scary. But once video and social media and content creation became more critical for marketing, we decided we don't want to grow and continue to do everything and learn more skills. We said, let's niche down. So we said, who are our favorite customers? And that was the industrial companies that we had. And we said, what service serves them best, I. E. What gets the immediate results and has the best retention within our organization? And it was our chat solution. So we said, let's create a new brand called manufacturing chats that came to fruition where we just target industrial companies for our chat solution. Anywhere there's people going to a website where there's a high transactional value. That's our expertise area. Absolutely. And while I talk about how great humans are in this particular aspect, you know, the human chat we provide, we're all in on A.I. i mean, even so much. So one of my side businesses that I have with a friend of mine, we're actually building energy parks for bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure. And we're building an energy management software. They just announced yesterday they're building bitcoin mining operations out in Texas. There's. They're going into that venture, so. So we've got about 20 sites throughout the country where we have in process bitco mining and AI data centers, the grid system, and then providing renewable energy as part of that ecosystem as well. And toss energy is what we're working on there.
[00:35:30] Speaker D: Nelson Breton, B2B marketing expert and president of manufacturing chats and Interchanges.
[00:35:36] Speaker F: So how can people find you, Nelson, at manufacturing chats? Just go to my website, manufacturingchats.com C H A T S Learn about us.
[00:35:44] Speaker C: And if you haven't, they'll chat you up.
[00:35:46] Speaker F: Chat you up.
[00:35:47] Speaker D: Okay, good. Well, thank you very much.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Your heart.
[00:35:52] Speaker D: We're on to a little bit of a change, but still something very innovative, very creative. Solo bow toys. Courtney Peebles, who has been on the show before.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So thank you for having me again. It's changed a lot since I was last on the show. Back then, we only had a couple products, and now we have over 40. We just were at toy fair exhibiting about a month ago, and we took away best plush toy of the year. Huge deal for us, because there was a ton of big companies in our category, and for a small company like us, it was a big deal.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: So, Courtney, this is not just a toy show. It's not like you go to your mall, right. And there's a toy show going on. This is like the big international Toy Fair, Right? This is, like, the biggest toy show of the year, right?
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is by far the biggest show that we do. It was our second time exhibiting, but the toy awards that they do are considered the Oscars of the toy industry.
[00:36:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, congratulations. How did you feel when you got this award?
[00:36:49] Speaker B: So I went to the show by myself. We had one of our contractors. She was gonna come, and then at the last minute, she couldn't come.
So I was by myself at the show. So when I. When they called my name, I had two friends of mine that they met me at the show, and they came to the gala with me. So I was glad that they were there with me, because when they called our name, I was so shocked that I was like, oh, okay, like, we're doing this.
So then I had to go on stage. I had to accept the award, take a photo, and then they ushered me backstage to do an acceptance speech. And I was so full of, like, shock that I didn't even know what to say. But the most full circle part of it for me was that toy specifically, is called Emotional Baggage. And the day that I announced it, I got a call an hour later that my grandfather had passed. And so I very much associated that toy with his passing. And he was a huge, huge part of my life. And it was very unexpected. Like, I never would have thought I would have gotten that call that day. So on the packaging, actually is a dedication to him. And because of just us living far away, some other stuff going on at the time, I actually wasn't able to be at his funeral. So it was very full circle for me and very, like, healing for me that we won the award, and it just meant a lot. And I was so. I was so shocked that I, like, couldn't even Process what was happening. It opened up a lot of doors for us, even more than had already been opened. So it has been very surreal that it happened.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Elizabeth was very close to her grandfather too.
[00:38:22] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. That's tough when that happens. I did watch the show this morning when we had you on before, I just wanted to remind myself about your company and your toys, and I remember talking about the baby, like, putting these little squares into this little slot. Your toys are very tactile, right?
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're simple, so they really play on those experiences. We remove all the bells and whistles that come with most toys, and we try to keep it simple but engaging. So our entire company motto is play, simply, learn exceptionally.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: So can you give us some examples of that? Because I think simplicity is really hard to achieve sometimes, isn't it?
