[00:00:00] Speaker A: You can freak out.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: That is an option.
[00:00:02] Speaker C: Generally, you're going to need to make a living and to pay your bills.
[00:00:04] Speaker D: Gauging your own performance metrics is a little bit difficult.
[00:00:07] Speaker E: You name it, Odoo has an app for it.
[00:00:09] Speaker F: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: And I'm Elizabeth Gerhardt. You just heard some snippets from our show. It was a great one. Stay tuned. Especially if you want to start a.
[00:00:17] Speaker G: New business, ramping up your business.
[00:00:21] Speaker F: The time is near.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: You've given it hard. Now get it in gear.
[00:00:26] Speaker G: It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:31] Speaker F: I'm Richard Gerhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:45] Speaker F: Welcome to Passage to Profit the road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and their business ventures. We have a really special treat. We have two experts from a company called Stark Raving Entrepreneurs. And this promises to be really fun. They're really engaging speakers. We have Gina Carr and Terry Brock and we'll be with them a little bit later in the show.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: And after that, we have amazing presentations. We're all about computers and AI and stuff today. So Nick Foy is the founder, CEO and chief evangelist of Silverdale Technology, the Odoo consulting company. You must be really smart to be able to do this stuff.
[00:01:25] Speaker F: Anybody who can figure out Odoo, I don't know.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: And then we have two really smart guys, too, Our son, Sean Black, and the CEO of the company he's working for. Matthew Bundy is the founder and Sean's the lead developer of Bitformance, a cryptocurrency analytics platform. I mean, these guys are so smart.
[00:01:43] Speaker F: This is going to be so cool. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for the segment, you, new business journey 2 and 5. Americans are business owners or they want to start their own business. So we always try to ask questions about entrepreneurship that our audience wants answers to. And so today the question is going to be, what is it that no one warns you about when you start your entrepreneurial journey? So I'm going to go to Terry first. Terry, what did nobody warn you about?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, I guess there's a bunch of things, but probably the one that comes to mind most is there's going to be really good times, but there's also going to be some rough times. And there's going to be some times when you're wondering, oh, they're offering this much money if I get a real job, okay. And you've got to look at, okay, what is it you want to do? Which means you keep going, press on regardless, and say, all right, let me clean up what I did wrong. And all the stuff, I'll use that word, stuff that we did that we shouldn't have been doing, and how are we going to turn that around and make it happen? There are some that say, it's not my cup of tea. Okay, that's fine. But I think be ready for that the more you can. I like what the United States Marines say, improvise, adapt and overcome. And if you keep that in mind, whatever happens, I think you're going to do a lot better.
[00:02:58] Speaker F: Yeah, I think that that's a really good point about entrepreneurism. It may not be for everyone. Right. But you never know until you try. And no matter which way it goes, you learn something that you can either take back to a job or maybe you learn that the entrepreneurial life is really for you. Gina, what are your thoughts?
[00:03:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll just add on to that, that the simple answer is it's hard. And it's hard to go from being the person who does the service or creates the product to. To the person who builds the company. And you have to make a decision early on which you're going to do, which you're going to be. And generally, at least up until 2025, where we are now, if you were going to grow more of a company, often you needed to have more people on the team, virtually or in person. Nowadays, with the evolution of AI, AI agents, AI bots, it's going to be, they say that someone's going to build a billion dollar company with only themselves as the only employee. I think that's amazing and exciting, and it's really changed the game in terms of building a company, which I love employing people, I love bringing team members on. And yet there's often headaches and vacations and family members that get married or die or whatever and their illness. There's so many things that you have to think about if you're building a bigger team.
[00:04:21] Speaker F: Right. And that is a challenge. And I think you make a great point that a lot of people don't really appreciate the transition from being a worker person to being a business owner, where you have to really take into all sorts of different considerations. Nick, what is it that you were not warned about for your entrepreneurial journey?
[00:04:41] Speaker E: Well, for Me, it was about figuring out how to scale quickly. Right. So build for the company you want, not for the one you have. And that was a difficult lesson to learn. If you build your company to work with the processes, the technology, whatever it is, based on what you have today, then you're never gonna be able to grow in scale. Right. You have to build with the future in mind. And if it doesn't work for 12 months in the future, then it doesn't work. And it's never too early to do that. So if you don't build it in from day one, then you're never gonna get to where you wanna be. That was a big lesson for me.
[00:05:15] Speaker F: Yeah. Stephen Covey talked about building with the end in mind. Right. And so if you know where you're going, that's a different blueprint than just looking at where you are right now and trying to survive. So I think that's a great point. Matthew, what are your thoughts?
[00:05:33] Speaker D: I kind of think the same thing as Terry a little bit, where you're going to have ups and downs in your process along the way of creating your company or product, whatever you're working on. And for me, it kind of really hit hard when you know, as a solo founder, that you're the only one that can really get yourself out of that trench that you're in if you get there. So it's not like you can work and wait on your boss or your company can improve its product or whatever. It's like you're the only one that can really make things happen. So unless you actually take the action or learn how to do something or whatever, you're, you know, you're going to fail. So it kind of really leans on your shoulders to take the initiative and. And drive to make things happen.
[00:06:07] Speaker F: That's great. Sean Black.
[00:06:09] Speaker H: I think the important thing is to, you know, just keep your head, try to learn as much as you can, try to push through it. You know, it's not the end of the world.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Usually.
[00:06:16] Speaker H: Usually there's a simpler solution that you might be thinking. So I would say, you know, you find some challenges, but you just got to push through and really persevere, I.
[00:06:25] Speaker E: Think is a good word for it.
[00:06:26] Speaker F: Great. Elizabeth.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: This is something I've encountered with the law firm and other people. I will say that there are a lot of people out there that pretend they know how to do something, and they don't actually. So you hire them and they just don't get it, and that is frustrating. But in that case, I think what you have to be prepared to do is to be prepared to say, okay, this isn't working out. I'm going and finding somebody else.
[00:06:50] Speaker F: My comment was something similar and that is that there's no magic bullet to hiring. Somebody can look great on paper and you get them in the door and it just doesn't work. I've hired other people and kind of wondered, well, why didn't I pick this person? And they turn out to be great. And so hiring is a black art and it's not always predictable. But I think if we follow Elizabeth's advice and that is hire slowly and release quickly. Right. If it's not working out, just get out of the situation as fast as you can and look for another option. So this has been a great session. I really enjoyed listening to all of the advice and I guess the moral of the story is expect the unexpected when you're in the business world. So now time for our featured guests, Gina Carr and Terry Brock. They're the co founders of Stark Raving Entrepreneurs and they help coaches, authors and speakers as well as content creators and consultants monetize their expertise using AI and social media. So there's a lot of value here. I can't wait to explore it. Terry, Gina, welcome to the show. Tell us what you're up to right now and how you serve the entrepreneur community.
[00:07:59] Speaker C: Absolutely. We love serving entrepreneurs. We have been entrepreneurs ourselves. I think I'm 30 plus years, Terri's 40 plus years. And we know that although the entrepreneurial journey is hard, that working for somebody is hard as well. And generally you're going to need to do one or the other to make a living and to pay your bills. We work with thought leaders who want to grow their business. They want to grow their digital platform mainly by leveraging AI and a lot of that includes creating recurring revenue in the form of membership programs and online courses. So we really help people become the go to person in their category for that problem that they solve with that particular audience.
