[00:00:00] Speaker A: Is the biggest risk in your life, the one you've been told is safe in your money, in your career, or even the choices you make or the people that you love
[00:00:12] Speaker B: ramping up your business.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: I'm Elizabeth Gearhart and we're your host.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Welcome to the Passage to Profit show, the road to entrepreneurship podcast. What if Wall street isn't the real opportunity that it used to be? Well, joining us is Jace Graham. He is betting on something very different. He is focusing on oil, minerals and even off the grid AI infrastructure. Jase is the CEO of Rising Phoenix Resources and a fourth generation oil man. And he's here to talk about a different way to protect your future.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: And then we have the women of the show.
We have Amy Scruggs, a returning guest. Thank you, Amy, for coming. And she had a high profile career with media coaching and she was really going up, up and then she left to take care of her dad. And we're going to hear all about that journey and how she's getting back into her media training again. And then this is near and dear to my heart. Jackie Jacola and Maggie Plesser are helping millions of cats live longer, healthier lives. They have every and they're doing research to help cats. And you know, I have many cats.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: We do know that.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: I know first, we have many cats.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: But on top of all that, we're also going to talk about why Taylor Swift just got sued and her new legal troubles. But first, it's time for your new business journey. We'd like to ask our panel, when you look back, what was the one decision or moment that most changed the trajectory of your business and what did it cost you to make that decision?
Welcome to the show. Jace. Graham, what was the one decision that you made that changed the trajectory of your business?
[00:02:03] Speaker D: You know, excited to be on the on the show? Yeah, there's been a few, but one definitely stands out more than any of them was Covid right. It affected us all.
I'll never forget I was down at our ranch in central Texas in an Airstream raising a capital for our mineral fund. And while everybody was heading for the hills, oil was dropping from, say 70 bucks a barrel down to under 20 bucks a barrel. I was trying to raise as much money as we possibly could and ended up being successful at doing that at that timeframe. So I think when a lot of people were trying to Figure out what was going on. We were doubling down and trying to raise as much capital, Found some wonderful opportunities at that lower price point and definitely changed the trajectory of our businesses from that point forward. For sure.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: That's great. That's one of the first stories that I've heard where Covid has actually helped somebody. Amy Scruggs, welcome to the program. What was the one decision that you made that changed the trajectory of your business?
[00:03:02] Speaker E: It was when I decided to really put myself out there as keynote speaking. So when I started fine tuning and really honing in what my presentation was and going in front of various audiences, it opened up so many opportunities because then I was being approached, can you work with me? It put myself out there and showed what those basic and common mistakes are that individuals make. And being in front of the camera or in their own speaking, you get a lot of laughter. And it opened up such great conversations and it opened up opportunity that was filling my business with incredible entrepreneurs that wanted to work with me.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: That is so true. I'm putting yourself out there has so many great benefits. And if you're a business person or if you have something to say, I always want to encourage people to get out there and say, it's Jackie and Maggie, welcome to the show. What was the decision that you made that changed the trajectory of your business?
[00:03:54] Speaker F: I will actually answer on behalf of every Cat Health Foundation. We are almost a 60 year old nonprofit organization and I joined five years ago as CEO.
At that time, two weeks into my tenure, the board had been working diligently for a few years, but we changed our name. We completely rebranded. It was a big, a big leap, a long exercise, but it has really served us well. We used to be named after our founder, Robert Wynn, and we were known as the Wynn Feline foundation. And we were very well known among the people who knew us. Right. But we did a major rebranding and it was quite a shift for all and really quite an adjustment for me having and only went the organization for two weeks. But it was a great move.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Well, it's really true that when you go through a rebranding, it's a huge exercise. You think about all the legal documents and contracts and everything else and then all of your advertising. It's a big risk to change your name and not lose traction with your current clientele. So thank you very much for sharing that.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Mine's kind of like Amy is only not as intense. But I started speaking, I started teaching a class and then people asked me to speak and then I have A very dear friend who I told her I'd help her start a podcast if she would help me promote the media studio gear media studios. And she's just been getting me these speaking engagements and then those are snowballing into other ones and it's just crazy. And I think it's the topic I'm doing. I'm doing AI and marketing. But anyway, it's just I'm finding that some of the people don't know anything about AI so that it's just kind of interesting how it has just snowballed once you get up there and start speaking and people like what you're saying and like your topic, the sky's the limit, right, Amy?
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. And it really has taken off for you, so absolutely amazing. For sure. I guess for me, one policy change that we've had at the law firm is trying to get the timing right on hiring people.
And I think in the past I was always reluctant to hire new team members because I was concerned about the cost. But I didn't really look at it in terms of an investment where actually hiring somebody can help move the business forward.
And so I've changed my perspective on this. Now I'm trying to hire sooner and not wait so long because I feel like I'm leaving things on the table and it reduces bottlenecks and the whole organization just seems to be happier. So that's it for me. So thank you very much. And now I'd like to introduce Jace Graham. What if everything you've been told about safe investing is quietly draining your wealth? Well, Jace Graham, the CEO of Rising Phoenix Resources and a fourth generation oil man, is shaking things up by moving money from Wall street and redirecting it to oil, minerals and even off the grid infrastructure. So welcome to the program. Jase, we're why are you taking the approach that you're taking?
[00:07:06] Speaker D: You know, we focus primarily into what we call alternative investments, alternative to the stock or bond market. And our firm looks not only at oil and gas minerals, but also drilling opportunities in oil and gas, real estate investing, private credit, as well as hard money lending. So we play all in the alts. We like that we can kind of understand how they operate and what happens with our capital as we invest and in directly into those tangible assets. And so, you know, when you look at a portfolio that investors have, obviously there's investments in stocks and bonds, but there also needs to be some investments in alternative investments like real estate, oil and gas. We're kicking up an AI data center concept here next quarter that's really intriguing. So we just find a better return profile and higher upside investing directly in and those types of asset classes.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: I guess that's the question that we're all wondering. It's like, well, why go there when normally you just go and, you know, to the stock market or the bond market. What makes these alternative investments attractive? And why should an ordinary investor consider those.
[00:08:18] Speaker D: I think having stocks in a portfolio is important.
And even bonds, bonds typically are much lower interest that you would be earning, but safer per se. On the stock side, there's a lot of volatility, meaning you can invest in a great stock, a great company, and the market shifts out of that sector, the stock drops, and you're back to flat on what you earned. So again, on the outside, investing directly into real estate, let's just say a single family home that you can purchase, fix up and resell it, or rent it, or provide seller financing on it, you have a tangible asset that you own, and it has cash flow as a component of it. Same thing with oil and gas minerals. Oil and gas minerals are real estate, just subsurface. All right. So it's part of the bundles of sticks that go along with real estate. A lot of people don't understand that. But in the United States, the only country in the world where owners of surface rights, I. E. The land on top, can also own the minerals underneath it all the way down to the center of the earth. We play in a fun space with alts. Again, return profiles tend to be higher. Okay. When I'd say tend to be higher, we're looking at, you know, 12 to 30% type cash on cash returns. You can see that in the stock market. But again, it's very volatile on how that happens. But that's the kind of profile we're looking for.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So just to make clear. So the land that we have our house on, that we own, we go all the way to the center of the earth, and we own all of that, too.
[00:09:40] Speaker D: To the center of the earth. And they say to the zenith in the sky. So, all right. Title and interest and that, you know,
[00:09:47] Speaker A: they feel even better.
[00:09:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: I don't know. We're in New Jersey, so we may own all the chemicals underneath.
[00:09:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: You know, I thought mowing the lawn was a big job. You know, now I have like all this ground to the center of the earth to take care of. But you had a. Elizabeth had an interesting question about oil.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: I don't know if you want to answer. So we are recording this in early April 2026 and we are in a skirmish, a war, I don't know what you want to call it.
And Iran has held hostage the Strait of Hormuz. And oil's not flowing, so gas prices have, I don't know, almost doubled. It's been crazy. But my question for you, Jase, is that I had thought the United States made enough gas and liquefied natural gas to meet all of our needs.
I thought we had enough in our own country. So why are we being affected by. By what's going on in the rest of the world?
