[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is a massive incursion on humanity.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I really started it as a joke.
[00:00:05] Speaker C: You know, it's really easy when you know nothing.
[00:00:08] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:09] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You've just heard some snippets from our show. Do you want to know more about starting your business? Stay tuned.
[00:00:17] Speaker F: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it hard. Now get it in gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:28] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:35] 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.
[00:00:42] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and their business ventures. Has big data collection gone too far? Our featured guest today is Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur, social networking pioneer, and privacy expert. And if you think social media has gone too far, listen up, because he's got a plan to fix it and it might just blow your mind.
[00:01:06] Speaker E: And then we have two really great speakers as well. Gary Cohen. Oh, my gosh. And I got it. I really want to know how he did this. He went from a startup making 4,000 a year to being listed on Nasdaq. I mean, come on, who does that is impressive, right? And then, okay, this is one of my favorite things.
Tim Nealon has Ghost city tours. He has a few cities and they take people on ghost tours. That is so much fun. We used to do that every time we went on vacation with our little kids. We went and saw Robert in Florida. He stole Richard's hat. The Robert doll, if you haven't heard of it.
[00:01:40] Speaker D: We are big Ghost tour fans.
[00:01:42] Speaker E: And later on we'll hear from our friend Alicia Morrissey, a great jazz singer. And we've got secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. Really excited about today's show.
[00:01:52] Speaker D: And speaking of ghosts and haunted things, I guess we wanted to tell a story about black cats. It's getting close to Halloween and this ties into the whole concept of upselling. Upselling. So this is a business related topic.
[00:02:07] Speaker E: It's story time now. So we had three cats and one of them died unexpectedly. And I was just crushed. And they're mostly my cats. So Memorial Day weekend, I said to Richard, let's go to the shelter.
[00:02:21] Speaker D: Innocently, she said, let's just go to the shelter and see what we see.
[00:02:24] Speaker E: And just look. They won't Let us leave with cats today.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: But let's just look. Yeah.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:30] Speaker E: What happened?
[00:02:30] Speaker D: When we got there, we saw a bunch of cats.
[00:02:33] Speaker E: Well, there was a little. We weren't even looking for a kitten. We were looking for something a little older. And he stuck his hand out through the bars of the cage and grabbed Richard, right? So his cat started it.
[00:02:44] Speaker D: Usually it's the lawyers with the handout, right?
[00:02:47] Speaker E: But we're like, well, maybe one older cat. They're like, well, maybe you want kittens. Well, one kitten. So they put us in a room with two little kittens from two different.
[00:02:55] Speaker D: And they were both black. And the way they played together, we thought they knew each other. They were just, like, taken off all over the room, full of energy, bouncing up and down, and we were like, oh, we can't really separate these two little youngins from each other.
[00:03:10] Speaker E: Like, well, the second one is half price.
So instead of coming home with one cat, we came home with two, and now we have a lot of cats.
[00:03:17] Speaker D: So was the first. The first upsell was Elizabeth getting us to the cat shelter in the first place. The second upsell was getting us to take two cats instead of one, so. So if you can weave those ideas into your business, you'll be an amazing success.
[00:03:31] Speaker E: They also had really good product, if you want to call an animal product, which isn't exactly the right thing to say, but they had something we really.
[00:03:38] Speaker D: Wanted, and we went for it. So now it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans are starting their own business, or at least thinking about starting their own business. And we have a question for our panel. What's the one mistake every new entrepreneur should avoid, but you had to learn the hard way? So let's start off with Mark.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: The first mistake that I really want to flag for everybody is don't be utterly unflexible when it's time to move the business into something else. Let it morph. Make sure you let it morph. If that's where the market is telling you it needs to go, don't be stuck with your righteousness.
[00:04:19] Speaker D: Gary. The one mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid. But you had to learn it the hard way.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: I think I'd augment Mark's, which is it's going from telling to asking. Not just to be informed, but to move people forward. So stop telling.
[00:04:33] Speaker D: Start asking, Tim, what is the mistake that every entrepreneur should avoid? But you had to learn the hard way.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: You don't have to do it all yourself. There's always this hesitation to involve others and this need to do it yourself, and I have fallen for that mistake. If you're in this for the long haul, more than likely you're not going to be able to do it by yourself. So you might as well become comfortable bringing people into your company early on and help learning how to rely on them to help you achieve what you're doing, trying to achieve.
[00:04:59] Speaker D: Oh, absolutely. My advice is, if you're hiring, make sure that you check references, you do background screenings, because hiring is hard enough.
[00:05:08] Speaker E: It's amazing. Things will turn up in a Google search that don't turn up on a background check.
[00:05:12] Speaker D: That's right, check their Facebook page. And speaking of social media, it's making us distracted, manipulated, and divided. And the people who built it know exactly what they're doing.
Today, tech entrepreneurs and privacy pioneer Mark Weinstein, one of the original inventors of social networking, pulls back the curtain on big tech surveillance capitalism and why your online life is being sold to the highest bidder. So he's here to reveal how we can finally take back control and restore sanity to the web. So welcome again, Mark. He's the author of the book Restoring Our Sanity Online, which I did have a chance to check out before the program.
I think it's definitely worth a read if you're concerned about privacy.
So tell us a little bit about surveillance capitalism and what it's doing to us.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: One of the reasons why, and this is the web2world that we still live in, that surveillance capitalism works, in other words, on your phone, on your laptop, wherever you are, the data ecosystem, they, the proverbial they, they know everything you're doing, who you're talking to, where you are, what you're saying, what your topics are, what your emotions are, what you're thinking. And this is now supercharged by AI. So you know when you look at a newsfeed, whether it's on TikTok or X or Insta or Facebook or wherever you are, that newsfeed is also designed purposefully to addict you, to keep you there as long as possible. And the data is stunning. Right? Kids are spending five to seven hours a day on social media.
Grownups, too. And we all see this. Either we know a young person or we know an older person who a year ago maybe wasn't so hooked. But now, with the advent of AI supercharged algorithms, we're stuck. And what are these algorithms doing? They're manipulating our thoughts, our opinions, our purchase decisions, our votes. And so this is a massive incursion on humanity. And I'm one of the guys who loves social media. I'm one of the guys who invented social media. One of. There's about a hundred of us.
And the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee, has endorsed my book, as has Woz, the Great Woz, co founder of Apple. Both of these guys say it's a vital read, it's a must read. And in the book we talk about, okay, well, we've got this giant mess, but can we fix it or are we doomed? Because remember now, social media is causing democracy to falter. So we've got a lot of issues here, Richard, and there's a lot going on and then the aspect of bots and trolls, because right now, you know, even in the wake of all of the political things that are going on right now, no one's talking about the huge perpetration by bots and trolls paid for by nefarious entities, by nefarious countries, and there are millions of them. It's well documented. And by the way, my book has over 400, you know, footnotes because it's important to find credible sources for anything that you're saying today. This is also really important.
We've got to get to a much better world around fact checking and questioning the facts. You know, it was well documented a few years ago that half of Elon's followers were bots and trolls. Half of Biden's followers are bots and trolls because, you know, we're talking about tens of millions of followers, half of them bots and trolls. And what they're doing also to us in our regular news feeds, for us, the rest of us, is the perpetration. Remember, the Russians and the Chinese would like nothing better to disrupt democracy now. They've had plenty of time. They've had a good decade of fomenting disagreement. And remember, the backbone of democracy is disagreement, always has been, not hatred. We don't really hate each other, but this perpetration where we, you know, most of these people aren't even real who we think we're having an argument with online.