[00:08:41] Speaker F: Can I ask you a quick question? And that is if you are working with a client and they want to start building up, say a consulting business, kind of, what is the typical timeline for that? Are you looking at five years or two years? I guess it depends a lot on the specialty. But give us some ideas. How long does it really take to start a business?
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Well, I would say that's going to be hard to say. It's kind of like how long is a rope? But it's going to depend on a whole bunch of factors there. Their education, their Experience their connection, what they want to do. But I would say it's going to be different for each person. But it's important to sit down, lay out your plan, look at the old SWOT analysis, your strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities. We all know about those things, and look at what is likely to be out there. I like to draw wisdom from those who have gone before us and learn a lot, like Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich. Look at what you want to do, but also what are the likely obstacles we're going to face out there and how can we solve those? What can we do now to prevent that? And I think that we can start planning ahead. I think it was Bear Bryant, the famous Alabama football coach, that had so many contingency plans. If they do this, we're going to do that. But if they do that, we'll do this. He had so many. He didn't use them all, obviously, but he knew enough to make sure that they had plans to improvise, adapt and overcome. As I was mentioning before, be able to change and be able to say, all right, this didn't work out. What are we going to do? Well, you can freak out.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: That is an option.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Sometimes we choose that. Or you could say, no, let's look at this rationally, logically. I find just for me, my experience, sometimes stepping back and just kind of taking a deep breath and pause. Meditation helps for me, might help for some others. Find what works for you and then get the wisdom and the inspiration you need from others. Don't try to do it alone. One of the things we say often in stark raving entrepreneurs is the Japanese phrase and saying that they use in Silicon Valley a lot. None of us is as smart as all of us. And so we want to get that community tie into that. So you got people that'll tell you the truth, not just say, oh, yeah, you did a good job. If you went up and did a speech. I do a lot of professional speaking. Do a speech, your enemies are going to say, yeah, you did a good job on that one. If you blew it. But your friends are the ones who are going to say, hey, come over here, Terry, what in the world? What are you thinking on that? That story of the donkey and the turkey. Where did you. That thing throw it?
[00:11:04] Speaker F: Yeah, you've got it.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: If you're someone listening to this and you're thinking about starting a business, how do you know that people are going to want to buy what you have? What is your best tool or technique for asking your audience or your Potential customers. Would you want this? Is this a gap in the market that I should fill with this company?
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Well, a very simple way is to take your social media platform of choice and do a post that says, I'm thinking of offering a course on xyz. Is that something you would be interested in? Please DM me, send me a private message and let me know. And that way it keeps it private and it's not all coming out of the comments. Oh, nobody responded to her. They don't know how many people might have responded. So that's one way, certainly when we're thinking of something new and recommending to our clients how to assess the market. Because in doing that and using your social media, then you're right in front of people that are already listening to you. Similarly, you can send an email. That's something like that. One tool is to interview prospective clients, go through and actually make the zoom calls or the phone calls and have a quick interview and really try to determine what the issues are and what they might be interested in.
[00:12:18] Speaker F: I think that that's great. It's a underutilized tool, is actually going out and asking people at the law firm. We've been kind of making a shift now in our marketing strategy. And my coach said, go out and talk to a dozen people in that industry and find out if you're a good fit for them, if that's where you want to be. And so I'm in the process of doing that. You learn a lot. And just even by doing that, I've gotten a couple of clients. So it's very informative and it's much cheaper than doing surveys and all that other stuff.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, Terry?
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say I agree with that strongly you want to ask that, but I think even more so, I remember in undergrad school, we were talking about focus groups that people would use and what they would say. And in the focus group they'll go, yeah, I would like the blue and the yellow widget you got. I. I'll take the yellow one. But when they found that they gave them a little bit of money, they said, here's $20 and you can use it on one or the other. You keep the $20, whatever you want. Which one do you want? And they found, ooh, they'd often go for the other one. I would give a small, minimum viable product, as we say. Noah Kagan talks about this in his book, it was a million dollar weekend. So really find out what people will actually buy. People will say, oh, yeah, I'd probably buy One of those. And they kind of want to make you feel good. And yeah, here's a pat on the head. Oh, boy, you're going to do it. Just go for it, girl. You. You got something going. That's nice. Find out what they do with real money. And fortunately, today we can do that in small tests. Offer a product on Facebook, offer a product on YouTube, offer a product somewhere, talk about it and see who really had to pay something. Time, money and energy. If they do that, you got a better likelihood that they're going to say, yes, we want it, and that's a more viable product.
[00:13:59] Speaker F: I love that.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: So what I'm hearing both of you say, though, is if you really do want to start a new company, you should get social media going first. You should put a video on YouTube. I use LinkedIn, whatever social media platform is most appropriate for your business. For this particular show we're doing now, we use Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and we post on LinkedIn too. But you have to have something out there where you can reach other people.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: I think, yes, that's definitely one of the keys. And YouTube is very powerful as a medium for connecting with your audience, building relationships, sharing your thoughts, sharing your heart, sharing your mind so that they'll know what you're all about and know whether they like you or not. As so they can be setting the stage for whether this is going to be a good fit for them to work with you or be in your program or buy your products or services at some point. So we really like that. I love LinkedIn newsletters. That's been very effective for a lot of our folks because LinkedIn newsletters go directly into the inbox of the subscribers. And just recently we've been helping clients and venturing ourselves, taking our toe in the water to Substack. Now, Substack is super powerful. It has evolved. It's a way to monetize. People can subscribe to your post depending on how you set it up, for free or for paid as well. They allow live streaming of video now. And one of the beautiful, powerful things about Substack is that you get your email list, the people who subscribe. You get their emails, and you can email substack or you can export that list. So we're very big on get people on your list. And so good ways to do that. Right now, a great way is Substack perfect.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: I'm going to have to look at that.
[00:15:41] Speaker F: I know Elizabeth is going to make the same comment that I'm making, which is, you know, your email List is gold. That's still one of the most powerful marketing tools. Any way that you can collect emails, people who are even remotely interested to your offerings. We have Gina Carr and Terry Brock from Stark Raving Entrepreneurs. I want to switch the focus, though, a little bit because you guys are using AI a lot in your marketing, and so I want to pick your brain on that a little bit. Can you tell me some of the ways that you're incorporating AI into some of the marketing plans for your clients?
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Well, you're right, Richard. It is taking Spice of Storm with the possibilities and the capabilities of it. I think as a marketer, I look at what is the market really looking for. Not just kind of sort of, but really. And one of the ways you can do that. Here's I'll share with those watching this, those listening to this little secret that you can use. Use Perplexity. Perplexity is another tool that's kind of different from Chat GPT. I use them both.
[00:16:40] Speaker F: So what is the difference between perplexity and ChatGPT?
[00:16:44] Speaker A: ChatGPT is very good. I love it and it gives a good resource to find out what's going on in many different areas. One of the best is their reasoning capability in the 01 pile. So you can then have someone that can walk you through it. Perplexity particularly excels in a few different areas. One of them is the focus you can use. So you can focus on social media is one of the tools. So you want to find out what are people really saying, not just what they kind of think. What are they saying on X, formerly Twitter, what are they saying on Facebook, what are they saying on Instagram, on Reddit, edit. And what you can do is you can select that. And what happens is Perplexity says, okay, we're putting on blinders. We're not going to pay attention to what the temperature is here or this current news item or some of these other things. We're only going to look at what people are saying on social media. So now you can go in there into your market. If I'm not a lawyer, but if I were a lawyer working with patents and copyrights or something, wink, wink, then what I could do is type in what are people looking for most now in copywriting? What major problems are they bumping into in the New Jersey area? What kind of lawsuits are coming about? What do they express as their greatest fear, their greatest trepidations, Those kind of prompts that we put together now you're going to tap into what people are really saying in Places where they say the truth usually, and find that out. And I think that's a great tool that we have in marketing today.
