[00:00:00] Speaker A: The demand and thirst for energy is virtually insatiable.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: It is a full catalog, fully shoppable menu.
[00:00:06] Speaker C: Real estate is one of the things that they do not teach.
[00:00:10] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:11] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard some snippets from our show. We had amazing people on. Listen for the rest of it.
[00:00:19] Speaker F: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in Gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:30] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:37] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law. And I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a full service podcast studio.
[00:00:46] 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. Amazing guest, Mike Silvestrini, trailblazing entrepreneur who turns solar startups into global powerhouses. He's the co founder of Energia and a leading voice in the renewable energy innovation space. And he's also a board member of Big Life Foundation.
[00:01:13] Speaker E: And then we have two great entrepreneurs who are kind of redoing the, I don't know, retail spaces online. Stan Lucien is the CEO and founder of Skybriz. It's a trailblazing real estate company.
And his website is really cool. You have to go. His blogs are amazing. And then we have Vivitra Anakru, co founder and CEO of DealMagic. And I looked at this website. It's really great. It's a shopping website, but it's different.
[00:01:41] Speaker D: It's really a nice website, so you definitely have to check it out. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans are business owners or at least thinking of starting a business. So we'd like to ask our panel a question. And today our question is, what strategies did you use to get your first client or customer? Let's start the ball rolling with Mike Silvescrini. Mike, welcome to the show. What did you do to get your first client or customer?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: For our first customer, I have to go back to 2007. We were two people, pretty scrappy, and the only skill that we had really developed at that time was how to put a proposal together. And we were shipping them in every direction we could. And we finally got a bite at a place that manufactures guns actually for a solar power plant called Smith and Wesson up in Massachusetts. So we hopped in the car and I had some volunteers, some people who were kind of believing in the idea of my first solar energy company. And I asked them to come along for their various expertise. And we met at Smith and Wesson. And Smith and Wesson, when you go into these types of manufacturing companies, there's a lot of gates of security and badges and that type of thing. So I figured there was eight of us that showed up. I look, let's two of us go in and take this meeting with Smith and Wesson and try to get our first solar project. And the rest of you guys go walk around, you know, the nearby businesses because it's sort of an industrial park, knock on doors and see what happens. Well, we went into Smith and Wesson and that deal collapsed because the lawyer just didn't want anything to do with the project. But while we were doing that, my buddy Andrew walked across the street and knocked on the right door with Astro Chemicals, who wound up becoming our first solar project.
And that one was a really meaningful project for us because it was large and it was impactful and it was an early stage project in the solar energy industry of its type. And then by our third and fourth customers were Walmart and Target. So they kind of snowballed quickly from there, but it took a relentless proposal generation and just keeping with it.
[00:03:41] Speaker D: That's amazing. And it's so interesting that sometimes clients just come from places you didn't really expect. You were expecting Smith and Wesson. It didn't work out, but the guys across the street were very interested and you landed your first customer. So thank you for sharing that, Stan. Lucian, how did you get your first client or customer?
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Skybase is a little different. How is it different? Because we offer different type of services like property management where we manage our own properties and educational content.
I guess my first client or consumer or customer, like a tenant, right. That was kind of like provided to me because when I bought the property I have already had tenants living in it. However though, to get more tenants, I came up with the idea of smart home integrated technologies in our properties like smart lights, smart door locks, smart thermostat. So that was kind of like something like an experiment for me, you know, and then when trying it, it kind of like opened a broader market for us because we had tenants, we had people that's looking for properties that have smart technology in them. You know, not all the properties out there have, you know, smart thermostats. My goal was to make it more convenient for tenants.
[00:04:55] Speaker D: That's great. That's an amazing strategy to entice customers with more technology. And seems like you learned from your first tenant that this type of technology could really be attractive to other potential tenants, and that opened up the world for you. So thank you for that. Avitra Anakru, welcome to the show. You. You're with DealMagic and tell us how.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: You got your first client or customer for Dealmagic. As you know, we serve local papa mom shops, anybody who is on your main street. We got started off by first going and frequenting our local merchants that we would normally go to our local barbers and spa owners and restaurants where we would go and frequent and just kind of tested the water to see what their reaction would be to this kind of technology.
And we walked the streets initially and very quickly we realized that in order for us to scale, even though a lot of people love what we are offering, in order for us to scale, we have to automate the hell out of it. So straight out of the bat, we automated the onboarding process. We automated the whole sales funnel, from ad to the lead generation to the signup and self onboarding. Everything is streamlined and automated. And that's helping us scale across the country in multiple categories.
[00:06:22] Speaker D: Perfect, Elizabeth.
[00:06:23] Speaker E: Yeah. So we're brick and mortar. We're a podcast studio, content creation studio. So we started out podcast studio, realized there's all sorts of content you can create, and it's not just for podcasts. Using the video studio, we have an audio studio, we have a photo shoot room. But the way that we, we got the first paying client I had experimented with a couple other people was we had an open house. So we had a grand opening and I didn't use much media to promote it. I actually have a friend who's a super networker, and I joined a chamber of commerce that she recommended. And the chamber of commerce brought a whole bunch of people to our event. And we did put it on social media and different places. And the first client that I got was somebody I had never met before, who came to the grand opening, who saw it, and and is a corporate client who's doing weekly podcast videos with me now.
[00:07:17] Speaker D: So that's great. You know, one of the things that I'm noticing in all of our comments is that there's a human touch involved, especially in getting the clients early on. I mean, we live in a world of digital, right, where we rely on the Internet, advertising, social media to try to get clients. But at the end of the day, at least starting out, it comes down to Relationships and talking with people and meeting them. Gerhardt Law is no different. I mean, when we started, our very first client happened to come from an attorney friend of mine who we had known for years and years and years. Her name was Alice Tarinis. And we also work with her husband Adam. And they were great. They were very supportive of when we started the law firm, she happened to know a client that could use our services and she referred them to us and they turn out to be a great client. Afterwards we did the website and all the digital, but the first clients were people that I actually met one on one. And so I do think that that's a good lesson for entrepreneurs starting out. Don't just rely on digital. The human connection is still, you know, super important. So that being said, now it's time for our featured guest interview. What if investing in clean energy could make you rich and save the planet at the same time? Well, Mike Silvestrini isn't just dreaming it, he's doing it. And he's able challenge just about everything that is conventional in the renewable space. So we're very happy to have him. Mike, what is the future of renewable energy?