So there's a lot to fix now. There's a lot of things that are coming up to fix this stuff. There's a lot we can do.
[00:09:23] Speaker D: Mark Weinstein, a tech entrepreneur, social networking pioneer and privacy expert, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online.
I'm just kind of wondering, like, well, okay, so all of this sounds really crazy and it doesn't sound good, but what does it really harm? I talk with my kids about these topics and they're like, oh, loosen up, dad. It's not a big deal. So what if somebody knows what my favorite potato chip is? They're just going to send me ads and maybe a coupon, and so it'll work out for me. So why get so worked up about this?
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Such a good question. And remember, this is the same thing as, you know, surveillance capitalism is now about 15 or 17 years old.
So back in 2010, 2011, people thought it was cool, right? Just like kids today. It's no different. It's like, oh, wow, they know what I want. They know the kind of potential, the kind of shoes. They know what I like. That's great. But it doesn't stop there.
So we know all the body shaming, we know all the issues that young women have, young girls have suicidal thoughts, all this stuff going on, because they're made to feel as though there's something inappropriate or inferior about them. So they have to buy this product or that product. You know, we have a breakdown in how democracy functions and in our ability to critically think. We've got to be able to ascertain who is pushing this information into my newsfeed. Why? What's the purpose? Wouldn't it be nice if they said, well, here's something being put in your newsfeed because it's trying to affect your vote or your healthcare decisions or, you know, your financial decisions, and it's coming from this or that. So, Richard, there's a lot at stake here, and unfortunately, a lot of our kids don't realize it. Also, remember kids up to the age and through the age of 13, and this goes back 30 years ago to the present. Whatever they see, advertisements, they think are telling the truth. That's just how it is.
And now we have to really fast forward our critical thinking teaching so the kids can now, because in the old days, it was just a potato chip ad, but now they're being fed so much information, more than ever in the history of humankind.
[00:11:41] Speaker E: I agree 100% with you. The algorithms show us what we want to see, reinforce our beliefs, the other side is evil. And then you go meet somebody who doesn't believe the same way you do. And they're not evil. They don't look like the devil, but the algorithms or whomever is controlling that. So that's the other thing is we blame it on the algorithms. It's not the algorithms, it's the people that are controlling it. There's people behind this. But my question is, how do you stop it? And then I'm just wondering if some kid is getting bullied Online, could you like program your own bot to go back after the bully year so they'd leave your kid alone? I mean that would ask.
[00:12:15] Speaker D: There you go. Fight fire with fire, right?
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Oh, look, this is a, this is a great question. I talk a lot about good AI and this is an AI, you know, centric conversation today also. And I have a chapter on AI, you know, because AI is really creepy with these relationships that we're developing, personal relationships with our AI friends. And the AI friend is just slurping data and pushing that up into the data ecosystem.
So we can't yet. You can't yet program a personal AI to then sort of filter everything. But here's what we can do. We talk about, because the book is very much a recipe for the future, not a regurgitation of the past. There's enough of books talking about the past. We've got to move into the future, into what I call Web4, because Web3 doesn't work and most people don't even know what Web3 is. And don't worry about that right now. And part of that is for our kids is user ID verification.
Now this is a very, I'm one of the world's leading privacy guys. I've been against this for years.
But for our children on social media, not for marginalized people, not for whistleblowers, we protect the anonymity of those people. But for our kids on social media sites, and that includes YouTube and that includes, you know, TikTok, and that includes, you know, Insta, and that includes even X where our kids are. We've got to make sure that anybody who's connecting to them is a verified minor. And if there's no grown up or bot who is fraudulently perpetrating and manipulating them, we've got to protect, we've got to start with a good verification system. There's some countries looking at this. Spain, Australia.
We've got to protect our kids first. That's the first place we go.
[00:14:02] Speaker D: We're with Mark Weinstein. And Mark, it's been great talking with you. Quick question. What are some of the biggest privacy threats that people aren't even aware of?
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Well, first of all, and this goes back to the advent of surveillance capitalism when companies like Facebook and Google realized that the way to make a boatload of money is to look, peek over your shoulder at everything you're doing and then to target you with, you know, ads and all this stuff.
[00:14:28] Speaker D: For example, if we have like Fire TV or Google tv, is that collecting data from us and then sending it back to Amazon or Google, the programs we watch all the time.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Look, if your phone is on and you're like into Instagram or any Meta product or you're logged into Google, whatever it is, your phone is constantly listening to you. Anybody can try this at home. Talk about somebody you haven't seen in a long time. Just have a conversation, not on your phone, just like with some friends around the phone. And then wait a day or two or 30 minutes or 10 minutes and see how long it takes for you to get some kind of suggestion about that friend or about that product, whatever it is you want to talk about.
Just check it out everybody. This is real. You're being monitored all the time. It goes into the data, it's called the data ecosystem. And that data is shared across platforms. And yeah, this is a massive problem. So you know what's going to happen soon is data portability. The inventor of the web is working on this data interoperability.
So soon, and this is all coming, you'll have a pod, you will actually control your data.
This is really what the future is. And this is likely to be part of the FTC Federal Trade Commission settlement with Meta. We're going to start to see some kind of data interoperability where you'll be able to pull your data off a platform, you'll be able to control it, et cetera.
[00:15:54] Speaker C: Gary Cohen Mark, I'm wondering about compulsion. So this idea of how AI has led us to addictive behaviors with our phone and other media. I know my dog recognizes it because when I'm on my phone, my dog walks to the other room. It's amazing. But I also feel a compulsion, you know, as a 63 year old and I have a compulsion to look at my phone. Right.
So we know other addictive forces in our lives are, you know, numerous. How we medicate ourselves, what's happening on that front to help people with it as an addiction versus just ah, it's clever. I'm kind of hooked in because there's a big distinction between those.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Gary, it's such an important question. And it's not just that, first of all we know that the screen is addictive and it's addictive to a toddler. So if you have kids, you know, right now, the first two years, don't let them see the phone, don't let them see a tv. This is, and there's certain countries now that are actually mandating that. But Gary, Even as a 63 year old guy, you're addicted more than ever. And here's why this is the AI conversation. Previously, it was the algorithms that were manipulating your newsfeed because they could plug into the data ecosystem and adjust and adapt. But AI is adjusting and adapting to what you're doing in nanoseconds, anticipating your next thought, anticipating whatever is being paid for to be pushed into your newsfeed. That's going to keep you hooked up and also serve who's ever paid for that. This is why you're hooked more than ever before. What can we do? We've got to find a way to flag when AI is operating and also what you can do. I'm sorry, man, but you've got to be proactive. You actually have to start to put your windows of time in. You've got to lock it down. You got to put the phone away at meals, you got to put the phone away at night. You're going to have to lock down the phone and create your own sort of channels for when it's permissible for you to be on the phone for an hour and just be there, and then you got to put it down. You're going to have to discipline.