[00:18:05] Speaker F: So you're talking about people who are reacting to posts on Facebook or LinkedIn, or people who are posting about experiences that they've had. In the case of intellectual property, they're wondering, should I file a patent on this? Is it worth the money? That kind of thing. Soliciting advice from their friends or business colleagues. Is that how it works?
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's all of those things, particularly because we're looking at something called sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis. Find out what is it that they're saying out there, really? And is there enough people that are doing that to offer this as a market or a product or service? If it isn't, then that's a different thing. By the way, that would tie back into what we were saying before. The research, the market, the AI tools, now, just in that one area, are really wonderful for what we can do today.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: How important do you think marketing is to a new business?
[00:18:57] Speaker C: I think it's critically important for any business, brick and mortar or for virtual businesses, which is mostly what we deal with, although we do work with a few brick and mortar businesses as well. But it's absolutely critical. The world needs to know, in particular, your target audience. The people that you serve need to know who you serve and the problem that you solve. So everybody in your world needs to know that, and particularly you need to be able to get the message out to those people who you want to serve, who you want to help, who your products and services will solve their problems. Because fundamentally, that's what everything boils down to in business. I'll give you money if you can solve this problem for me. So that's a big part of it. And marketing has never been easier. Terri and I both come from traditional media background, where I published print magazines and I had my own little TV show and things that were very expensive to do just a few years ago. And now it's just amazing what we can do with one little iPhone, a free Zoom account, and all sorts of ways that we can communicate with others. So it's really powerful, the tools that are available and people need to take advantage of them and know how to take advantage of them, know how to use them. It's just like many other tools. If you have a power drill and you don't know how to use it, then you could do a lot of damage in your home.
[00:20:25] Speaker F: Gina and Terry from Stark Raving Entrepreneurs Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt. We'll be back with more right after this.
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[00:22:34] Speaker G: Now back to passage to profit once again. Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:22:39] Speaker F: Special guests Gina Carr and Terry Brock from Stark Raving Entrepreneurs. Tell us a little bit about the process that you use when you're working with a client.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Well, I think one of the things we want to do is we want to start with where they are, what they're looking for, where their pain is. Then say, here's some tools that are out there that might help lately. Lately being since 11-30-2022 with ChatGPT, we have seen a lot of the tools around AI that are able to solve that. For instance, I was talking to, as a professional speaker, I make a lot of presentations here and there. And I was giving a presentation to a group of home builders that are in a homeowners association. And they work a lot with showing people how to put their houses together. They have a tradition where they would design a house. They do a graphic of, have really good graphics artists who cost a lot of money to come in and draw this and put it together. Here's the house that you would like, how they do it. Then they look at it and the couple says, that's okay, but we really would like the porch over on the right side, not here on the left side. So now they got to go back and redo it. It's several more days, more money, et cetera. And I said, does that happen? And they go, oh, yeah, it does. I go, watch this. So I just sat down at the keyboard and typed in literally what we wanted. As many that work with Dall E3 and other tools that are available to create graphics know we can just type in the words and then it appeared. You should have heard the audience. I wish you could have been there. They're going, that's amazing. Because it's happening that fast. This is like something like out of Star Trek, and I'm a big Star Trek fan, so to see those kind of things happening, I think there's great opportunities. And right now, as we're recording this at the front end of 2025, a lot of good is happening within AI agents. Right that down. If you're driving as you're listening to this, just remember it real well and put that down when you get a chance. AI agents are where you can get tools from AI to start doing the tasks for you that others have been doing. This is where, as Gina was mentioning, our first $1 billion company with one person as an employee is likely to happen. So I would say get into that, find out those tools and start using those.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: What if you don't like using software? I mean, I love using software, but I deal with people that I'm holding their hand and taking them the whole way through it. I know they could do it themselves. They just don't want to.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say get started in a small way, because in a way it'd be like, say, well, I don't like using a car. I don't want to ride in a car. Or I don't well, okay, you really don't have to, but if you don't, it's going to hold you back a lot. Or if you don't like electricity, I'm sorry, you know, we were using it today. So I would say get to know it, but do it in a way that has a way that we gradually ease into it. Systematic desensitization is a topic that psychologists and psychiatrists tell us about. If you're scared of something, you just introduce a little bit of it. Not a whole lot, not enough to scare, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more. Get those coaches that can help you. I'm thinking this will be a good way to do it. And psychologists who are way smarter than me in that area say this helps us to overcome those barriers.
[00:25:41] Speaker F: So, Terry, I just wanted to ask, what are AI agents? You mentioned that before. Are they secret agents?
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Like when they're close and wear a badge and they open it up, they go, hey, you want to buy this Versus the guys in New York go.
[00:25:51] Speaker F: Hey, I got a watch for you here.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: No, but that's a whole nother the thing. No, the AI agents are little robots. It's like you've got a system of things that you need to do in your office. When someone calls in, say for a first time, they're inquiry, they're saying, hey, I'm looking for a lawyer that can help me in copyright and patents. I need some help on that. You have procedures that you go through. People can do that or you can program that into AI so that AI says we're going to do this first and then we need to ask them this question. And if they ask this way, we go this and it starts doing it automatically. You look at the systems that you are implementing and you think what can be done here automatically to be faster and better for the person who is inquiring about it and also for us as our team so that the team can be deployed toward higher end thinking tasks versus something that's mundane that we could literally get a robot to do. So those are the kind of things that are starting to happen right now. And in this year we're going to see some dramatic leaps forward. People way smarter than me are saying, this is in place right now. So I would say say make it a point to start reading up on AI agents. Just do some searches out there on your Google if you're so yeah, I think some are still using Google. You can use that or you could use Perplexity Chat GPT and many of the others that are really good out there that give us those answers.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: That was great. I want to go to Gina. I have one quick question before we go through your processes. Do you feel like if I learned a software program like, I love Canva, if I really learned that, could I go into the gig economy and help other people use Canva? Do you think that's going to be a gap that people can do?
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Well, it is, but it's probably not one that I would advise because it is becoming so easy just to ask your AI tool. Oh, I want an image of someone who is heavy and now they have lost weight. And I want it to be the same person and I want them to be wearing the same clothing. And you can give it all these details that in the past it was impossible to find a stock photo like that. You would generally need to hire a graphics person to create something like that. And so the. The race to zero, as they say, in terms of what that's going to be worth for someone to do as a service is going down. It's not impossible. And especially if you get into a specific niche where, let's say it is weight loss and you're really good at those type of weight loss images and maybe you use AI to create them yourself, there's still a lot of people who will not want to do it themselves. They feel that someone else can do better, that someone else, especially a graphics person, has a better eye for those type things. And believe me, I've seen a lot of work that people have done. And there's a big difference between someone who has a good eye for something that's aesthetically pleasing versus not.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So what is your process then? When you get a client?