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Well, it's really what's the future of energy? Because renewable energy is just one of the types of energy sources that we rely on as the world continues to modernize and digitize. And you know, with more data centers, which everybody's hearing about coming online, the demand and thirst for energy is virtually insatiable. And there's a variety of tools in the toolbox for us to address that energy shortage. And the one that I think has the most velocity and the easiest and fastest to deploy at the best price is solar energy. And I'm not the only one who thinks that because over the last five years there's been more solar energy installed than all the coal and nuclear and wind natural gas combined.
So really solar energy is the premier technology for all new power generation worldwide already. So we expect that to continue.
[00:09:40] Speaker D: I'm just going to play a little devil's advocate here because the narrative out there seems to be that renewables are great, but they're expensive and the technology isn't quite there yet. But what you're saying is completely different than what seems to be out there in the general news media. So can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot of different versions of energy markets around the world. Even within the United States, each state is kind of its own landscape for the econometrics of energy. Based off of the resources that they have and their history of building power plants. Like I'm in Connecticut here where there's a large nuclear power plant, a legacy plant from the past. They just signed a terrible deal to buy electricity from that plant at a very high price. But the reality is when you take away all the government subsidies and energy sources are able to participate and compete toe to toe with one another, solar always wins. And that's happening across the world. So we're in a variety of different international markets from South Africa and Brazil and Colombia and others. And you know, we entered these markets without any tax credits or the types of government intervention that we have in the US energy markets. And we're able to be 30 to 40% lower than the natural gas based energy that we're competing against. So it's very easy to install new solar plants and convert energy systems into solar based energy systems.
[00:11:05] Speaker E: As you said, AI and all these computing programs take a huge amount of energy and batteries is one component of that. But for the solar energy, I would have liked to have solar energy on my house, but have it go to my own house.
But instead it goes to the grid and then comes back. Right. Is that still the way it works? Like if you have solar panels on top of your house, you have to send your energy to the utility company and then they send you energy back?
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Well, first, when I'm discussing solar energy, we're really talking about energy infrastructure. This is the stuff that runs the modern world at large scale. But as far as residential solar goes, which is not my area of expertise, I treat it more like an appliance. It's something that you would like to have. It's something that you're going to use and it does go directly to your meter. It doesn't go out to the grid and come back first. It'll go, it'll go directly to your energy demand first. Only when there's a circumstance where your solar energy is producing more energy for an instant than your house is using at that same instant, will you export the additional energy back to the grid. And hopefully, depending on what state you're in, you may get a credit for that. We're really talking about modern energy infrastructure. These are large scale solar assets that are designed to replace 30 or 40,000 houses worth of energy. And that's the type of scale that we're going to need. If we're sincere about producing energy with renewables, if we're sincere about keeping up with the increased energy demand, we're going to have to Move faster than residential solar.
[00:12:32] Speaker E: Where are you going to get the minerals from?
[00:12:34] Speaker A: I mean, silicon. Silicon is the most abundant element in the world.
[00:12:37] Speaker E: So that's the only mineral that solar panels use.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Yeah, solar energy is just silicon. So silicon is an atom. And if you look at a silicon atom that has one electron in its outer shell, if you zap that with a photon, so a package of light energy, it knots that outermost electron off of its outermost shell and it jumps to the nearest atom and that creates a chain reaction. And then we have aluminum that basically provides a raceway for us to collect that electrical activity. It's called photosensitivity. And then we, we just keep stacking that. So the goal of a solar panel is to have a one atom thick layer. So the thickness of a solar cell is measured in microns. You want a one atom thick layer of silicon cells pointed approximately towards the sun so that you can harvest that photosensitive chain reaction. That's in all as it is, is compounding that. Put more cells together, more modules together, more arrays together, until you have sizable energy production.
[00:13:36] Speaker D: We're with Mike Silvestrini from Energia. Mike, can you tell us what Energia does?
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Basically, we know we need to deploy substantially more renewable energy at a faster rate than we're currently doing. And the reason why is because even though we put $500 billion worth of new solar in the ground last year as a, as a goal, that's pretty much set off the increase in demand for energy. So we didn't really make any headway against decarbonizing our existing energy infrastructure.
So we need to accelerate the rate at which we deploy solar energy. And we need to look at what are the available sources of capital for that acceleration to occur. And you can go around the governments of the world and the large financial institutions, and they all have their pledges, and there's mega private equity funds, and you can add all that up, and that looks like we can maintain sort of this half trillion dollar run rate. But where's the additional capital going to come from?
And where we think it makes the most sense is the American individual investor. And what really was lacking in the marketplace was the plumbing necessary for individual investors to find access to premium renewable energy investment opportunities. So we took advantage of a number of different tools that are pretty modern and now available things like regulation A in the regulatory space that allows us to convert solar projects into securities. We have a great digital platform. We have projects around the world that rely on starlink so that we can see and access those plants in real time. So there's a sort of a bundle of new technologies that we package together in order to take these great investment opportunities in the solar energy world and convert them into something that's easy for individual investors to buy and include in their personal investing portfolio.
[00:15:23] Speaker D: How could people access this investment platform? Where do they go?
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Energia.com is the way that we sell our securities. You know, we had to make a decision as to whether or not we were going to list our funds on a stock exchange or if we were going to keep them private.
But for a number of reasons which happy to go into this asset class, which is considered an alternative asset class. And energy infrastructure really belongs in the private markets where we can control the share price.
The reason why is if you put that onto a listed exchange, people start wheeling and dealing amongst themselves. You know, you might be willing to sell your stock at a lower price, and somebody else may be able to buy a stock at a lower price, but they, the price should really be attached to the net asset value of the underlying solar projects. Everybody should pay the same price because the value is the same in order to get the desired return on investment. So we decided to keep control over the share price, not allow market manipulation, but and instead allow people to trade amongst themselves at a price that represents the nav of the portfolio. And that's why we use Energia.com as our exchange method to sell our securities.
