[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's not right to simply take somebody else's work and call it your own.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I've got 22 tapes of your spouse and we are asking for $200,000.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: 80% of those deaths are preventable.
[00:00:13] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:15] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard some snippets from our show. It was a great one. Stay tuned. Especially if you want to start a.
[00:00:21] Speaker F: New business, ramping up your business.
[00:00:26] Speaker D: The time is near.
[00:00:27] Speaker F: You've given it hard.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Now get it in gear.
[00:00:30] Speaker F: It's pass to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:35] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:42] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:49] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories in the business world. We have a super special guest, Ken Dashow. He's a writer, performer, director and personnel at Q104.3, New York's classic rock station. He's written several plays and screenplays and is the host of Ken Dashow's Beto Revolution podcast.
[00:01:14] Speaker E: And then we have two really great entrepreneurs coming up. Mehdi Javanmar is a professor at Rutgers University doing just amazing research. He's the co founder of Rizlab Health and it all has to do with white blood cell count, so can't wait to hear what he's doing. And then Sophia Diaz is an accomplished and multifaceted personality. I listen to her music online. It's great. I love what she does. She wears so many hats, I can't even get into them right now. And coming up later on, it's Noah's retrospective along with Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind.
[00:01:46] Speaker D: But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans are thinking about starting a business or business owners already. And we like to ask our panel a question that's of relevance to them. So this week the question is what are the skills that a startup founder must master to be successful? So, Mehdi, welcome to the show. Tell us, what are the skills that a startup founder must master to be successful?
[00:02:17] Speaker C: As a startup founder, you always have to, you have to wear multiple hats on, right? Especially in the very early stages. You know, one minute, you know, especially if you're, if you're the CEO, one minute, you're going to be the engineer, right? One minute you're going to be doing marketing, right? One minute you're going to be doing finance and checking your budgets and books and calculating, projecting revenues.
One minute you have to be a legal expert, understanding how to read and review NDAs and all other kinds of legal documents. So I think, you know, you have to be, you know, multi. You know, you have to wear multiple hats and be able to tackle different challenges.
[00:03:08] Speaker D: Great. Sophia, what skills would an entrepreneur or entertainer need to master to become successful?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, for me, it has always been the people, the people that I choose to work with, with the people that I intentionally choose to work with.
It helps build a safe environment for me as a CEO, as a founder of a company. And, you know, I cherish those relationships. When I started Diaz, I had little money and I launched my company in Milan, Italy, and I'm still in touch with those very people. And the factory owners say, for instance, in Padua, where the eyewear is made and my clothing is made in Istanbul. Actually, it's two hour drive from Istanbul in a little industrial town called Bursa. So having those relationships with people is the most important for me as an entrepreneur and as a businesswoman.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: You cannot buy relationships.
[00:04:14] Speaker D: No, it's all about the interaction that people have with each other and the trust and the trust that they build. So that's great. We have Ken Dashow at New York's classic rock Q104.3. It's such a pleasure. We've seen each other here at the studio from time to time. Ken has always talked about AI, artificial intelligence. And so we're here to pick his brain on that today.
[00:04:39] Speaker E: And I just want to say, yeah, he has a very rich, deep, happy voice, like he loves what he's doing. And he's just got this intonation that you just love listening to him.
[00:04:48] Speaker D: Yeah, very verbal.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Thank you. You know, do it for a long time. And on the air, God, since 1978, I don't even wanna do the math. But here in New York, since 82 and you know, everything we talk about, branding, branding, branding. Well, my voice, what you're hearing now, or my image of what I do on social media, that is my brand. That's me. I am Ken Dash out for better or worse. If you love it, if you hate it, that's fine. It's however you react to it. But the thought that somebody else could simply sample it and repurpose it for their own use, A, without asking and B, without paying, is terrifying.
[00:05:25] Speaker D: Which is why we're here. Because we're here to talk about AI in the entertainment industry. Ken, tell us about what you think the state of AI in the entertainment industry is.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: I think it's the biggest threat to any sense of entertainment you've ever had, from movies to TV to music to the spoken word. There's never been a threat like this before because the goal of people is to do everything as cheaply as possible. The producers, and we understand that their job is to manage costs, and we all get that. That's what it's about. But the thought of simply replacing me with a computer that sounds like me is a lot cheaper than paying me to do my work. But I believe in my heart of hearts, a computer can sound like me, but it won't create the ideas. It won't talk about the stories. Part of what we do, what makes radio, whether you're listening over the air online on the iHeartRadio app, what makes it special, is who we are, the stories we tell, how we relate to the music, what we share with you. And AI can't create that. It can only copy it.
[00:06:31] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:31] Speaker E: It wasn't at the Stone Pony in New Jersey, for instance, 20 years ago.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Exactly. It wasn't there to tell the Bruce story when just recently, when I told the story. I host this big benefit every year called Love Rocks NYC to benefit God's Love We Deliver and all these stars. And when I tell a story about backstage, about Trey Anastasio from the band Phish, the biggest jam band in the world, being the ultimate fanboy of Cher and losing his mind and trying to run out on stage to play with her because it means that much. AI can't tell that story. It can sample what I sound like. It can say, here are the Beatles. But it doesn't have content. And all of my musician friends see it happening left, right, and sideways. Rather than be hired to play, they just ask the computer to create some music and they use it.
[00:07:22] Speaker D: That's unfortunate. It's kind of the lazy way to do it. But it lacks the richness. And a performer evolves over time. They have experience, Right. And they live through things, and those experiences are reflected in their performances. Right. And AI can't do that. It's sort of. AI goes out onto the Internet, and it sort of takes the average of all of the stuff that's out there.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: That's exactly it.
[00:07:48] Speaker D: And it puts it together in some sort of compilation, and it sounds okay to a certain extent, but I don't think you're gonna reach a pinnacle that a real artist can reach.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: 100%, Richard. It can make something that sounds like a Billie Eilish song. It can make something that sounds like what already exists. But all of the artists that are special to us, from George Gershwin to the Beatles to Mozart, you can create a Chopin prelude that sounds like Chopin, but it won't have the heart and soul. It'll sound like it. And when you think about legendary songs of Stormy Weather to the Beatles, to John Lennon's In My Life, why does that make us tear up? Is it the minor key? No, it's because it came from his heart.