[00:28:37] Speaker C: We walk them through these various stages in our programs that help them to become that go to person. So clarity, visibility, marketing, sales, community engagement, and technology and just get clear on who you serve and the problem you solve. Visibility, make that visible to the world. Marketing, whatever your offer is, make that offer visible to the world. Which is different than you as the business owner or as the thought leader. Sales have a way to convert that service or product into money, build a community, community engagement, build a community around it. And an overarching theme of what Terri and I do is to have a high tech focus such that you can leverage technology to make your life easier and to do things better, cheaper and faster.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Excellent. I don't think high tech means what it used to though, does it?
[00:29:29] Speaker C: Not at all. When I pull up my phone and say, tell me all about this service, tell me which software is better for my needs, for my particular business size. Should I buy the ABC software? Should I buy the XYZ software? It's amazing. And that's what software is today. That's what technology is today.
[00:29:47] Speaker F: That is so helpful. Gina Carr and Terry Brock from Stark Raving Entrepreneurs. Where can we find you?
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Well, for
[email protected] we'll give you the information, what we have, and the way that you can benefit from that. Stark Raving Entrepreneurs. A little bit cheeky there, but that's okay. We like to push the edge just a little bit.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: And let me just add that we are often doing free trainings that you can attend by going to starcraving events.
And we have all sorts of sessions. Sometimes we're the featured trainer, sometimes we're bringing in one of our brilliant friends and colleagues to share and to talk about it in our community events.
[00:30:27] Speaker F: So, yeah, definitely go see Gina and Terry. And now time for Intellectual Property News. Elizabeth, what are we going to be talking about today?
[00:30:35] Speaker B: So I did a little bit of digging into AI and patents because Richard's a patent attorney, I'm a patent agent. He owns a patent firm that does trademarks and copyrights too. And I ended up on the WIPO site, which is the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is really a great site if you're in the patent world. They had some historical milestones on here of AI patent applications. And can anybody here tell me what year was the first mention of the term AI?
[00:31:06] Speaker A: 1956.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Oh, Terry, did you look that up?
[00:31:10] Speaker A: I have ChatGPT running in my brain.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Who would have thought, right? I don't think we were even born yet that year.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: That year. That's why I remember.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: My next question is, in 1987-1993, a catastrophic event happened that led to the second AI winter. What was that? Does anybody know? Can you guess? There was a sudden collapse of the specialized hardware industry during those years. And so they didn't have the components they needed to get the computing systems to run AI. Then they solved that because AI became more data driven and computers increased in power. So that led to what we have today. But which two countries have the most patents about AI?
[00:31:54] Speaker D: Let's say China's probably up there.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Yep, that's one of them. What's the other one?
[00:31:57] Speaker D: Us.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Yes, very good. And then what is the leading company for patents in AI? It's IBM, which started out as International Business Machines way back when and now is all, almost all about software, although I do think they still do some actual physical products. One last thing they threw in this, and this is just a rhetorical question, but a scary one, they talked about super intelligence. What happens if intelligent machines exceed the capabilities of the human brain?
[00:32:27] Speaker A: They will be taxed heavily by Congress.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: I can hardly imagine industry which is not going to be transformed by AI. So that is our intellectual property in the news. There's a lot of patents around AI.
[00:32:37] Speaker F: And of course, if you have a patent that you want to file, you can do so by contacting Gearhart Law. Or you can go to learnmoreaboutpatents.com and get a free white paper on patents or sign up for a consultation with one of the Gearhart Law attorneys. And don't forget too, you can also download a paper about
[email protected] and we'd be happy to help you with any trademark filings that you have. We'll be back with more passage to Profit right after this.
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[00:35:08] Speaker A: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:35:13] Speaker F: Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard across the country on the Radio America Network and on iHeartrad. Passage to Profit is also a popular podcast. We are ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally and have been named as a top 10 interview podcast by Feedspot Database. So we're very proud of those things, and we're very happy to bring all of this wonderful information to our audience. It's now time for Elizabeth's segment, so please tell us what you're up to.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: So I'm running a meetup with Stacy Sherman called podcast and YouTube creators community, and Terri and Gina both spoke at the meetup last Tuesday night. It was amazing. We talked about podcasting, and it just shows you how professional these guys are, because I said, when you come on Passage to Profit, can you kind of switch and do general business instead of just podcasting? They were like, sure, yeah. We can talk about AI with anything, which they have done here very well. And I have my cat podcast with Danielle Woolley, the Jersey Podcast, and I'm learning more every day. Richard and I and a couple other people went and worked on the podcast studio in Summit, New Jersey, on Sunday and made a lot of progress. I'm pretty excited. It's almost done, and we have a lot of people interested in it, too. So those are my main projects right now. And I'm also doing the marketing for Gearhart while helping with that and trying to figure out how to use more AI. So I like that program you told us about for the videos because I'm gonna hire a video assistant and marketing assistant. I'm gonna say you have to either know this or learn it. So now we want to switch gears a little bit and go to our medical minute. We put this in because we thought most people are interested in staying healthy. And this was kind of a weird one. This came from Medical News Today, and I didn't know any of this until I started reading this, but our body cleans itself, all the old dead cells and all the junk out through our lymphatic system. So the body has lymphatic vessels, but the brain doesn't have that. So the brain uses the lymphatic system, but it's only on during the deep part of sleep called non REM sleep and it uses norephenine. But if you take a sleep aid, there's been some studies in mice that show that this can disrupt the process and it's pretty bad for your brain. Now other people are saying, well look, if you can't sleep at all, it's better to get some sleep and have your process disrupted by these sleep aids, but don't take them for a long time. So I don't take them. I don't always sleep well, but that kind of stuff always makes me feel really bad the next day.
[00:37:41] Speaker F: And you know, getting sleep obviously is really important for an entrepreneur because you've got to be able to think. That's a big part of what you do, right? And so if you're tired, I take the over the counter stuff and I do sleep better, but I never really wake up the day following. I'm always a little bit groggy and you know, I find if I just skip it and power through it, I'm usually better off than the sleep aid.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: But I think as an entrepreneur too, if you don't load your whole day up with meetings all the time, you can take a nap and then you can work after dinner. Anyway, enough about that. I am so excited to hear what Nick Boy has to say. He is the founder, CEO and chief evangelist of Silverdale Technology, the Odoo consulting company, which provides access to world class processes, systems and change management methods regardless of a company's size or budget.
[00:38:31] Speaker C: So welcome.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Nick, can you please explain what Odoo is to start?
[00:38:34] Speaker E: Absolutely. So Odoo will describe itself and we in the industry will describe as an erp. And then most people then ask what the hell is an erp? So ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP term is something that the industries kind of came up with and we were the only people that calls it that. Right? Let's be clear, most people would refer to it as the system, okay? The computer system that they use to get things done right? And in a lot of different companies and organizations, that's never just one system, it's a myriad of different systems. Now Odoo is an ERP system that really pulls all that together all into one place. So you can conceivably run everything in your business from one single platform, whether it's E commerce, payments accounting, inventory manufacturing, CRM, your website, you name it, Odoo has an app for it and it's a very diverse and very lively ecosystem that thousands of companies across the US and the world actually use.
[00:39:36] Speaker F: That's great. I've heard the expression jack of all trades, master of none. So when you have these ERP systems that do a lot of different things, how does that compare to like just buying a single system, like an inventory management system or a contacts management system? Is there some sacrifice in the functionality by putting all this stuff together in one package?