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. You know, our most popular, oldest toy, I say oldest, it's been, like, three years, is the emotions coin drop, and kids love it. And it's actually something that really grows with kids. We also have people as old as, like, in nursing homes using the toy for, like, communicating if they aren't able to communicate their emotions. So it's very simple. It's a wooden box. It has the emotions on the side, and then it has coins associated to the different emotions. So a big part of what we do is we provide the toy, but then we also provide an activity card. That's a starting point. So we give people the idea of where you can start with the toy, and then through everything that we do, we give people more ideas of how you can use it as they grow. So we're keeping that simplicity, but we're also giving people so many other ways to use it and so many opportunities for learning literally through their lifespan.
[00:39:57] Speaker D: So when you say the emotions on the side, do you mean faces showing emotion, or do you mean the words?
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's actually the words above it and then a little emotion faces below it. So there's six emotions. It's our six core emotions emotions. It's happy, sad, angry, surprised, silly, and anxious, which is just like a starting point. And since then.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: I like the silly one.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah, the silly is definitely a favorite. Since then, we've added more emotions. So we're now at 15 total emotions.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: So how long have you been an entrepreneur?
[00:40:29] Speaker B: So it's been since 2022. We have grown much faster than I expected, which obviously is a great problem to have 2024. Midway through the year, we were very aware that tariffs were gonna become a problem. So back then, we were like, okay, well, what do we do? Because this is our income. Like, this is how we take care of our family. And we couldn't just wait and hope that the tariffs didn't happen. So we actually pivoted half of our business to be 3D printing. So now we 3D print toys alongside the toys that we mass produce. So we are carrying out an expansion plan in the next couple months that's expanding our five printers to 46 printers. So our printed toys have become very, very popular too. Even at Toy Fair, people putting their hands on, like our motion blocks is a great example. They're 3D printed, but they have a very tactile experience. But again, they're simple and kids can have so many different ways to play with them. But it's really changing the game of the toy industry and allowing us to maintain some manufacturing in the states. And that way we're not really getting bombarded with tariffs and really affecting our business.
[00:41:38] Speaker D: So I have to ask you this. Do those 3D printers use AI?
[00:41:41] Speaker B: So, you know there's AI elements built into it?
[00:41:45] Speaker D: Of course they do.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Right. But we. So I don't tell a lot of people this, but we have a lot of AI practices that we use in our company. Because we're a small team. We have to work smarter, and we have to make sure that we are streamlining our processes as best as possible. So I've actually built several AI bots for Salibo so that we can streamline processes and get things done quicker. Now, I agree with everything that's been said that you still need people. Like, no matter what, you're still going to need people. And that's really been proven to us that even with all this technology that we've infused into our business, we still need people.
[00:42:23] Speaker C: Ian.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: I just want to congratulate you, Courtney, on your success on the award and on going through the process of getting yourself to this point. Children need toys. Children love toys. It's important, and everybody does. I still act like a kid. Toys are important, especially the ability to engage with something, feel like it's your own. So I love the business. I know the challenges of the business. Oftentimes you only hear 0.00001% of the entrepreneur story. And so you think to yourself that, oh, they talked about failing in the past, but now they're just crushing it. Well, actually, we're all constantly failing every single day, and every day is full of hurdles and trauma, and yet we still get up and continue to try. And I just think it's Amazing what you've created. I looked at your website, Courtney. I think it's really cool what you and your team and all your AI bots have put together.
[00:43:17] Speaker C: I wanted to ask Courtney, who are you now compared to who you were when you first started the business?
[00:43:24] Speaker B: At the time I was finishing my master's in film producing. I really underestimated myself. I've learned a lot over the past couple years and I have really, like, gotten to a place where I know what I know, but I also know I still need other people's help. And back then I was very unaware of what I didn't know. And I was very like, locked into like, okay, this is what traditionally you're supposed to do. And I was less like, oh, I'm thinking outside the box now. I think outside the box for everything. I know what the quote unquote rules are within an entrepreneurship and starting a product based company, but I also know how to break them and what works for us, which is exactly what I said at the beginning. Not everything that works for everybody else works for us. So we have found the best fit for us and our customers and our mission. And I've really just like, tried to like, push away what other people say and their opinions because everybody's gonna have an opinion no matter what. But I just have to stay true to what I know works for our business and our ultimate goals.
