[00:00:02] Speaker A: 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.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Lock. And I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a full service podcast studio.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their business journey and also share helpful insights about the successes that they've had.
[00:00:41] Speaker D: It's time for your new business journey. Millions of Americans are dreaming right now about starting their own business. As a matter of fact, 2 in 5Americans are business owners or are thinking of starting a new business. And so we'd like to ask our panel this question. How did you come up with your business idea? Was it divine revelation or caffeine overdose? So let's go to our first contestant.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Kevin.
[00:01:06] Speaker D: Tell us how you got your business idea.
[00:01:08] Speaker E: Well, you nailed it. Four venti lattes a day puts me into that. Capping over to a situation.
[00:01:15] Speaker D: So what happened when you had your idea for your business? How did that idea evolve?
[00:01:20] Speaker E: I've been told that I am a serial entrepreneur and I've been self employed most of my life.
The business, most recent businesses that I'm involved in really were organic.
They came as a result of we'll get more into it, but came as a result of finding a need, filling the need, and ideally for myself as a professional speaker and then finding out other people wanted to tap into that same solution.
And so that kind of evolved into the blind spot assessment business. That is one of the businesses I run.
[00:01:54] Speaker D: So were you looking for a business to start or did the idea come to you and you said, oh, this could be a great business?
[00:02:02] Speaker E: Yes, and yes. So I guess this is the serial entrepreneur in me. But my mind always is watching for the next business opportunity. So it's just part of how I see the world is I'm always looking for, you know, where is there a need that needs filling. So that's kind of always on the radar and in the same time it's very intentionally decided to start this particular venture because again, there was a demand there.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Great.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Matt, can you tell us about your decision to start a business? Was it based on divine revelation or caffeine overdose?
[00:02:34] Speaker F: Well, I'm, I'm like Kevin, I, you know, I'm like a five shot Americano, trying to get things going in the morning and then something in the afternoon. But look, I, you know, I started my first company, software company, at 29 years old. I was working with big four consulting firms, PwC and Deloitte.
And similar to Kevin, I'm the type of person, when I see something being done that could be done better, I can't let that go. And we'll talk more about my experience in the healthcare industry, which is loaded with things that should be done better. And technology can fill the gap to a lot of things that are done poorly. But that's really what it was. I really believe that my time was valuable, especially as a consultant that was traveling four days a week to places all over the US And I needed to be able to deliver something better for my clients.
Therefore, I did not get the support that I needed from those firms to go do it. So why not leave and partner with the technology guy and let's go see what happens. And that's really, it's really how my life, my professional life has evolved. Entrepreneur is interesting. A lot of people think you have to have the new idea and you don't have to have the new idea. Very rarely does somebody come up with the new idea. Right. It's evolution of an idea that's already out there. In fact, if you are the first to market, it's risky. People talk about competition. I love competition. Competition means somebody else other than me thinks there's value in what we're doing.
And so therefore, you know, we, we push towards that.
[00:04:02] Speaker D: I think it's easier to sell a product if there's already a market for it. If you do it better and you have increased features. I remember one point, we won a lawsuit when I was working in the corporate world against Bausch and Lau. The argument that the Bao Shen Long people made to us, well, it's a new market. If you take one of us off the market, then the market's not as going to have as much credibility. And we were selling contact lenses to doctors who were very reluctant to try new products because they wanted to make sure that their patients eyes remained healthy.
Of course we ignored that and we took them off the market anyway.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: But that was their pitch.
[00:04:40] Speaker D: And I think that probably in retrospect, their business approach was probably a little bit wiser.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: And it does really help with the competition because I run a meetup group for podcasters and youtubers and we talked about video editing tools at the last meetup and there's two that are kind of similar. One's called Descript. The other's called capcut. And they keep adding new features to compete with each other.
So that makes it better for the consumer. Right. But when you look at those two, I feel like the user interface is so much better on Capcut. I feel like it's much more clearly laid out. And I think that that oftentimes is what helps people rise above, is that if it's easier to use, then you're going to get to the masses. Descript may be better in some ways. In fact, I think some of its audio adjustment is better, but it's harder to use. So it's not going to get to the masses the way the Cap cut will.
[00:05:30] Speaker D: So, Elizabeth, what about for you? Was it divine revelation or caffeine overdose?
[00:05:35] Speaker C: I mean, for the podcast studio, we had been looking at ways to use our building. Cause we bought this building in 2010 for the law firm. And during COVID we recorded upstairs here, where we are now. The studio didn't look like this. We've remodeled the whole thing. So Richard bought all this great equipment and put it together, expensive equipment, so that we would sound good for radio. But we're trying to think of what to do with the building. We're thinking, should we sell it? Because it's kind of emptied out and nobody's coming back after Covid. Should we rent it for office space? Like, really, what can we do with it? And I kind of wake up in the middle of the night. This is how it happens for me. And it's like, well, we should run it to other podcasters. We've got all the equipment already. And then Richard, of course, researched it. He's like, can you make any money doing this? And he found people that were making money doing it.
So we took on the project. But, yeah, it's always divine.
[00:06:22] Speaker D: Well, for me, I don't know. I would say more caffeine overdose than divine revelation. I was working in a corporate environment, and it just was not a good fit for me personally. I couldn't understand some of the decision making that was going on. And I felt more. More and more frustrated. So I ended up leaving. And Elizabeth suggested that I start my own law practice. And I thought she was nuts. I thought that was the craziest thing in the world.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: He's always thought I was nuts. It wasn't just that, but we didn't.
[00:06:53] Speaker D: Want to leave beautiful New Jersey. We didn't want to relocate again because the kids were in school.
And so I thought I'd give it a try. And it turned out that it worked out pretty well. So I don't know. I say caffeine because the idea was really hers, but I drank a lot of caffeine trying to put it into practice and make it work.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Put his name on the door cause I'm not a lawyer, but I also said I'd help you as much as I could.
[00:07:16] Speaker D: And you did.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:18] Speaker D: I guess entrepreneurship relies both on divine revelation and caffeine overdose. And so we've learned a lot already on this.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: I'm certainly overdosing on the caffeine. Now that the studio's open, I'll tell.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: You that Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rissi Kat Bussari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, 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.