[00:40:00] Speaker E: I would say not necessarily. I think if you were to do a side by side comparison, let's just say between say a Salesforce and Odoo CRM, for example. Right. If you had a side by side comparison of the features, then Salesforce is going to have way more features than Odoo CRM, without a doubt. Okay. Same if you were to look at Odoo inventory versus a red hat, for example, or if you were to look at HubSpot versus Odoo email marketing or marketing automation. Right. So when you look at these kind of, you know, single threaded systems, right, like those, and you compare it feature by feature, they're always going to have more features. But what I think people are underestimating is the power of having everything all in one place. And when you have lots of these different supposedly best in breed systems, what you actually spend most of your time doing is trying to keep all your data in sync between them. You're exporting CSV file, you're importing things, you're trying to figure out why you've got 1001 contacts here, 998 here, and they don't match up. You just spend your time wrangling your data in between systems as opposed to using the data to your advantage and making better decisions. Right. And so don't underestimate the power of having everything all in one place at your fingertips. I tell you, you know, when I get on a call with a client, the first thing I look at is their contact page in Rodo.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Why?
[00:41:29] Speaker E: Because it tells me how many help tickets they have open, how many sales orders they're currently working on, how many opportunities we're working on right now, how many invoices they have outstanding. Right. It tells me how projects we're working, how many tasks. Right. What we're waiting on. Right. Tells me what they've looked at recently on our website. Like all of that all in one place. Other companies would have to go into five, six different systems to do that. And I can do that instantly.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: And I think what Richard really likes the most about an ERP is you can get reports, so you can ask for a specific report, and all the data is in the same place. So we can give you from soup to nuts. Like, this person contacted the firm on this date, went into our CRM and became a client on this date and paid us this much money in 2025.
[00:42:14] Speaker E: Yep. Yeah. That client journey and that visibility 20 years ago, I heard it for the first time, was this kind of panacea of a kind of single view of the customer.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:23] Speaker E: That everyone was talking about back in the day. And I would say that most companies today do not have a single view of the customer. Right. You know the companies that do, and you know the ones that don't. And it's very easy to tell when you hear people, when you call them up and, oh, I have to log into my other system for that, or my system's running a little bit slower, you just know what they're doing. They're logging into five different places to try and answer a question. Right. And they can't pivot very quickly. So, you know, the companies have got this right and the ones that have.
[00:42:51] Speaker F: Got it wrong, I think that's really important. At Gearhart Law, we use Odoo. Coincidentally, we've had the system for a long time. If somebody is just starting a business, are they ready for erp? Is that something that they should be looking at early on in their business plan?
[00:43:08] Speaker E: Absolutely. Anybody asks me, am I ready for an erp, the answer is always, well, you should have done it yesterday. Okay? It's always too late, and it's never too early is what I tell people. The reality is, when you look at the cost of getting into an ERP these days, it used to be at least tens of thousands of dollars and used to be months and months of effort. The reality is now you can go to odoo.com, you can sign up for an account, you can be live within minutes, and you're going to be paying 50, 60 bucks a month or something. So the reality is, even if you're just a solo entrepreneur, and this is something talked about earlier about, you know, it's never too early to think about scale. So as soon as you start using an ERP in that way and you start adding in modules, you start putting all your data in there, you'll start seeing how quickly it stacks up and you'll start making better decisions. And honestly, the goal for most companies is certainly, when we work with our clients, my goal is to get you to stop talking about your erp. Quite frankly, right What I really want you talking about is how you're going to grow and develop your business and how the system is going to be a strategic tool to allow you to do that, not an impediment, which is what most people treat the systems as today.
[00:44:16] Speaker F: I just want to relate a story from Gerhardt Law. We had an earlier version of the ERP version 10, and it was the public version and then we migrated to version 16. I won't even go into what a challenge that was. It was very expensive and it took a lot of time to do it. The provider who had installed the version 10, he didn't even tell us about these other versions. But once we got everything, everything set up and installed, we were able to find out things that we didn't know. So some of our clients turned out not to be making our firm any money. We were able to actually look at different projects at different clients and make adjustments to how we do business in order to make everything kind of work out from a financial perspective. And without the erp, that would have been very time consuming and very, very tedious. And so while there's a cost associated with investing in this kind of software, it's really important to know that if you get it right, it can also really help your bottom line in lots of different ways. And we're spending a lot of time doing that.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: We've spoken to so many people on this show who are business experts who have said you cannot run a business without knowing what your data is. And that's really the strength of the erp. I wanted to go to Terri and Gina.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: My question was, is it okay for a small business, a very small business, or a startup or solopreneur? And it sounds like it's wonderful having a dashboard like that to be able to evaluate the data, one of the pieces of data that we're getting that we could do a better job of evaluating. And I'm wondering, does something like this come into a dashboard or can in? It is when we host very frequent Zoom meetings and we have a lot of different guests in there and community members and such, and we survey people immediately upon leaving. So we have these survey results and then either someone has to go in each time and download it and upload it and evaluate it, which kind of gets left out of the picture sometimes. Does your service do something like that?
[00:46:28] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. So as they say, we have an app for that. Right? So Odoo does actually have a built in survey app where you can do, you know, after event surveys. You can also do real time surveys, which are also really powerful. So even during a zoom, for example, you can give out a link during the webinar and you can actually gather real time feedback. That's taking survey to another level where we can actually see, you know, we do that with some of our user training. For example, we'll actually post a live survey survey and clients can tell us in real time, is it going well? Is it not going well? Are we going too fast or too slow? There's no point finding out afterwards that you are going too fast. What can you do about that? Nothing. So those real time surveys as well during webinars are pretty powerful and that's something to think about. So it's not just post event. You've got to be thinking about using the tool during the event as well.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Terry?
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Yes, I would say, first of all, we've seen a lot of good coming from ERPs, and you know better than I do through the years, really good things. What are you seeing right now that AI is helping with ERPs? ERP. And what would you like to see coming in the future? If I could give you, you know, your wish list here, you can make one wish, that kind of thing, what would it be that you would have AI do for that? And I'm curious about the tools that you're using right now for that.
[00:47:41] Speaker E: I've been listening intently to the whole conversation about AI and itching to get involved in it. We took a decision about a year and a half ago, in fact, to cap the number of employees that we have at Silver. That was a decision we made. And the reason we made that decision was to force us to grow the company and scale the company without making it a linear growth with employee headcount. Right now, in our industry, that's almost unheard of. Okay? More projects, more clients, more people. Okay? And we decided to break that and we capped the company to 50 employees, which is what we have today. And actually now we talk about our 51st employee. Our 51st employee is called Dale. Dale is our AI. And Dale is trained on over 250,000 tasks that we've completed over the last five years. Over 20,000 help tickets and over 30,000 pieces of content, FAQs, best practice, user guides. Dale has access to all of that data and information. So now we use that data to help support our clients. We use it to help develop. We use it for coding, we use it for testing, we use it for sales. We use it right across our business. And in fact, Dale is the colleague sitting right next to you. Okay. For every single person in our company, everyone has access to Dale. He's the best memory that we have and also the best person to help you brainstorm. And as it turns out, after five years, with all that data that we have, is actually the best memory and long term memory of our company.
[00:49:14] Speaker F: Do you use Dale to answer client inquiries or is it just an internal resource?
