Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay, everyone, thank you so much for attending. My name is David Pistolski. I am an intellectual property attorney and patent attorney and partner at a firm called Gerhardt Law. We are based in Summit, New Jersey. And all we do is service startups, emerging companies and entrepreneurs, which is why we came up with this kind of free virtual monthly education and empowerment series called the Entrepreneurial Strategy Series. We've been doing it for about four and a half years. And so thank you for everybody that's joined the the the topic today. And by the way, we hold these every month. It's usually the last Thursday of the month and it's usually at this time at 12pm Eastern. Sometimes we change it up a little bit, but it's appointment. We want it to be appointment TV for all of you.
We do record it and we will share the recording afterwards. So if anyone's asking, that is the answer.
We are looking also for ideas always. So if you have any ideas for topics you want to see, let me know. This particular session is near and dear to my heart.
I have been involved with the American Bar association, the section of Intellectual Property law, probably for about 20 years, which is as long as I've been a lawyer.
And they approached me probably because of all the work that I do with startups and entrepreneurs, and asked me to publish a book about how folks like it would. The the actual book is called Marketing your Invention Product or Journey, which is this, which is the topic of the session. But they approached me and asked me to kind of be the lead author and editor on it.
And I jumped at the opportunity because a lot of my clients, you know, usually have. Usually have found amazing ways to market in today's world. So I gathered a bunch of authors. We have a few of them, not all of them. We have a few of them here with us today. And we kind of wanted to give you a little preview of the book.
And so we have four speakers with us.
I'm going to. And so the speakers are also authors in this book, but I'm going to first ask them to introduce themselves. We'll talk about their chapters in a second. Each of them have their own chapter in the book, including myself. But right now I just want to. If you can briefly introduce yourself to everybody and let them know you're here. We will start with Elizabeth Gerhardt, which I know she's on my screen somewhere. Here she is. Hold on one second.
So I've known Elizabeth for a few years now.
We work together at Gerhart Law.
She I'm going to Just speak a little bit about her.
She is not just an inventor and a PhD, but she's also our marketing marketing guru at. She's our chief marketing officer at the firm. And so, yeah, so you'll hear more.
Elizabeth, take it away. Introduce yourself. Don't necessarily talk about your chapter yet, but maybe, just maybe, if you could, you can talk a little bit about you, about. About who you are.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Okay, sure. Yeah. So as David pointed out, I help with the marketing at Gearhart Law. I do have to say that David is the marketing expert when it comes to in person marketing and he gets so many client referrals. People love working with him.
So David has brought so many clients into the firm, it's amazing. So we let him go out and do the educational stuff and network and meet people and work with the aba. And my husband Richard and I do the digital part. So we work with the website and the social media and all the digital outreach at the firm.
And we're in our eighth year now of our podcast and radio show called the Passage to Profit Show. We record sometimes on Zoom, sometimes we record in Manhattan in the Iheart studios, which is really fun and pretty cool. They're a little bit glamorous.
And we invite entrepreneurs to come on the show and talk about their products and their entrepreneurial journeys. As I said, we've been doing that for a long time over Covid. We did it in our building upstairs in our studio. And after Covid, we decided to fix the studio up and help other podcasters get started by running them the studio. So we have high end equipment and everything there. And that's when I did a deep dive into all things podcasting.
And I have a meetup about it, which we'll talk about later.
So I help people start podcasts from Soup to Nuts. And I help with the marketing part of the podcast too, because marketing for a podcast starts from before your first episode. That's me.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you, Elizabeth. Yeah, well, so Elizabeth's whole chapter is about podcasting, but she'll introduce that in a second, waiting patiently. And also someone that I've known for a few years, once a lawyer turned inventor. Her name is Emily Kennison. She has been on this program before. She has been as part of our entrepreneurial strategy series before.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Great to see you.
Please go for it, Emily.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Thank you, David.
David, you're the best. Everybody should just use David as your attorney. Have worked with them forever. Phenomenal IP is very important to your marketing strategy with all that Said, I'm Emily Kennison. I am the founder of Emmy Kenny Inc. Where we build new innovations for women for their everyday products that make their lives so much better, and then we build the brands around them. We are most well known for Ro Curls, where we created the world's first heatless curling headband. We own a bunch of.
And we're sold at online and Target stores and a bunch of other retailers.
And yeah, I'm excited to be here and tell you more about our marketing journey.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you, Emily. Yeah. So Emily's chapter was we wanted the, we really wanted the inventor perspective. And that's. And, and so she wrote a whole chapter about how it is to be an inventor. You'll hear more about it later. But how it is to be an inventor and kind of use certain marketing techniques. So thank you, Emily. Thank you for being here. Chris Rawley, I've also known you for a lot of years, for sure.
Chris is actually also a client of the firm and he's also been on this show before talking about probably what he's going to be introducing himself about in a second. Go for it. Chris. Good to see you.
[00:06:49] Speaker D: Thanks, David. It's great to be here. And you have such a. Just a broad, international, diverse group of people. It's, it's fun to be on this presentation.
So I'm the founder and CEO of Harvest Returns. We started in 2016 as the, I'll say it, world's first equity crowdfunding platform for raising capital for agriculture businesses. So that's farms, ranches, agribusiness, anything that has to do with, with production of food and growing and the environment. And so we've been doing that as for a number of years. We've deployed about $40 million in that space and love to talk to anybody about crowdfunding. It's a, it's a fun subject. Thanks.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Awesome. And last but not least, one of my favorite people on earth who I don't get to see that often these days.
Andrew, I've, Yeah, I'll, I mean, I have a thousand things to say about you, but I think I'll let you say them first. But Andrew, really, really, really good to see. See you. Thanks for joining. Thanks for taking the time. Who are you? And let everybody know who you are and.
[00:07:57] Speaker E: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, David. I don't know if this thing up here is backwards or forwards because.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: No, no, it looks good. Big Idea Ventures. We see it.