[00:16:33] Speaker E: So if I have an IRA and I want to take some of the funds from my IRA and buy Energia stock, I guess it's stock, then do I just tell my financial advisor, go buy Energia?
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah, you can do it yourself in a, in three or four clicks. On the Energia website, we have one of the best underlying architectures for investing retirement plans directly with Energia, we have our own Energia ira. But if you go to the website, it should make it super simple for you to be able to move some of that capital and position it into real assets. So you remember when you, when you invest in Energia, you're buying a pro rata portion of an underlying basket of solar projects. There's no employees, it's not a company. It doesn't have operating expenses as a traditional company does. You're just directly connected to these solar energy projects. And each month as the sun rises and it spins that meter, and we invoice those customers and collect that revenue, we pay the operating expenses for the projects and then ship up the rest to our Clients who get their pro rider distribution of that cash flow. About 85% of our clients choose to get those monthly dividends and reinvest it and buy more participation into more solar energy projects, creating a compounded yield effect. But it's really up to our clients. We don't make that decision. They make it for themselves. Some people want to enjoy the monthly dividend yield, but that's how I think that it's a great asset class for long term retirement planning.
[00:18:01] Speaker E: So what is the return monthly like? If I were to put say $10,000 in, how much would I get as a dividend monthly on average? Do you know?
[00:18:10] Speaker A: So the return and the dividend yield are two different numbers. But the way that this works is that across we have different products. So we have a product that's just for Brazil and we describe that investment thesis in the offering circular. Why are we going to Brazil? Why do we think we can make money buying solar power assets in Brazil? We do the same thing for Latin America and in Africa in the US and each of those investment thesis has a different underlying strategy and we expect to have different results because no two markets are the same. There are different currencies, different policies, different build costs, different radiance. We take all that into consideration and you get approximately a 14% IRR, which is an internal rate of return out of our Brazil portfolio. And we've been doing that for the last five years having this 14% IRR.
[00:19:00] Speaker E: I'm calling my guy today.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: We should. It's a kick ass asset class. Yes, we spotted something in Brazil a few years ago and knew that there was going to be some oversized opportunities to make money with Brazilian solar. It's a very complex market. You need to go in there with a lot of capital and build a lot of software. You need to really fight through some challenges of doing business in Brazil. But when you do that, the reward is tremendous and we're at a safe flying altitude. We have a beautiful batch of operating assets. We've invested about $300 million into Brazilian solar and I plan on investing hundreds of millions more. But we also have another product like Africa is a very different market. It relies on different currencies and different risk profiles. And our Africa product is about a 10% return. These are all stated after our fees. So this is net to the investor and it's about a 10% return. And there's a lot of reasons why Africa has a lower return than Brazil. It's because of the presence of development finance institutions which really adulterate the natural economics and the cost and risk profile of Africa's economy.
We have the US where our dividend yield is 7 and change. I want to say it's 7.2%. But what we really encourage our clients to do is to even though Brazil is this big shiny double digit number, in the US is this kind of lousy looking seven where you know your money market account is three and a half. The reality is you should blend them because these rely on a vast array of characteristics and variables and assumptions that are changing all the time. And when we look at solar energy as an asset class, I'm trying to make for you guys a perfect solar cocktail. And I look at the US as the ice in the drink.
[00:20:42] Speaker D: I'm all for cocktails. We're with Mike Silvestrini here from Energia. How do you spell energia, Mike?
[00:20:48] Speaker A: E N E R G E A.
[00:20:50] Speaker D: That's great. We'll be back with more Passage to Profit after this. Stay tuned for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind coming up toward the end of the show. We also have our favorite intellectual property news.
And don't forget to experience more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram X and YouTube or subscribe to our podcast. Anywhere you get your podcast, just look for the Passage to Profit show on any of these platforms. We'll be back right after this.
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[00:23:18] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once again. Rich Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and our.
[00:23:23] Speaker E: Special guest, Mike Silvestrini with Energia E N E r g e a.com and has he got an investment for you?
But he started two companies. He started Green Skies Renewable Energy and grew up for 25,000 to a huge number. And he sold it. And we want to talk to him about his entrepreneurial journey and what were some of the biggest challenges and how he overcame those.
So what was your biggest challenge, Mike?
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Oh, man. There's too many to probably prioritize as one big challenge. But really being an entrepreneur is just an enormous challenge itself. Every day is a battle, and really only the paranoid survive. We say, I look at being an entrepreneur as sort of like being an engineer of business systems and you're building this tower and you're trying to put on the next level but make it in such a way that doesn't fall over.
So you constantly have to make sure that the health of the business is your first priority. And I always say to my team, we take care of the company, the company will take care of us. We got to prioritize the health and wellbeing of the company. And I see a lot of young entrepreneurs. And, you know, after you exit a company and you have some resources, you get a lot of investment opportunities to glance at. I see a lot of people starting their entrepreneurial journey in ways that make me shriek. They're not prioritizing generally how to make money, how to produce revenue. A lot of times they're too comfortable spending money when they have none, especially if they have an early angel investor or that type of thing. But I'm lucky because I wasn't smart enough to get an angel investor or any types of early support. So I only had no money. And that allowed me to stay out of trouble and not Waste it. And we wound up really scrapping our way through that first, first sale, get our first cash flow in the door. And that money was so precious to us, we wouldn't spend it on a thing. I think it sat in the back bank account for months after we made our first 25 grand. But if you keep it like that, if you, if you put your own needs behind the needs of the company, you can really build a beautiful business. And if you know your idea has to be good and your team has to be good and all the rest of it. But I think the thing that really matters most is that discipline in those early days, keep it alive and keep going. Because if just sticking around will allow you your business to grow, you know, keep the doors open and good things happen, but that requires discipline. So after I sold Green Skies, you know, in one moment I went from having lawyers and engineers and accountants and horsepower, hundreds of employees and solar assets across the America. And in one stroke of the pen, I had nothing. I had cash for the first time in my life, but I didn't have any horsepower anymore.