[00:44:30] Speaker D: I did go on your website. I did find one toy that I kind of want for myself. Maybe I'll get it for Richard.
[00:44:35] Speaker C: I want the emotion box. You know, the emotional coin thing.
[00:44:39] Speaker D: Don't you have one with Play Doh where you can take the faces and smash them into the Play doh?
[00:44:44] Speaker C: Oh, that sounds so good.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yes. I will say that is definitely one of our most popular ones. They're called our Emotion Stamps and people love it. And our newest toy though is called Emotion friends. And they're 3D printed figurines that are basically taking our emotions and bringing them in figure form. And they are selling like hotcakes. I underestimated those. I thought people would think that they're like super cute. Very complimentary to what we do. I didn't expect it to be as popular as it has been. So we actually started putting on our website a discount code for them to wait to ship it because we are expanding, but we're not like expanding tomorrow. Like, we still have to put a lot of things in place in order to execute the expansion. So people have been very wonderful about waiting because like our printers are printing 247 trying to get the orders out, but we're limited in our capacity until the expansion is complete.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I used to watch a lot of spongebob because the kids were watching spongebob. And I always thought that part of the reason that this franchise was so successful is they were telling jokes to the adults as well as to the kids. Right. And so when you're running a toy company, are you also marketing to the adults? Or do you focus more on them? Or do you focus more on the kids?
[00:46:02] Speaker B: We're very different in this area. We actually don't market to the kids at all. We know what the kids like and we test them with kids. But we're marketing to the parents, we're marketing to the teachers. We're marketing to the people that will ultimately be opening up their wallet to pay for it. I hear all the time people in the toy industry talking about marketing to the kids, but we market on social media. These kids aren't on social media. If they were, I'd be a little concerned.
[00:46:29] Speaker C: But is that the standard model? Because I kind of get the impression now that, like, the whole cartoon toy thing is kind of mixed together. And so they're getting a Power Ranger or whatever and they're watching the TV show and then, good idea.
[00:46:44] Speaker D: She could do what Ian's doing with Kiki. She could make a movie, and he's going the other way, making merch from the memes and stuff. You could make memes out of your merch, right?
[00:46:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. A lot of the traditional marketing is based on the assumption of in person retail. So if it's focus on in person retail, marketing to the kids makes sense, because if a kid goes into a store, they're gonna be like, mom, Dad, I want this. But most of our customers come from online. We are in about 14 retail stores. But we have a very, very strong consumer base and a very, very strong community on Instagram. And that's where most of the people come from. People know what our product will be because of the content that we put out on social media. So it's less like, oh, I'm trying to convince a kid to want it, and more like, okay, I'm trying to show the parent the value of it, and they will ultimately be the one to purchase it because they're the ones looking online.
[00:47:41] Speaker C: And do you have a lot of repeat customers then because of the community aspect of it?
[00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So we've done two Kickstarters, and both times it was our customers. Our customers are the most loyal and dedicated people. I still to this day am like, so floored when we launch a product and they're all like, oh my gosh, I'm adding to CART right now. They are fantastic. It's really like a grassroots type marketing because we nurture our customers and we really care about their feedback. So then by default they share with their friends. They want to tell their friends about it because they feel like they're a part of it too. And that's really like what we've always tried to create is an environment and a community based on. Yes, we're all trying to reach the same goal of learning through play. And people just feel connected. And I think it's one of the most impactful parts about our company is that we have a significantly strong base of loyal customers.
[00:48:39] Speaker D: Can you please spell your website?
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's solubotoys.coms o l o b o toys T-O-Y-S.com and if you're looking for me specifically, you'll mostly find me on our Instagram, which is at Salibo Toys.
[00:48:55] Speaker D: Listeners, you are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest, Ian Utily. And we will be right back.
[00:49:03] Speaker E: Man, I had a rough night's sleep, boy. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday and I. I just couldn't sleep, man.
[00:49:10] Speaker F: I'm dying here.
[00:49:11] Speaker E: 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 a tax doctor right now. See if you qualify to pay less.
[00:49:46] Speaker G: 8002-6219-2680-0262-1926.
800, 262-1926. That's 800-262-1926.
[00:50:01] Speaker E: It's passage to profit.