[00:08:04] Speaker E: Okay. Okay. All right. Fabulous. So a bit of background. David and I have known each other for probably I Don't want to age you, David. You're obviously 35 years old and look very good on it.
David and I have known each other for probably 12 to 14 years, something like that.
I formally built and grew the Food Tech accelerator in New York. The world's first food tech accelerator in New York.
As part of sosv, we ran around the world and found lots of great companies and David advised many of them around their IP. During the four years that we invested in about 50 companies across the food space.
I eventually left SOSV, set up big Idea Ventures. So in terms of who I am, I'm the founder and managing general partner for Big Idea Ventures. We're the world's most active food tech investor globally. We've got teams in Europe, Asia, North America. We've made 160 investments across 32 countries.
Interesting data point. 62% of that. Those companies are female led.
No. No particular criteria of why. They're just, you know, the best people running the best companies that we wanted to invest in happen to be predominantly female, which was interesting.
We also own a platform called vevolution V E V O L U T I O N which is maybe how you found us.
Found today's event.
We acquired it from the. From a great, great team around eight weeks ago. And our goal is to help other. Other investors like ourselves. We don't kind of feel competitive with people. We're trying to actually make the whole ecosystem work better, help other investors find us, find great young startup companies and vice versa. So that's what evolution is all about. And yeah, yeah, Big Idea Ventures acquired that recently.
So that's a bit about me, apart from being married with a little white fluffy dog who will probably try and bark at some point during today's event.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you, Andrew. I remember being in Andrew's kitchen in his home in Princeton, where you were tossing around the idea for creating Big Idea Ventures. So that was really fun and a long time.
It seems like just yesterday, actually. It just seems like yesterday.
[00:10:32] Speaker E: Yeah. Neither of us have changed.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: No.
So thank you for your introductions. Let's get into the chapters.
I will tell you that I. There is a chapter in the book that I wrote about, but it is mostly it was.
It's. It's like the legal chapter.
It's all about the importance of, you know, securing your intellectual property, getting a patent, a trademark, a copyright, or potentially even a trade secret.
And so we'll talk about some of those topics with each of the actual authors. But first, I want to get into each of the author's chapters. We'll start with Elizabeth again. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about your chapter and impart some knowledge.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yes. Hi, everybody.
So I want to say, before I get too deep into it, is podcasting would not be where it is today without AI. So a lot of what we do in podcasting, a lot of the software we use, we use artificial intelligence for.
I have a presentation and I'm not going to show it here, but I'll give you the highlights of it. On how podcasting is good for a business. So I will say that a lot of people want to go into podcasting to promote their personal brand and become a Joe Rogan or somebody who's very well known. That still happens, but it's a lot more difficult.
I use. I see podcasts as a digital marketing tool. So they're part of your digital marketing toolbox. You have your website, you have your blog, you have your social media, you have your podcast.
Why is a podcast good for a business? It puts you in front of a new audience. So these are people you're probably not reaching with your other social media and website outreach efforts.
It puts you on a number of directories. So you upload your podcast one place and it goes out to 12 different directories.
And why is that important?
Because it helps your website with Google. So the way things are working now, things have changed in the digital marketing realm immensely in the last year. You not only have people using Google search, you have people using ChatGPT. Every time I talk to people, I ask them how many people are using ChatGPT. Almost everyone raises their hand. So you want to get people to come to your website, but you. You also want them to find out about you on ChatGPT.
And to do that, you have to put content out there on a regular basis.
Google is now favoring video content because they bought YouTube and they have YouTube podcasts. And when these.
When Google and the other search engines look for you and look at your website, they look at all your content online. They go to Instagram, they go to YouTube, they go to TikTok everything. And podcasts help with that because you're putting out fresh content every week or every two weeks or however often you do it. So it sees that you're constantly updating it, and it helps with your authority, which helps with your website ranking.
So that's the back end. That's why having a hosting a podcast is really good for you for your online presence. And really, you need to repurpose the content and take little video snippets and put those out there with a question that people are asking.
It's all about keywords and Google searches.
But what does it do for you on the front end if you host a podcast? Because I will say it is time and money. So Richard Gearhart and I have, my husband have been doing this podcast for seven years. We're in our eighth year. We have two assistants that are helping us with it now because it does take time and money. It's an interview style podcast, so we interview other experts in different fields. But I think the main thing a podcast does for a business owner is it positions you as a thought leader in your industry and it also gives you authority.
So you can use a podcast every week to showcase your brand, your genuine firsthand experience and expertise on a topic and, and you can do interviews. One thing that we have found so valuable is interviewing other people in the business space and just learning all the new things that are coming along. So it's a radio show and podcast for entrepreneurs and innovators.
And I'm telling you, I love doing it, but as I said, we have a lot of help.
So from the front end, it really promotes your brand and positions you as an expert. From the back end, it helps you all over the place with Google searches and searches with the other large language models like ChatGPT and Perplexity and Google Gemini and there's a few others too.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you. Actually, Elizabeth, I was just about to share the passage to profit show website so people can check it out. So I just chatted it to everyone.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Great.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: And so, yeah, that's what Elizabeth's chapter was mostly. But I think you also talk about the history of like podcasting and stuff like that, if I'm not mistaken.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Right. So the difference between podcast and radio, radio goes out on the airwaves. Podcast was the first thing that went through the Internet and it has what's called an RSS feed, which stands for really simple syndication.
And in the media world, syndication just means putting your content out on a bunch of different places.
So when somebody figured out, okay, we can get this audio, and it started out with more video and then it went just to audio. Now it's coming back to video. Video is more important.
Somebody figured out, okay, we can get this on the Internet and then we can send this feed to all the different podcasting platforms. So for instance, the most, the podcasting platforms that people are most consuming podcasts on are YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. People are going to the web Browsers, Pandora, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Overcast, Pocket, Cast, Castbox, and many others.