So I sat there in my house and thought to myself, what am I going to do next? And started thinking about a number of entrepreneurial strategies as an entrepreneur does in different types of industries and ideas and note taking and realized pretty quickly that I'm really an expert in solar and nothing else. So stick with what I'm really good at and build another company. That's where Energia came out of. It was the next logical step for me as an expert. So I knew also I was non competed from doing business in the US for a couple years after I sold Green Skies. So that's one of the reasons why I started looking overseas for investment opportunities. So I get this opportunity to go to Nicaragua and Nicaragua is a wild ride. So I'm going there with the World bank and somebody from the Vatican. This is the Pope's representative in Latin America and the goal is to build a gigantic solar energy project to power the people of Nicaragua. But when I got there, things were quite different. It was wild. It's basically like a police state. So there's cameras everywhere and the government's always watching and they don't like any dissent in their country. And then I get ushered in a black car service to Loriano Ortega's mansion where we have this beautiful conversation about all the change that's going to happen. And you know, I was there to represent the capital to make this project possible, whether leveraging my relationships in private equity or doing Things like energy, that's kind of what I'm known for, is capitalizing solar energy infrastructure. So I go from there to the utility company and another dog and pony show. Whatever you need, Mike. You tell me what we need. We're going to make it possible for you. And it didn't get weird until that night when we went out to dinner and we're sitting around with this cast of characters and then in comes the muscle. And basically the restaurant was full and it just emptied. So now it's just us. And then there's a couple of machine guns sitting on various tables around us. He summons over one of the waiters and asks him to demonstrate how much this waiter appreciates the party in power by showing his party card, which he shakingly, you know, shaking hand, pulls out of his wallet and shows me how much of a fan he is of the leading party.
And they were kind of like putting on this tough guy show. And you realize that this is a group of high school buddies that run a country and you know, here's their cousin is sitting in the United nations and their other cousin is an ambassador to a foreign nation. And you know, but it's just this group of individuals and they owned this nation ruthlessly at that. So needless to say, we didn't park any money in Nicaragua. But that type of story is not that unusual when you're chasing down international solar opportunities.
[00:28:48] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:28:48] Speaker E: I don't think he's ever heard a story like that. And I have never seen a machine gun.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah, watch out for Nicaragua, man.
[00:28:55] Speaker D: So one more time for our audience. Where can people find Energia?
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Energia is simply energia.come n e r g e a dot com. And what I love for people to do is to just come to the website, take a look at some of the videos. So we'll try to to present the information a number of different ways. One way is to watch a video and see the visuals of these assets where they are, get a sense for place, read the offering circular. That's where we give great detail to our investment thesis. For those brave enough to get through. A 90 page document that says establishes exactly what we're here to do, exactly how we're doing on that mission, the economics, the audited financial statements and the other things that investors should keep an eye on before getting involved. And then lastly, we left the barrier to entry as low as we could. It's just a hundred bucks is the minimum to participate and buy some stock in Energia. Because as we've seen people come in at a level that is comfortable for them to experiment with. Some people experiment with 20 grand. Some people experiment with a hundred bucks. Depends on who you are. But what they inevitably do is fall in love with the product, see the transparency of the reporting, see the value in the monthly dividends, and then get more and more engrossed with energy and become our real clients.
[00:30:11] Speaker D: That sounds great. So sign up today. Go to the Energia website. I certainly will. I'm definitely interested learning more. Thanks so much, Mike for being with us on passage to profit. Now it's time for intellectual property news.
[00:30:25] Speaker E: This is a doozy. I'm going to let you explain it. It's trademark confusionist.
[00:30:29] Speaker D: It's two behemoths. It's Columbia versus Columbia. Not the country, but Columbia the University versus Columbia. The outerwear company Columbia, the outerwear company filed a lawsuit against Columbia the University because Columbia University did not live up to the terms of a contract.
Their contract required that Columbia University put logo or other identifying information on any merchandise that it sold with the Columbia name on it. Right.
[00:31:05] Speaker E: Sportswear. Merchandise. Right. Or was it. Was it any merchandise or sportswear?
[00:31:10] Speaker D: Any apparel?
[00:31:11] Speaker E: Any apparel.
[00:31:11] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: And so of course, Columbia Sportswear has been in the apparel business for a long, long time, since 1938.
And Columbia University, of course, has been around even longer, even since 1754.
[00:31:26] Speaker E: Right.
[00:31:28] Speaker D: But I guess they weren't selling T shirts back in 1754, and that's where they lost out.
So they got on the bandwagon with other universities and started selling sportswear a little too late. And it looks like Columbia outsold them.
[00:31:43] Speaker E: So it sounds like Columbia Sportswear makes its own line and Columbia University makes its own line. And Columbia Sportswear didn't want some. Maybe they weren't up to the same standards. Some shoddily made product that Columbia University had made confused with the good stuff that they make. Although imagine Columbia University stuff is good too. But I mean, I.
[00:32:05] Speaker D: This is such a weird controversy.
[00:32:07] Speaker E: It's a very strange. But they had a contract, right? They had a license.
[00:32:11] Speaker D: And Columbia University is allegedly not following it. What was so interesting, we were talking about this. Elizabeth is from the Pacific Northwest and she had barely heard of Columbia University until she came out here. But she was very aware of Columbia Sportswear Sportswear. And I grew up in the Midwest, around Chicago, and I of course knew of Columbia University but never really heard of Columbia Sportswear. So it's kind of funny how different parts of the country have, you know, different levels of familiarity with These brands. But in any case, we'd like to turn this over to our panel. Find out what do you think about this?
Who do you empathize with most Columbia sportswear, a contract holder or Columbia University.
So let's go to Pavitra and a crew. Welcome to the show again. Give us your thoughts on this controversy.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Well, I side with Columbia, the apparel maker.
I empathize with them because they are, they are the real brand and Columbia University is a university and they should make it clear that it's a university logo, university brand.
If they are using the Columbia apparels, they shouldn't be confusing people.
[00:33:34] Speaker E: I agree.
[00:33:35] Speaker D: That's pretty sensible about approach. Thank you very much.
[00:33:39] Speaker E: Very logical.
[00:33:40] Speaker D: Stan, Lucien, what are your thoughts?