[00:49:20] Speaker E: Dale is external and internally focused. So all the tools that we develop internally is obviously where we started, but those tools are also now pointed externally. We've actually just rolled out a couple of weeks ago. In fact, we just rolled out our first version to clients. So Dale is now our first line support is now through Dale. And Dale will search through all of our help tickets and find similar questions and the answers that were provided. And we'll try and help the client where possible. Right. And we're starting to see some pretty good results from that. So the goal with using Dale in our company isn't about replacing people, because it's actually a tool that allows our people to do more and to be more effective and to deliver more. When you start looking at some of our ratios, so, for example, revenue per employee, since we started using Dell, our revenue per employee has increased pretty dramatically. Right. Again, because we're generating more revenue. But more importantly, using the data that we as a company have and have always had, we just didn't have a great way of serving up that information and reusing it.
[00:50:29] Speaker F: So is there any human review of the answers that are going out to clients?
[00:50:34] Speaker E: Yes, there is. So Dale will always do that first line support. Every help ticket that comes into us as well, which is our main method of support, every single one of them also goes against Dale. So Dale. Dale will take that question, he'll go pull an answer, and actually a human will then go look at the answer that's provided. We'll adjust that, we'll add more detail, whatever we need to do to make it correct. And then that learning goes back into Dale as well. Right. So he's consistently and constantly learning. And we have dedicated resources now who are there helping to train Dale. And it's one of those things that we're talking earlier about, you know, how do you get people to kind of adopt and not be scared of these types of tools? I'll tell you, one of the great things that we did was actually give it a name. So when you start to give it a name, it becomes a little bit more personal, a bit more human like. And you'll find during the discussions, right. You'll actually say, hey, did you ask Dale? And in fact, that became the project name. Ask Dale was actually the project name that we've been running for the last 18 months.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: So we've had a little bit of pushback from the attorneys at the law firm. So a few years ago, I wanted to introduce this AI company to do the marketing. Cause I'm in charge of the marketing, thought, well, let's bring it in that way. There was so much resistance and I got eviscerated in this meeting, but Richard had my back. So. And then we, we just had a management team meeting yesterday where we're trying to say, like, what are the pinch points and how can we solve these? And it just doesn't seem like the attorneys really want to use the AI like Richard and I do. Like, we're like, oh, we could do this, that the other thing. There's a barrier there.
[00:52:01] Speaker F: Well, I think there's a lot of trust issues because sometimes you do get the wrong answers. And we use AI for legal research, for example. Usually the answers are okay, but you also have to ask the right question. But even still, when you do that sometimes. So there's still some trust issues there for some people.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: But the companies that aren't using it are going to be way behind.
[00:52:23] Speaker E: If you're not using it today in your business in some way, shape or form, you're going to be falling behind. There's no doubt about it. And if you think your competitors aren't using it, then you're crazy. Okay? And you need to get on board with this. But you're, you're right about the data and you're right about the hallucinations. Right. The official term for kind of the errors, they call them hallucinations is very much, very. I find as I get older, I've got a lot more of those as well, quite frankly. The hallucinations really come and you look at it, it's actually normally either bad context or bad instructions or it doesn't have access to sufficient data. If you're in a very specialized area, for example, you know, IP law, for example. Right. You're going to be thinking about, well, what data is it using to call upon? You know, at the end of the day, all of these large language models really are just a text predictor. Okay. It's just trying to figure out what's the next most likely word. That's really what it's doing in the background, right.
At the end of the day, that's where it is. So it really depends on the depth of information on the amount you're going to get back, that's going to be decent. So that's one of the reasons why we decided to create our own LLM.
[00:53:29] Speaker C: Right?
[00:53:29] Speaker E: So a large language model, right? If you just use chatgpt.com, you're using whatever data they've got, okay? You're using their LLM, you're using their data, okay? What they've collected. And it's either good or as bad as what they've collected. In our case, because we're specialists, we do what we do and we've been doing it for five years. We've got all this data. We actually created our own LLM to supplement ChatGPT and we ask Dale to prioritize answers from our LLM LM first.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:54:00] Speaker E: And so there's ways and means of doing this, but you've got to be, you know, you got to know what you're doing.
[00:54:04] Speaker I: Right?
[00:54:05] Speaker E: You can't just, you know, sign up to chatgpt.com and use it like Google. You're going to make a hash of it.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So unfortunately we're out of time for this discussion. But Nick, where can people find you?
[00:54:14] Speaker E: You can find us@silverdale us. You can also find us on all the socials at Silverdale Tech Passage to.
[00:54:22] Speaker F: Profit with Richard Analyst Gerhardt.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: We're not going to quit talking about AI and software because our new next two guests are working in a company together. We have Matthew Bundy and Sean Black. Matt is the founder and Sean is the lead developer of bitformance, a cryptocurrency analytics platform that allows users to track, analyze and create their own cryptocurrency indexes. This is like woo woo stuff way out there, you guys. So welcome. Tell us all about it.
[00:54:50] Speaker D: Thanks for having me. So Sean and I've been working on this for the last few years. And bitformance allows users like you said to tracking allies, creating their own cryptocurrency indexes and additional market metrics. But the reason why it came for me is because like stock market has a bunch of different ETFs, different industries. You can track all this stuff at the time crypto. And still to a certain extent, it doesn't really have that industry subsector, whatever you want to call it, segmentation, like the stock market does. And so gauging your own performance metrics is a little bit difficult. You know, if you have a portfolio, portfolio of 20 different cryptocurrencies, how do you know your performance is good versus bad? You Know, usually it's just relative to Bitcoin. Maybe sometimes you'll use S&P 500 to try to gauge it, but there isn't really that one central benchmark, if you want to call it for that. So that's where the index is kind of coming to help, where if you primarily, like Terry said, have AI related cryptocurrencies, you can see, like, if I have these AI cryptocurrencies, am I doing good relative to the AI index, index maybe? Or am I lacking the AI index? If I am, why am I doing that? Are there some that are performing better than others or are my holdings just not performing well? So it kind of really gives you that performance gauge and metrics on that. And then additionally we have the different taxonomy systems that really help to show in general the market how the dynamics are working, either in between the different sector subsectors, custom benchmarking, back testing tools, just the general kind of getting more information throughout the market.
[00:56:22] Speaker F: So for those of us of a certain age who did not grow up with cryptocurrency, could you just kind of generally describe what it is? I mean, we've all heard about it, but understanding it is elusive sometimes.
[00:56:36] Speaker D: I think the general premise when it first came about was decentralized peer to peer payment networks.
[00:56:41] Speaker E: So.
[00:56:41] Speaker D: So there's no central entity. So like a PayPal or a Stripe or something where there's a central entity that's handling all the payments like a Visa or whatever, and then you have to rely on them. If their network goes down, that's it. You can't handle payments. Bitcoin is decentralized so that there's no central entity that controls everything. It's handled by, in Bitcoin's case, a bunch of miners. That's a whole separate conversation. You have to go, what's mining?
It's just mining. Mining is solving complex math problems. That's kind of the simple way of thinking it to help confirm the transactions that go through and the security of the network. So there's a bunch of miners, it could be me, it could be you. You know, there's anyone can really do it. But the payments are peer to peer. So if I send Terry or Sean or whoever a Bitcoin, there's no Visa or Stripe that has to facilitate that payment. It's just the network itself of other users that are really helping to make that happen.
[00:57:34] Speaker F: How is that different from like Zel, right, Doing the same thing?