You can send it to all those places. So wherever people get their podcasts, they can find your podcast, but it also puts you online in a bunch of different places for the search engines to find you. And they love the search engines, love seeing you all over the Internet. And I'm sure the other people that are going to talk today are going to talk about that.
It really helps your brand.
So, yeah, it started probably about 2005 and did a slow build. Most people didn't know what they were to start with. Now everybody knows what a podcast is. And with my studio, and every time I tell people I have a podcast studio, they're like, I want to start a podcast.
Everybody has a story to tell, right?
And it's really democratized media, right? Because now anyone can start a podcast. And there are a lot of marketing tricks that you can use to get your podcast noticed by Google More and noticed by the listeners. And one thing you have to do with podcasts, so if anybody's thinking of starting one or has one, you have to put your keywords, which are things that describe what you do. So for Gearhart Law, the keywords are patents, trademarks, and copyrights. You have to put keywords in your title of your podcast because Google search is really well developed, and Google can offer up your content based on the algorithms it's had for many years. These podcast platforms are fairly new, so in order for them to offer up your content to the right people to as like next content to listen to, you need to have your keywords in there.
The other thing with a podcast is to really go into a niche. So in the book, I gave the example of a woman who was selling dog toys, right? And her podcast, this is hypothetical, she had dog. She would do videos with her dog toys, which you could do. She also could interview people that are dog experts. So she can. What she can do is use her podcast to promote her toys, but also to establish herself as an expert in the industry of dog products and dog health.
So she can do a podcast every week. She can talk to other people. She can just talk herself and she can put her dog videos in there, but she also has to make it good for audio. So maybe she wants her dog videos just at the end, and she can describe a little bit about what they're doing, and she can direct people then to her website to buy her dog toys, or she can direct them somewhere else. If she has Shopify on one of her social media sites, maybe she does that.
The other thing I would say for people that are starting podcasts or doing podcasts, you have to be on YouTube. So Google had Google Podcasts till 2020or21, and then they went to Google YouTube Podcasts. So YouTube is the second most searched engine there is after Google. So Google's kind of king of everything. Although all that is changing because people are searching with Chat GPT now with Perplexity with Google Gemini AI has changed the landscape quite a bit, but Google is still way up there. YouTube is, as far as I can tell, still number two.
So you have to put your podcast on YouTube. And for anyone looking for any advice about how to use YouTube, for podcasts or any content that you put on YouTube, as much of the transcript as you can get in there is great, if not just the high points.
YouTube looks at your description and it looks at your video, and they have to match to a certain degree. So you can't put stuff in your description that's not in your video.
They have to match. You can get about five or six minutes worth of content into the description on YouTube because it's very limited.
But what you can do is you can direct people somewhere else to find the rest of the transcript if they would rather read it than listen to your video. So you can have it on your website or somewhere else. And to get back to the dog example, if you don't know what you would do a podcast about, I use AI all the time. I use Perplexity. Although we're going to talk about this in September, ChatGPT is coming out with a new version, Chat GPT 5, which does everything except clean your house. It does everything else.
But you can ask Chachi pt or I use all, I use Chat GPT, I use Perplexity and I use Google Gemini, and I ask them all the same question and compare the answers.
Used to be they all gave pretty different answers. Now they're all kind of giving the same answer because they're all going to the same sources pretty much.
What do people want to know about podcasting? What questions in particular are people asking about podcasting? And you can drill down and down and down.
And then that question, the best one, is the one that you use to create your next podcast, if. If that's what like your topic. So in the dog example, what do people want to know about dogs and toys? Or what do people want to know about dog health?
And if this person was really wanted to drill down and really go into a niche which we suggest that you go deep into a niche.
She would do a dog breed, so she might do like golden retrievers. This is a podcast all about golden retrievers.
It's really important that people know exactly what your content is about and it's really important that the search engines know exactly what your content is about.
And there are like a million other things I could say about this.
One of the most important things if you're doing a podcast is to have good audio.
So I always use a mic. I have better mics than this in my studio. So if you come to record in my studio, we get really high quality recordings there.
So I don't know, David, is there anything else?
[00:22:39] Speaker A: No, I think that's great for now. Those are really good nuggets. I appreciate all that. I think everybody does too. I'm going, we're going to switch gears to Emily Kenison, self made entrepreneur inventor. You didn't talk about how you want a lawyer. How do you use marketing? What was your chapter about? Enlighten us, please.
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Sure.
So as David mentioned, I'm an inventor and the products that we bring to life, they are science backed, they're innovation driven, they are new inventions that hadn't existed before in the market.
And so, you know, when you think of, you know, a new invention that comes to market, even if it's the world's best, newest thing in that sector, if the customer doesn't know how to use it because they've never seen this before, that product is going to go nowhere and it's going to be a complete disaster for your brand, for you. And so I think when you look at the inventor space, customer success and customer education really becomes the cornerstone of your marketing pillar more than in any other product. Because yeah, lip glosses already exist, they know what that is. But when you introduce a heatless curling headband like we we did, no one knew how to use it.
And so when we started to build out our company, we looked at marketing through a different lens as well. We were looking at it through the customer journey.
So we had three categories. Attract, engage and then delight attract. How do you attract people to get build awareness for your brand? How do you engage with them once they are and then how do you delight them once they make that purchase? So you're looking at the customer journey post purchase, making sure they love the product, making sure they know how to use it, making sure that they feel that they are a part of your growing company. Because another thing is as an inventor, especially in the women's product Space, there isn't a lot of capital floating around your way and so you have to be very lean and scrappy when it comes to your marketing budget. We built basically with no marketing budget and really just focusing on customer success.
I will emphasize again, education is key and kind of echo a couple things already said we. One thing that we do on the delight side is we do one on one curl classes. They are virtual. They help our customers learn how to use the product. If they're having any issues at all, they can sign up. It's 15 minutes and we'll make sure that they love the product.