[00:08:34] Speaker D: Yeah. I was listening to now and Then, which was the Beatles tune that was nominated or eventually won the Emmy. Right, right, the Grammy. Yeah, at the Grammy. I'm sorry, in 2025. I respect the Beatles a lot, but I don't think that that song got to the level of their original music. And they used AI to create and produce that.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Well, let me sort that out, because that's been a big bone of contention, where AI works great, where it works on a technical level. John Lennon made this cassette tape of him playing the piano demos. There were three demos on it, and on it it says for Paul. And Yoko got it to Paul. And why they couldn't use the song before is because they couldn't separate the piano and John's voice. And it always sounded really ratty. But because of AI, they were able to sample the song. And technically, the absolute vibrations of the frequencies of John's voice and the piano were different. It separated the piano and the voice so that then they could mix the piano separately, John's voice separately, and then augment John's voice. And to make his voice stronger, they didn't use AI. Paul McCartney sang like John, because if you've been singing with somebody since you're 14 years old and he's 16, I assure you Paul can sing exactly like John can. It's up in the noise like this, you know, Paul's more up here, John's down here, but he can do it perfectly. So that's the best use of it. Think of the movie that Peter Jackson did, Get Back, where he separated out all the tracks so we could hang it. That's where AI is used to great effect. Replacing Ringo on a drum track is not the Beatles. But the emotional part of that song to me is, I can't imagine on this cassette, written by your oldest friend in the world, your closest friend, that says for Paul, and the lyric is now and then I miss you. Oh, I don't know how he got through it. Without crying his eyes in.
[00:10:36] Speaker E: So there's push right now. There are a number of performers, there are actors mostly, who are petitioning the new administration because Google and OpenAI want to take everything for free and use whatever they want and use this piece of copyright law called fair use to just basically steal everybody blind. But it's not even the compensation for people like you, from what I'm hearing. It's the fact that they're taking your stuff and they're making it something awful, that it's not supposed to be without your permission, and that's it. They don't want to have to get permission. They don't want to obey the copyright rules of this country. So what do you think the answer is? Should we all petition our congresspeople? Like, what do we do?
[00:11:17] Speaker A: 100% if every. You know, we always say, write your congressman. But for real, if you still want to read books, if you want TV shows, if you want original, if you think that an artist or a creator or somebody should be paid a fair wage to do their work just as you are, please, please write to them and say it's not right to simply take somebody else's work and call it your own. Because no matter how you explain it, no matter what you say, it's simply stealing. You simply. You did something. We're creating this podcast called Passage to Profit. And when it goes on the air, I can simply take it, download it, and say, this is my show. And literally, you can hide it any way you want, but that's what they're doing. My wife's an actress, and the actors and the writers were on strike for so long, and it hurt. But my wife was last, as she's usually the fourth name or the fifth name on a show. And what they said is, we will give you $1,000. We scan your face, we get your image, and then the studio can use it in perpetuity. We can use you in any story for any reason, because we own your image and your voice. A thousand bucks for a thousand bucks. Come on.
[00:12:29] Speaker E: Really?
[00:12:29] Speaker D: And there's some. Must be some desperate people out. Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: I mean, but the thing is, okay, because you have the technical ability to do it, so where are your actors gonna come from? And there's that old euphemism. Well, the cream will rise to the top. But if you're eliminating the dairy product in the container, if you have no actors, if you have no writers, where's it coming from?
[00:12:51] Speaker D: I'll tell you, though, that the people that I talk to, who are very involved in AI are very confident that they're going to be able to perfect AI to the point where you're not going to be able to know the difference between a human and an AI and it's going to be able to teach itself and it's going to be able to learn, and we're not going to know the difference. Right.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: How terrifying is that statement? And you're right.
[00:13:17] Speaker D: And I hear this. We were talking yesterday about AI and about just how people interact. And so normally we kind of try to tune ourselves to the person that we're speaking with. And, you know, if the person had a fight with his brother the day before, we kind of take that into account. Right. We don't say anything goofy about, you know, your brother, but there's like, oh, no, that's all going to be possible for AI to account for that in its communications. And then, well, why do we even bother living if it's.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:13:50] Speaker D: If we take all the humanity and all the purpose out of our lives, what would we do if AI does everything for us?
[00:13:57] Speaker A: That's why it has to be hard borders and hard controls over this. I've been doing this all these years for the first time. Usually in a contract negotiation, you argue about money and responsibilities, and that's always the fight. You know, you read athletes and performers, they want more money or they don't want to do this. Well, I'm thrilled and blessed. Get paid a fair wage. And my answer my whole life in working, whether I was in the theater or on radio, was, my duties are, whatever you need me to do, I'd be glad to do it. But when a clause came in that said we have the right to use your name or likeness for any reason whatsoever for any sponsor or client, that's terrifying, A, to me. And B, think of the damage you could do. We stay away. I don't do any hot button issues. I don't endorse a politician. I don't. I don't endorse a political point of view. And because that's not what we are, There are stations that are that and shows that are all about politics. We're not. We're a safe zone from that. We talk about music and rock and roll and life stories. So if there's a picture of me even in another market of Ken saying, vote for this guy, how do I combat that?
[00:15:08] Speaker D: If you have your brand, that would.
[00:15:10] Speaker E: Make me furious if somebody did that to me. Because we stay away from politics, Everything with this show, because people need a break, quite honestly.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:15:18] Speaker E: But honestly, yeah, that is one of the scariest things. To think that somebody could take your Persona, so to speak, and make it do something that is not aligned with your values.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Right. Plus, I mean, it's my livelihood. This, you know, we talk about passage to profit. This is how I feed my family. And, you know, when you think about computers and robotics taking over the assembly line, taking blue collar work, there's a mechanical reality to that, and it can be redundant work, and it's true, but you still need people to maintain the equipment and things. But as far as doing plumbing, as far as doing creative work in terms of building something, you have to have an architect, you have to have somebody, a builder, you have to have a designer. You have to have work done by a human being to do it. Those jobs are essential in healthcare. It can't be done by a computer. And that's as far as the arts go. There's that sense of, well, these guys make a fortune. And yes, the top stars of the world that you see in movies that, you know, get a fortune, and maybe Howard Stern makes a fortune, but the other 95% of people in radio and TV are just trying to pay their bills.