[00:10:44] Speaker D: Great question. And you're right. That's the elephant room right now. Oil went from 65 bucks a barrel a little over 30 days ago to as high as 110 bucks a barrel about three days ago. It's back down around 94. So a little bit of momentum on oil. Natural gas is a totally different story. Okay. And natural gas is sitting around three bucks in mcf, which is pretty low. Okay. So, yes, we in the United States have more oil and, or natural gas than we can use.
So what you tend to see, though, is oil and natural gas are traded on a world market, so it's not just contingent on what's going on in our supply. In the United States, you can drill an oil well in West Texas, recover the oil, and sell it to the biggest purchaser, the highest purchaser on a worldwide stage. What's happening with the Strait of Hermes is there definitely is curtailing production, but that's affecting all oil prices around the world, not just the United States. Interesting time. We are finding phenomenal opportunities right now while prices are rising again, not in favor of any sort of war or conflict, but when things do kind of happen like that, commodity prices tend to rise. And so we like to be able to play on those sides of the coin. As far as our investment strategies, Yeah,
[00:11:58] Speaker C: I read they shoot up like a rocket. Gasoline prices for cars shoot up like a rocket and come down like a feather.
[00:12:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: So in your world of working with investors, do you work with mostly private individuals? Do you work with companies? Or who do you work with? And what is the appetite for investment products?
[00:12:21] Speaker D: Our investors range from high net worth accredited investors to family offices that are focused in oil and gas. We work with a few wealth advisors that have clients that also are looking to divest into alternative investments. And so we provide that product for them. And we now are about to open up a. A investment club that is also going to be talking to unaccredited investors that may have an old 401k sitting around they want to put back in play. So we're, we're kind of starting to find some ways to even bring all investor types onto our platforms. We don't necessarily do any sort of private equity or institutional capital raising. It's more direct to high net worth and individuals that want to achieve higher returns. But you know, the way we look at it, you know, we've got five pillars of capital allocation and how we invest. Number one, oil and gas, minerals. We have drilling opportunities a little bit different, but also directly in oil and gas. Massive tax write off associated with those types of investments and higher return profile, but also additional risk with some dry hole risk, meaning the wells may not perform the way you want them to. Investing in, directly in real estate, private credit, where we provide mortgages, private mortgages to homeowners that may not be able to get a traditional mortgage from a bank. And also hard money lending to investors. So can we use these five different ways? But when real estate slows down, you know, we're shifting over to minerals, right? When oil prices drop, we're buying minerals. When markets are volatile, we're investing and putting more private credit out. When distress appears, you know, we're looking at real estate at a discount. So again, we're playing a lot of different areas. It's all rooted in real estate. And so we just kind of zig and zag because the shoes never drop at the same time across those different pillars that I talked about.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: So, Jase, if I, if I were rich and I gave you a half a million dollars and said invest this, would you spread it out across those five different project types and then move it around as necessary for me? Is that how you work a little bit.
[00:14:15] Speaker D: We do have different types of funds that we provide to investors, but it is kind of more specific on the niche and where we are and kind of what we think is an ideal opportunity right now. So right now we've kind of pumped the brakes on real estate because interest rates have been so high. Okay, direct. But we've also been lending on hard money with real estate. But right now we've been really big on buying oil and gas minerals because we did see oil prices at 65 bucks a barrel. Natural gas is at 3 bucks in MCF, which is really low on that side. And so we've got a lot of upside to play in there as well as drilling opportunities. So it really just depends. We don't have like a fund that's kind of mixed with all of those assets. That's something we're kind of Looking at maybe down the road, but right now it's kind of specific to the investment strategy or thesis. What's the return on our mineral funds? I could just. We've averaged this 17% cash on cash last five years. Invested a hundred grand, 17,000 on average on an annual basis. And those funds typically look to do a 1.5 to 2 to 1 multiple on your capital in about a 3, 4 year period. So that's track record. So we kind of look at that. But on the drilling side, you know, you're looking at a 2 to 3 to 1 type return. Plus you get a big 90%, upwards of 90% tax write off in the first year of that investment. So big tax write off, you can write it off against W2 earnings, ordinary income, all that kind of stuff. So we start to see a lot of people starting to look at that type of investment towards the back half of the year where they know how much money they're making and how much they want to look to offset right off.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: That's really interesting. I wanted to ask you a question about oil drilling. I just brings to mind all of these old westerns, you know, where people are riding around out in the desert and they're like drilling here and then drilling there and then there's oil and then there Hills.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: Beverly Hillbillies.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: But. So I'm imagining things have changed now and they probably have all sorts of technology that can look for oil. Is that a more accurate process now? Are they able to predict whether you're going to hit oil or is there still pretty random, much more chance of
[00:16:15] Speaker D: success today than it was back in even like when my dad was drilling oil wells back in the 70s and 80s. Back then you're drilling what's called conventional pockets. You're drilling a vertical well down to find a pocket and you're either in the pocket or you're out of the pocket. All right, that's called conventional drilling. What happened in early 2000s is the advancement of horizontal drilling. Okay, so now you're horizontally drilling into these shale basins. It's called unconventional drilling. Big one that's one of the biggest in the world is the Permian Basin in West Texas. So a little bit like you're talking about out in the West Texas flat cranes, there's a lot of activity, a lot of our oil, most of our oil comes from that. But this is where operators are drilling horizontally into a shale formation several miles horizontally. So it's not a matter of whether they're going to be in the pocket or out of the pocket. Now it's a matter of just completing the wells in the zone and then they stimulate the rock. That is fracking. I know that's a bad word, but it has allowed us as a country become energy independent, and so that's a huge thing. So we're not relying on. That's why you hear Trump talk about we're not relying on any of the oil over from Iran at all. We have more oil than we can use it, and so we export it out and we sell it for the highest possible price. So, yes, it is a lot.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Drill horizontally. That's just as counterintuitive to me. I mean, I understand drilling down, but drilling sideways. Who came up with that?
[00:17:44] Speaker D: It was a gentleman, you know, out of in the Barnett Shell, which is actually right outside of Dallas Fort Worth, that developed that whole horizontal drilling. And they basically just slowly. I mean, remember, you're several miles deep, and then you're actually going several miles lateral.
So they slowly start to turn that drill bit. They've got directional motors on the end of that drill bit to kind of turn that drill bit and that drill pipe to where it goes horizontally. It's fascinating.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: They continue drill into my property and then sneak over to my neighbors and grab this oil.
[00:18:16] Speaker D: Not anymore. That was definitely back in the Beverly Hillbillies days that. That whole, you know, there's so many.
Richard.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Loyalty. Yeah, exactly. You got it.
[00:18:27] Speaker D: Who drank my milkshake? But no, that's no longer a thing. But it was a thing as several people back in the, you know, 20s and 30s out in East Texas in Tyler, several prominent families got thrown in jail because of that. But no longer.
There's so many directional surveys and reporting agencies that you can't just sneak over into somebody else's minimums.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Is fracking really dangerous for the earth? Because, I mean, there's a lot of people who are concerned about it.
[00:18:54] Speaker D: Yeah. Again, it's allowed our country to become energy independent, which is massive. We no longer rely on foreign oil or natural gas for anything. You know, there's so much oversight in how these wells are drilled. You know, they first they drill down, you know, a couple hundred feet, they set surface casing, and they cement it all the way to the surface. Then they drill down another, call it three or 400ft, and they set what's called intermediary casing, and then they cement that all the way to the surface and they got two sets, and then they drill the main string of pipe. I mean, it gets a bad rap, but again, it's Allowed our country to become energy independent. You're not seeing any sort of blowouts or anything like that. I mean, if you are, it's, it's. It's minor at most. So I'm all in favor. If it went away, do you know what would happen to oil and natural gas prices? They would triple, if maybe quadruple. So the crowd is fickle. We like energy. We like to turn on our shower and have a hot shower. We like to drive over to McDonald's to get a cheeseburger right now. So again, I want to go back
[00:19:51] Speaker C: to the investing a little bit. So we have had a very turbulent month for the price of oil. Right. What did you do with your funds during this past month? Did you just let it ride? I mean, because you were seeing, like, especially with crypto, people were buying and selling, like, huge amounts based on the whim of whoever. I don't want to get into politics here, but based on Twitter feed.