[00:57:37] Speaker D: Yeah, and well, you know, Zel's through like a Wells Fargo or Something. So at the other end, you know, the bank really does have to get the transaction to go through and then you have to receive it in your bank account. So there is that entity at the other end. You know, if there's a bank run or a huge crash or something, you're not going to be able to withdraw your money maybe. Or if the, the system goes down, you know, the person you're trying to send money to might not be able to receive it. So Bitcoin kind of in, in its core really helps with stuff like that, where there's not really anyone or central any that you have to trust. It's. It's just a general consensus of the network that anyone can really be a part of and it's not a single entity that controls everything.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: So is this traded on a trading site, like a website where you have all. And I was going to ask you, how many cryptocurrencies are there?
[00:58:20] Speaker D: So that's, that's the tricky question there, there's thousands, tens of thousands. Now, are they quality ones? No, but there, I mean, there's a bunch of sites where you could. There's Kraken, there's Coinbase, there's. There's Gemini there. There's a lot of exchanges where it's kind of like a stock broker, you know, there's E Trade, there's Interactive brokers, there's Fidelity, where you can trade stocks. It's kind of similar in cryptocurrency where there's different exchanges where you can connect your. Either it's a PayPal or maybe your bank account or whatever, and purchase the cryptocurrencies. And then what? The best practice is to then withdraw your cryptocurrencies from that exchange and, and store them yourselves. Otherwise you're still having to rely on that exchange to hold your funds, which we see in FTX or whatever. How that ended up where. Next thing you know that, that goes bottoms up. And then people have all these funds stuck on the exchange and can't withdraw them. So it's good to purchase them on the exchange and then hold them yourselves in something maybe like an offline storage, like a ledger or a Trezor or.
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Something, and then forget your password and that's.
[00:59:21] Speaker D: Yeah, don't forget your password then, you know, then you're going to lose your thumbs or.
[00:59:24] Speaker F: So I wanted to ask Sean a question. How do you get your money out of cryptocurrency? How does it go from crypto to dollars?
[00:59:33] Speaker H: Like Matt was saying, you have your exchanges right where you purchase them. I mean, that's where you trade them. So I mean, if you had, like, if you bought Bitcoin or something and a couple years later you decided to sell it, you would just, if it's not on Coinbase, like if it's in a ledger or wallet somewhere, you would send it to Coinbase, to your Coinbase account account essentially, and then you would sell it for USD. And then you could, if you have your bank account connected to your Coinbase account, then you just withdraw ESD that you sold your Bitcoin for. So I mean, that's what these, they're exchanges, you know, it's a, you know, it's a currency exchange. So you're, you're pretty much.
It is a central entity where you can offload and buy crypto. But the beauty of it is, you know, you can take control of your own crypto by moving it off the exchange. Once it's off the exchange, you, you know, in your own wallet that you have complete control. You know, there's no Wells Fargo, there's no other bank or entity that can tell you or you know, has control over your own Bitcoin wallet. So, but if you wanted to sell it, you would, you would send it to one of those exchanges and just exchange it for whatever you wanted to. I mean, you can exchange it for USD, you can exchange it for other cryptocurrencies. Some exchanges, like if you had Bitcoin and Doge, if you wanted to exchange your Bitcoin for Dogecoin, you could totally do that on one of those exchanges. So I mean, that's, that's what their function is, just an exchange where you can trade your USD for Bitcoin. I mean, at the end of the day, they are currencies.
[01:00:56] Speaker D: I just want to add on real quick to Sean is, you know, now they also have the, I guess they've had it for a While with Bitcoin ATMs or I mean even you can meet up with someone in person, just pay them cash and transfer Bitcoin. So I mean, like Sean said, it's either a currency or you think of it like gold, you know, and just hand someone a bar of gold and they're going to send you some thousand bucks or something. So, you know, there's a bunch of different avenues news.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: I do want to ask you guys something and I think we should go to Terry and Gina. But is it still as volatile a market as I remember? Sean. Sean called me one night. He's like, my crypto made so much Money, I've got like $10,000 of crypto. I'm like, sell it Sean, sell it. And the next day he calls me, goes well it's down to zero now.
[01:01:34] Speaker D: So yes and no. You know, the more it's kind of like stocks. Not you know, it's a little more volatile in stocks but you know, you have the established like an Apple, a Microsoft, which is equivalent of like a Bitcoin Ethereum. Those are while still more volatile in stocks, I would say they have come down a little bit in terms of volatility since you know, the inception. We are still relatively young in the market, so it is volatile. But then if you go to, you know, so called meme coins or whatever else, some of these more brand new or ones that are really just kind of coming about, you might see them go from a dollar to a thousand dollars, then back down to $2 and span of 24 hours, hours. And so as you know, like you said for Sean, you might see your dollar turn into a million dollars and then don't sell and it turns back down to 20 bucks. So it really depends on the asset and kind of what you're holding.
[01:02:22] Speaker H: I would say one of the cool things about fitformance is that you can actually see the performance of some of these cryptocurrencies over a long period of time. And when you look at the performance from like 2017 until now, now, you know, you might see some short term volatility. But if you see that if like you didn't do anything, if you just had it and didn't trade it or do anything like that, it would, it actually served you better in the long run than just trying to like ape into some of these, you know, really volatile assets. So I mean that's one of the cool things about the website is you can actually see and track the performance of these over a long period of time and then you kind of get your own insight. Well, you know, maybe I don't want to just sell this, you know, in a week from now because like, you know, judging by past experience and looking, looking at, you know, the website, it might, you know, it might be better to just hold onto it for a long time. So I mean that's just kind of one of the cool things that you can see.
[01:03:18] Speaker F: So in terms of performance, if we were going to compare cryptocurrency, maybe the top hundred cryptocurrencies, compare that to the performance of the S&P 500 or the new York Stock Exchange, would you have been better off investing in a portfolio of cryptocurrencies five years ago, or are you still better off off investing money in the stock market, for example?
[01:03:43] Speaker D: Yeah, it depends really on a timeframe. I think that you're looking at. If you invested 10 years ago, when it was still really in its infancy till now, you would have beat the S&P 500 by miles. But certain periods of time, you might see that cryptocurrency actually really underperforms the stock market a lot of the times. That has to do with the volatility, where the upsides are usually much higher, but the downsides, the drawdowns are much, much steeper. So you'll make more money, but you'll also lose more money effectively. So, and that's why I think a lot of people say, you know, don't have all your funds in cryptocurrency, all your funds in the stock market have some sort of balance between the two. So you do get capture some of that upside, but then you won't get the huge drawdown that it has.
[01:04:21] Speaker B: That's good advice. So, Terry.
[01:04:23] Speaker A: Oh, I compliment both of you and what you're doing, Matt and Sean, because I'm very strongly in favor of what we can do that lasts. Bitcoin is based on not fiat currency. It's not based on the whim of some government. It's based on mathematics. And mathematics will not lead you wrong. And I've been involved in the crypto community, the mc, at many different conferences. Matter of fact, personally, we're very happy what happened. A week ago, my friend Ross Ulbricht was freed from prison and he was very involved in that. Right now we're seeing a lot of things happening in that realm. And I would say right now I have a strategy of high hodl, hodl hold on for dear life. So in other words, you buy crypto and hold it, not worried about selling it, but as you know, places where you can do it, El Salvador, now you can go out on the street and use bitcoin to buy regular goods at a store. And Argentina is moving toward that and there are several other countries that are embracing that. So what do you see for the future? I mean, really long term for bitcoin, like the end of this year? Really long term, end of this year.