[00:16:32] Speaker E: And when it comes right down to it, sure, it's great to create something from these different sites, but it came from somewhere and it came from people, and they should be able to give their permission and be compensated. And I don't know how we get that message through strong enough to the current Congress or whomever. Now, the only good thing is that the current administration, which I will not say anything bad or good about, but the one thing I do know about them is they have a lot of ip, a lot of the people in that administration, so maybe they see the value of intellectual property, and maybe I don't know what they'll do, but hopefully they'll say, well, you know, copyright law is important to this country.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah. The one thing that I can't stress strong enough, and this is to your congressman, to conversations you have, and please hold this thought dear. This is not impeding progress. This is preserving creativity, the arts, and reality. So that when you see something on your screen, you need to know, is that real? That you're watching or not. When there used to be mudslinging campaigns that go back forever, my opponent, you know, like, does. You know, he physically goes to the jail and lets the criminals out and get feeds. You know, there was always that stuff. He takes money from the. And, you know, and it was what it was. But now when you see a Video, supposedly of somebody doing something illegal, and you don't know whether that's real or not. You simply want to believe it. What is it called? Confirmation bias? I want to believe something bad about Ken Dash House. So if somebody puts up a video of it, see, I'll prove it.
[00:18:09] Speaker D: Seeing is believing, right?
[00:18:11] Speaker A: I mean, what if it's not?
[00:18:12] Speaker D: And you can read stuff and you can know, well, maybe that's true, maybe that's not. But seeing and hearing something, there's a lot more credibility when you see it and you hear it. And if it's fake, then I think we lose our bearings. Right, because we don't know what to believe anymore, whether it's real or whether it's fake. And so I think there's a real danger here if this is allowed to continue on.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: When this first started, Bob Dylan simply said one sentence. He said, when you can't believe what you see, watch out.
Yeah, Bob, that's it.
[00:18:47] Speaker E: Well, what was scary for me, I have a cat podcast with another woman, Danielle Woolley. And what was scary was I put into Google Notebook just three sentences about cats and said, do a podcast. It was actually came up with a pretty good podcast. It was a woman and a man. They were talking about cats. The thing that was missing was they didn't say their names and they didn't say anything about their personal experiences with cats. Everything they got was very generic. They took a couple things from what I put in, but now Sora is coming to do that with video, and I don't know where this is going to end up.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: That's, you know, what you said right now, it's still in its infancy and it is poor. You know, it's. It's really barely there. But, Richard, like you said before, it gets better by leaps and bounds. And it's going to get refined and refined. And when you say, do a cat podcast and create two names, it'll get to that point where you go, oh, that's dangerous.
[00:19:41] Speaker E: Yeah. I mean, why do they need me anymore? Exactly.
[00:19:44] Speaker D: Ken Dashow, personality at New York's classic rock Q 104.3 passage to profit with.
[00:19:51] Speaker E: Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:19:52] Speaker D: We'll be right back after this.
[00:19:55] Speaker G: Let me tell you a story about Bill. Bill was a normal guy in his 50s. He had back surgery about two years ago. Bill was in a lot of pain. He dealt with his pain by taking the Percocets his doctor prescribed for him. Bill took more and more and more of them to help with the pain until one day, the prescriptions weren't enough to rid of Bill's pain. Then one day, Bill found someone to help him get rid of the pain with illegal drugs he didn't need a prescription for. Fast forward to today. Bill lost his job and his family. The only thing he does have is his drug dealer. If you know Bill's story and you don't want to end up like Bill, call the detox and treatment help line right now to get away and get treatment. 8009-8017-6180-0980-1761.
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[00:21:55] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once again. Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:21:59] Speaker D: We have Ken dashow at New York's Classic Rock Q 104.3 here to talk about AI in the entertainment industry. There's nothing really now that's regulating AI. There's no brakes on the train, right? The genie's out of the bottle, right?
[00:22:16] Speaker E: It's an unstoppable train at this point.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: It's simply what you are and aren't allowed to use if you can't have curbs. Which says if we're going to use someone's existing image, look, when you're making one of those dystopian futuristic movies, I think we all pretty much understand that it used to be an artist physically painting it with a paintbrush on a piece of glass. And now it's a computer creating that Mad Max dystopian future or another planet or Star Trek or whatever it is, we get that. But when it's replacing the human beings who are acting in the place, and it may look to the point where it's really good, but it's never gonna touch your heart because it doesn't know how. Cause it doesn't have a heart. Think of the musicians you love or songs you love. Bruce Springsteen to Billie Holiday to whomever the person is that means something to you. It's coming from what. What they're really doing is connecting their soul to yours. And that's the magic of art. From a painting that's hanging a museum to a movie to a show and a computer. That's. Its limit, is it could create something that looks like it, sounds like it, but it can't have a living, breathing heart.
[00:23:29] Speaker E: That's why a piano piece played by different people never sounds the same.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Right, Exactly.
You couldn't say it any better. You can say it. Play it like this, play it like that. But one night, if. You know the thing about the Grateful Dead and everybody has to have every show, why? Because every show was a little different. Sometimes it was faster, it was slower. Sometimes the band was in an angry mood. Sometimes they were just not together. Sometimes it was sloppy. And then it came together after a half hour. And everybody wants to go on that different journey. As we said, other bands I've seen so many times of my favorites, of Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan or, you know, name a band. Great nights, bad nights, interesting nights, quiet nights, loud and angry nights, rock nights. And that's part of the journey. If it's always exactly the same, I don't need to see it again.
[00:24:24] Speaker E: Absolutely. I never realized that was why the Deadheads followed the great hotel all over the country.
[00:24:30] Speaker D: Well, also. Nothing better to do, right?