[00:18:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it's possible that we could go too far with all of this data surveillance. For example, I think you mentioned during your TED talk, Mark, which is great TED Talk, by the way, you should look up mark on YouTube, which admittedly is a social media channel. But you talk about China, for example, and how they have these surveillance capabilities and they actually create rewards and punishments based on people's online behavior.
And if you say the wrong thing about the government, you could be put in jail or your kid could be denied access to a top school, and they're actually being much more direct about manipulating the population.
And you like to think that we would never get to that point, but this is a boiling frog situation.
[00:18:49] Speaker E: People are getting fired for speaking their minds on social media right now, today.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Which is ironic because we're the country of free speech.
[00:18:58] Speaker E: We were the country of free speech.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Yeah, we were.
[00:19:01] Speaker E: But one thing I like to do, and I know this doesn't really work for everybody, I like to try to confuse them. So I put my wrong birthday into Facebook.
[00:19:10] Speaker D: So you get birthday cards on the wrong day.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: What is.
[00:19:12] Speaker D: I mean. Oh, my God, that's fooling them.
[00:19:15] Speaker E: Yeah. And I try to confuse my Kindle by ordering books all over the spectrum.
[00:19:19] Speaker D: I thought that was just because you had a lot of different interests.
[00:19:22] Speaker E: I don't know. I think that you're right there. Just. We have to take more downtime, Mark. Right. I mean, I don't know what the other solution is.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Well, you know, they know that about six hours this and it's amazing you can tolerate that much time before there's a significant increase in the number of people who are depressed. But that six hour marker is when we sit with kids and grownups. If you're spending six hours a day on media and that could be your phone, your computer, tv, you got six hours a day, you're much more likely to be headed straight into some kind of depression, a longer term depression.
[00:19:58] Speaker D: Fascinating discussion. We have to take a commercial break. We're with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online.
We'll have more Passage to Profit right after this. IP in the News coming up as well as the AI Roundtable and also Secrets of the Entrepreneur.
You don't want to miss that. And don't forget to experience more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram X and YouTube or by subscribing to our podcast. Anywhere that you get your podcasts, just look for the Passage to Profit show on any of these platforms. We'll be back right after this.
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[00:22:31] Speaker F: Now back to passage to Prophet. Once again Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
[00:22:36] Speaker E: Our special guest Mark Weinstein. And he has written a book called Restoring our Sanity Online. He's talking about social media. He was a social media pioneer. He was one of the first inventors of a social media platform.
[00:22:49] Speaker D: 14 patents.
[00:22:50] Speaker E: He has 14 patents. And very smart guy obviously. And what we wanted to shift the conversation to, we talked a little bit about the evils of how we're being manipulated and data mined by our social media use.
But we use it for work and we get business from it. So we don't personally post. I post on my own LinkedIn, but otherwise we have assistants who post for us on social media every day. So how do you reconcile that with the data mining manipulation?
[00:23:18] Speaker A: You know, listen, that's a great question. I mean collectively, if you are running a business, you need to reach out and find your customers.
This is different than the, you know, the ethical breakdowns of social media. You know, around, you know, manipulating people's votes and things like that, you know, body shaming, all these things that go on. If you're a business, then you ought to be very savvy about how you spend your marketing dollars. And today you've got to spend it digitally. You can't, you, you know, nobody runs the newspaper ad anymore really or something like that. You've got to be there. And so you've, you've just gotta be savvy about that. That's, that's I think a very appropriate use as a business person. You know, you want to, you want to find your customers. Now the best way to use social media in my opinion for business is grassroots though, where you're actually not paying, but you have some social media expert who can find the people that are likely to want your product or service and can find them in a grassroots way.
And that's by themselves being engaged in social media in groups with thought leadership and finding like minded people.
And that's really because, you know, you want to create a little movement, right? You want to create this sort of niche of what I call ambassadors, because really you're looking for the ambassadors, the people that are going to love your product and your broadcast, going to wear it, going to show it, you know, going to use it, talk about it.
That's where the rubber meets the road.
[00:24:52] Speaker E: So, and I hate, I hate to say this, Mark, but I'm going to say it anyway. You can use ChatGPT to do that because I run a meetup group and we had somebody who had to attend a funeral and couldn't make it. So I did ask it to check LinkedIn and it brought up somebody who I knew who had spoken at my group before, and he came and spoke at the group last night.
And I, I wouldn't have really thought that way unless I'd used ChatGPT to scour LinkedIn for me.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: But see, AI, remember, AI isn't inherently good or bad. It's the application of AI that, that makes it either nefarious or, or a good guy and helpful. So that, that's a very good use. We all use AI. You know, I prefer to use it, you know, in searches. Right. Because if you're using a, an unbiased AI and you want to search on a product, like, what's really the best mattress for this application?
You know, AI is really helpful right now in nanoseconds. So I think that's a very good application. And we've got. Here's the challenge in modern society, in the history of humankind. Technology runs ahead of anybody's ability to regulate or understand its impact on the human condition. And that's always going to be the case.
So now we're always playing catch up. So here we are playing catch up around AI. Now we've learned, you know, how nefarious it can be and also how awkward it is. There's, there's AI stuffed animals for our kids, and then they make the kids feel good. But you know what they're doing? They're just collecting data because they're connected to the web and they're reporting back and they're figuring out what to say next. This is, this, you know, we're in the middle of quite a conundrum. But AI can be mass. AI can also root out the bad AI. AI can find a bot and troll. You know, it's interesting. We're now going to be cat and mouse AI versus AI.
[00:26:41] Speaker E: We are.
[00:26:43] Speaker D: So we're with Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online.
Mark, you were one of the earlier creators of social networking starting back in the 90s. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what motivated you to get into this business and how you got started.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: You know, first of all, anybody who remembers in the 90s, it was like, it was incredible. This was called the new economy.
And the idea. And we had email back then, don't kid yourself. We had email in the 90s, especially in the mid to late 90s, and it was just as ghastly as it is now. In other words, it's one dimensional. We misunderstand, we misinterpret, we're stuck on it, we're waiting for the next, all that. So the idea of getting new technology and at the time they had a 10 year old nephew because you want to listen to kids, you want to listen to your kids and other kids. And my nephew and I took a hike around a lake on a family vacation and we started to ideate, you know, uncle Marky, wouldn't it be great if we could. And we had this conversation. Ten minutes into it, I looked at my nephew and said, you know, I'm going to start a company. I'm going to give you 10% of it. I went back home at this point to Albuquerque. I started a company back then. You put nan in the newspaper. You interview people at your dining room table.
I hired engineers and graphic designers who couldn't design pages that would load because no one had done it before. Now, at the same time, there were several companies. When we were in beta, they were in beta. Superfamily.com and Superfriends.com were mine. They became PC magazine, top 100 sites three years in a row worldwide. But it was an exciting, amazing time. And this is again, you know, so my tip here is like, always pay attention to what your kids are doing. I mean, the idea that we're all wearing ripped jeans there or our kids are, come on. That came from, you know, our generations. The guys that are older on this broadcast, like me and Gary and Tim and, you know, Elizabeth and Richard.
You know, it was just cool when the jeans finally got worn out that they ripped. You would wear them. Now you buy them ripped. It's ridiculous.
[00:28:46] Speaker D: I was just too cheap to buy new pants. Mark, it's just been amazing. Can you tell us where people can find you?