[00:33:42] Speaker C: I think I would side with the university, but I also agree that they should have be more transparent that, you know, that you know, when whatever products or even if it's sportware or whatever the the case may be, they need to be more transparent that this is, you know, for the university and all of that to avoid exactly what's going on right now.
[00:34:04] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, even as an intellectual property lawyer, I know that the university should be following the contract, but there's still part of me that says you've been there a long time. Right. And you have a certain amount of fame and lots of times fame can influence the scope of your intellectual property protection. But they signed an agreement with Columbia University. Mike, what do you think?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Well, it just seems like Columbia University can't do anything right lately. But right now I would say that in this particular case, Colombia has been using the mark, you know, if you will, of Colombia for hundreds of years before this apparel company came around. And I don't know the details of what agreement was signed. The contract should obviously govern.
But if it was just, if there were no contract, then certainly the university should have every right to print T shirts with its brand on it. It sounds like the apparel maker is being a bit predatorial and using intellectual property as an opportunity to ratchet some cash out of the university.
[00:35:09] Speaker D: Yeah, that probably makes sense in the grand scheme of things, how much difference does it make? Right.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: But right.
[00:35:16] Speaker D: Anyway, thanks for your comments and to our audience or our panel, if you have an idea or invention that you want to protect, contact us at Gearhart Law. We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights. Also, you can visit learn more about patents.com or learnmoreaboutrademarks.com or a free consultation. You can just download your free entrepreneur's quick guides to patents or trademarks. And schedule a time with a Gerhardt law attorney. We have to take a commercial break, but we'll be back with more passage to profit. Stay tuned. We have Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
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[00:36:44] Speaker G: 8007-0511-9880-0705-1198, 0705-1198. That's 800-705-1198.
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[00:37:43] Speaker G: 8007-3853-3280-0738-5332-800738-53332. That's 800-738-5332. Paid for by zero debt.
[00:37:57] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and.
[00:38:00] Speaker D: Elizabeth Gearhart heard in 38 markets across the U.S. we'd like to do a shout out to our listeners in Cadillac, Michigan on Watt.
Also, our podcast is is in the top global 3% of podcasts and we've also been recently selected by Beatspot podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. So subscribe to the Passage to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and on the Iheart app. And now it is time for Elizabeth Spotlight. So tell us what's going on.
[00:38:34] Speaker E: I've been taking my entrepreneurial journey along different routes, and the Gear Media Studios is my latest innovation, I guess. And we do have a meetup group associated with it called podcast and YouTube creators community. Podcasting is very reliant on artificial intelligence. So most of our meetups now for the community are advances in artificial intelligence and how you use it for your podcasting and specifically for making your videos better and analyzing the data, all that stuff. So we're taking Passage to Profit and using artificial intelligence to really try to analyze the show and dive in and make it better, get more listeners. So that's kind of what I've been focused on lately, is how can we improve things? And what can chatgpt and Perplexity and especially Google Gemini tell us about our processes and what we're doing not only in the studio, but also at Gearhart Law. And I, I like Google Gemini because it goes straight to the horse's mouth. It's not the answers you get from AI. I mean, people are like, AI is going to replace us. What we need the humans for is to know what questions to ask, because AI is not curious.
So the value of AI to you is really if you can figure out the right questions to ask and really dig deep into it, that's really where the value of AI is for people. But now we're going to go on to the medical minute. So do you think if you're trying to get healthier and lose weight, that it's better to eat ultra processed foods or minimal processed foods? So everybody who thinks it's better to eat ultra processed foods, raise your hand. Oh, nobody's raising their hand. They did a study where they have people eat ultra processed foods and then stop and then eat minimally processed foods. So now what they're saying is minimally processed foods have undergone very little alteration from their natural state, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, meat, fish and dairy products. The whole, you know, everything we always hear about. But the other ones typically contain ingredients not commonly used in home cooking, like artificial flavors, preservatives and emulsifiers. So it's really still hard to tell. They said in the study let people eat as much as they wanted, but they found that the minimally processed foods filled them up better. It's something that we all knew, but we just don't really know what they mean by ultra processed and minimally processed. Okay, so let's move on. I am so excited about our next presenter. Pavitra Anakru is the co founder and CEO of DealMagic. And you spell that D E A L M a g I k.com and it's a really fast growing platform where you can shop, which is one of my favorite things to do. So I'd like to hear all about it. Pavitra, please tell us what you're doing and how you're doing it.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: DealMagic is a vision of us to empower local businesses and fill the technology gap they currently have with big box stores. So what we do at Dealmagic is we provide them the technology to run their businesses and a marketplace to promote their businesses. It is a platform that truly brings your main street online. So when you go to dmagic.com, you will actually see your neighborhood restaurants with whom you can place an order for pickup or delivery. And you can book a bouquet of flowers for delivery or for pickup and you can book an appointment for your haircut or a pet grooming session. And you can also pre purchase your car wash. So anything and everything that you do on your main street is available online from your local merchants. On the flip side, any local merchant or anybody who is just starting off a business can quickly get their digital storefronts in minutes. What I mean by that is all they need to do is go into business.demagic.com signature sign up and it's available on the web, Android mobile app as well as an iOS app. They can be on their desk or they can use their entire operations on the go and they sign up and they set up their menus and we have a 247 help desk that helps set everything up in minutes for them and within half an hour or so they will be completely onboarded. They can start promoting their business and people can come and make appointment with that. And there is order management system, booking management system, promotion management system, all of that integrated with the storefront and it is fully SEO enabled. They can have a standalone website and of course a mobile app that comes with that. Or they can come into the marketplace where they can go in and see not just their business, everybody else's business. On the flip side of it, if you are in the market to go get a bouquet of flowers, you can also probably be thinking about, okay, it may be your birthday or something. You can also book a facial appointment right there because everything is visible to you. And everything is promoted to you at the same place.
[00:43:34] Speaker D: Is this then mostly for local businesses? It's community business oriented website.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: It is kind of a hyper local business. At the same time it is expanding out to be with a global reach too. So what we currently offer is everything where you can buy online, redeem in store or buy online, get it delivered. So you can think of it as an amalgamation of Yelp and Doordash and Vagaros of the world that offer similar services but for a particular brand, but we particular category if you will.