[00:24:33] Speaker A: You know, by the way, just. We talk about passage to profit. There's a whole other show to be done about the brilliance of. Of the Grateful Dead's completely illogical business legacy. Everybody spent all the time in the world stopping people from taping concerts because they're going to bootleg the concerts, and then we won't be able to sell the live albums. So the Grateful Dead never made any money selling albums anyway. So not only did they let them tape it, but they set up special sections so that the tapers would have a quiet area with people not screaming, so you could get higher quality. And I've talked to them. Phil Lesh, may he rest in peace, explained it and said it wasn't a strategic marketing Thing, we just thought, let them have the music and enjoy it. But what we didn't realize is, over the course of a tour, we wound up with a quarter of a million salespeople, all sharing our music, telling you, oh, you gotta see the Grateful Dead. Oh, listen to this. And that's what built the legacy. And I'd love to tell you in hindsight how brilliant we were. We just thought that the kids want to have recordings of it, let them have it. And that's what turned out to be our greatest marketing tool ever.
[00:25:37] Speaker D: There's something very pure about that.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:40] Speaker D: You know, it's really. For them, it was about the music.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: You do it for the right reasons.
[00:25:45] Speaker D: And sometimes the karma just goes out there and handles it the right way.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Exactly. Oh, guys, this was so much fun. Elizabeth, Richard, we could do this for hours and hours. And again, all I can share with your listeners, with everybody listening, is this really is a reason to write to your local congressman, to your politician, write to your senator, and explain that you see the danger in this of people losing their jobs in the arts, where it starts there, but of everything, that there need to be curbs where you can't just take someone's voice or likeness and reuse it without their permission and without paying it. It's not impeding progress. It is destroying creativity 100%.
[00:26:26] Speaker D: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Ken.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: My pleasure.
[00:26:29] Speaker D: It was a real pleasure having you on the program. We look forward forward to hearing all the great things that you're doing on.
[00:26:35] Speaker E: Q104 and the 12 o'clock Beatles block.
[00:26:38] Speaker D: You can't miss that.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: So if I can. Yeah. So Sunday Maria does 12 o'clock Beatles block for me. Sunday morning breakfast with the Beatles. And again, it's exploded. And I don't say this with braggadocio, because of me. It's exploded because of what the music means. What's magical about it is it's not programmed by anyone else but me. It's listeners, it's your ideas, it's their requests. And sharing why these songs mean something to the listener is the magic of it. And telling stories, my stories from my life and theirs, about what these songs mean, that's become the magic, why we've been doing it over 20 years.
[00:27:12] Speaker E: And when is that?
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Sunday mornings, 8 to 10 on Q 104.3 on the iHeartRadio app. And by the way, my Beatles podcast, Ken Dashow's Beatles Revolution. You guys should come on that one time and we'll talk music.
[00:27:25] Speaker E: Oh, I would love to. I Grew up with the Beatles.
[00:27:27] Speaker D: Sounds great.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:27:29] Speaker E: On Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:27:32] Speaker D: And now it's time for Intellectual Property News. So, Elizabeth?
[00:27:35] Speaker E: Well, to carry on the current theme, a number of content creators, actors, Hollywood names, more than 400 drafted a letter and signed it asking the current administration to not let AI companies exploit their copyrighted work. So not just say, okay, copyright law doesn't really matter. Google and OpenAI can do whatever they want with whatever content you've put out there. And they're trying to say, look, they can't just take our stuff and they can't make replicas of us and put us out of our jobs.
[00:28:07] Speaker D: I think what was really interesting is that this was in a response to Google and OpenAI blatantly stating that they wanted to be exempt from copyright laws and that they wanted more relaxed copyright laws because they didn't want to have to deal with lawsuits from creators. And so because of this, the actors and creative leaders in Hollywood wrote this letter to the administration asking them to maintain the laws. So right Now, Google and OpenAI are looking for an out and they want to be able to copy stuff, really, without compensating anybody and without having to get anybody's permission. And I think this was going to come to a head eventually, but I think Google and OpenAI decided that they prefer to try to approach the administration rather than litigate this in the courts. Let's ask our guest today. What do you think about this situation? How do you feel about AI and creators? Sophia, what are your thoughts?
[00:29:11] Speaker B: I agree with what Ken said about AI. It's a challenging situation for entrepreneurs, business owners.
[00:29:21] Speaker D: I agree, it is pretty challenging. Mehdi, what do you think about AI and creators?
[00:29:26] Speaker C: Very interesting points that Ken made, especially the last 50 years where progress in technology has moved really fast.
[00:29:34] Speaker D: The scary part is AI is so beyond any person's comprehension. So, Elizabeth, what do you think?
[00:29:41] Speaker E: I think it's going to seep into every part of life and people say, oh, I don't use AI, but they do use AI, they just don't know it. And I think the representatives need to put some boundaries around it. And I don't think Google and OpenAI should just be able to take whatever they want.
[00:29:56] Speaker D: So speaking of intellectual property, if you have any intellectual property needs, contact Gerhardt Law. You can learn about patents and trademarks if you go to our website. Learn more about patents.com and learn more about trademarks.com you can download a free white paper and you can also set up a free consultation with one of our attorneys.
[00:30:17] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: We'll be back right after this. Commercial break. Stay tuned. We have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up soon. So you don't want to miss that.
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[00:32:26] Speaker A: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:32:30] Speaker D: Now it's time for Elizabeth Spotlight. Tell us what you've been up to.
[00:32:34] Speaker E: I still have my meetup group, podcast and YouTube creators community. Stacey Sherman's taking a break and Sonia Satra is helping me with it now. And I'm excited because on March 27, we're going to talk about copyrights and trademarks and have a sneak peek of our podcast studio which is almost done. So anybody that lives in or around New Jersey that wants to come and see the studio. April 28th, it's a Monday night, we're going to have our open house during the afternoon and then at 5 o'clock is when the bar opens and we have food and the mayor comes and we do the ribbon cutting and we announce the opening grand opening of our new studio, Gear Media Studios in Summit, New Jersey. So we have been working like crazy on that. I'm still doing the Jersey podcast, podcast with Danielle Woolley and of course marketing for Gearhart Law. So is that enough?
[00:33:25] Speaker D: That's a good start.
[00:33:26] Speaker E: That's a good start. So Richard's been helping put the studio together and we have a video studio, we have an audio studio, we have a makeup room, and we have a big all purpose room that photographers can use. We're really excited about it. And now comes the marketing push. So this is where I really test myself on how good my marketing skills actually are.