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Thank you. The book Restoring our sanity online is audio. It's Kindle, it's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any bookstore that you like. It's been in the airport stores for months. The book, by the way, is highly entertaining because I have hilarious stories. So you can find me markweinsteininventor.com you can write to me, Mark. @restoretheweb.com and you can find the books everywhere.
And thank you, everybody. It's a great conversation and the book has a lot of what you can do right now for yourself, for your kids, what we can do right now and what's coming.
Great.
[00:29:28] Speaker D: Well, the pleasure's been all ours.
[00:29:29] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm going to get that for us and the kids.
[00:29:31] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:32] Speaker E: Now, we have been talking about social media and the goods and the evils, and we're going to now segue into a roundtable on AI. So this is our AI roundtable. So I'm going to ask everybody how they're using AI, And I'm pretty sure nobody here is using it nefariously.
[00:29:50] Speaker D: I guess we have to ask and find out.
[00:29:52] Speaker E: Mark, why don't we start with you? What is one way you're using AI in your business?
[00:29:56] Speaker A: You know, and for everybody. I've written about AI a lot and how to regulate it on Fox in particular. They carried a couple of my pieces and did some interviews. But I think AI for search, an unbiased, you know, AI is a really great way to use it. I still like to be creative, so I'm not using it for writing or, you know, but when we're researching, you know, also people that I want to connect with, I think it's a great. But also just researching a product, you know, we're always buying things. We're buying things on Amazon. It's one thing to look at their reviews. It's another thing just to have an unbiased AI sort of give you some input on, you know, what's up or, you know, or what's going wrong with the transmission in your car or things like that. In the old days, we'd have to, like, get. Get, you know, get the search results and then sort of thumb through them. We'll, you know, scroll and figure out which one it works. But the AI search is much more effective at telling you right now what mattress, what's wrong with your transmission, whatever it is. So I enjoy it that way.
[00:30:56] Speaker E: That's a great way to use it. So, Gary, how are you using it?
[00:30:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I think in listening to this conversation over the last half hour, it brought me back to a memory. When I was at the Aspen Institute and we were talking about right when AI was being rolled out publicly, the large language model. And it struck me that as a kid growing up with severe learning differences, that there was always a connection between what I wanted the output to be from me and what it actually was.
And it almost puts Tears in my eyes to talk about this. That now the ability to express yourself by thinking about what the bullets are that you want to express and then asking AI to write it, and you actually see the words and you're like, but that's what I was thinking. Right? And I think for so many, and you know, so many of clients are have adhd, which often has other disabilities or challenges for them in their learning, that helping them see how using AI to help express themselves more fully and completely is such a huge, huge win. The way I do it in my business is all my calls have a transcript. Those transcripts are run through ChatGPT and with a prompt that says, this is what we covered. It goes back, it looks at all my past conversations with that person and says, this is where we're on track. This is where we're off track. These were the people we talked about. These are the things we're going to talk about in the next call based upon that. And what are the psychological underpinnings or coaching underpinnings that came out in the call? Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker E: That is really smart. That's a great way to use it. Thank you. Kim, how are you using it?
[00:32:55] Speaker B: I'm actually using AI in a way that probably not a lot of people are. We're in a phase right now where we're building AI into everything that we're building.
So whether we're talking about Ghost City tours, and I know that's kind of what I'm known for, but where it's really helped me in a sort of business sense is the reptile conservation center that I own.
And what we do is we breed some of the world's most endangered, critically endangered reptiles. And by building AI into the software that runs that facility. Because if you can imagine, every animal has thousands of data points over the course of its life, and they're not all easy to breed. And because there's not many of them left, it's important that we figure that out. So by building our software, or more appropriately, building, you know, OpenAI into our software, where it's able to go into the database and analyze things, thousands of data points on these animals is valuable insight into not only keeping these, you know, fragile animals alive, but what is working to make sure that we're able to produce the next generation of these animals. Now, I know that's not what you brought me on to talk about, but on Go City, we're doing something very similar where we're able to bring in, you know, AI to analyze all the data points Whether it's the data points from Google Analytics or, you know, search console or our booking software, I mean, you name it, we have all that data running through OpenAI right now. And it's making connections that there is no way we would have been able to make on our own. I mean, even I think I have a pretty good brain, but there's no way I'm connecting all these data points. So, you know, we're not really using it from a perspective of, you know, hey chatgpt, write me this or you know, go research this or whatever. Even though there's a ton of value in that, what we've been doing is using it to analyze data to help us make better business decisions.
[00:34:35] Speaker E: Yeah, I wonder if ever able to talk to ghosts.
[00:34:39] Speaker D: Well, there's supposed to be software out there that lets you communicate with your pets, right? And then maybe so maybe, maybe ghosts are the next step.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: I might be able to surprise you in a month or two. There is something interesting that we've been working on. You know, running actually electromagnetic energy readouts through AI and helping it make sense of it. It's actually really interesting stuff.
[00:35:01] Speaker E: Oh my gosh, that is.
[00:35:02] Speaker D: Our daughter would be fascinated. She loves the, loves the ghost stuff.
[00:35:06] Speaker E: I love all these different uses. This is just, I feel like I'm doing a social experiment every week on the show. Everybody's using it for different things. It's really awesome.
[00:35:15] Speaker D: Well, I had an interesting conversation this morning with somebody in Europe and they were talking about how their company used AI. She was asking me about how AI is working in the States. And so of course I followed up with the question. They seem to be taking a slightly different tact. So they're implementing AI into their operations, but they're not firing people. They're saying, look it, if we can be more productive with, you know, the more routine tasks and that frees our team up to go out and spend more time interacting with customers and more time getting business.
And it was really interesting to hear this because in the US it seems like a lot of the dialogue is around cutting jobs. You know, recently I guess Salesforce laid off about 250 engineers. And they were very open about the reason. They just said, you know, AI can do your job now, so don't let the door hit you on the way out.
This company was taking a different approach and saying we can use it to recapture other resources that can be redirected in positive ways for the company. So I thought that was really a interesting take. And you Know, you would think, well, of course. Right. But I think our mindsets here, you know, perhaps groomed by social media, have kind of put this into our heads that AI is going to be a job destroyer. And you don't have to think that way.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: I was just wondering if, as the market shows up against that company, whether that will hold true. In other words, if they can create more value that way. Yes, but oftentimes the market has something to say about it. In other words, once their competitors catch up with what they're doing on AI, then all of a sudden margins get destroyed.
[00:37:03] Speaker D: And that, yeah, that's a valid point. And it could be that it works out that way, but at least instead of reflexively going to the cost cutting, they're going to look for ways to redeploy their team.
And I also think that if a company can provide incentives for people to adopt AI, it'll get adopted faster because people can be resistant to adopting it. And if they see that their future is still somewhat secure, then they're more likely to implement it quicker compared to a company that says, well, your job's going to be gone after you do this implementation.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:45] Speaker D: And so you may actually make more progress, at least in the short term, more quickly. But good point.
[00:37:51] Speaker E: I just used it this morning, so I'm going to give my most recent use. I had my meetup group last night and we talked about ChatGPT5, what else? And AI versus human and copyrights in AI. And our next meetup is going to be October 21st. We do a hybrid in the studio here and also online, and it is going to be from Mike to Market, building a podcast that lasts.