It's an incredible way to actually communicate with your customers, get to know them, get to know what they love about the product, what's missing, how you can improve, how you can build in the space and to connect with them and just build that connection that I think a lot of brands are lacking these days, that human connection.
But the other thing is we also record these and if they let us, we post them on YouTube and so it becomes an extra source of content that's very easily made, that is addressing questions that other customers have. And since YouTube is a long form content with a, you know, long lasting SEO Duration Compared to TikTok and Instagram, which is gone after 24 hours, these videos really do have staying power.
Even as the market expanded. We were the first, but then it grew exponentially overnight. And that's another thing I could talk about later or not, but you're able to still have that staying power with SEO when it comes to using YouTube as a primary format in our case.
And then you can always obviously cut down the videos and repurpose them across other platforms. But for us, yeah, we were always looking at YouTube as a very strong means for customer education, serving our customers better and then also being able to do our marketing strategy in an effective way.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty much a good synopsis. Anything else, David?
[00:26:30] Speaker A: No, Emily, I was just curious. So are you using like anything other than YouTube, like even though it's short form and it disappears, but are you using TikTok? Are you? I mean, I don't think TikTok disappears. Are you using Instagram and stuff like that?
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Yes, we do use the other platforms.
We do a lot of repurposing of our own customer content.
So instead of bringing on influencers, we found that by engaging so much with the customers and really getting their reviews, really engaging with them, that they end up being our marketing force. Word of mouth is the best type of marketing. You can ask for. And so when they then actually post things about it too, reposting what they post, creating some of our own posts. And then with the YouTube content, we'll splice it down because you have this long, you know, 15 minute video and you can splice it down into all these little snippets and then use it across all the other channels. So from YouTube, our content that we make there, we then filter it through LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram.
But those, I would emphasize, are not our primary tracking metrics for marketing. We're looking at the YouTube channel as our primary focus.
And the other ones are. Yeah, as a small business, you kind of have to focus at least I think, and I've heard other people say as well, that you should really focus on one. And for us, that has been YouTube.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And when you're asking your customers to be your brand ambassadors, how does that process work exactly? Like, are you just like, oh, you know, we're filming you and we're posting it? I'm clearly that's not what's happening. But like, what's the process of getting them to be on, you know, kind of on board with you?
[00:28:10] Speaker C: Sure.
So when the customers sign up for our curl classes, they get a questionnaire that helps me at least prepare for the curl class. So we know what we're going to be addressing. And part of that includes, would you mind if this is recorded? And then also do you mind if we would be using it for marketing purposes? And so they can opt in or out immediately initially through a survey and yeah, that's. That's pretty much it. And then we talk through it as well when I, when we meet with them.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: That's good. Yeah, consent is good. We like consent.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Consent is, yes, of course, consent.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: That's great. Emily, we will come back to you. Thank you for sharing those nuggets. Chris Raleigh. A little bit of a different situation here.
A different way of marketing. For sure. Most companies are, most companies who are raising money may are raising it in all sorts of different ways. Friends, family, angels, investors. We'll hear from Andrew in a second.
But you know, crowdfunding, you know, traditional reward based crowdfunding is a way of marketing equity based crowd financing, which is what Harvest Returns does. Talk to us a little bit about that and how that works and if that's a good.
And it was what your chapter was about also, maybe you can enlighten us about that new type of marketing technique in today's world.
[00:29:36] Speaker D: Yeah, David, thanks.
You kind of laid it out every first time.
Entrepreneur or an inventor, you've basically got two problems. You need customers and generally you need funding to either jumpstart your business or grow your business or produce that first product.
And crowdfunding is one of the ways you can partially solve both those, those problems. And you kind of alluded to it.
There's many, many different flavors of crowdfunding and it's really important that you understand the distinctions between those because there's, there's some legal, legalities and regulations about each of them. So you know, some people on social media, you'll see GoFundMe and you'll see donor based crowdfunding. That's, that's great if you're, you know, raising for money for a cause, you know, or to, to, to help out a charity. But it's not really appropriate and it could even verge into illegal. If you're trying to raise money for your business using one of those donor sites, then there's sort of a middle ground that's the rewards based crowdfunding. So some of the sites would be Kickstarter, Indiegogo, that would be a place where you could gain some broad based exposure for your, your product, but also raise capital to help, you know, build out those prototypes and commercialize it. And the, the main difference is you're not promising a financial return with those sites that rewards based crowdfunding, you're promising some sort of incentive. So might be a T shirt, stickers, swag from your company, discounts on products, actually selling the products via the website.
And then there's since 2016, at least in the United States and in Europe, the regulation has been there a little bit longer, equity crowdfunding. And so equity crowdfunding is where you are raising capital from investors.
And that involves some legalities. There's different flavors. You'll hear reg CF, you'll hear title 3, you'll hear reg A plus we do reg D. And there's all sorts of varieties and legal nuances to each of those. So the one thing that they're all in common is they all involve the law and they, you need to get security attorneys involved.
So that's, that's the basics of crowdfunding. The chapter we go into, you know, how to, how to choose a crowdfunding platform.
It really depends on what kind of business you have and how to maximize your campaign for success and also for marketing exposure. Some of the ways that these platforms actually do marketing to investors.
And there's some of the, some of the pitfalls and Other pros and cons of doing raising capital and marketing your product or your invention or your company with crowdfunding.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Chris, can you talk about your personal journey with Harvest Returns and how. Because you also needed to raise money to build this platform for others to raise money. How did, how did that go for you?
[00:32:45] Speaker D: Yeah, so we, we initially bootstrapped the platform. So, you know, we, we invested our own money, we built it out and we, we started building our own audience. So it was a big marketing task just to attract a very specific type of investor. So this is an investor that, that was interested in alternative investments. So not just, you know, putting your money in stock market in your 401k or IRA S P500 type of things. They had to be invest. They had to be interested specifically in agriculture as an asset class. And then we also, we had a dual marketing problem because we had, we had to retract the deal flow from our ag business. And that, that is almost on autopilot now. And it's. We're always attracting investors. So.