Doordash obviously is for food, Vagaru is for SPAs and your DashPass is for health and fitness. But DealMagic is truly one platform that brings everybody together.
So it's not just your promotions or flash deals or whatever. It is your full catalog, fully shoppable menu. So businesses use that to offer a deal and upsell their entire menu. So it's full service shopping app. What we also offer is a unique way to get to their business. You can come to our storefront and you can see everybody and they can compare their offerings and they not only showcase their unique products, but if a florist chooses to be completely on their own, they still can use all the services and technology that we provide and have a unique address without having to create their own website. So you can go to
[email protected] and that is your website. And we are also enhancing our app so that we only give them the technology so they can have their own domain. If Rosa's by Moses has its own domain ownership, we power their domain with all our backend technologies so they don't have to participate on the marketplace. They can have their own web page powered by everything off the back of it. But having participating in the marketplace gives them additional visibility.
And we also do a lot of advertising and SEO on our own and they will miss out on it if they do not.
[00:45:48] Speaker E: So do they actually get a link to your Dealmagic website from their website? Is it like an seoable link?
[00:45:55] Speaker B: That's one of the ways we offer. But they don't have to do that. So going into the technical details of it, one way to join our marketplace is just open up your online storefront. So the way people reach you is like I said, xyzmagic. Com, that could be your URL. And if you own your own domain, we can power up your domain and you can create however you want. Your website can be however you want, but all of the menus and order management system and Booking management system. Everything is already built for you. So you don't have to do anything other than create a domain name. And if you already have a website that also has a menu capability, but you want additional power that DealMagic brings, you can add a button which we help create.
Click here to shop on DealMagic. Click here to place your orders online.
[00:46:49] Speaker E: So I do want to bring up one of the things that we talked about before the show that I think is great. If you're starting something and you don't want to have to pay thousands of dollars for a website, you could just use DealMagic to at least starting out right. And maybe you'll never need a website if you just use Deal Magic.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. And the best part is it costs nothing to be on DealMagic. So the only time you pay us is when something gets sold on our platform and we only charge a commission of 15%, which already includes the credit card processing fee. And you only pay us when somebody buys something from you. And the way we make our money is through scale. Because, like Mike was alluding to American consumers, the strength of the market is American small business owners and American consumers. And there is strength in scale that it offers. And the sheer size of the number of businesses and the multiple categories that we serve and the number of consumers who are on our system in and of itself helps us get 12% off of everything that gets sold.
[00:47:55] Speaker D: That's great. We're with Pavitra Anakru, co founder of Deal Magic. That's spelled D E A L M A G I K dot com. So go to dealmagic dot com. Mike, did you have any questions for Pavitra?
[00:48:10] Speaker A: No, but I just think it's great. I love seeing businesses that directly impact Main street enterprise because I feel sometimes that it's harder and harder for people to start companies in America. And I think back to when I first started, you know, 20 years ago. It seems like it was a easier environment, a little bit less bureaucracy, a little bit less cost. But that's changing. And we need technology like what Pavitra is doing here to make it easier and lower the barrier of entry for people to start their own enterprise. So bravo, Pavitra.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Thank you. Another thing to add to that is if you are a florist or a restaurant owner, you don't have to worry about the space with which the technology is changing and you don't have to worry about adapting to that change. Being on a platform like DealMagic, we are constantly evolving and constantly powering up Our tech stack. So being AI powered is just click of another button for you adding another feature. So you are right up there with big box stores. We recently had a national level florist contest and it's one of the hustles that we did, but that really, really went viral. Florists from all over the country put their designs out there. The winners were offered a contract wherein we are creating a deal magic dealmagic signature catalog. And this is going to help us greatly with SEO as well as enable florists who are starting off to get access to design the recipes and everything that they need to power up their florist shop.
So it was very well received and it gave us an opportunity to sign up lots and thousands of customers in one shot. In the span of one month, we were able to get hundreds of businesses to sign up all across the nation and lots of consumers to join and sign up as well. So I just wanted to highlight that and if anybody's out there listening, how to go viral, how to scale your business.
This is one of the great ways when you come up with an idea to bring in all sides together and have people have an opinion or say in the process that really does go viral. People always like to be heard and given a platform to express their opinions.
[00:50:27] Speaker D: I'd also like to mention too, Pavitra and diomagic are Gerhard LA clients. Right. So you've been with us now for how long?
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Oh, it's over 10 plus years. They just want to take it step back and say that this is my second company. My first company is in Wall street and providing technology for capital markets, institutional broker dealers. That's when I started off with you guys and you guys helped us navigate all the contracts with various banks that we were making. I was actually thrust into being an entrepreneur. I'm a geeky, nerdy technology person, but you know, things happen. And then I just became an entrepreneur overnight. And having a law firm help me navigate the process was very, very helpful. And even when I was writing contracts with Cantors and Raymond James's of the World, having David Postarski from your firm represent us helped us great deal because David happened to work for BGC too, so he knew the other things.
[00:51:26] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: And having an experienced liar helped us a great deal. And he taught us the importance of trademarking and getting design patents and all that stuff and that has helped us immensely.
[00:51:40] Speaker D: Well, we're very honored to have served you for these years and we're grateful for your success. Passage to Profit with Richard And Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:51:48] Speaker E: We are going to move on to our next guest who's been waiting patiently. Stan lucien is the CEO and founder of Sky Briz S K Y-B R I Z.com a trailblazing tech driven real estate company that's reimagining the rental experience through innovation, education and equity. So welcome Stan, tell us all about what you're doing.
[00:52:10] Speaker C: Skybus is a realistic technology company and we offer a lot of different solutions like property management education.
Main focus right now it's the educational part of the company.
Why is that? We trying to, let's just educate the next generation. So this is where we come in with animated content like Skycast or animated educational videos. Why is that? It's because that we realize that real estate is one of the things that they do not teach in middle school, high school or even college from what I can recall. You know, and it is one of the most big decision that you will ever make in your life. The moment you get out, whether you're trying to rent, whether you're trying to buy a property, no matter where you're going, you're still going to need a roof over your head. And what we notice is that especially for student right out of college, they don't know where to go.