So we will see how that goes. So enough about that. Now onto the medical minute. And I do want to hear everybody's comments on this because this is something really amazing.
[00:33:57] Speaker D: I can't wait to hear everybody's comments on this.
[00:33:59] Speaker E: So this is from listverse.com and it's from this article that lists the 10 major recent advances in medicine by Brett Hill. And basically Japanese researchers think they have found a way for an adult human to grow a new tooth. I am just amazed. So they, they developed a drug that targets this protein, USAG1 protein, a key player in tooth formation. By blocking the protein, the drug encourages the growth of new teeth in adults, something that was previously thought to be impossible.
[00:34:34] Speaker D: So if you're missing one tooth, do you get just that, one tooth replaced?
[00:34:40] Speaker E: I don't know. The first trials will involve 30 men aged between 30 and 64. If all goes well, the drug might be available to the public by 2030. So that's only five years away that you could grow a new tooth in your head. I don't know how they control it, how they like how it manifests itself. Because you'd think like if they blocked it, you'd be growing teeth all over the place.
[00:35:01] Speaker D: Yeah. Like how does it know which tooth to replace?
[00:35:04] Speaker E: But we do have somebody, we do have a Rutgers University professor here who does research in a similar, not the same area.
[00:35:12] Speaker D: Biomedical stuff.
[00:35:13] Speaker E: Biomedical stuff, yeah.
[00:35:14] Speaker D: Maybe he has an answer. I have two missing teeth and I'm trying to decide whether I should wait and get new teeth in five years and hope this technology works. Or whether I should just go ahead and have the implants now? What do you think?
[00:35:27] Speaker E: I think I'd have the implants, but let's ask.
[00:35:28] Speaker D: I think so too.
[00:35:30] Speaker E: And we'll get to Sophia too, But. Mehdi, had you heard about this before?
[00:35:33] Speaker C: No, I haven't. This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
[00:35:36] Speaker E: Me too. And I just found it online. Do you think it's real? I mean, I don't know.
[00:35:40] Speaker D: I mean, regenerative could be an AI ploy, but. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Regenerative medicine is. Is a pretty hot field in general.
This attempt to build tissue, you know, from ground up, starting from a single cell and being able to, for example, build different kinds of organs. You know, also leveraging things like 3D printing and whatnot. Things like kid artificial kidneys, you know, know pancreases and whatnot. As for tooth, I knew that people were working in this general field, bone regeneration, but this one in particular I had not. I had not heard of.
[00:36:25] Speaker E: So it could be real?
[00:36:26] Speaker D: I think it's real. I mean, why would somebody make that up?
[00:36:29] Speaker E: I wonder how they would control the expression of things, though. So you only get the tooth you want.
[00:36:34] Speaker D: Can you like order like 2 extra large or 4 extra large teeth in the front of your mouth and become a vampire, for example? Or maybe not.
Okay, well, let's move on to somebody else.
[00:36:46] Speaker E: So, Sophia, do you have any thoughts about this?
[00:36:49] Speaker B: I agree with Dr. Maddie.
[00:36:51] Speaker E: I do think this is pretty interesting. I don't need it right now, but five years from now, you know, I mean, this is just. It would be so cool if it was real, because I've heard that having replacement teeth is not very comfortable a lot of the time.
[00:37:05] Speaker D: Yeah, it seems to me like it might be a while before they get there. Five years seems like a pretty aggressive timeline, but you never know, so.
[00:37:13] Speaker E: Okay, well, now we've talked about something we don't really know is happening. I want to talk about a critical breakthrough that we do know is happening. That Mehdi Javimard, a professor at Rutgers University and co founder of Rizlab Health, is designing. Its about white blood cell count. I can hardly wait to hear. Can you please tell us what you are doing, Mehdi?
[00:37:35] Speaker C: Absolutely. I think we're all familiar with things like glucose meters that diabetics use. You know, they can take a quick finger prick and check their glucose levels at home, or, you know, home based tests like the COVID tests. Right. We all started using those during the pandemic. Now, what we're trying to do at Rizlab Health is essentially take that similar idea, but, but use it for, for counting blood cells. So things like white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, and, you know, when being able to check these levels rapidly with a tiny amount of blood is really important, you know, for, for different kinds of diseases, indications, you know, patients having all sorts of, you know, different conditions that they're dealing with. You know, just to give you an idea, the first indication that we're targeting is sepsis. You know, sepsis as, you know, is the third leading killer or the third leading cause of hospital deaths.
[00:38:38] Speaker E: Can you explain exactly what sepsis is?
[00:38:41] Speaker C: Yeah, very good question. So I think the best way to describe sepsis is it's, it's blood poisoning. It's like you get bacteria, pathogens in your blood, usually originates from somewhere outside of the blood. The bacteria manage to get in the blood and then obviously, as you can imagine, creates a mess because bacteria shouldn't be in there. And if not treated very quickly, then it can result in death. In fact, for every hour that treatment is delayed, the chance of mortality goes up by 8%. I personally actually had a very dear relative, very close relative of mine several years back who had surgery on their knee and that ultimately resulted in sepsis.
And they ended up passing away after a month or so.
[00:39:34] Speaker E: Did they know they had it right away or did they delay too long for treatment?
[00:39:39] Speaker C: They did not know. They did not know right away because they came home after the surgery and then, you know, the wound got infected and then, you know, ultimately, you know, got into their bloodstream. And by the time the hospitals figured out what was going on, they started treating, but it was, it was a little too late. And then the, you know, anti, you get antimicrobial resistance as well. You know, the bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics and then it becomes very, very difficult to treat. So just, you know, just to tell you, what we want to do at Rizzlab, for example, is, you know, being able to triage high risk patients very early, like in the emergency room at triage, for example. Right. Because right now the way it works is in an emergency room, when somebody comes in with an infection, they look at four parameters. So they look at the, you know, whether you have fever or not, whether you have elevated heart rate, elevated breathing rate, and those three things they can do at the triage. Right. You know, there's like a nurse there that can quickly measure these things. But the fourth parameter is the white blood Cell can't. They can't do that until you get admitted into the ER. And we know, like, these days, ERs are very overcrowded, right? So you get admitted, you need a phlebotomist to take a tube of blood, has to get sent to a lab. Right. By the time that gets back, one, two, maybe three, four hours may have. Have passed. Right. The disease has progressed. But what we envision is being able to take a finger prick at triage and know within minutes, Right, whether the blood count is elevated and whether they need to start sepsis treatment right away. Or better yet, being able to do it in the ambulance, right, when the patient's on the way or in urgent care.