And then eventually we did go on at some point after we'd kind of gotten to the, you know, what people call the minimum viable. Minimum viable product stage and done had a somewhat early success. We raised our own capital via the platform. And there's other crowdfunding platforms that have done this. There, there's some crowdfunding platforms on the. The reg. CF side. Reg regulation crowdfunding side in the US that are. They constantly raise capital for themselves. I, I won't name which one, but they're. They're always out there doing it. But we had a round and it was successful. And so many of our investors and our farms are also investors in harvest returns.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Amazing. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing. We'll come back to you also.
Andrew.
[00:34:16] Speaker E: Yes, Hello.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: So you are a investor.
How do you. And so you. Your chapter was kind of all about how to market to an investor as well as, you know, kind of using an accelerator, which is what Big Idea Ventures is as a marketing platform as well. Maybe you can talk a little bit about your experience. And by the way, Andrew is also an inventor himself. Maybe you can start there because I'm sure you have some marketing tips from that journey as well.
[00:34:52] Speaker E: Yeah, so. So the chapter I wrote was, was, was quite practical and, and just to kind of take you through.
I told you the dog would go nut. I don't know if you can hear him, but anything.
Sorry, I did tell you.
All right, I'm gonna put him outside. Forgive Me.
All right, let's start again.
Yeah. So I basically started a company back in the day. I invented the world's first.
Sorry the world's smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder.
Very weird product to create. It happened during a shower one day, which is where most of my ideas come from.
And it was an idea that didn't go away. Most of them go away. This one didn't. I ended up realizing the only way to get rid of it was to build a business plan and get some investors and actually go try and do it. So credit a company went to China, set up a manufacturing facility, produced the product, sold it into large retail in the US and Europe and, and managed to raise probably about half a million dollars from angel investors and, and related. That company eventually exited. So we exited the company and gave lots of money back to the people that wrote those checks.
So I did, I did come at this as a, as a sort of a startup person, as an investor, as an inventor. But as I mentioned in the beginning, Big Idea Ventures is, is investing in many, many different companies.
And at this point I probably, across Food X and Big Idea ventures made around 200 plus investments in companies.
So what I ended up doing was writing a very practical chapter that a, was information that I wish I'd have known when I was, you know, trying to find investors for my first company with no idea what to do. So I kind of kept it very fundamental at first in terms of what we, what we wrote. My dog's going mad and you probably can't hear him, so you're fine. I'm not.
I also sort of went through the different kinds of investors that you should be thinking about at different stages of your company.
Also investor motivations, why, you know, why some investors are coming to the table and wanting to find companies like yours, why they're writing their checks, etc. You know, news flash or sort of getting to the key of the story. Not all investors are just focused on making money.
And there needs to be a strong chemistry between you guys and why you're doing your business and the investors who are writing the checks for a number of reasons. One, because you need to be motivated to be delivering on the same thing. If they're all about the money and you're about, I don't know, changing the world, you can't, you're going to have a horrible relationship. So you do really need to have that aligned chemistry with the investors.
Tough one, because obviously if you're raising money and you're desperate to get your company started Often you'll, you'll just look for the green, look for the cash.
And I really do recommend that you, you know, you read the chapter and, and I'm not getting any royalties, so I'm not trying to sell you something here. Read the chapter and sort of understand why you need to align what you're trying to accomplish as a founder and what the investors are all about. So a couple of key things that we cover in the chapter.
Why your personal why matters in fundraising. How to identify and approach the perfect investors for you. Maybe totally wrong investors for other people, but the ideal investors for you.
The key elements of a winning pitch deck. So investors are looking for certain things when they're evaluating a company.
We've moved away from private memorandums and large business plans and things like that as investor community have moved sort of towards the pitch deck.
And yet, despite the fact it's a pitch deck, we are looking for key things in that deck when making a decision, not a decision to invest, but a decision to have another meeting.
And that's an important consideration. It's not about thinking you're going to get a check straight away. It's about realizing that you're needing to go through different gates to get to that end, successful end conclusion. And you're just as in control of those gates as the investor itself.
So what, what investors really think about, what they're really focused on and care about.
And then we sort of get into the difference between regular investors. So angels and VCs and private equity and all those guys and accelerators and what accelerators are, are out to do, how they can support you, things to look out for, things to be concerned about. With some accelerators, they're not all equal in terms of what they can and cannot deliver to you. So in terms of who's it for? It's for inventors, early stage founders, you know, scientists, engineers with breakthrough ideas who are ready to sort of fund, build and scale their startup. That's a, that's probably a good summary of the, the chapter, David.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you, Andrew. I'm going to stick on you if you can. This question will go out to all of you.
You know, there is not, there's not an ess where I don't mention intellectual property. I mean, I have to, you know, I, you know, wake up to it and go to sleep to it and dream about it.
So you know, from your perspective, and I know every. No, no two invest, no investors created equal. I get it. Right, but from your perspective, what is the importance of intellectual Property. And you could be patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copy, I don't care. Like, it's just in general, how important is it to you? No right or wrong answer here, everybody. Right, Andrew, what do you think?
[00:41:00] Speaker E: Well, so I'm, I'm going to totally ignore the question. I'm not going to do it in general. I'm going to give you a, a little story.
So the, the company I started, the world's smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder after about three years of becoming super successful. We had got, by the way, trademarks, service marks, patents around the design, et cetera. We had done, you know, all of the things we needed to do from an intellectual property perspective. Thankfully, a company came along, number one in the industry and said, we want to buy you, we're going to write you a big, big check for your company. And I was like, holy smokes, this is, this is a wonderful day. This is exactly what I was hoping for.