Like, you know, what kind of step do they need to take to rent a property? For instance, they might go on Zillow and sell property from it. You know, they rent the properties. But out there we also have I guess bad people, you know, slum lord or whatever you call it. You know, they take advantage of people that don't really know the law, the real estate law. You know, some landlord may trying to do things that's illegal, you know, to some tenants and they kind of have to allow that. Why is that? It's because they do not know that the landlord cannot do that. So this is when I come with the educational part of it, you know, to trying to educate people, to trying to tell them that you know what, this is what's out there for you. Again, it's not like those information are not available out there, but they just kind of like written in such a complex language that you need a real estate agent or an attorney to break that information down to you even though it's public available information. So that's why again we need, we use, you know, animated content to try to better educate, you know, the people.
[00:54:10] Speaker E: I love your animated content.
[00:54:12] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:54:12] Speaker E: What's interesting is I went on your website and I was looking at your animated content and it's really attractive and well done. And I learned something that I didn't really know just from like a short video there. One thing that your video said was if you want to buy a multifamily unit, that if there's renters there, you can use that rent to help you get the loan for it, right?
[00:54:31] Speaker C: Yes, that's accurate. So some of the banks or lenders may let you use some of the income from the other unit to, you know, to help you qualify for the mortgage. Yes.
[00:54:42] Speaker E: And that was just one of your short videos.
[00:54:44] Speaker D: Yeah, that's pretty helpful. And the videos were very well done. By the way, we're speaking with Stan Lucian. You'
[email protected], right? That's s k y b r I z.com, is that correct? Yes. Your website, you mentioned earlier that there are some unscrupulous landlords who might be preying on younger tenants.
[00:55:06] Speaker C: I know the main focus is trying to educate the younger generation, but I do not believe that only the younger generation got, you know, victimized by some bad landlord. I take a story for myself.
My first rental property, when I first rented, I was 19 and property was flooded all the time. Whenever it's raining, you know, all of my loaning always get, you know, destroy. And even that it was hard for the landlord to make any repair. I was always paying rent on time. You know, I was always doing what I'm supposed to do. But when there's a repair that's needed, the landlord refused to make the repair. And I have to pay the consequences for a landlord that refused to fix his own property.
[00:55:50] Speaker D: So how would you prevent that from happening in the future? What steps would you take?
[00:55:55] Speaker C: Well, this is when. That's, that's the goal that I'm trying to achieve. So I want people to be able to be, you know what, I'm glad I learned that, you know, now I can make a better decision rather than. I wish I knew that. So this is when we trying to put those information out there saying that, do you know that your landlord cannot do that? Or your landlord is supposed to repair your property, your landlord cannot charge you for, you know, like for instance in New York City, your landlord can no longer charge you, you know, first month rent and last month security deposit, like twice. And you know, that's exactly how I'm trying to educate people to make better informed decisions. My goal right now with the website, because we redesigning it, right? We trying to make it a hub for real estate, not just Ed. So we, we also gonna brand Listing which is also a scanners where people are gonna be able to list properties on a website and also make properties. Followers will also be able to follow real estate agent follow landlords learn. The idea is to again to make the the website a platform for like a real estate hub, you know, no matter what you need. So you'll be able to get it from our website.
[00:57:00] Speaker E: So we're speaking the Stan Lucien of Sky Bris, but I wanted to ask our guest today, Mike Silvestrini of Energia, do you have any questions or comments on this website?
[00:57:09] Speaker A: No, none really. It's, it's. It sounds like there's a few different businesses kind of getting together here and you know, my. If you're good at a bunch of different things and you can think you can scrap together some business and across those categories that's great and you should do that. My recommendation would also be like figure out which one of those business channels is going to be the most profitable and the one that you enjoy the most and get excited about every day and really focus on it and try to scale it. Whether that's educating renters or looking at the technology component of a rental user experience. Those are distinct businesses. Both are good ideas and if you pick one and ride it, I bet you can, you know, find out where it goes.
[00:57:47] Speaker E: I think that's good advice. I love your education piece. I love your little videos. I guess looking at it, I wouldn't worry so much about listing properties there as I would the education part in the videos. And then maybe you can get some of these real estate places to sponsor you. I'm not really sure how you would monetize a purely educational website, but I know there are ways.
[00:58:08] Speaker C: I guess it comes down to my first property. When I bought my first property, I wish I knew I could have bought a multifamily instead. I would have rent some of the units and live for free and one of the other one depend off, you know, how much the bank landed and how much is the mortgage. And my second property could have just been like a single family unit. But again, you know, some of the things that you learn them after the fact, you know. And again those are information that's out there. My real estate agent club tell me that, you know, what are you interested in buying a multifamily instead of single family. This is the benefits that's that's in it. Or my real estate attorney could have also brought that up to me. But they did it, you know. And again I've learned that after the fact. And then that's what got me to the property management part of the company. So I bought my first unit, my second properties, you know, and third one. And then for the educational part of it, it's again is the same learning experience. I'm like, I wish I knew that, you know, and I'm pretty sure there's also other people out there that also wish they knew, you know, information. I mean, they knew some kind of stuff before they made the decision. So I've tried different approach. I tried, I started with Meme until I get to Skycast, which is all animated videos. And then I launched that to Housing Insight, which is all blogs, articles. And then we also have Housing Chronicles. We're trying to make real estate fun, you know, trying to use real life, real life scenario to try to educate people that way as well too. Because we know people can relate to, you know, to some of the content that we posted. So that's kind of what got me to that. You don't want to try too many things at the same time. But it's, it's because of the data that I'm getting from different part of the company, you know, from different part of the solution under the company. And that's what I'm like, you know what, why not combine all of those and put them under one umbrella, you know, so, so I can turn that into a hub for people.
And that's when the listing part comes to it. I'm like, if somebody's looking for properties, they just one click away from trying to get educational content rather than trying to navigate to YouTube or trying to navigate to other website when everything is right there within the same website.
[01:00:18] Speaker E: So Stan, you said you do property management. Do you have clients that you manage properties for?
[01:00:23] Speaker C: As a friend, I focus on managing my own properties. For now it's just my properties. But I know it's a big market, but for now it's just my properties that, you know, we manage.