[00:20:16] Speaker D: Right?
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Well, X feed. Did you guys just kind of hang tight?
[00:20:20] Speaker D: Two things. One, the current funds that are in our portfolio are going to do phenomenal. We don't see the price, the spot price, the price that's just. You're seeing right now the 100 bucks a barrel for another two months, meaning the operator gets that price, then they distribute their checks out to the mineral owners. But that happens about two months after that occurs. So we're not going to really see that until probably June on our check stubs. But that's just increased revenue, increased yield back to our partnerships because those partnerships bought, say, oil, the mineral interest around 50, 60 bucks a barrel. Now, what we're doing today with our current funds that we're deploying capital on now, we're not chasing the current price at all whatsoever. We're negotiating and talking to sellers at that 60, 70 bucks a barrel price range. And so there's a big arbitrage where it's trading today and what we're negotiating direct to seller.
[00:21:11] Speaker C: Okay. So you're not doing these wild swings in and out of the market and
[00:21:16] Speaker D: all this stuff because it's a longer play. That's the difference of an alternative investment versus maybe a stock or investing in crypto where you can just push a button and sell, push a button and buy, push a button and sell. Our opportunities are longer. You're invested in a partnership. And then we kind of determine the best time to exit based on timing and commodity price swings.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: So we're with Jace Graham, who is the CEO at Rising Phoenix Resources. Jace, I assume that the Risk in the oil business is that oil prices are going to drop and stay low for a period of time. Is that the risk to your investors or do you have a way to manage that risk in the event that that happens? I would assume that if the Iran war comes to some sort of end, right. The prices are going to go back down. Anybody who is investing now is probably going to take a loss on, you know, the money they put in. But if production improves and prices trend downward over time, is that what the risk is to the investor or is it something else?
[00:22:18] Speaker D: Yeah, I think you're looking at that right. Is commodity price affects the return profiles of the funds. Whether that's on the drilling funds that we do, direct drilling funds or the oil and gas minerals. Now what we look at when we price these types of assets, let's just say that we're pricing right now to be buying minerals around 70 bucks a barrel. We're looking at a return profile that's going to get investors all their money back within five years or less. So that's about a 20% cash on cash on an annual basis. So that's at 70. So if oil goes down to, let's just say 35, okay. Which is really low and I don't see it staying down there for long, but let's just say it does. So it drops by 50%.
In effect, that yield would just be cut in half. Okay. So that 20% is now a 10 and a 10 is not the worst case scenario at 35 bucks a barrel. So that's some of the things that we're pricing in and hedging in when we're negotiating and making these purchases and making the lump sum offer. So yes, we did see. So when Covid occurred and oil prices went down to 20 bucks a barrel, we're still doing distributions, monthly distributions, distributions went down around 6 to 8%.
But that's like my worst case scenario, I would think. And so, you know, we kind of look at that and we factor that in on our acquisition cost.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: So how much money do you have to have to invest with your funds?
[00:23:34] Speaker D: We have an offering. This is the investment club where people can come into a investment club. Minimum is $10,000 and it's more of a debt type scenario that pays a 10% interest rate on a two year term. Collateral is the minerals and the mineral funds. So all we did is we started raising our own debt versus going to a bank and we continue to use our banks, but we also started raising debt because we had investors saying, hey, I Just want a flat return. I don't want to deal with any of this volatility that you guys were talking about. You know, I'm 65, I'm 70, I'm retiring. Here's half a million or here's a hundred thousand. I just want to get my nice little interest payment that I can live off of and at the end of two years, get it redeemed on the other funds, the mineral funds and the drilling funds. It's a $50,000 minimum and it's a credit investor only at this time.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: So if you have a 401k sitting there, can you move that money over?
[00:24:23] Speaker D: That's a great question. Because if you have a 401k that's active right now with an employer, you're kind of with that employer and they're how they're managing that 401k. What we tend to find is there's a lot of people with old 401ks. I bet there's ladies on this panel right now that probably are sitting on an old 401k from a prior employer. And when you leave that job, it just kind of sits there. It's not really actively being managed. So you can actually convert that to a traditional IRA with a custodian that allows you to self direct it. Then you can start investing into alternative investments like oil and gas or real estate or hard money lending or private credit or whatever you want. So it allows people to get in the game, but it's through the self directed IRA custodian that allows that.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Jace Graham, CEO of Rising Phoenix Resources, will be back with more right after this. Stay tuned. Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt. We're going to hear more about Taylor Swift's legal problems and also we'll hear from secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
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[00:27:25] Speaker A: Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. We're here with Jace Graham from Rising Phoenix Resources. You're a serial entrepreneur, Jase. Tell us what a serial entrepreneur is and what businesses you've been involved in and why you got involved in this one.
[00:27:40] Speaker D: What I kind of realized is that I just don't think I'm employable. I don't like being told what to do. And so now I have in a situation where no one can tell me what to do. So that was probably how it all started. No, I, I mean, it started as an early age with me. Um, you know, my, my father was an entrepreneur. I got to see him kind of build a business from the ground up. Uh, so I got to learn from the shoulder of a giant. But I mean, I was early on, I mean, I was washing cars, shining shoes. I had a landscaping business. And by the time I was in a senior in high school, I had two four man crews working for me and I was just kind of driving around and making sure the lawns were getting done. So it turned into a pretty big business that actually got me into Cornell University on a landscape architecture kind of program. So it's kind of interesting. You can connect the dots looking backwards, but it's always kind of Been in my blood, and then had an opportunity. In 2016, I decided it was a good time to maybe start my own career at Rising Phoenix and open up the shop. And I was scared to death. I run scared every day as an entrepreneur. It's just part of what goes along with it. But no, we started and we were raising money for a mineral fund with just some friends and family, and I needed to figure out how to make some immediate cash. And so we kind of learned about real estate wholesaling from a podcast that I listened to with a gentleman named Justin Colby, who's now a very close friend of mine. And my wife. And I got going in it, and I was trying to make some money and flip some real estate. And so I sent out 10,000 mailers. We had, you know, like, probably $10,000 left to our name, sold our house, pulled out all the equity, and started a company. Okay, sent the mailers out. I put my wife's name and phone number on them. She didn't know it at the time, so she got a ton of calls, and she's like, what's going on? I was like, you're. You're a realtor, so you understand, you know, the lingo. I'm just kind of trying to just make things happen in the back end. And so that's kind of how we got started. And we flipped our first house. We made about $15,000 on that flip. Just flipping the contract, literally double closing same day and not doing any fix up. And so then I was like, geez, that was interesting. So let's learn to try to scale this. So then I started bringing on a sales rep, and then we started building a team. And fast forward to today.
We've done over 1200 of those on the real estate side.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: So quick question, quick question, Jay. So a lot of people are great at doing something, like maybe being in real estate or starting a business. The next step always seems to be hiring.
So how did you make the transition from being kind of a solo entrepreneur or a couple entrepreneur to more of a business owner and, you know, bringing people in? How did that work for you?
[00:30:18] Speaker D: Well, I mean, at the time, I didn't really. I knew I didn't want to be going out to all these houses and actually trying to do the underwriting, all that. So I was really wanting to try to train somebody in that capacity. So I think when you look at your business, you can break it down to just sales and ops.
Sales and ops. Those are the two basic fundamentals. Now, marketing is part of Sales and ops kind of takes care of everything else as far as the oil and the engine. But what ended up happening is I read a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. Changed my life forever. Because in the. In the meantime, I was just in my head as far as how I wanted to build this out and the systems and the processes around it. But reading that book, Traction, allowed me to kind of understand what the entrepreneurial operating system looked like that Gill talks about. And that's a cadence that we use from our meetings to how we run our accountability chart, to the functions, to how we just operate as a company. Since I read that book in 2017. So that allowed me to start thinking as an owner and not as a solopreneur. And so then I started to figure out how to start hiring and getting people excited about the mission that we were trying to get on and the mountain we were looking to climb and bringing everybody into that. So we're all rolling in the same direction. So that was definitely a pivotal moment, is reading that book and learning that you can apply this to all these types of businesses. But now I've got a framework that I could launch from and kind of start building these other businesses out of.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: Didn't you find it kind of terrifying to hire somebody else and have to trust them? And then, of course, if they screw up, you're the one who's gets the fallout from that. Richard's had success and some not so successful experiences with. On with hiring people. How do you handle? How do you manage that? I think that's a real hard thing for entrepreneurs to do.