We went through, we signed NDAs, we went through the due diligence process, at the end of the due diligence process, about to sign the contract to acquire the company.
They basically said, we've determined from our due diligence that you cannot defend yourself. So we've decided to actually replicate your product and do it ourselves. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Yeah, not a good, not a, not a good day.
We went back to our investors, told them what was happening, they wrote a huge check for us and said, go take these bee bags to the cleaners, you know, go, go fight these buggers.
We ended up in a two year legal battle. And the fact that we had patents, trademarks, service marks, and we were in business in the market, that was a really key distinction. You can't just have all these intellectual properties and not be a functioning business. You actually need, you know, revenues and a real product and customers and consumers and all the, all the rest of it. Because we had all those things, we ended up winning the largest award in Virginia State history. They ended up owing US $120 million for ripping us off.
If we'd have had none of those things, none of those patents, trademarks, etc. Etc.
We probably wouldn't have won. I don't know if we would have won and we certainly wouldn't have won to that degree. Now, saying that having all of those things, and this is the caveat the lawyers don't like to kind of mention too often, if you don't have the two years and the four or five million dollars, you need to fight the battle very, very hard to win win. Even if you have service marks, trademarks, patents, et cetera, you not only need those pieces of intellectual property and it's critical that you do have them, but you also need the ability to fight and you know, otherwise they just roll over you.
Well, is that okay? David?
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Perfect. IP justice prevail. That is awesome. At the way. And for all of those people like freak or I have no money to do this. There are some, there are, there are ways to go around that in today's world. There's litigation funders, there's all sorts of, you know, different ways to cut that, to cut that cake. But yes, Andrew, perfect. Yes, please go.
[00:44:13] Speaker E: One last, one last thing. When that happened, we actually had some law firms who were like, we will do it for you for free, but we're going to take a huge, you know, a 30 or 40 whatever. And you know, if I'd have had no investors behind me, I, I would have probably taken that deal and, and I would have split the, you know, the, the success fee with the, with the lawyer. So there are ways to do it. But you know, step one, have the right intellectual property. Step two, be in the market with real revenues, real customers, be a real business. Step three, if somebody does that to you, then you'll need to figure out whether it's a success fee for the lawyer or money from the investors or whatever as a way of defending yourself.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate that. Chris, what are your thoughts?
I know you have a trade. Again, not everything's patentable and not everything needs a patent. If it does, you should. But from your perspective, what's your view on intellectual property? Intellectual property or, and, and maybe the platform's view of companies that you are, you know, now helping raise money, you know, from, from their perspective as well, if you can talk about that.
[00:45:28] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:45:28] Speaker D: From our perspective, we're as much of a marketing company as we are a finance company. So our brand is very important to us and protecting it is, is very important. So, you know, early on we, we work to register our trademark and that, that's been interesting and helpful. I, you know, I will say it is interesting in the modern world today with, with globalism and the Internet, people will, will still try to knock you off and it's very hard to go after like fished sites or I guess forget the, the technical term for it, but people have put up our, a website that looks very much like ours and we've tried to take it down and there's not much we can do. Unless we somehow cross international boundaries and spend a lot of money. But as far as the companies go that we, we diligence and we put in front of investors, many of them are technology companies. They have patents.
We want to see proof of that. Investors need to know that that as, as in Andrew's story, maybe, well, maybe the way Andrew's story should have, should have occurred where, you know, he had his patents protected and you know, he proved that proof and then the, the, the acquirer ripped him off. In our case, you know, as investors, we just want to make sure that those, those companies are doing what they can to protect their intellectual property, whether it's, whether it's patents or other methods. So it's very important.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you.
The reason why I'm bringing this up this, this topic of, of intellectual property is what my chapter is about. It needs to be part of your journey, right? If you are patent pending, you should be marketing the, out of that. If you have a trademark, you should be mark, you should be marketing that. More and more websites are, you know, respecting the intellectual, especially e commerce sites where most of you might be doing business are respecting the rights of intellectual property holders, right? If you have a patent, Amazon will enforce it for you. You have a trademark, the Amazon brand registry industry will enforce it to you. Walmart just got into that.
Etsy got into that. So everybody's like, you know, finally, you know, e commerce is, you know, showing love to intellectual property and Emily probably knows a few things about that for sure. Maybe you can talk about your experience with intellectual property and sometimes even like, I think, I think, I think you probably, you know, were agreeing with Chris and Andrew that even if you have it, you know, sometimes that's not the end all be all at the end of the day because people find all sorts of ways to kind of get around it. But maybe you can talk about that a little.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: Definitely with what Chris said about, you know, just copying everything from your website so it looks like complete, you know, copy paste dupe happens.
So I guess for some background with rogue curls, we launched the brand in 2021. By 2022, we were in Google's top 100 holiday list, being one of the most searched for products of the year and one that defined our year. So it was, you know, one of these lightning in a bottle situations when it came to the brand.
My background as a lawyer, I made sure, you know, we had the patents and the trademarks and the copyrights and everything filed away, which was helpful because if you end up having you Know, a glimpse of this type of upward trajectory, fast success as we just heard. You're going to get a lot of copycats, counterfeits, knockoffs, and it goes from zero to a hundred very quick.
At one point we were having like 3,000 new listings and websites popping up a week with counterfeits of our product.
So how do you figure out how to stop that type of insanity? And it doesn't just happen here in the us, it happens internationally and it's, it's a newer problem too post pandemic. The scale that these are happening and the rules are kind of catching up as David alluded to. Like these platforms, they are trying to crack down but they're not 100% there yet. So there is definitely a, you know, whack a mole with Amazon, a product that we took down in 2021 is still on. You know, we got them down, they're back up now four years later. So it's, it's, you know, it's a, it's a never ending quote unquote battle.
But I think, you know, there are some tools that are coming to market, ones that crawl the web to figure out where all these listings are coming from. Because how are you going to know those 3,000? All you know is that when you search it's everything else that's popping up.