That's October 21st in the evening here on the East Coast. But the way I used it this morning, I took the. We record everything on Zoom. I took the Zoom recording. I opened up the script editing software, edited some stuff out. I. I don't know if I should say. We got hacked in the meeting and somebody put a porn video in the middle of it.
[00:38:33] Speaker D: Oh, my God.
[00:38:34] Speaker E: And so we were able to stop it. So I had to go edit that out before I gave the video to anybody else. So I did that in descript, got the transcript.
[00:38:42] Speaker D: Were they wearing Fitbits?
[00:38:45] Speaker E: I'm trying not to laugh.
But then I can take the transcript from descript and I can throw it into chatgpt, which I've kind of trained to talk like me. Some people have really trained their ChatGPT to speak in their voice. And I could say, do a summary email of this meetup that I can send out to everybody that came, including all the links to people's podcasts that they mentioned, all the software sites they mentioned.
That would have taken me hours.
This takes me an hour maybe. The only, the hardest part is that it's a long meeting. And the slowest part is downloading the data and then getting the directed transcript and video back. So I love all these uses. I love all these creative uses. And I really feel like the people that are going to come out on top of this are going to be the people that use it in super creative ways and in their everyday life, too, to just speed things up.
So I don't think we're all going away.
[00:39:37] Speaker D: Not yet. Hopefully not yet. We need to take a commercial break, but we'll be back with more passage to profit right after this.
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[00:41:44] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:41:48] Speaker D: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard in 38 markets across the U.S. we'd like to do a shout out to our affiliate WHSY 9:50am and 1:05:9 FM in Hattlesburg, Lauren, Mississippi. And our podcast is ranked in the global top 3% of podcasts. We've also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a Top 10 Entrepreneur Interview Podcast. So subscribe to the Passage to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and on the IART app. Excellent time for IP in the News. Neil Young Speaking of older people, I think Neil Young's 79. I don't think he looks that great. I'm looking at a picture of him here. But anyway, he started a band, a new band called Chrome Hearts. They've been playing for about a year. And it turns out a company, a clothing company called Chrome Hearts, is now suing him for trademark infringement, alleging that customers are going to be confused if they see Neil's band and their clothing.
[00:42:54] Speaker E: They confuse a sweater for an old guy playing guitar?
I don't think so. There's different categories of trademarks, right?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:02] Speaker D: The clothing company says that because they've worked with celebrities in the past, that's enough of a bridge between what they're doing and what Neil is doing. Personally, I kind of wonder if they're not just doing this for the publicity associated with filing a lawsuit. Evan knows that would never happen.
[00:43:19] Speaker E: Isn't there some sort of thing with trademarks, too? Like if somebody like Coca Cola, you couldn't do a close trademark to Coca Cola because they're so well known.
[00:43:29] Speaker D: They're famous. Right. Once you've become famous, you get a broader set of rights. But companies can use the same trademark as long as they're in different industries. So one of my favorite examples is Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines. You wouldn't confuse Delta Faucets as a place where you could book an airline ticket. And you wouldn't think that Delta Airlines sells faucets.
So the likelihood of confusion is pretty low. But I guess the moral of the story is that we want to pay attention to the goods and services associated with the trademark, and we'll be keeping track of this Neil Young lawsuit and advise accordingly. But just because you have the same name doesn't mean you necessarily have a good, strong case for infringement. And so if you have an idea or invention that you want to protect, contact us at Gerhart Law, we work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights. And if you want even more information, you go to learn more about patents.com or learn more about trademarks.com youm can book a free consultation with the Gearhart Law attorney or you can download your free Entrepreneur's Quick guide to patents or trademarks.
[00:44:39] Speaker E: And now it is time to find out. I have been waiting patiently to find this out how Gary Cohen took a $4,000 a year startup into a NASDAQ listed company. Welcome, Gary. Please spill the beans.
[00:44:55] Speaker C: Spill the beans. Well, you know, it's really easy when you know nothing. My business partner Rick diamond and I started with each of us put in $2,000. And the idea came to me when my roommate asked me to spy on his competitors at a trade show in New York because I was vacationing there. I'm like, okay, you know, I wasn't doing anything. I was out of school. So I spent a day walking around this trade show. And he was selling the first computer systems. They were called predictive dialers, which predicts when a person's going to be free on the line so that the productivity of that caller who's placing the call is doubled. Right? So huge innovation in the call center industry. And so by the end of the day, I had made up this story about, yeah, I'm going to the call center business. And I'm like, I sold myself. And I called a childhood friend. He and I had been talking about going into real estate or something.
And I said, I think I have a better idea for us. And he goes, well, okay, we don't know anything about real estate. We don't know anything about call centers. So that was the launch. Literally just made up in the air one day. And then we started using my roommate's technology, telephony. We knew nothing about the industry and there were competitors out there, but they knew nothing about the technology.
So that gave us such leverage on them that places like Dun and Bradstreet and IBM signed up with us just because they didn't understand how we could be so productive and so not knowing about what we were doing.
And eventually UnitedHealthcare hired us because we didn't know what we were doing because they had a hiring freeze on. And they said, you know, we're gonna use you and we're Gonna use you because you have no bad habits in this call center business.
And at the time was telemarketing, right? And we're going, yep, that's true. We have no, you know, bad habits because nobody trained us. We're going to train you to do it well. And we were insourced and we brought hired people, brought them over to their offices, and they taught us how to do it. And it was one step after another. And as we grew, we needed money, and we didn't have any, so we went to the government for money. How do you do that? We had jobs, lots of jobs. And so the first town offered us 250,000 and we did the deal. And then the next town, we got a little smarter, and then it was a million dollars to open up a call center. But this was the trick. I just thought it was funny. We started getting frustrated that we get this money from the government through economic development and we'd have to pay taxes on it, which seems so insane. The government's giving you money, and then they.
[00:47:35] Speaker D: Well, it's like taxes on Social Security payments.
[00:47:38] Speaker C: Makes no sense.
So we started getting clever, which was we had them lease back everything we needed. So we'd have them buy the computers and we'd lease it for pretty much a dollar a year until five years goes up and then we buy for a buck back from them.
So the community would actually hold the assets while we were using them and depreciating them. And then we didn't need to collect that money. And so that's how we built our call centers. Canada gave us $15 million to open three of them. Because by that time we were hiring thousands of people in a year, about 2,200 people of that. There's like a segment of the population that rotates really quickly, you know, about high turnover of employees. But that's like 25% of your people are turning over, like 500%, 800%. All the rest are solid in there there for years.
[00:48:33] Speaker D: So I want to ask you, how do you react now when you get a call from a telemarketer?
[00:48:37] Speaker C: When I left the business and I was one of the lead lobbyists in the industry against anti telemarketing legislation, I put myself on the do not call list, the do not mail list. I mark spam on all of the calls. I don't take them. And I also know that when you get a pause and somebody's not there is the predictive dialing system not working.
The last thing you want to do is hang up because it triggers the next call. It'll call you back in about 20 minutes because you hang it up. So it's better to wait and then say, take me off your list.
[00:49:10] Speaker D: So did telemarketers always have scripts or did that evolve over time?