[01:05:26] Speaker D: Well, I'd like to take it a step farther even, and not just peer to peer payments, but you know, you look at something like an Ethereum or other, you know, Solana maybe, that you can actually build decentralized applications on top of the network. So it's not just as simple as I'm going to pay you money, but it's, I'm going to use this technology to maybe autonomously handle car data from the actual car to the organization itself without really needing to have a central entity that it passes through. So that's the kind of, of the really the real future is how can we build these systems and technology without relying on a single person or company or whatever that almost build like an ecosystem. I think that's where the real value of it comes in.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: Absolutely basing it on blockchain, which again is mathematics, not depending on a human being doing something. It just, if this happens, it takes it for supply chains. It's perfect for voting. And some of the problems with voting blockchain is the answer.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: So I wanted to go to Gina.
[01:06:19] Speaker C: Gina, Terry and I were early adopters of bitcoin. In fact, I purchased my first in 2013. So long, long time ago. And I think of the roller coasters that I can see where we live in Orlando, there's roller coasters over at Universal Studio that I can see right outside my window right here. And it's up and down and up and down and up and down. And we, we just became comfortable with that. As Terry mentioned, we have a HODL hold on for dear life strategy and we know it's going to go well way up and it's going to come way down. And so, you know, and, and it has gotten more stable. And now that the US government is embracing it, now that the main investment houses have their ETFs and have embraced it, it's going to change and there's going to be bigger movements that are artificial possibly. But overall we believe in the long term viability of it by, you know, very much so. So Richard, if I could address the question that you asked with a slight different twist. You said if you had a basket of cryptocurrencies versus the stock market, you might have done well or might not as just as Matthew said. But if you had had bitcoin for those 10 years, you would have definitely done well.
[01:07:27] Speaker F: So I hear it's worth like $200,000 per coin or something.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: Or is it even about 103, 103,000 this morning? And of course it's volatile and going up now.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Well, this has been fascinating, Matt and Sean, how do people find you?
[01:07:41] Speaker D: You can go to our
[email protected] or Twitter bitformance team. Those are the kind of the two primary places to reach us.
[01:07:49] Speaker B: Don't go away because we have secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up. And if you missed any of this show, you really need to go back and listen to it. And it will be out tomorrow on our podcast Passage to Profit show. We will be right back.
[01:08:02] Speaker G: Man, I had a rough night's sleep, boy. I got a letter from the IRS yesterday and I just couldn't sleep.
[01:08:09] Speaker D: Man, I'm dying here.
[01:08:11] Speaker G: Somebody help me. IRS problems affect more than just your finances. If you're ready to take back control of your life and you owe more than $10,000, you need to call the tax doctor. Their expert staff can immediately protect you from the IRS and state collectors and get you the best possible tax settlement guaranteed. The IRS has recently released new programs geared in helping struggling taxpayers where you may qualify to settle your tax debt and wipe out up to 85% or more of what you currently owe. If you owe $10,000 or more in back taxes, call the tax doctor right now. See if you qualify to pay less.
[01:08:46] Speaker I: 8002-6219-2680-0262-1926.
800, 262, 1926. That's 800, 262, 1926. It's passage to Profit.
[01:09:03] Speaker B: Alicia Morrissey is our program coordinator here on Passage to Profit, and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passage to profitshow.com website and check out her album. Our special guest today, Terry Brock and Gina Car. And this has been a pretty tech heavy show, but down to earth so that I think that a normal person can.
[01:09:26] Speaker F: Mortals like us can understand.
[01:09:28] Speaker B: Muggles like us can understand. And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So, Terry Brock, would you like to share a secret for our listeners?
[01:09:38] Speaker A: I think one of the things you got to do is as an entrepreneur, make sure that you're sound and you're functioning well as a person. One of the things I find that helps me every day, that I strive for. I don't hit it every day, but three things. Things SEM Study, exercise, meditation. Every day, study something. Reading or listening to good learning. Go over to the University of YouTube finding something you can use and then e. Exercise. This is the body you've got, okay? On this trip through planet Earth, you got this one. Take care of it. Do the things that the medical professionals tell us to do and stay away from those things that are not so good. And then m. Meditation. Meditation, whatever is right for you. Quiet, prayer, reflecting time, meditating. We find those things help you to calm your spirit as an entrepreneur and So I would encourage to all my brothers and sisters that are entrepreneurs out there, first of all, cheers to you. And remember to study, exercise and meditate every day. Put something in there, even a little bit. I know you're busy sometimes, but just even a little, maybe just a few push ups or maybe just a few squats or something. Okay, we got it. You're busy. Do something. And then I think you'll find that you'll be able to do better in your business and do better all the way around by taking care of the heart of you and making sure that that is operating as it should.
[01:10:53] Speaker B: That is excellent advice. So, Gina Carr, what is your secret you can share?
[01:10:59] Speaker C: Well, I would say the most important thing is to protect your mind. The entrepreneurial journey can be very rough. We've talked about in the show a number of times the ups and downs and turnarounds and things that you don't expect. So you have to be very careful that you are surrounding yourself with people that support you. And it can be very lonely as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur or even as an entrepreneur with a big team because you can't necessarily talk to people on your team or people in your real life about what's going on. So seek community. That can be very helpful. Seek people who are are supportive, positive and reinforcing versus dragging you down. And if you have to live with those people or have to interact with those people that are dragging you down, you need the positive support even more. It's incredibly important.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: It's so true. So, Nick Foy, what is your secret?
[01:11:53] Speaker E: Very simple. Over commit and over deliver. It's one of those things where I learned that very early that, you know, forget this whole thing about managing expectations. Just over commit and over deliver every single time. Give them something, give them value. Every single time you have a conversation, right. Whether they paid for it or not doesn't matter. Over commit, over deliver every single time and you can't go wrong.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: I agree.
[01:12:16] Speaker D: So Matt, I'd say say innovative and have a forward thinking kind of mindset. If you do have that forward mindset or innovative mindset where you're an early adopter, you really need to find that place and community online that you can be with those like minded people and kind of share your ideas and thoughts. Thoughts.
[01:12:31] Speaker B: That's great advice. Sean Black. What is a secret you can share?
[01:12:35] Speaker H: Yeah, so I would just say cherish every relationship you have the opportunity to build.
You know, there, there are some times where you might say, do I really want to go to this conference or do I really want to meet with this person? Like, I'm not really feeling it. I don't really know what they can bring to the table. You would be surprised nine times out of 10, you know, walking out of those types of meetings, like, oh, wow, like, I'm really glad I, I met up with this person to talk to them. You know, I didn't think anything was going to come out out of it. Now we have this great relationship. Now we have a bunch of ideas moving forward. So I think really giving relationships an opportunity to f, you know, to, to really blossom is really important.
[01:13:11] Speaker B: That's great advice. Richard Gearhart what's your secret?
[01:13:15] Speaker F: Celebrate your wins. Whether they're small or they're not. I have a list of wins that I update on a regular basis. I mean, obviously learn from the other things that happened. But. But remember that finding things to be celebrated and happy and enthusiastic about, reminding yourself, oh, last month this happened, will give you a great lift. So celebrate your wins.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: Excellent. And mine is going to be, and I know people may have heard this before, remember your why. So I heard somebody once say, when you're starting your journey, write down why you're doing it so that anytime you feel like you want to give up, you can go back and remember your why. And I thought that was great advice.
[01:13:59] Speaker F: Perfect. 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, Marissa Kat Busari. 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
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