[00:32:03] Speaker D: The first thing you got to start thinking about is building out systems and processes. Okay. So just bringing somebody into your world and kind of just saying, hey, do what I do and learn how I do it. It's not the right way. So what we did initially is like we had. We had to bring in what was the framework, what are the activities that this individual or this role or function needs to do Great now, what are the metrics behind it? What's the scorecard? Who's keeping track? What's the number?
And so then being able to have numbers and metrics that then you can manage your business from scorecards, that takes all the, you know, gray out of it. You know, he's a likable guy, but he's just not converting. No, we look at conversion all the way down to, you know, what that looks like on a percentage basis, and either you're on or you're off, you're off. Let's get you back on. If you continue to stay off and off and off and you're a sales rep, then maybe this is not a fit for you. Maybe you should go over to the ops team. But I think it's really about building out a process that's easy to follow, keeping it simple. At times I've made it too complicated and we go back always to just keeping it so simple for those particular functions. What are the three, maybe four key responsibility areas that are associated with that function? And then what are the maybe two or three key KPIs, key performance indicators associated with that? And then it's just training. And I mean, managing people is not easy. I mean, that's the hardest thing because, you know, what you tend to find, especially as an entrepreneur, is that, you know, people are not going to be on that journey with you forever. Right. Things change, you know, life events occur, people leave, people come. And so it's maintaining that focus and having those standards in place and those processes that you can bring people in, get people up to speed, having them contribute, and then also having them a part of the game.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think too, it's part of it is just experience, right. I mean, you figure out what works and what doesn't. And when you're hiring somebody, hiring is sort of a black art, you know, in the sense that they can look. Somebody can look great on paper and show up and then they're just not a good fit. Right. And then there's other times when we've taken a flyer on somebody who for some reason they didn't really look that great. But we thought we'd take a chance and it worked out amazing. So I find that it's unpredictable now as we get more mature, we have more people inputting on the decisions and maybe you get a better, more rounded decision when that happens. But it's still not a perfect system. But it is, I think when I was first starting out, I made a lot of hiring mistakes.
I trusted everybody. If somebody said they could do something in the interview, I trusted them. That's because I would never say something in an interview that I couldn't do. But it's not always the case, right.
And it took a while for me to learn that lesson the hard way many times.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: So, Jase, you've had other companies. Did you sell them? Did you have successful exits with them?
[00:35:02] Speaker D: We've had successful exits with our funds that investors invest in the companies operating companies we still maintain. So the real estate company, the mineral royalty acquisition company, and the capital raising company are all still, you know, part of the Rising Phoenix umbrella, but we create different unique offerings that people can invest directly into. And now those are the ones that you would look to go on and sell to somebody, you know, as, as those funds mature.
[00:35:28] Speaker C: So what are you going to do when you retire?
[00:35:31] Speaker D: I don't know.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: You're not going to retire drilling oil?
[00:35:33] Speaker D: Well, I'm a lifer in the game. No, I mean, my wife and I started a foundation last year. We're pretty excited about that. Still trying to figure out exactly what we want that to do within our community. But that's something that we're passionate about. My boys are 9 and 12. They're kind of got this entrepreneurial bug with what they're doing. My son goes out and power washes trash cans in the neighborhood and charges people.
So I'm excited to kind of bring them on board and talk to them about what we're doing to kind of pass the torch. But I don't know, I mean, I'm having a blast kind of doing what we do. I don't see an end in anytime near.
[00:36:09] Speaker C: Yeah, we don't see an end in sight either. So anyway, how do people get a hold of you?
[00:36:14] Speaker D: You can go to our website, www.rising-or hyphen phoenix.com, learn about what we do, how we do it. You'll see the different strategies that we plan and of course you can schedule a call with, you know, someone on our team and talk more if that's of interest. Also just someone LinkedIn under Jace Graham.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Great, thank you.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Jace Graham with Rising Phoenix Resources. Really insightful. It's time now for our AI segment. So take it away.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: Now it is time for real AI use cases Business Owners Roundtable. I'm going to ask everybody here one way that they're using AI in their business and then we're going to talk about all the other ways they're doing it. But everybody just do one way to start. So I am going to start with you, Jace Graham, with Rising Phoenix dot com. What is one way that you're using AI in your business?
[00:37:05] Speaker D: Today we are using AI in a few different places, but one that's really kind of created an impact directly is in ChatGPT. There's a way that you can set up your own GPT knowledge base where you can load the GPT up. So let me give you an example. I've got a sales team, we've loaded the knowledge base up into this GPT to be able to grade calls, provide feedback, provide an email back to the person that they talk to based on the conversation that they had. And so now they're getting real time feedback on their sales calls because we've created the knowledge base and said, hey, here's what we're looking for, here's how the call's supposed to sound, here's what's supposed to happen, and here's the grading breakout. And so now they're able to use that in real time to be able to get feedback and be able to, you know, execute and have conversations with Excellent.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: Thank you. Amy Scruggs with Amy ScruggsMedia.com what's one way that you're using AI in your business?
[00:38:01] Speaker E: I would say the most important for me is the repurposing of content for not only myself but my clients, being able to really grab those key sound bites and key clips, whether it be from our coaching so that I can send that to them for their review and their repurposing and their learning, or if it's being used for the public facing, for social media, their LinkedIn for emails, whatever that is. Being able to use AI to recreate and repurpose really great content and sound bites is a game changer.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Jackie Jacola with EveryCat.org, what's one way you're using AI in your business?
[00:38:34] Speaker F: To help with meeting summaries and distilling some of our summaries. And that is a huge time saver from meeting recaps and follow ups. And it really is of good use for our tiny little staff at our nonprofit.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Dr. Maggie Plesser, what's one way you're using AI?
[00:38:53] Speaker H: Yeah, I would say when I'm contributing to articles on behalf of every cat, I'll write my own response to whatever questions we're getting from the journalist and then I'll also do a search to see maybe if I missed a resource. But also how how does AI do their formatting on the same topic? So it kind of helps me to strengthen my own voice in the article.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: Richard Gearhart with Gearhart Law. What's one way you're using AI?
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Well, I was just in a bunch of meetings this week about all of our AI processes and I'm totally confused. I'll tell you, this stuff can really go to the nth degree. We're trying to use automation to help us with a lot of our administrative stuff and all I can say is AI takes time sometimes. I mean, if you're using it for content generation, yeah, you get an instant answer and that's great. But if you're, like, using it to look at different systems. So we've got our time tracking system, and we've got our file system, and we've got our docket system, and there isn't a system out there that covers all of those. So we're trying to pull it all together with AI and integrate it. And we've been working at this a while, and every time they say they have it ready to go, they say, oh, just one more thing we have to change.
[00:40:13] Speaker C: So, yeah, I've been in some of those meetings. It's pretty detailed. You have to tell it every tiny little iota thing.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And you know, there's like, with some of it is it's not always consistent. I mean, if you ask the same question twice, you get two different answers. Right. And so if you're using it with data and stuff, you have to be really careful that you set it up so that you get it done in a consistent way.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Okay, we'll come back to you.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: No, it's okay. I'm done.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: So for me, Elizabeth Gearhart with Gear Media Studios, I have a meetup group called podcast and YouTube creators community, and we have a Facebook group, and people asked for us to do a demonstration on how to start a YouTube channel. Well, I have a bunch of YouTube channels, but I hadn't started one for a few months, and I thought, you know, there might be some stuff I don't know. So I asked Gemini and I watched a couple videos. It's like, yeah, I kind of already know all this stuff. But what Gemini told me that was super good was if you're gonna walk people through this, it's on Zoom, but also in person, we're doing this hybrid thing.
Then why don't you start the channel and pre record it? Like screen record yourself doing the channel. And then when you have, you know, because you have to wait for Two Factor authentication, all the stuff, then you can edit that, and then you can put a really polished product up there for people to watch during your meetup so they're not sitting around waiting for the Two factor authentication to come through. And I thought that was really smart.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: That is really smart. It feels like Four Factor authentication. Now. Every time you try to sign in, it's like you got to get the password, you got to go, and then you put something else in, and you get caught in this infinite loop. By the time you're done actually authenticating and you get into the software, it's time to go home.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: So how else are you guys using it. Anybody just chime in.