And so that helps you identify where these websites are. And then there are companies that will manually, I recommend manual submissions because any automated submission did not seem to really work. So someone that's manually going into Alibaba, into Amazon, into Etsy, into ebay to get these products taken down is way more effective. And there are companies you can hire to do that and then, but they're not completely effective. And I say that with a very big asterisk. They're not completely effective.
And what we found at this type of scale there are schedule A lawsuits in which you can sue. I believe it's up to 400 defendants in a single lawsuit and in a time they're all international sellers that are shipping into the U.S. that's the requirement for who can be named as a defendant in these lawsuits.
And there's only a couple jurisdictions that allow it. So yeah, it's not like everywhere, but you got to find the right firm to do this and the schedule A lawsuits, what happens is you're able to collect settlements from these, these defendants. It's not obviously going to be like what you're owed, but you're getting at least some money back. But the more important thing is that when these lawsuits are filed, there are forums where like the Chinese sellers are talking to each other and warning other sellers. By the way, we just got this lawsuit from this product. If you're selling this product, I would recommend just stop selling it because you might be in the next lawsuit. And so it has this like ripple effect where even though they're not a named defendant, you'll get a cleaning up of the market just because they're spreading the word through these Chinese online forums, which is helpful. Obviously it doesn't take care of like any of the US Sellers that are directly, but it definitely, it saved our brand.
And right now we just have, you know, these kind of going on in the background. We fill up 400, we file it, we get a chunk of cash, fill up another 400 file, I get a chunk of cash. And they take about 18 months to resolve. But as soon as you file it, which you can do pretty quickly, the ripple effect happens.
So, yeah, it was definitely a learning journey. And I talked to many people and brands and it's been hard to figure out kind of the strategy around this. But there is a way to kind of help quell it. I wouldn't say stop it.
And then on the flip side, you have a lot of damage control that you have to do as a brand because when you're new to market and everybody sees your product and sees your website and it's a dupe and they're getting these terrible knockoffs, they're just crap.
They're going to associate that with you, your brand. They might not even know your brand's name. They just know the product and the pictures.
And so there was a lot of market, you know, customer issues that were coming up from that. And so I think it goes back to what I was talking about before, where it's like if you focus in on your core customers and you do that, really over the top delight with them, they became our advocate. We didn't have to jump into these forums. They were the ones replying saying, that's a knockoff, this is the original. And they become your little warriors for your brand too, because they've been with you through the journey and they're excited to do that. So even if you're a small team, you kind of have, you know, more people on your side, which is really heartwarming and helpful.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Love that. Yeah, thank you. Those are, those are, those are kind of really great kind of tips and strategies. I think what I've learned over the years is that you have a bigger problem if you don't have intellectual property. You have a more expensive problem if you don't have intellectual property, no matter what. You know, you're right. Like, these problems are there and they're hopefully getting better, but without it, there's really nothing you can do. So, you know, you need, you. You just need to bring, like, something to the fight, you know, and so it's good to have that.
Elizabeth, you are also an inventor, which you did not talk about, actually. And so what is the.
And yes, you are married to my partner at the firm, Richard Gerhardt. We are an IP firm. But what are your personal kind of feelings, tips and strategies around intellectual property, especially as it pertains to podcasting, if you will, you know.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Well, I would like to go into the content realm a little bit because everybody here is producing content.
Right? We're producing content right now.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: Right now.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: And David, as the copyright attorney, you can help me with this. But this content, my understanding is it's copyrighted as it's being produced. But if you want to take it, if you want to sue somebody, you probably need to register your copyright. Is that correct?
Okay, so I do want to say something here. So I did start out saying that AI is huge in podcasting and for all content creators. I do want to say. There was an article in the Business Insider on July 21, and the reason I found this is that my husband Richard and I talk about intellectual property in the news every week when we do our radio show.
And this was an interview with Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, you know, Shark Tank Hannah.
So what Mark, who's laughing?
What Mark Cuban says is the AI arms race will be won by companies that hoard top talent and lack of lock up valuable intellectual property. And that IP is king.
So based on that, what he's talking about, I. There's a lot. I can't go too deep into the AI because it'll get too technical too quickly. There are a lot of companies doing their own chatgpts just for their company, and they're owning all their content, intellectual property.
Also, AI companies are paying content creators now, and they're also paying them for content that is not public.
So in the media world, the big fight right now is over copyrighted content. And who's going to get paid for their content. Can AI just take it and use it? And it's going through the court system.
As a creator, you should fight to get paid for any content that you create, unless you want to give it away for free.
The other thing is there are companies that will help you get paid by AI for using your content.
And that's pretty much the copyright battle. There's a lot of legislation going on. Now.
The other piece of intellectual property that's very important for podcasters is trademarks.
So can. I mean, if you tried to go use Joe Rogan's name in your podcast, he'd shut you down real quick because I'm sure he's trademarked. And there have also been instances where people have tried to do something like the I love Oprah Winfrey podcast or I love Taylor Swift podcast, and their marketing and legal department. Shut those people down real quick and say, you cannot use our name for anything because they protect their brands fiercely.
So when you're creating content, you are copyrighted. Know your copyrights. Ask David, because I don't really know a lot about copyright. I just know how people are trying to use it now and protect your content. And if somebody wants to use it, if you find they're using it, then you should go ask them for some money.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree, as marketing is all about content creation, which is. Which is why in the book, we kind of delve into some of those kind of legal strategies in protecting your content. Olivia, I'll stick on you. By the way, if anyone has any questions, just raise your hand and we'll call on you. But we are getting to time. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what kind of mistakes you've seen people do or maybe lessons learned that you can kind of impart. This question will go for all of you, Andrew, Chris, and Emily, but I think that's. And then. And then we'll get to the actual questions that are coming in. But maybe you can talk about some lessons learned or mistakes made by that. That. That you've seen people do in podcasting.