[01:00:33] Speaker E: Because it seems to me when I heard you say property management, it seemed to me that you could use this website in this community that you're building to drive people to your property management business. Especially since it seems like you do encourage people to buy multifamily and then you could expand your personal property management to help other people manage their properties. Because property management is huge when people own more than one property.
[01:00:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that's one of the things. So this is one of our core part of the company and you know, so when we post our educational content so people won't Just think that we're just making stuff up, you know. So it's thing that we learn from our own experience because we also manage this Broadway so we know what we're talking about. So we don't just post content out there. And fortunately for us, we, we barely have any vacant unit and even if we do, they take less than a week to till then.
And I believe the reason why is because of the technology part that we added into our properties. I've heard different landlords and other people always be like why do you invest so much in your properties? They're just rental properties, you know, people don't care about that. They just need a, a roof over the head, you know. But we don't see it like that because some renters, they want to be different, they want to stand out. They want to stand up property that look nice again, that have technology strips. I mean they have technologies and all of those things to stand out.
[01:01:54] Speaker E: I think what you're doing is great.
[01:01:55] Speaker B: So what kind of people do you.
[01:01:57] Speaker E: Want to have get in touch with you? Do you want people that are looking to buy property that need education?
[01:02:01] Speaker C: Well, for rental main focus is kind of for property owners, landlord or realtor. So we're going to need people to come and list the property on our platform. So that will be our primary focus and then people that also need to learn about the real estate market. But our primary focus right now is to try to get property owners, realtors, show them that we have traffic, high traffic on our website. So if they lease the property the, the, the chance to also get somebody from our website to, you know, to contact them. It's, it's highly likely.
[01:02:30] Speaker E: Okay, so if you're a real estate person or you're a property owner, go to Sky Bris S K Y-B-R-I Z.com and help Stan build his site out. Thank you Stan.
[01:02:41] Speaker D: Back with more passage to profit Secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. A separate coming up next, I am.
[01:02:48] Speaker H: 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.
[01:03:33] Speaker G: 8004-9270-1480-4492, 7014 800, 492-7014.
That's 800-492-7014.
[01:03:47] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit.
[01:03:49] 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.
[01:04:02] Speaker E: Her album and now it is time Time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. I am going to start with Mike Silvestrini, co founder of Energia E N E R G E A what secret can you share with our listeners?
[01:04:17] Speaker A: Mike I think that the secret to getting through all the constant struggles that entrepreneurship is all about is realizing that when you have your down days, there is a good day on the horizon. But you also have to realize that when you're having a great day, you know there's a piano hanging by a thread somewhere nearby. You just have to get comfortable with that, the ups and downs of building a company and not get too excited with the good news and not get too depressed when the going is rough and steady. Eddie right through it.
[01:04:45] Speaker E: That's hard. But you're right.
[01:04:47] Speaker D: I agree.
[01:04:47] Speaker E: Pavitra and a crew dealmagic D E A L M A G I K dot com what is the secret you can share?
[01:04:56] Speaker B: All I would say is perseverance and you really have to keep at it. It's so easy to come across a time where you feel like, why the hell am I doing it? I better give up and get a job that pays me well, monthly salary, a bonus. But you have to keep at it and you will reap the reward. The reward is not just at the end of the day. There is no, you know, cornucopia of plenty and no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's not just that, of course it is there, but it's also the journey.
And the reward for me personally has been personal freedom and intellectual freedom that I got by starting my own company. Being a mother and being a very creative person technologically, going through this journey itself has been a great reward. And I would say keep at it. You will see the secret.
[01:05:53] Speaker E: That is great advice. Really. It's so easy to give up. But yeah, you just gotta keep going. You know what they say, if you're going through hell. Keep going.
Stan Lucian with skybriz.com S K-Y-B-R-I Z.com what's the secret you can share?
[01:06:10] Speaker C: I will say that once you trying to create something new, whether it's a new company, a new segment, a new, you know, type of technology, it's gonna be hard, you know, because if it's the first time you're doing something or if it's the first time it's being done, then there's really nowhere else that you can. We can learn from our copy from, you know, but no matter how hard it get, don't give up. You know it's going to get hard, but do not give up. Instead, I will say take a step back and look at things at a different perspective. You know, see what you're doing wrong and how can you do it different to get a different result?
[01:06:44] Speaker E: Well, that's great advice. Richard Gearhart Gearhart Law G E A R H A R t l a.
[01:06:50] Speaker D: W.Com I would say that a good way that I manage my entrepreneurial emotions is through planning. I plan for the good times, I plan for the bad times. I don't constrict myself with the plan, but I use it as a guide. If I see another opportunity, then I'll go for it, even if it's not on the plan. But if things aren't going so well, I usually feel better if I know that there's a backup way to keep things going or keep things moving forward, even if this particular project doesn't work out. So for me, having a plan and working the plan is always been really helpful.
[01:07:31] Speaker E: My secret is I think that everybody should go to chatgpt or Perplexity or especially Google Gemini and ask it, what can you tell me about? And then put your own name in there and maybe the city or state where you live and see what there is about you in those search engines and what there is about your business. So maybe what can you tell me about Energia and see what comes up? Because right now you can really control that narrative by going on podcasts like this one, starting your own podcast, whatever information you put online. So these things are looking at everything you have online.
So really I would put more be in the media, put blogs out, make sure you're putting a lot online that says what you want to say about yourself and your company.
[01:08:19] Speaker D: That's really great advice. We work with our social media consultant, Carolina Tabares, and we were looking at our website traffic sources and the AI search engines are becoming a larger and larger part of the referrals. People go from the ChatGPT to our website now as we go forward. So having that good presence in the artificial intelligence realm, you know, perplexity, ChatGPT is really important and it also gives.
[01:08:52] Speaker E: You the references where it found the information from. So most of mine comes from LinkedIn, most of Richard's comes from the Gerhardt Law website, but they use a few other sources too. So now you know where to post or where to put the information that you want to be known for.
[01:09:06] Speaker D: Excellent point. Thank you for sharing that. Well, that's it for us. 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, our studio assistant Risa Kat Bussari, and our social media powerhouse Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
[01:10:10] Speaker A: It.