[00:41:54] Speaker E: My daughter teases me that she says I'm having an emotional relationship with AI because I utilize it in so many different things. Any AI platform that's available that I see is credible, that works. I use it for everything, even maintaining, you know, my daily journals and my daily protein counts. It's amazing.
[00:42:15] Speaker C: Well, thank you all so very much. This has been real AI use cases. Business Owners Roundtable. You're listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard Elizabeth Gerhardt. Our special guest today, Jace Graham and and we will be right back.
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[00:44:28] Speaker A: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Quick shout out to our friends at WPSE 1450am and 107.1 FM in Erie, PA. Thanks for listening and if you're new here, Passage to Profit is a top ranked entrepreneur, podcast and radio show heard in 38 markets across the country. It's a place where founders share what really works. Now it's time for Intellectual Property news. Many times we've talked about Taylor Swift suing somebody for intellectual property infringement, whether it's a trademark or a copyright. As a big brand and a megastar, she's always enforcing her rights.
But this time she's the one getting sued. Which, let's be honest, probably doesn't happen very often in her world. If you're a Taylor Swift fan, you know that she recently released an album entitled the Life of a Showgirl. But somebody else has a similar trademark registration and is suing Taylor Swift. The suit was brought by Marin Wade, who owns the trademark Confessions of a Showgirl. Maren has been touring a show under that name for the last 12 years, and in it she talks about the candidate and often humorous realities of life in entertainment. So she didn't just think of this yesterday. This has been out there for a while. There is an irony here because the US Trademark Office actually blocked Taylor Swift from getting a trademark on Life of a Showgirl for music performances and live entertainment services because of Wade's earlier mark, which is probably the first time somebody at the USPTO told Taylor Swift no. It's hard to believe that the US Patent and Trademark Office would deny Taylor Swift anything. Personally, I don't think that Life of a Showgirl and Confession of a Showgirl are so similar that it would cause confusion in the public. Two trademarks are considered confusingly similar if there's similarity in sight, sound and meaning. And to me, the marks look different, sound different, and mean different things.
How could someone confuse life with confessions unless they're really having a long day or just listening, maybe to too much Taylor Swift. The examiner at the trademark office was obviously not a Taylor Swift fan. Now that the lawsuit has been filed, the focus shifts from what happened at the trademark office to whether the public would actually be confused between Marin Wade and Taylor Swift. While Wade is not as well known as Taylor Swift, she does have an impressive background TV appearances, touring with football legend Terry Bradshaw, singing backup for Wayne Newton, and performing with Chris Stapleton at the Country Music Awards.
So this isn't exactly an unknown act stepping out of nowhere. And it's hard to believe that Taylor Swift's attorneys weren't aware of Wade's mark, they would have done a search before filing ways Mark would have shown up and Swift likely moved forward assuming that the marks were different, which is exactly what trademark lawyers get paid to argue about. What's fascinating is that after Swift's album was released, Wade actually appeared to embrace Taylor Swift and the album on social media, which either shows good sportsmanship or a really patient litigation strategy.
So now the big question Will Wade have the resources and the stamina to take on Taylor Swift's massive entertainment empire? Is this just a publicity move? And would a jury really believe that Life of a Showgirl and Confessions of a Showgirl are confusingly similar? Because if they do confusingly similar just got a whole lot more confusing. We'll keep you posted. And this has been Richard Gerhart for Intellectual Property News. And if you have an idea or an invention you want to protect, the team at Gearhart Law helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into protected assets. You can visit learn more about Patents.com or learn more about Trademarks.com for a free consultation and practical guides to get you started later. We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up, what successful founders think about that most people never see now.
[00:48:57] Speaker C: We are so pleased to welcome back Amy Scruggs. We had her on the show a few years ago. So impressive and she helps people with their media appearances. Welcome Amy. Tell us about your journey because I know you've been through some things and what you're doing now.
[00:49:13] Speaker E: It's been an interesting journey since we were last together and I see still have to say that I love the clips in the interview that we've done before because I still use them all the time when I talk about repurposing and using those sound bites. We did some really good stuff.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: You've always been one of our favorite guests, so thanks for coming back so much.
[00:49:31] Speaker E: I feel the same way about this show. So when you guys reach out, I'm like absolutely. And I'm here for a different twist on it today. Yes, I love speaking about media coaching and helping professionals be more articulate in speaking.
But I was thrown a curveball after we were last together and it's that my family needed me. We have a lot of kids. I have a aging parent like many do. My youngest was just going off to college as I realized that my father's advancement in his Alzheimer's disease had gone to a next level. And I went up during the holidays about two hours north of where I live to visit and saw that his needs were beyond what my mother was able to handle. And she didn't realize yet she was in it so much she couldn't see from the top down. And it was an immediate response that says, this has to be handled now. And here I had my business, I had speaking engagements, I was working full time with clients, but my family needed me. And I literally stepped away from this desk, packed up the car, and moved in with my parents. Yes, 50 something. Living with my parents. That was a whole different video series.
Living with my parents to care for my father with Alzheimer's.
The caregiving crisis was immediately opened up to me because I love being educated and empowered. And so the minute I knew I was going into this, I engaged in every possible resource that was of Alzheimer's education, caregiving support groups, online Facebook groups that were other caregivers, and, you know, oh, what do I do? How do I handle this? And that really was eye opening. To find out how many families are impacted by this. I spent a year and a half, almost two years with dad and walking beside him. And I decided to take my joy in media and combine these two things at this time. And I turned the cameras on in pigtails and braids and no makeup, in the trenches with dad because my dad is very. He was. He was wonderful and joyful and loved to play and I loved to play. So we decided to make it his best last days ever. And I recorded our journey in play and in engaging with this disease and working with it, not against it. Our carpool karaoke, we called it carpool caregiver karaoke. I had the baking series, crafts projects in the yard, we caught squirrels, did everything.
And it was the most amazing, life changing journey I could ever experience.
However, we want to go with this in this discussion because it also completely annihilated my business. After he passed, I sat down and notebook on my desk still said December 2023, and it was now mid-2025. I said, okay, what do I do? What do I do? At the time with dad was life changing and he made an impact on people's lives. He had so many followers, he went viral, he was hilarious, he was sweet, he was loving.
And I did everything with him and for him up until his last breath, which was the hardest, most beautiful moment of my life.
[00:52:26] Speaker C: What was his name?
[00:52:27] Speaker E: Tom Scruggs. My dad from the time I was little said I was gonna be another Barbara Mandrell when I grew up. He knew I was gonna be a performer and a singer. We loved music together. That was our Thing. I would go with him to the hardware store and work on the cars in the garage. I would be out in the yard with him. We would laugh together. He was very, very loving, very supporting, very playful, as I am as well. We were both jokesters, and we're both very klutzy, and so we had that in common. Our love Johnny Cash, our love for country music. I have a picture right here on my wall of he and I standing together with Clint Black in my first big national show. He was there with me for all of that, always supportive of my kids. And so when it was time for me to care for him, he still knew who I was. When I got there about five, six months in, he really didn't remember who I was, but he knew he loved me.
And there was this twinkle in his eye, and he would say, you're really good at this. And he'd say, I love you so much, sweetheart. But then he would say, what's her name? Again? That was heartbreaking to go through that, but it's okay. It's okay. I wouldn't tell him no for anything. He wanted to play, he wanted to do something. He wanted to go out in the yard. Yes, we're going to do all of those things. I took him on his last kind of bucket list experiences. We went to the casino the last time I pushed him in the wheelchair. I took him to the restroom. He just pushed buttons. We did the penny slots, but he just pushed buttons, and he had a blast. We would go to the airport and watch the airplanes and have lunch. And I took him out into the community every day. He would shake hands and meet people. Every checker at every store at Target, the grocery store, all of the places we frequented, every little restaurant I took him to. They knew us, and he loved it. He would smile and people would say, oh, my goodness, you guys look so happy. And I tried to show the joy in dementia care, as hard as it was, there were so many beautiful moments. And what I realized is I had an opportunity to live with him, partner with him and play with him and be just a kid. I wasn't worried about the phone ringing or my business because I had to throw it out the window. I had to let that go. And see, I wouldn't change this for anything. I wouldn't change a minute of that time with him. No regrets. And I would actually ask every entrepreneur if it's possible, even if it's just a day that you leave it all on the ground. And I say, I just want to be Me, and I want to play for a day because I found myself again. And I think if I hadn't found myself, I wouldn't be in the position to have reintegrated into my business with such new insight and new joy in it.