[00:49:16] Speaker C: When we entered, they had scripts, and then they had the flipbooks and stuff that was all manual. We were automated. So our scripts were. As they went through the scripts? Yes. No, maybe. And then it would change the dialogue. Nowadays, I understand it's been 20 years since I've been in the business, but they're using AI. It's prompting based upon the algorithm of how the customer or prospect is speaking, and it's giving a really custom response for the agent. And I'm hearing that even the agent could be AI as well. I just was at a meeting in which this group was showing me large group facilitation. But before the team came into the meeting, they had an AI call each of the people, do an hour interview with each of them and take those transcripts, compress them, find the intelligence that they were looking for, and feed it back to that group. And so they're basically doing the same thing in the call center world.
[00:50:17] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:50:18] Speaker D: So is it unrealistic to think that companies calling on prospective clients would use AI then as a way to target the right clients? And then, I guess, in line with what you're saying, also develop maybe a custom script for certain classes of prospective clients?
[00:50:36] Speaker C: Yes. And going to what Mark was talking about, I was hearing Sam Altman talk about how the ways to secure your bank accounts and all of that information is really not secure. If you think voice is the way.
Because now with the deep fake, people can clone your voice. So if you could do that to break security, you could certainly do that to place a phone call with an AI that caller sounds just like anybody you want them to sound like.
[00:51:07] Speaker E: Yeah. There's software programs that are pretty easy to use. So right now you're doing CO2 coaching, and here it says that you're helping executives clear their minds, break through obstacles, and achieve extraordinary success.
That's really cool. Can you tell us a success story of someone you worked with without saying their name?
[00:51:24] Speaker C: Oh, so many one comes to mind. This person was burned out. They were building a incredible software company, facing all the challenges, you know, hiring the wrong people, all of that.
And first it was, how do I help that person find their time?
How do I get them to get their time back? Because when people are burned out, it's usually because they don't have time and they haven't figured out how to move the work away from them, Move to a leadership position versus a doer position. And often this is a transition entrepreneurs have a hard time making. They're so good at doing, they have a hard time giving it up. And so we moved him into that leader role, hired talented people around him and talked about all the things he needed to know about developing that. He started doing strategic planning with our firm and we built a plan. He said in one day he made $45 million more from that work that we did, which clearly didn't cost him $45 million to get there. Sold the company. I can't say for the numbers, but it's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and all within five years of that meeting saying, I'm done, I'm burned out. Because at that point he just like, tell me how I can get this thing sold. So it was helping him find his own strength that he had and then using that strength to help him find the time organize his business in a way that makes sense to him and all the other employees and the great team that he surrounded himself with and then created a way to position the company for somebody else to want it.
[00:53:09] Speaker D: We're with Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of CO2 coaching. Sounds like he's getting pretty good results so far, so kudos there. One of the things that we talked about on our pre call was that the concept of how do I keep people on the hook versus putting me on the hook. I think this dovetails nicely with your story about moving from an entrepreneur role to a leader role. But what are some of the techniques that an entrepreneur can practice to implement that?
[00:53:40] Speaker C: I'm working on a book called on the Hook and the idea, it's an allegory and it talks about how somebody walks into your office, right, and says, this is what I'm going to do. And they're very excited and they tell you you ask all the questions. You have to assure yourself that they actually know what they have in mind and that it's clear. But it's not to convince you. It's just to make sure they're clear headed about what they want to do. Most management learning is you give them affirmation. Yeah, that sounds great. Oh, that's a great idea. However, it takes away the hook. It puts you on the hook and takes them off the hook. Why does that happen? Because as soon as you start giving them affirmation on something that hasn't actually accomplished anything yet, you're basically saying, I agree with you. And once you agree with them, you've become on the hook because if it doesn't work out, they're coming back to you and they say it didn't work, but you agreed that this was the right way to do it.
[00:54:40] Speaker D: So let me ask you, what's the difference between that and giving authorization to move forward? How do you untangle those two ideas?
[00:54:49] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for that insight. It's true. And this is a place that leaders have a hard time, particularly at the beginning stages of entrepreneurship. What you find, though, is most companies have role and job descriptions for people.
Those are the things that have already given that authority to that employee. And somehow it's overlooked by both parties, the boss and the employee. And so you don't need to give them permission. They have it. You granted it when you hired them, when you gave them the job description, when you gave them the roles of authority that they have in their role.
So when they come in, they're actually looking for your permission. And what you don't want to do is give them that permission. You want to say, wow, you sound like you've thought this all through. You're really excited about it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out. And they go, ah, ah, but, but they don't want to accept it because they know, they feel the tension that now is on them. But I thought, what would you do if you were in my place? Might be the comment, well, it is not my place. I hired you to do this job. You're really talented and really smart and I believe in you and I trust you.
So I'm looking forward to seeing the results that you accomplish by executing on this. When they come back and it's done really well, you go, wow, that's fabulous. And think about it in their heads, they're not thinking you gave them permission anymore. Now they can actually take in the appreciation of what you gave them. And I'm telling you, almost every. It's very hard for me to think of a company. I've coached over 300 within 300 companies over the last 20 years. It's very hard to find one that didn't have this issue. It's amazing how it's just insidious.
Nobody's really labeled it in the management world. It just sits there.
And then they come up with all these fancy ways to trap people as opposed to having them feel that sense of ownership and burden of what it means to feel like an owner of a business which everybody on this Call knows that feel.
[00:57:00] Speaker D: It's an interesting technique. And so you've tried this.
[00:57:04] Speaker C: It's really fun. Well, first, what I'll say is I'm writing the book because it takes so long to convince a client how to do it. Meaning, like, it's simple. All of you probably get what I'm saying right now. Everybody on the show is listening. They go, oh, I get it. I get it. Good. It's so quick. Falls out of your head because it's so instinctual. I want to be positive. I get the kind of visceral high from giving advice. I'm a coach. I love advice giving.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Please.
[00:57:35] Speaker C: Right. However, I know I'm a coach and I'm not leading the person. I'm in a instructive teaching coaching role. And that's very different than a leadership role. Okay. And so what I found was, over a course of a year, people will make this adjustment, and before long, they have so much time on their hands. Because what happens is people no longer come in for permission because they clearly know they're not going to get it. And so all those people who are lining up at your door aren't at your door anymore. They're just doing the work and they're owning it. And you're starting to see the results. And we see that in most all of our clients. And they eventually get it. The trick is, how do you get it quicker? How do you really realize that when you're pointing the finger about why are they always coming to me? It's because you keep giving the advice. You keep wanting to answer the question. This simple, silly one is, somebody comes into your office and says, hey, I can't figure out how to use this printer. And you're like, really? That's why you're coming to see the CEO of the business. You can't. And you do know how to fix it, by the way, as the CEO, because you had to do it at some point, especially if you're starting small. But instead you say, where else might you find that? And they go, well, I could ask ChatGPT.
Good, next time. You don't have to bring that to me. Right.
It's just a silly example, but it's like there are so many places where people can find the answer other than you, and they're responsible for it. So make them responsible. Have them feel the hook, the tension, the ownership.
[00:59:10] Speaker D: Gary Cohen, co founder and managing partner of CO2 coaching.
[00:59:15] Speaker E: Thank you, Gary. Great advice. Gary, how do people find you?
[00:59:18] Speaker C: Co2coaching.com, type in Gary B. Cohen. That'll get them to me.