[00:41:30] Speaker E: Sounds like that really fills a need.
[00:41:33] Speaker D: So is sepsis then treatable if it's caught early?
[00:41:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So essentially, they start, you know, the medical team will start infusion of antibiotics right away. Very.
[00:41:46] Speaker D: And that makes all the difference. That would be enough to help somebody survive.
[00:41:50] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:41:52] Speaker E: What are you measuring? Are you measuring white blood cell count?
[00:41:54] Speaker C: Yeah, so. So. So exactly. In the emergency room, those four parameters I mentioned, they're called the SIRS criteria. Systemic inflammatory response.
So the higher your score is, the higher chance of mortality. So essentially, once they see that you have a score of 2 or higher, they begin that process. But. But oftentimes they need a tiebreaker, right, because maybe somebody took aspirin or Tylenol before they went, and their fever's under control, but they really, you know, have something bad going on, or maybe, you know, maybe they just rush to the er. So they're, you know, they're breathing, you know, heavily, or they're nervous, so they have a high heart rate. The white blood cell count is the only one that is truly objective.
[00:42:41] Speaker D: So how did you go about starting this company, and how did you go about designing the device? What were the steps that you took?
[00:42:49] Speaker C: So, very good question. So this all started from, you know, my academic roots. I did my PhD at Stanford. I don't want to say how many years ago, so you can't guess how old I am. But my research focus was on, you know, building really tiny sensors for. For being able to detect really small molecules, like proteins, you know, cells, DNA molecules.
So we built this technology, looked really promising, you know, published papers, and continued really working on it in an academic environment. In 2014, I started a lab at Rutgers University, was able to recruit some amazing, brilliant students and scholars to work on further building this technology and perfecting it. And then, you know, about five, six years ago, with a team of great co founders. We spun off the company with the goal of commercializing filing patents, mass producing it, getting regulatory approval, Things that you really. You gotta do it in the corporate environment.
[00:43:58] Speaker D: Yeah. I have to point out that Rizzi Lab is a Gerhardt Law client, so thank you very much for that.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: No, and thank you for the support you give us.
[00:44:06] Speaker E: So do you have investor funding?
[00:44:08] Speaker C: We do. We benefit both from investor funding. So private investors and also federal government contracts have really helped us de risk the technology, manufacture these devices. And now we're working on doing the clinical studies necessary to get clearance for our device from the fda.
[00:44:32] Speaker E: So how many lives do you think you can save in a year? Have you done the calculation?
[00:44:37] Speaker C: So, just to give you an idea, well, 134,000 people die from sepsis every day and roughly 11 million annually. And 80% of those deaths are preventable if the sepsis is detected early.
[00:44:54] Speaker D: Why don't they just test at the hospital more often?
[00:44:58] Speaker C: Very good question. So when you go to the er, they do, but it's only after you've been admitted and you know, you need a phlebotomist to come and take a full tube of blood and pat, send that on to the Lab. Now, some ERs are very fast and can do it quickly. But. But if you go to like, a major hospital that's really crowded, the lab is backed up, that can take hours.
And so the reason to ask your. Answer your question. Why? Well, wouldn't it help just to measure your white blood cell count once a year? Well, you do that already for, like, your physical exam. Right, but sepsis is something that just appears very quickly and it moves very fast.
[00:45:41] Speaker E: Yeah, I was kind of under the impression that anyone that got sepsis pretty much died, but I guess not everyone that gets it. But what is the survival rate? Did you say that already?
[00:45:50] Speaker C: So what I do know is roughly 50 million cases and 11 million deaths. So more like one in five die. And those, you know, those that die, 80% of them could have been preventable if. If detected early.
[00:46:06] Speaker E: What's the treatment?
[00:46:07] Speaker C: It's an aggressive regimen of antibiotics. Infused. Infused.
[00:46:12] Speaker E: Mehdi Javamar, professor at Rutgers University and co founder of Rizlab Health. How do people find you? I guess you. They can go on the Rutgers site and find you. How do you spell your last name?
[00:46:22] Speaker C: J A V A N, M A.
[00:46:25] Speaker E: R D. So if there are any people out there looking for, like, groundbreaking research, you're a bright young student. Would you want them to contact you?
[00:46:35] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:46:36] Speaker E: So we love what Rutgers does. They are groundbreaking with their research in so many areas and thank you very much, Mehdi. This has been fascinating.
[00:46:45] Speaker C: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[00:46:48] Speaker D: Passage to Prophet with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:46:51] Speaker E: Now it is time to move on to Sophia Diaz who's been waiting here patiently. She is an accomplished and multifaceted personality. I'm just going to let her tell you everything she does. I will say I went online on YouTube and listened to her music. I loved it. Great. So please tell us what you do, Sophia.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Well, I'm a fashion designer. I created a brand called Diaz, which is my family name. I'm also creator of futuristic eyewear under the same name. I would just say that I'm extremely blessed to be able to do so many creative things that I do. I'm also very passionate about writing. I write my own music and I've recorded two studio albums by choice. I chose to record both the albums at Tuff Gong Recording Studio, which is in Kingston, Jamaica.
And I had the opportunity to work with some of the finest, the most sought after musicians in the world. I had to put my mind right from the beginning and choose a team, choose who I wanted to work with, who I wanted on my team. And I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Mr. Clive Hunt, who is one of the top music producers in the industry.
And I also wanted to work with Shane Brown, who is who engineered and remixed both my albums and the rest of the team were just fantastic, bulletproof. The first album would not have been possible without the emotional and moral support of Clive Hunt and Shane Brown. I was going through, I was put into a rather challenging position situation at that time. The home that I lived in Bucktown in Chicago was under foreclosure. I had a few dollars and a few cents in my bank account. Everything else was forcibly taken away from me.
[00:49:02] Speaker D: In what way?