[00:54:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I saw a LinkedIn post by someone who's been on the show, Jessica Varghese, I think it was, and he took a week, and no electronics, no social, no computer, no anything. He hung out with his kids and his family, and they just went on adventures. And he said he came back so strong from that, like, you're ready to create and really go again. I do think that's an important thing for entrepreneurs.
[00:55:22] Speaker E: It is. And I didn't realize I was forced into it, but I've been running and chasing since I was 18 years old. Just go, go, go. Chase, chase. Do, do. Climb, climb. Be coop. You know, go through the recession, all right? Rebuild again, rebuild again. I don't remember a time since I was a kid that that all stopped and it all didn't exist. And all of a sudden, because of being in this disease with him and finding the ways to make it the most joyful, playful experience ever, I mean, we. We were still singing his last few days alive. Whatever little strength he had, he was singing with me at the bed. And it was beautiful. It reinvented me in a different way as well. And I feel like I'm. I'm ready to be back better and stronger. It took me about eight months after he passed, and before I could even face going back in, I wasn't ready. I actually was having a hard time speaking, which as a keynote speaker is not a good thing. I was actually really stuttering and struggling speaking. And I realized it was just the deep grief because not only did I lose Dad, I lost my identity as a caregiver. I would tell people, I'm a recovering caregiver. There was an identity crisis because it became my business. I put just as much into running that. His doctor's appointments, his plans, his activities, our daily agenda as I did my business.
And it was such an identity swap there for me.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: I remember when my mom was going through her last stages of life. She didn't have dementia so much, but she was in the hospital a lot, and she was in a coma. Elizabeth had to watch the kids and get them to school. I was just starting out at the law firm. I remember sitting in her emergency room while she was in a coma, you know, typing emails and stuff. But at least I was there, and I was able to spend time with her when she was cogent. And I'm glad that I. I was able to do that. And it wasn't always easy. I mean, sometimes I was kind of irritated about having to take the time from my other responsibilities. But I. In the end, I look back at it and I say, well, you know, this is something I'm. I'm glad that I did. And I know that she was happy that I was there too. You know, there's just that loyalty sometimes if you have a good relationship with a parent, that sort of transcends all the other things. And, Amy, I think it shows a lot of devotion and loyalty to your dad to have gone that route and supported him for. For such a long time.
[00:57:45] Speaker C: I think it shows a huge strength of character. Really?
[00:57:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Speaker C: So, Jace, do you have any questions or comments for Amy? Like, how did you put your life back together afterwards?
[00:57:55] Speaker D: No, I mean, I think that's. I mean, it's an amazing story that you took that time and spent that time with your father like you did. Unfortunately, my father passed away from a heart attack and, you know, did not get that opportunity to really spend that quality time with him. So I just think that is just an amazing story. And, you know, what you did and how you supported him during those times when, you know, he was confused and scared and just to have you there to be that just person that. That rock. I know he was comforted by that. So I'm very amazed by the story.
[00:58:26] Speaker C: Amy, how did you finally pick up the pieces and start your business again? Did you do it one step at a time?
[00:58:33] Speaker E: It was definitely one step at a time. There were a lot of tears, and at one point, I was just going through the list of things. Okay, well, underwater basket weaving sounds fun. Let's see, what else. What other. What other careers could I do here? Because I really was feeling that I was left behind.
You can't be gone that long and then just step back in and have people go, oh, there you are. But I realized it by putting our journey online, by sharing the real, raw, vulnerable experience of what we were going through, that everybody was connecting and resonating with me and cheering me on the whole way, that when I said, okay, I'm ready, I had to put my hand out and say, I'm ready. I'm ready. Who can I work with? And I'm telling you, the phone rang. It was like. It was. It was a miracle, but it was just this beautiful. Like, I wasn't forgotten. And I think as an entrepreneur, to realize that decisions that I made in my business 10 years ago. I got to reap back today by being able to plug back in, laying the right foundations, doing honest work, working with people with integrity is what allowed me to come back.
And I wasn't forgotten. And I still made a difference in dad's life. We made a difference in others lives and any little business. I actually, the first client I had back was someone I had known for 15 years and she was so wonderful. And she called me in August, she said, amy, I need you out of your funk because I need you.
Okay? And it was so eye opening. Okay, I'm coming back. It's another moment of okay, I'm able to speak again and I'm back. And I'm so appreciative that your show is still here to say welcome back. So thank you for that.
[01:00:10] Speaker A: Which did you find more challenging, being a caregiver or being an entrepreneur?
[01:00:14] Speaker E: The entrepreneur is still harder. The caregiving was tough in a different way. The entrepreneur is that it all falls on me. I didn't have a team to sit here. Can you be me while I'm gone? Can you go speak for me while I'm gone? I think the entrepreneurship is scarier. It's scarier again as I'm back in it, it is definitely the scarier part. Caregiving was just nothing but love and life and joy and beauty. And I think the entrepreneurship is really not for the fame of it always
[01:00:43] Speaker A: have all of those things, right. It doesn't have like joy and beauty every day.
[01:00:47] Speaker C: But you don't know what's going to happen as an entrepreneur. I mean, you pretty much knew what was going to happen with your father, heartbreaking as it was.
But as an entrepreneur, you don't know what tomorrow's going to bring.
[01:00:58] Speaker E: You know, as an entrepreneur, you don't have those resources necessarily. If you're working for somebody that you can take that family leave or whatever those benefits are, it's on us. And so as, as a community, how do we change the narrative to start supporting entrepreneurs more? As caregiving is becoming a larger crisis in today's, especially in our country, you got one in four adults are a caregiver.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: So I was going to ask, I mean, what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are facing the same sort of situation?
They're moving along and all of a sudden, bingo, you've got a sick parent or somebody that needs your attention. What advice would you give to them?
[01:01:38] Speaker E: Start having conversations now. Don't wait till your loved one is in the point where they need it then there should be conversation with siblings. I had a sibling who works a W2 full time career, so he was unable to help. And my mom said, well, he has a job. Well, so did I. Well, no, it's just your business.
So there was a miscommunication there as to who should be helping and what the priority was. And I think having communications as a family with your parents, with your children, state when this happens because it's not if, it's when, when someone has a need in your family because it's going to happen.
What is our response? What systems? Who can give up? What? Where can we make those adjustments? How could a business still continue? The conversation should have happened three years ago, four years ago, not when I went into a burning building. As I described it, I feel like I just dropped everything and walked into a burning building. So I think finding out what can your family do, who can do what, when can they do it and already have a system in play so that you are not just thrown into the wolves and your entire company or business or whatever you do is thrown to the wayside. Even a nonprofit. Who's going to run it if you're not there?
[01:02:45] Speaker C: I do think though, as an entrepreneur, you are somewhat at an advantage if you need to take a couple years off because you can come back, as you said. And maybe if you hadn't come back to speaking, maybe you would have come back to, I don't know, building AI agents or something. Who knows? Amy Scruggs. So impressive.
[01:03:04] Speaker E: Amy Scruggs Media. You can literally find me on any platform under Amy Scruggs Media. The website, any social media handles. I am the easiest to find. Just Google Amy Scruggs and you can't miss me.
[01:03:14] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Amy.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: Passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhard.
[01:03:18] Speaker C: And now we're on to our next guest. We have two guests that work
[email protected], and for those of you have never listened to this or seen the show before, I am an avid cat lover. I was born with a cat in my arms.
[01:03:31] Speaker F: I can't remember a time in my
[01:03:33] Speaker C: life when there wasn't a cat hanging around.
[01:03:34] Speaker A: Well, anyway, yeah, anyway, being born with a cat, that's quite a trick.