[00:59:23] Speaker E: Okay, great. Thanks.
[00:59:24] Speaker D: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:59:27] Speaker E: Now it is time or ghost stories. Yay. I told Tim ne he has to tell a ghost story on the show. Welcome, Tim. Tell us about your ghost tours business.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Ghost city Tours, it's the world's largest walking tour company. You know, every year we do about a million people on our tours, and 28 markets in the United States, I think we're in right now. Just a lot of fun. And it's really evolved as a company over the last couple years into something that I once again enjoy. You know, when I first started go city tours, I really started it as a joke. I. I mean, come on. Ghost tourists, like that can't really be a real business, right? But what happened? You know, I. I met two guys. I moved to Savannah, Georgia. I met two guys who are really great tour guides, but they were horrible business people. And up until that point in my life, I had spent the last 10 years running a marketing and web design company. So I had this idea, like, hey, I'll start a company. I'll. I'll build this thing up. You guys can work for me, and you're going to make more money working for me than you do on your own.
And. And they did. For some reason, they still don't really totally understand why. It was just something I was doing in my spare time. And in the second month in business where I think, you know, maybe I was running a couple of Google Ads at the time or, you know, maybe some Facebook ads, maybe, you know, we did, you know, almost $200,000 in that second month without even trying. And, you know, at the time, our profit margins were like 87%. So I thought, maybe there's something to this. Yeah, you know, it just took off from there. And, you know, at first, what go Seek Tours was, it was a way for me to help some friends and, you know, occupy my time. But it was also out of necessity. You know, at that point in my life, I was almost homeless. You know, I was living in a hotel room that the manager of the hotel knew me and let me stay in that hotel room for about two months. So for me, it was really just, I don't want to live this way anymore. You know, I grew up without a lot. You know, I appreciate everything my parents did, but it was my time to get rid of that bad hand and finally turn my life around and get something going. And that's where Ghost City Tours came from. So, you know, it's it's morphed over the years quite a bit at a point where I think we've been in business 14 years. You know, at the beginning, if I'm being completely honest, I just needed to make money. You know, I, I, I needed to feed myself. You know, I had to take care of my family. But now I'm to a point where the money. And don't get me wrong, I love money, or we all do, but that's not so important to me anymore. What I came to realize about Ghost City Tours is that, you know, this is a company where we can help people get in touch with what I consider, like, what people should actually be.
And how we do that is by sparking their curiosity. You know, one of the biggest compliments I can get, which is also our number one complaint about our company, is there was too much history on this tour. There weren't enough ghosts. You know, there was too. They talked too much about the city's culture and all this stuff. We really wanted to hear ghost stories, and they too. But to me, it's more important that we get people out in the world and we open their eyes to something that maybe they weren't thinking about before. You know, maybe we made them come to. Well, we didn't make them come to New Orleans, but they came to New Orleans. We made them see the city through a new light, truly appreciating the culture and the people and all those things that made a city like New Orleans what it is.
And then they go buy a book, which to me is the biggest compliment if I can get somebody to go buy a book about anything, once they're done with a ghost tour and want to learn more about the world around them. You know, earlier we were talking about social media. One of the best ways to avoid all that is to get off of it, you know, go out, explore the world, you know, take your family for a walk. And that is what, you know, Ghost City Tours has really become. Over the years, it's been our vehicle to help pull people away from those screens, get them out into the real world, and find that curiosity that human beings innately have, you know, and if it takes ghosts as the catalyst to help them get out of that zone, I. That that's what we do. It's been very enlightening to see the impact that just ghost tours can have on people.
[01:03:13] Speaker D: So, Tim, I have to ask, do you believe in ghosts?
[01:03:17] Speaker B: I do.
There's no way that I can't. Part of what Ghost City does is we haven't done them for a few years. But we hold national nationwide ghost hunts where we'd find famous haunted locations across the country and we'd rent them for a few nights. Think Mansfield reformatory in Ohio or the St. Augustine Lighthouse. People would come from across the country and, you know, ghost hunt with us for two nights. And I have seen some stuff that would blow your mind. I have heard stuff, you know, everything from shadow figures, you know, those figures that look like people, you know, shadowy people walking across hallways, to full body apparitions where, you know, we're walking in an abandoned hospital with a group of people and some semi transparent lady walks out in front of us with a hospital gown on and walks into a wall. Now, those things don't happen very often. Don't let the TV shows fool you. If you see a full body apparition, that's pretty damn rare. But you know that the idea of being able to go into these haunted places and actually talk, and I know it sounds crazy, especially if you don't believe in these things, but to be able to talk to them and have them answer questions for you, there's no way I can't believe in ghosts after all that.
[01:04:17] Speaker D: Did you start out not believing in ghosts and just really thought of it as more entertainment and then became convinced, or did you always have this spiritual side?
[01:04:26] Speaker B: I thought it was stupid. Like, seriously, like, I, you know, I grew up not far from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I've always been a huge history buff, you know, especially when it comes to the civil war.
And I would go to the Gettysburg battlefield very often to, you know, hey, I want to see where this guy was. And you know, where this happened. And one night I was hanging out at a place that a lot of people are familiar with in Gettysburg. It's called devil's den. And I was hanging out with a park ranger buddy of mine. Off to our right, there's a field called the triangle field.
And at night, that night, there were people walking through the field with flashlights. And I got excited because I thought people. I was going to see people get busted for relic hunting. So that's what I thought. And he's like, no, they're looking for ghosts. And I remember in my head, that's the stupid thing. But once again, curiosity, I think, is so important to people. And so a couple times later, I was like, you know what? I'm going to go to Walmart. You know, I'd seen those goofy ghost hunting TV shows. So I went out, bought a voice recorder, went to the middle of the field called the wheat field. And I just stood there at night. And when you do this for the first time, you feel like a total buffoon.
I'm literally standing in the field in the middle of the night holding a voice recorder, saying, can you please tell me your name? I. I got a name. And it was as clear as day. It was a guy. It said George. And I know, you know, it's. It wasn't an artist whore. He paradoia kind of thing. Like, really was a man saying George. And at that moment, I'm like, holy crap. Like, there is something to this. Like, what is. Like. And to this day, I still can't explain it, but there, there. There was something to it. Weird stuff happens. We're able to document it. And I wouldn't call it an addiction, but I would say that it. If you're somebody who is really driven by trying to understand the world around you and. And you grab onto mysteries and you want to understand it, there's. This whole ghost thing is. Is a really great topic to dive into because the reality is I don't think we're ever going to figure out what is going on or what they truly are.
[01:06:06] Speaker E: Well, it's pretty cool. And I gotta tell you, I do have a ghost story.
[01:06:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[01:06:10] Speaker E: So our house. Well, first of all, our house when we first moved in, the guy had died there before us, and we would always hear footsteps in the attic. We called him One Eye Roger.
[01:06:18] Speaker A: Remember that?
[01:06:19] Speaker E: But then this one day, I'm wondering if ghosts come and go, because we had this cat, she's gone now. And she was in the foyer and she was talking to somebody. She really was. She was going to.
I mean, and this went on for like five minutes. And like, Checkers, who are you talking to? And I swear she was talking to a ghost.
[01:06:42] Speaker B: She might have been.