[00:49:03] Speaker B: The person who was closest to me was a former spouse who had planned my demise with great strategy in such a way where, I mean this is all documented by attorneys where I had two choices. One was to really go and end my life because I had nothing and. Or the other was to ask people for support, ask people for help to give me dignity to stand up and work and survive. And I was responsible for four other people in my life at that time. My adopted three cats and a large, beautiful 165 pound dog, Mr. Santos, who was with me. I adopted him since he was a baby boy. So essentially the writing style of the album comes from real life circumstances, real life challenges where you don't know what's going to happen to you. Your life, my life was in the hands of another person. I was terrified. I was frightened.
Perhaps I felt like I was a victim just for a few hours. But I could not be in that frame of mind. It would have been futile.
So I had to very, very quickly get myself together and just move on to the next day. And the next day it was survival of the fittest.
I sold my grandmother's piano to have money to buy groceries. I sold my handbags, my personal belongings to strangers just to be able to survive. And I'm talking about buying groceries, a bottle of water.
[00:50:55] Speaker E: Well, that sounds like a tremendous thing to come back from. But you have. But I did want to ask you about your designs. Are you selling those to the public?
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Yes, I am.
[00:51:05] Speaker E: Where are you selling them?
[00:51:06] Speaker B: It's essentially online. But as for the next month or so, my website is offline, so we are in the process of reconstructing.
[00:51:16] Speaker E: So do you have them on Amazon?
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Yes, my books are on Amazon.
[00:51:20] Speaker E: So what is your website going to be called when it's back online?
[00:51:24] Speaker B: Sophiadias.com.
[00:51:26] Speaker E: Okay. Yeah, I saw your Instagram page. I was really excited to look at your glasses that I wear. Is that for people that need prescription glasses or do you have readers?
[00:51:38] Speaker B: No, it's purely a fashion accessory. It has got UV 40 sun protection. I essentially designed those for myself because I play a lot of. I play cricket. I play tennis almost every other day. I play squash some, you know, perpetually, you know, very active lifestyle, so. And the design of the eyewear covers your entire face. I've worn those glasses throughout all of my official music videos.
[00:52:11] Speaker E: Yeah, those are nice if you're gonna. To protect your eyes and the skin around your eyes especially.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Right? Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:52:18] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: I got to work with some tremendous people making both those albums. I worked with director Walt Lovelace, who's a genius. He's from Trinidad and Tobago, and we filmed Plugged in and Blanchishere beach in Trinidad and Tobago. I worked with the all Trinidadian team who were just absolutely fabulous. And we have so many memories. And in the future, if I ever, you know, work in Trinidad and Tobago, that's the same team that I'm going to be working with.
[00:52:51] Speaker D: Great. So do you have more plans for more albums in the future, more books, sort of. What's next for you?
[00:52:59] Speaker B: What's next for Sophia is just keep on paying it forward, being a good person. Just help a lot of people along the way.
[00:53:08] Speaker D: Talk a little bit about your Books. Why don't you tell us about those? What are their titles and what are they about?
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Well, my first book that got published, which is on Amazon, is A Culinary Journey. And it captures. It's not just a book, you know, about recipes, and you add cayenne pepper and bell peppers and make this dish. It is actually a love story with me and food and all of the various countries that I've traveled and the people that I've met all across the world. I learned to cook Iranian food, for example, from my neighbors in London in Hyde Park Gate, and all of my journeys through Mozambique, where I met a fisherman. I paid him $20. He and his wife taught me how to cook fish on a beach, Mozambique style, you know, with local herbs and so on and so forth. Spices. I attended culinary school in Italy, in Sardinia, Paris, Switzerland, England, India, Thailand, almost all over the world.
[00:54:17] Speaker D: So what experience did you have that made you want to cook? Is it just that you enjoy eating, or is it something more?
[00:54:24] Speaker B: I love eating good food. And growing up in boarding school, you know, we didn't have much of a culinary experience. And after boarding school, when I would go home, my mother could not. I mean, she's a fantastic mother, but she could not boil an egg. Either the egg would explode or it was undercooked. It was undercooked. And so I started saving money. And, you know, studying culinary is an expensive business. You know, you're paying for food, you're paying for professionals, you're paying for a hotel or a place to stay, flights and so on and so forth. But it was a good investment.
[00:55:06] Speaker E: I think that's fascinating. So you have a book on cooking. What was your other book about?
[00:55:10] Speaker B: The other book was about a short chapter in my life, I think, that lasted for about seven to 10 years, called blondie Prouve, and translated into English, it's called Bulletproof, where I survived a loaded gun aimed at my head and at my dog in the sanctity of my home, in my kitchen, by a person who was closest to me, a former spouse. And, you know, I don't like to relive it, but it's in the past, and the past does not define who I am. But the book talks about how people, some people. I mean, that former spouse was not alone. He had a team of people, and they dedicated several years of their lives to completely annihilate me. And I wouldn't know how people have that in them to, you know, completely annihilate another human being.
[00:56:12] Speaker D: Do you feel safe now?
[00:56:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. I learned that when you talk about what you've been through and you stand up and you have good people, good friends all over the world just knowing what you've been through and it was very evident. It wasn't hush hush. It was in the face of the world. So I feel absolutely safe wherever I go.
[00:56:37] Speaker E: I feel like some people are very angry people and they have to find a target for that anger.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I was the target.
[00:56:47] Speaker E: And you became the target for these people. I feel like politicians are the target for a lot of people. Like the other side is the target for this free floating anger that they don't know what their anger about or where to put it. So, yeah, it kind of sounds like that's what hap. You just met the wrong people that just had this anger and decided, oh, she's going to be our target. Which is horrible for you.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: It was. And what was even really horrible was that my then former spouse was involved with one of our employees who had secretly taped him. And this is in the book and in the movie script, Bulletproof.
The employee had secretly taped my then former spouse. And there were 22 tapes just like how Puff Diddy or whatever his name is, Sean Combs, it's similar. And this young intern and employee of ours then was blackmailing my former spouse. And even, even, even, you know, I was getting calls from anonymous people if I wanted to see those 22 tapes.
[00:57:58] Speaker E: Well, this sounds like a really good book. I'm gonna have to get it.
Wow.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:58:04] Speaker G: Wow.