[01:03:39] Speaker C: Well, you know, if anybody could pull
[01:03:42] Speaker A: it off, you can.
[01:03:43] Speaker C: So we have Jackie at Chicola and Dr. Maggie Plesser with every cat dot org. Welcome. I am so, so excited to hear about your research that's helping cats and other animals. So please tell us what you're doing.
[01:03:56] Speaker F: Thank you. We are with Every Cat Health Foundation. But I have to ask you a question first. How many cats do you share a home with currently if you were born holding one?
[01:04:06] Speaker C: Right now we have more than Richard and I have ever had together in our married life. We have four. We had a cat pass away. We had three. We had a cat pass away. We went to the shelter just to look on Memorial Day weekend a year ago, almost a year ago, and came home with two little black kittens.
We're not taking them back. So we have four now. It's a lot. It's a lot. But they love us. They're nice.
[01:04:31] Speaker F: We are Every Cat Hill foundation is a 60 year old nonprofit foundation which is a good long run and we hope to be around for 60 more because we focus on all cats everywhere throughout the world. There are tens and millions of cats in homes throughout the world, many different breeds.
I myself also have three related black cats that came to me via a good story, but we'll save it for another day. But we fund research behind everything that goes into keeping cats healthy and happy from nutrition. I mean, not that long ago you'd go to the store and you'd buy a can of food that said dog and cat food.
Cats have very specific nutritional requirements, unlike other species. So we funded research back in the might be before the early 90s, but that's as far back as my memory is serving right now.
Just the fact that cats need a certain levels of taurine in their food or else really bad things are going to happen to them. So looking at behavior, kidney disease, cancer, really anything, a vaccine, vaccines, and Dr. Placer can talk more about that.
But as much as we all love cats, we need to realize that their, their medicine and the science behind that has to come from somewhere.
[01:05:53] Speaker A: Are there a lot of human based medicines that can be used for cats? I know that sometimes animals can take human based medicines, but I, I, I don't know about cats.
[01:06:06] Speaker C: Well, Max is taking one right now. Jackie or Maggie, do you want to answer that?
[01:06:10] Speaker H: So, yes, a lot of medicines on the human side do trickle down or come over to veterinary medicine and help a variety of species, including cats.
[01:06:17] Speaker C: I have to tell a little bit of Max's story. I actually started a podcast because we could not find a cure for Max. He was scratching. Well, first of all, I got him from ASPCA and I thought he was in New Jersey, but he came up on a, in a van from Kentucky and he was almost dead. I didn't know it like he was so small and he's Fur.
[01:06:37] Speaker A: Anyway, you picked him up from a truck driver in a Walmart parking lot
[01:06:42] Speaker C: at 4am yeah, they were making their rounds. Anyway, I had to pay for the gas money too, but anyway, so I started feeding him. I took him to the vet. You know, he started getting his rounds of vaccines. He started scratching all the fur off his face and scratching his ears. I kept track of it on an Excel spreadsheet. There was one month I either called the vet, changed medicine, or took him to the vet 28 times and finally found this vet that is an allergist dermatologist for cats. It's not that much more expensive than the other vets. And he found some medication that helped to put him. Actually put him on, I think Benadryl or something, a little bit of Benadryl and something. Now he's on a new medication that was just. That came out for dogs to your point, and it's off label for cats, but it's really working for him. But he's also taking an anti allergy, human medicine too.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: That cat gets more medical care than I do.
[01:07:34] Speaker C: That poor cat was on so many different medications. His first year of life was just horrible till we found the solution and then this new medicine came along, which is even better. But is. Is that what you guys are doing
[01:07:45] Speaker H: research on to your mention of extra label use? So in the vet world, it's hard to know everything about every species, yet we want to help every species. So, yes, we do. Sometimes there'll be anecdotal stories vets will share with vets, but to have the proof of what works, what side effects, that is part of the research we do in our specific species, cats. How should that drug be used beyond just kind of what we anecdotally know?
[01:08:09] Speaker A: And then how do you get the information out to vets so they know? Do you have a newsletter or do you have a website? How do you communicate that?
[01:08:17] Speaker F: The way our foundation works is we. I'm taking a bit of a step back, but we put out requests for proposals on cat health research several times a year.
And we usually receive those proposals back from universities, from veterinarians, from perhaps master students. The proposals come back to us and we have a scientific review committee that kind of ranks those proposals based on the specific cycle of the year. And what every cat health foundation is looking for in funding research are the most innovative leaps in cat health that could affect the most cats.
Now, there are different layers upon that, but we're really willing to take a leap and to find a discovery that's going to lead to a cure or a vaccine. And the translational piece of this that I'm kind of going to bring back to your original question about human medicine for cats.
Sometimes we accidentally are funding research that leads to accidental cures for humans. And we can get more into that. But as the research happens, those investigators will give us progress reports. Does research need to continue?
Did we discover something that was unexpected?
We'll have webinars. There are often published papers, there are some recent articles I know in Science magazine and also other peer reviewed journals.
So we try and distill the information coming back from the researchers and broadcast through a variety of ways to reach everybody who even thinks they might love a cat someday. To pet parents, to veterinary professionals, to pharmaceutical and food companies, because we all want to share and help elevate how we care for cats.
[01:10:16] Speaker C: So if I was very grateful that we found this medication for Max, I should probably donate to you because it was probably research that you were funding or somebody like you was funding that led to this discovery that this medication could help my cat. Right.
[01:10:32] Speaker F: The inventions have to come from somewhere.
[01:10:34] Speaker C: Yes, but I find it. I was going to ask you, and I'm glad you brought it up. I was going to ask you, do you ever find that you're doing research, maybe you develop a drug and it's working well in cats and you're like, you know, this is the same mechanism as in humans, like maybe it would work for people.
And you said you are finding that.
[01:10:52] Speaker H: Yeah, Jackie used the word translational medicine. So some of the ways every cat's work has helped in this capacity is we recently funded a study, it was published in Science, looking at the genetics in cats when they have changes in certain types of cancer that is showing promise to potentially help treat human cancer, specifically mammary cancer. There was a movie with Tom Hanks and a cat in it, the man had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition. A lot of the research done in that condition in cats, because it's very common in cats, has helped the human world. Feline infectious peritonitis fips kind of way you might hear it referred to, is a mutation in a coronavirus that has been fatal for cats for years. Decades of research, millions of dollars has gone to trying to find a cure for this disease in cats. All of that research into that feline coronavirus was a springboard when Covid became an issue here. So definitely our species helping other species, beyond just keeping your cat healthy and furthering the human animal bond, it's the species, helping species. You never really know what you'll find and who it might help.
[01:12:05] Speaker A: Are cats smarter than dogs?
[01:12:07] Speaker F: Well, that depends on who you ask.
[01:12:09] Speaker D: Well, that's why I asked you.
[01:12:11] Speaker F: Each species has their. Their own smarts in their. In their own ways and adapts to their environment. Cats are unique. Right. They're very clever. They do mask their illness quite well. Some can be very stoic, Some can be playful. Sometimes the changes as they age can appear a little less dramatic because they tend to want to take care of themselves, but they really are relying on you to help take care of them.
I really. It just depends on the individual. But I think I love all animals. I have dogs.
[01:12:47] Speaker G: That.
[01:12:47] Speaker A: That was a very diplomatic answer, but we want to know what you really think. Are cats smarter than dogs?
[01:12:52] Speaker C: She's not gonna say.
[01:12:54] Speaker A: I mean, I think cats are pretty smart.
What's so interesting about them is that they can be so random in their behavior. Like, all of a sudden, one day they'll be in a spot that they never been in, and you've had this cat for 10 years, and all of a sudden they're, you know, hiding under the sofa or sitting in a corner, and you look at it and you're like, holy cow, why are you there? You know, you never went there before. But they seem to have that kind of behavior. I think it's part of their charm, in my opinion.
[01:13:25] Speaker C: Yeah. It is interesting that the biology is close enough to humans that there is some overlap there. Is there a disease that you have funded that you've actually been able to cure or at least find a vaccine or treatment for?