[00:50:03] Speaker C: Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
[00:50:07] Speaker D: Noah Fleischman is our producer here at Passage to Prophet and he we just.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: Can'T observe our future without recognizing our past.
[00:50:15] Speaker I: I just found out about a brand new smartphone device that's designed and functions like a vintage table telephone. I knew it was only a matter of time. A friend of mine who works with the elderly says it's a great new innovation. I asked her, where can I get one? Technology is always gonna move ahead and fast, but that doesn't mean you have to be that old to prefer the grounded landscape that you remember best. Once this phone thing catches on, we're going to start seeing box shaped television sets again with curvature screens and a circular converter dial with just the six channels you want. 600 channels at once is a little too much for some of us. After that, who knows, Maybe a renaissance in print publications. Wristwatches are going to have new meaning all over again. Maybe a return to phone books. But the good news is there's plenty of traditional things in our lives that'll still never change. I was reminded of that the other day when I was in the department store and went online to use the restroom.
[00:51:08] Speaker E: Now more with Richard and Elizabeth, Passage.
[00:51:11] Speaker D: To profit and our special guest, Ian Utile. And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So we'll go to you first, Ian, what is a secret you can share?
[00:51:24] Speaker A: The primary secret I've learned in 25 years in CO founding 10 companies is to do extremely hard things, seek challenges and seek discipline. This is the thing that unlocks everything in your dreams as you drive after whatever it is you're doing in entrepreneurship.
[00:51:44] Speaker C: That's a very powerful message.
[00:51:45] Speaker D: Very powerful, yes. Nelson Brighton, you get to follow that.
[00:51:49] Speaker G: Absolutely.
[00:51:50] Speaker F: I agree discipline is important, but I think, you know, I'll just kind of pigtail on it, make it a little more fun for people. Find out what your own discipline is, figure out what your routine looks like. Because discipline in a routine, working towards your goal or goals is absolutely key. You have to realize most entrepreneurs have this, whether they realize it or not. Where you focus your time and energy and your thoughts will turn into your reality in the future. The other word for it that's been mentioned is called manifestation. But that's, that's absolutely a proven fact that the more time and energy and thought you put into something that will become your future reality. So, you know, make sure you're focusing your discipline on what you want your future to look like.
[00:52:31] Speaker D: So, Courtney Peebles, what's your secret?
[00:52:33] Speaker B: It's kind of complimentary to what they both said. It's just always be learning. Never get to a place where you stop learning, because if you stop learning, then you're not going to grow. Things are constantly changing. They change every single day. And if you stop learning, you're, you fall behind. So I always, always say, always keep learning. And never, like, get too prideful to where you're like, I don't need to learn anymore, because you do. Everybody needs to keep learning.
[00:52:58] Speaker D: That's right. So, Richard Gearhart, what is your secret this week?
[00:53:02] Speaker C: So I'm going to kind of stick with the discipline theme a little bit. I think you can kind of weave that discipline into just about anything if you try hard enough. But in our case, we've been doing some hiring lately, and I'm finding that hiring slowly gives me a better sort of vibe that making sure, especially in a law firm where you're bringing in a professional that is highly skilled has to fit well with the team, has to have the right ethics. But going slowly in the process is a new discipline for me because in the past, I was always in a hurry to get the positions filled. And by taking it slower, I think our chances of success are actually better. It gives you more time to think and make better decisions.
[00:53:51] Speaker D: And mine this week. So I kind of try to do everything myself, as much as I can with the Gear Media Studios. Well, Richard, of course, helps a lot, but I'm trying to do the marketing and the prep for this grand opening, most of the work myself, as much as I can. And what I realized is I have a couple of friends that are, like, super good at the things that they do and they're willing to trade me. One of my friends is a super networker, so she's helping me promote, and so I'm helping her start a podcast. And another one is a super graphic designer. I mean, I do some design, but her stuff, she was. She worked in New York City for years, and her stuff is way, way above what I can do. So we're trading. We're trading things. I bounce things off, or we bounce things off each other, and she'll maybe do a podcast or at least use the video studio so I can trade her that or design work. So I think if you're pulling your own weight on this and trying to do it without spending a lot of money, if you can do something really well and other people and they can do something, trade is a great way to go.
[00:54:46] Speaker C: 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, Risiket 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.