[00:58:04] Speaker E: And it's a true story.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: Yes. My phone calls were monitored. I changed my telephone, I believe twice. And I would still get phone calls. And you know, I would get a no caller ID or sometimes a local Chicago phone call. And the person would say, hi, Ms. Diaz, you've just entered your home and parked to your car in the garage. I'm right outside the corner on Cortland at the Starbucks. Would you like to meet me? I've got 22 tapes of your spouse on them in the city, state hotel and room number.
And we are asking for $200,000.
I went to the police, I talked to the attorneys and I said, I have no desire to see those tapes. I mean, no wife would want to see her husband in her God alone knows what's on the tapes. But, but I, I was told what was on the tapes and it didn't stop there, Elizabeth. It went on. The person would say, well, you know, we are going to give this to your competitors in the business realm.
[00:59:18] Speaker E: Oh, my God.
[00:59:19] Speaker B: And it was sad and just frightening. That people were monitoring your move.
[00:59:27] Speaker E: Right. And what they would do for money. Right. It's like, how could you?
[00:59:31] Speaker B: It was a web of I was caught up. I wasn't caught up. I was placed in a web of dangerous minds.
Money was the extortion, manipulation, and blackmail was the name of the game.
[00:59:46] Speaker E: And did you make a movie out of that?
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Did you say yes? The book was turned into a movie script based on real life facts.
[00:59:55] Speaker E: Has the movie come out yet?
[00:59:56] Speaker B: Oh, no. We're in the process of, you know, getting the right partners on board as investors and going to that route.
[01:00:05] Speaker E: Sounds like a great movie.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: My life was extremely in a very dangerous place then. And I knew the players. I mean, I knew the lady who was, who had made these 22 tapes. She was one of our employees. Of course, the main star of those tapes was a former spouse. And then various other people were involved, and I knew all of them.
[01:00:29] Speaker E: Wow, that's a great teaser for your book. So your book is on Amazon.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Blondie Proof by Sofia Diaz.
[01:00:35] Speaker E: Sofia Diaz is an accomplished and multifaceted personality. I listen to her music online. It's great. I love what she does. Listeners, you are listening to the Passage to Profit show with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest today, Ken Dashau. And we will be right back.
[01:00:50] Speaker F: Man, I had a rough night's sleep, boy. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday and I just couldn't sleep, man.
[01:00:57] Speaker C: I'm dying here.
[01:00:58] Speaker F: 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.
[01:01:33] Speaker G: 8008-026219-26800.
26 2192-680026-21926. That's 800-262-1926.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: It's passage to Profit.
[01:01:50] Speaker D: Now it's time for Noah's retrospective.
[01:01:54] Speaker E: Noah Fleishman is our producer here at Passage to Profit, and he never stops trying to make sense of the future by looking at the past.
[01:02:02] Speaker I: I just can't stand those disruptive ads that break in when I'm browsing YouTube, especially when I'm watching a file of classic television commercials. I don't think anyone's ever going to admit to a fondness for television commercials, much less to a fondness for watching them. But then again, try to explain why all those bundle videos of all those eternal commercial breaks from decades past are now the most visited files out there. Truth is, for many of us, those commercials were the wallpaper of our impressionable past. We're the TV generation and we're cherishing our memories even if we don't want to live in the past. A few good minutes with the old commercials is worth a smile. We can live around the new ones. A woman I know actually tells me her teenage daughter likes to watch those current day ads on her device all the time. Now that's what you call a contemporary figure.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: Now more with Richard and Elizabeth Passage.
[01:02:50] Speaker E: To profit, our special guest, Ken Dashow. We're almost to the end of the show. You can find our show as a podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. And if you didn't hear it, Ken Dashow was great. And our two guests have been really great too. Now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. Mehdi Javamard, do you have a secret for entrepreneurs that you can share?
[01:03:14] Speaker C: I think the number one characteristic you need as an entrepreneur is resilience and grit. And actually hearing Sophia's story reminded me further about this. There's a quote I like actually from the movie Rocky Balboa. He says, it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. And, you know, I think that's something I personally have to remind myself of every day. Because as an entrepreneur, not every day feels like you're winning and you have to, you know, get back up and keep punching your way through. And, you know, eventually, God willing, you'll make it.
[01:03:55] Speaker E: Sophia Diaz, do you have a secret you can share?
[01:03:58] Speaker B: I believe the secret is for me choosing the people that I want to work with. I've been very fortunate to have built relationships and business for the last 25, 30 years. And it's my characteristic to work with the same people where I've built and sustained and maintained and nourished fantastic work relationships. For me, it has always been the people, the people that I choose to work with, the people that I intentionally choose to work with. It helps build a safe environment for me as a CEO, as a founder of a company. And, you know, I cherish those relationships. When I started Diaz, I had little money. And I launched my company, Milan, Italy, and I'm still in touch with those very people and the factory owners. So having those relationships with people is the most important for me as an entrepreneur and as a businesswoman.
[01:05:04] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: You cannot buy relationships.
[01:05:07] Speaker D: That's great. I think that that's super important.
[01:05:10] Speaker E: That is important.
[01:05:11] Speaker D: So, Richard Gearhart, I think my secret this week is going to be try not to have too many secrets.
I mean, it's true, though, the more we can be transparent. There's not perfect transparency. I don't think that that's really achievable. But especially with relationships, if you can be transparent and authentic and not have any secrets, then that's very helpful.
[01:05:38] Speaker E: I think mine is a little bit like Medi's. I think you just have to keep doing what you're doing and just keep going on and on. We've been doing this show. It's almost seven years now that we've been doing this show. And at times it was difficult. During COVID it was difficult, but we kept doing it and we've kept doing it. And things take a long time to really blossom sometimes. And I think our show's getting onto a whole nother level. You know, we got syndicated. That was a big deal for us. But I feel like we're going into almost a whole nother realm with the social media marketing we're doing and the things that we're learning and the YouTube stuff. But most people, some people can, but most people are not going to be successful overnight. So you just have to keep going and keep going and just know it could take a long time. That is my secret.
[01:06:25] Speaker D: Very profoundly said. And unfortunately, that's it for us for this week. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team. Our producer, Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishikeb Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the info 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.