[01:06:43] Speaker E: So have you changed your marketing a little bit? Because I see you started a podcast a little bit ago and you're doing a lot of YouTube shorts. And what's really cool is, like, you're asking other people, like, tell me about your haunting. Tell me about your ghosts. Or the ones I've been seeing are Bigfoot. Yeah, we love Bigfoot.
[01:06:57] Speaker D: Richard has Bigfoot pajamas and Bigfoot slippers too.
[01:07:01] Speaker B: You know, this podcast, it's really about just, you know, wanting to get people to be interested in this stuff again. And it doesn't mean that you have to believe in ghosts or Bigfoot or anything like that. But there's so much mystery in the world around us. And because so Everybody, you know, like we talked about or you guys talked about earlier, everybody's so focused on that screen or, you know, trying to keep up with the Joneses on TikTok or whatever, that they're forgetting that there's a whole world out there that's worth exploring. And by the way, that world is so much more exciting than anything you're going to see on screen.
And we hope that by putting these podcasts out, we can encourage people to put the screen down, go outside, go for a walk, go for a hike through the woods. You never know what you're gonna see. I mean, hundreds of years ago, people got on wooden ships and sailed across the world. How insane is that? And now we can't even get kids to get off the damn couch half the time. It's a crazy world we're living in. So with us, it just happens to be ghosts and Bigfoot and these crazy cryptozoology things. Those are the catalysts that we use to hopefully get people engaged and get them to find that curiosity, you know, that childlike curiosity that's still in all of us, I think, just begging to come out.
[01:08:03] Speaker D: Ghost City Tours, as I understand it, places a premium on telling historically accurate stories, Right? So maybe there's a little bit of embellishment there, but you're not just making stuff up. I mean, these are accurate representations of what happened in the past, right?
[01:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that that's one of the biggest reasons Ghost City Tours has been so successful. I mean, when we started this company, I mean, the average ghost tour company in America, it was like a 50, $75,000 a year company. You know, single market, you know, they weren't really run by business people. They were run by, you know, somebody who enjoyed giving tours of their city. But when we came on the scene, I, you know, because I was a history buff, it was very important to me to make sure that we did the research. So we spent a lot of times in, you know, historical societies. We knocked on doors and talked to the people who lived in these homes that were rumored to be haunted, and we got the real story. And, you know, the first couple years, we took an incredible amount of hate from other companies because we're essentially crapping on all over their stories. You know, for years, they've been telling people that zombies are eating babies in graveyards. Like it's just stupid nonsense. And we came onto the scene and said, no, that is not what happened. But by the way, this happened, and it's actually more interesting, we essentially ruined their tours. For them. But I feel that, you know, for somebody, anybody that is telling other people's stories, especially people who are no longer with us, these ghosts, we owe it to them to tell the truth. It's not fair to somebody that is no longer with us to be able to make lies about them or spread misinformation about them in an effort just to make a tour spookier. It does nobody any good, in my opinion, is very disrespectful to the city and the culture as well. You have to put that extra effort in to find out the truth and make sure that you're telling the truth. We are no fans of revisionist history here at all.
[01:09:50] Speaker E: Tim Nealon, Ghost City Tours. You ever want to swap ghost stories, let me know. Where do people find you if they want to reach out?
[01:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you want to learn more about Ghost City Tours, it is just ghostcitytours.com, you know, same for all the social platforms as well. If you go to any of them, you'll find Ghost City Tours. If you just looked up my name, Tim Nealon, you're probably going to find the Reptile Conservation center stuff first, especially on Instagram, but that's me.
[01:10:12] Speaker E: Great, thank you.
[01:10:13] Speaker D: Stay tuned for more Passage to Profit with Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up next.
[01:10:19] Speaker H: I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged. If you've been involved in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or injured at work, you have rights and you may be entitled to money for your suffering. Don't accept an offer you get from an insurance company until you talk to a lawyer. And we represent some of the best personal injury lawyers you can find. Tough lawyers that will fight to win your case. And they're so good, they stake their reputation on it by only getting paid if you win. So if you've been in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or hurt on the job, find out today for free what kind of compensation you may be entitled to. Call the legal helpline right now.
[01:11:04] Speaker G: 8004-9270-1480-0492-7014, 800-492-7014.
That's 800-492-7014.
[01:11:19] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit.
[01:11:21] Speaker D: Alicia 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 prophetshow.com website and check out her album.
[01:11:35] Speaker E: And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So, Mark Weinstein, author of Restoring Our Sanity Online.
Do you have a secret you can share?
[01:11:47] Speaker A: First of all, everybody has a good idea. If you have a good idea, you're not unique, okay? Because almost everybody I've ever met in my life has a good idea. Just what happens, we think of something, oh, wow. Wouldn't it be great if, wow, here's a good idea. The secret is really turning that idea into reality is where the rubber meets the road. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. But here's the key. If you decide to take your good idea or somebody else's good idea, whatever, wherever you get it and turn it into reality and you believe that you're right, that it really is a good idea and there really is a marketplace for it. And also that it has some sort of ethical grounding so you can really feel good about it. I always like that piece. Just make sure you feel good about it. Doesn't have to be ethical, you don't have to be a do gooder. But make sure you know you're actually providing value and service for a product. Here's the thing. So many people are going to tell you you can't do it. Here's why, here's why you don't know how to do it. You know, whatever it is, as long as you believe, go for it. Even if they're naysayers, if you believe, stay the course and do your best to surround yourself with people who also believe or nurture and support. Give you positive reinforcement and everything you've learned will be of value.
[01:13:02] Speaker E: That was a great secret. Gary Cohen with co2coaching.com what secret would you like to share?
[01:13:08] Speaker C: I don't know that it's a secret, but it's something that I've learned along the way that I share with all my clients, which is leaders need to walk the ridgeline. And on one side of that ridgeline is humility. And too much humility doesn't work if you're leading. But the opposite is ego and too much ego, nobody wants to follow you. And so the trick, and it is a trick, is to stay the ridgeline because when things are really not going well, you want to stay in that humble place. You're never going to get the teams to come along with you and be engaged. And when things are really working well, and I've seen it on way too many people, including myself, when it's just like you're just kicking it, your ego takes over. I can do no wrong. And that's usually when all the wrong begins. So for me as a coach, I am constantly working with my clients to stay on the rich line. Early on in the coaching, I say this is going to happen eventually and I want you to know what's happening to you because you will not want to hear anybody when the ego takes over.
So it's kind of staying in that balanced place of just knowing you're enough. Not too much, not too little enough.
[01:14:25] Speaker E: That is great advice. I get so much out of this show myself. I love doing it. Okay, Tim Nealon gocitytours.com what is a piece of advice, a secret you can share?
[01:14:36] Speaker B: It's developing the right mindset. You are going to have days where you want to quit. You are going to have days where you feel like a failure. And you're also going to have days where you feel on top of the world. And if you live in either one of those zones, you know it's not good for you. So if there was a secret, I think it would just be developing that proper mindset that sets you up for success. Work on who you are as a person and be comfortable being uncomfortable.
[01:15:00] Speaker E: Yeah, that's great advice.
[01:15:02] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 39 markets across the U.S.
in addition, passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator Alicia Morrissey, our studio assistant Rishiket Bussari, and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcast. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
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