[01:13:37] Speaker H: So, again, that feline infectious peritonitis, all the work we've done and other places have contributed to that body of work. It is now treatable. Yes. And so I've been out of vet school. It'll be 12 years in May. And I remember having to give a kitten piece because it was all that we could do, and now it can be cured. So that's huge for those people, those pets, and then just the. The research on the virus.
[01:14:01] Speaker C: Are you developing new vaccines? Are you funding people that are developing new vaccines for the cats?
[01:14:06] Speaker H: We do get some applications on people looking to. Yes. Advance the efficacy of certain vaccines. So all the vaccines your cats need, those diseases are still around, but we always would like things to have less side effects or be easier to administer, things like that.
[01:14:21] Speaker C: What about allergies? Max has a autoimmune condition.
[01:14:26] Speaker H: Yeah.
[01:14:26] Speaker C: And all we can do is give them stuff that makes them not feel Itchy, but we can't cure it right now.
[01:14:31] Speaker H: Yeah, I had a cat with dust mite allergies and I was giving him shots just like I take. I have tree nut allergies to build up a tolerance against it. So yeah, the field of dermatology is veterinary dermatology is advancing and more things are making their way to cats. So we always say cats are not small dogs, they are their own species. But they are getting more unique care as we can put resources toward learning
[01:14:55] Speaker C: more about them and how much does the food affect them.
[01:14:58] Speaker H: Animals can have food allergies, so there can be just food they don't tolerate well. Like some foods don't sit well with us. There can be allergies specifically to certain proteins in their food. So it's a way, you know, allergies can manifest in respiratory reactions, say candles or things in the animal's environment, GI upset or the skin. So allergies can present a variety of ways and they can definitely have reactions to the foods they eat.
[01:15:23] Speaker F: And now if you look at the varieties of foods that are available for cats that weren't even available three, five years ago, I have two. Two of my three cats are on prescription diets. The other one still kind of likes junk food, but nevertheless, I have no
[01:15:40] Speaker C: idea what's in their cat food, but they won't eat the super healthy cat food. We tried giving Max every kind of protein we could. He ate kangaroo for a while.
[01:15:49] Speaker A: He ate kangaroo?
[01:15:51] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:15:51] Speaker C: And it still didn't work. And it was expensive.
[01:15:53] Speaker A: Real kangaroo?
[01:15:54] Speaker C: Yeah, they make that for cats. The freeze dried pellets for cats that have these bad allergies.
[01:15:59] Speaker A: I had no idea.
[01:16:00] Speaker H: Yeah, alligator is another one. So I'm in south Louisiana and I'm kind of thinking, oh, you know, pet food. We have access to alligator farms around here. So yeah, novel proteins can be.
[01:16:10] Speaker A: I'll never eat cat food.
[01:16:13] Speaker C: Don't say never. Never say never. We have more cat food in the house than real food anyway.
[01:16:17] Speaker A: Plenty of kangaroo in the house. I didn't know that until right this minute.
[01:16:22] Speaker C: Jackie at Chicola and Dr. Maggie Plesser with everycat.org what do you think causes people to donate the most?
[01:16:29] Speaker H: I think after a loss of a cat, we get some people reaching out or when a cat is ill, they're looking into where is work being done or who's trying to learn more about this thing that, you know, really impacted my loved ones. So I think we do get a lot of people donating in memory of their cats or to champion a cause that, if we knew more about, could have prolonged the life of their cats.
[01:16:49] Speaker C: That's good. What about people who pass away and don't want flowers or gifts? Do they put you as somebody to donate to?
[01:16:56] Speaker F: Yes, indeed they do. Most of our donations come from individuals, whether they are with us now or leaving a memory and they have passed on. And people who are passionate about cats or have family members that, that were passionate about cats. We, we really have opportunities to be involved with every cat in any way. And as Richard asked, we do have volunteer opportunities because we do have information booths and ask the vet sessions and talk about our research at various cat festivals or cat shows or even in concert with veterinary clinics.
And again, tens of millions of cats in the world and you can't, as we know, have just one. So I have three, four, so.
[01:17:44] Speaker A: And a lot of unhappy kangaroos to boot.
[01:17:46] Speaker C: Do you sell any merchandise?
[01:17:48] Speaker F: We do have a store
[email protected] yes, we do. We have T shirts and some mugs and some other fun swag to help us support research.
[01:17:58] Speaker C: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. So people can just go on your website, everycat.org and buy merch or donate?
[01:18:04] Speaker F: They can.
[01:18:05] Speaker C: Great. Thank you very much. You're listening to the Passage of Profit show with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhart. Our special guest today, Jace Graham. And we'll be right back.
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[01:19:12] Speaker A: It's passage to Profit. Alicia Morgan Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit, and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passage to profitshow.com website and check out her album.
[01:19:27] Speaker C: It is now time for secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. We're gonna start with Jace Graham with Rising-Phoenix.com.
jace, what's a secret you can share with our audience?
[01:19:40] Speaker D: You know, I think you've got to have the right mindset. Do not take a victim mindset ever. I think you have to be proactive and understand that all this is for a reason and you're dealing with all kinds of unique changes and unique environments and decisions and pressure and all that stuff and take advantage and learn from that stuff. I mean, you can connect the dots looking backwards always, right. But when you're in the heat of it and the thick of it, it's not always easy to see the trees in the forest. But I definitely think not having that victim mindset is key. Early on, I mean, I was washing cars, shining shoes. I had a landscaping business. And by the time I was in a senior in high school, I had two four man crews working for me and I was just kind of driving around and making sure the lawns were getting done. So it turned into a pretty big business that actually got me into Cornell University on a landscape architecture kind of program. So it's kind of interesting. You can connect the dots looking backwards, but it's always kind of been in my blood. And then had an opportunity. In 2016, I decided it was a good time to maybe start my own career. I was scared to death. I run scared every day as an entrepreneur. It's just part of what goes along with it. But I don't know. I mean, I'm having a blast doing what we do. I don't see an end in anytime near.
[01:20:51] Speaker C: I agree 100%. Thank you. And Amy Scruggs with Amy Scruggs media dot com. What's a secret you can share?
[01:20:58] Speaker E: I always tell myself that my future self will thank me for this. Even it's of a task I really don't want to do or a day that the phone just doesn't ring or you can't reach anybody. But I'm gonna do it anyways.
My future self will thank me for this today, even if it doesn't make sense right now. And I have found that to be true probably 99% of the time, even if it's a what I consider a failure or a loss or letting go of something because it's no longer a fit. My future self thanked.
[01:21:25] Speaker C: Thank you. So, Jackie Ochakola, what's a secret you can share?
[01:21:29] Speaker F: Find the joy in absolutely everything you're doing, it'll help you keep focused with passion on mission. And if a challenge seems too tough to tackle, pause. Figure out how tackling it might just have a glimmer of fun associated with it. Because no matter the outcome, even if not one that's perceived, you will feel the joy and the success of just the challenge then.
[01:21:56] Speaker C: Excellent. And Dr. Maggie Plessier, also with everycat.org what's a secret you can share?
[01:22:02] Speaker H: I would say be humble, kind of know your weaknesses and trust the right people. Know who you are, be honest with who you are, and find who compliments you the best.
[01:22:10] Speaker C: Ooh, I love that one, too. Richard Gearhart with Gearhart Law.
[01:22:13] Speaker A: I would say be out there. If you're an entrepreneur, one of your big jobs is sales. You've got to sell yourself and your company. And so to do that, you gotta be out there meeting people. Whether it's through podcasts, networking, social media, whatever it is, you gotta be out there making connections to bring people to your company and, you know, hopefully understand and appreciate your offering.
[01:22:38] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart with gearmedia.com My secret today is even if you think you know everything about something, you don't. I'm gonna give this presentation on starting a YouTube channel, and I've started so many and I've done it my way and I've just kind of blundered my way through because I figured it out. But then I watched a video and I asked Gemini and a couple things that I picked up on that were little nuggets that I can share with the audience. Every once in a while, it's good to read the instruction manual or watch a video on something that you already think you know.
[01:23:09] Speaker A: Step one Read the instructions. Well, that's it for today's Passage to Profit show. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and leave a quick review. Also, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X and subscribe to our YouTube channel for bonus content.
Tune in next week for another episode of Passage to Prophet.