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Right? Well, I do want to bring up something that was mentioned earlier. I think it was Chris, and this is really what people are gravitating towards now is know your why.
Why do you want to do your podcast? Because that drives everything else that you do.
So if you don't know your why, and if you're just doing something for money but not because you're passionate about it in some way, you're going to get tired and quit. It's just not going to work out. So one thing is people are quitting podcasting too early because it is work. So you have to really be motivated and really want to do it and have a reason why you're doing it.
That's one thing.
The main mistake that I See, podcasters making, quite honestly, and it fits right in with what you're doing, David, is they don't know anything about marketing and they may or may not know the industry they're podcasting about.
I would say in my mind, podcasting is 80% marketing because there are a lot of people doing podcasts and there are a lot of tips and tricks to marketing a podcast that some of them are traditional marketing like you guys have all been talking about. Some of them are specific to podcasts. But I think the biggest mistake is somebody starts a podcast and their, their first question is, well, how do I get people to listen to it? And it's like, well, you have to do the marketing. That, that's the whole thing.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Got it. Thank you. Emily, same question to you. What have you seen or mistakes you've made or lessons you've learned that you can impart?
[00:59:57] Speaker C: This is so with Ro Curls, it's the second brand I've brought to market around an invention. The first one, straplets, I did in a very different way. I took the time to really perfect the product. I took the time to make sure all the IP was granted. I took the time to build the website and really do a big launch.
And there's no wrong or right way to do things with rope curls. I went from idea to market in four months, launched a beta, told no one, tested and perfected in market, and then scaled with the company.
But I think my, my one thing that I've learned is like, take all advice with a grain of salt. Salt. Because the times change so quickly and there really is no wrong way to build a business. And so you can do it any which way. And I know we're here giving advice, but always add it through a lens of what is going to work for you and just know that it's just one option. You can do it a hundred different ways and you'll still end up somewhere.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: Love that. Awesome. Thank you for that. Chris, same question.
Mistakes you've made or you've seen other people made?
[01:00:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I've probably made more mistakes that I can remember, but the marketing costs money. So that's, that's a very obvious thing, but it's overlooked. When people are trying to build a brand, whether you go out and hire a marketing agency or you try to do it yourself, you're going to make mistakes. And we've done both and we've made mistakes and we see a lot of, in the agriculture space, a lot of people, they want to go to direct consumer, cut out the middleman. Which is a great concept in theory, but in order to get the kind of audience you need, you have to spend a lot and a lot of money to build your brand. So one, you need to consider that the second that that doesn't have to be impossible, you can go out and you can find free marketing. There's an old book called guerrilla marketing, and it's just how to get out there and get your, get your business out there in front of, in front of your customers without spending a lot of money and, and doing it very efficiently. And, and you know, I loved Elizabeth's talk on podcasts. I personally love podcasts. We don't have a podcast, but, but I find a very high ROI from going on podcasts because my, my customers are on podcasts, very niche podcasts, and in my case it's agriculture and investing. I was on podcast yesterday and got five leads right off the bat from that podcast. So it's, and then they keep going because if it's on YouTube, that that's out there presumably forever.
So if the content's good and you're going on people's podcasts that, that are well done, you're going to see results from that.
[01:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree totally. I, I, by the way, this is a podcast too. But yes, I do love to go on, on podcasts as well.
Munaza will come to you in a second. And we have two questions, but I want to give Andrew the opportunity, opportunity to enter. I assume you, you, you, you, you hear and see and have experienced a lot of people making mistakes. Any, any advice there that you can give?
[01:03:06] Speaker E: Given my focus here at the chapter around fundraising and engaging with investors, I think the key one is some people take this numbers game idea to the, to the nth degree, which wastes a lot of time for them and a lot of time for other people. What I mean by that is they think, I'm just going to get this list, an enormous list of every one in the world who's an investor. And I'm just going to spam the heck out of them with a very generic, very standard email. And, you know, something will stick against the wall.
Usually not.
You're actually much better off to go do a little bit of online research. And as we've mentioned, that there's a lot of ways to do that now very, very efficiently. So go find investors who actually invest in the sector you're in. That's a very kind of obvious start point.
Find investors who have invested in companies ideally similar to yours. You'll probably find In VCS and related, there are people who in, in their bios outline the boards and that they sit on the companies that they've invested in, etc. Find people, VCS or other investors who show within their bio that they've made investments in your sector in companies similar to yours perhaps at a later stage etc and then instead of just spamming them with a very generic email, ideally find somebody that is connected to them in some way so that you can get a semi warm referral or introduction. LinkedIn's really quite good at this. You can actually generally find people, one, you know, one person removed that may not be necessarily directly in your network and you can ask a friend or somebody within your network to refer you.
So yeah, basic, basic idea is be targeted into in terms of who you're reaching out to.
Not just thinking it's a numbers game and if you send a thousand emails, generic emails, you're going to get to somebody that will write you a check. It really doesn't work that way by the way. A lot of small investors, I. E. Seed and angel investors are local. They like to invest locally where they can actually, you know, see people, shake hands, meet people.
So if you're looking for the smaller checks just to get started, you may find somebody within, you know, within a 50 mile radius of yourself through a social event, through a church gathering, through a, a local business entre meeting, from the chat, local you know, business chapters and, and so on and so forth.
A lot of these angel investors prefer to invest locally. So if you're looking for small checks, often it's through friends of friends, you know, social events that are within your community versus Reaching out to somebody in the venture capital community who only write million dollar checks or more for example.
[01:06:17] Speaker A: Love that, excellent advice, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate that. I'm going to go to the questions.
Shivani, I know you had a question. I guess you're, you can ask, you could ask it live if that's okay.
[01:06:34] Speaker F: Yeah. So I have a question that we are like about to start a podcast and we like right now we have like audio format of it. So I was just wondering that if we can like would it be a good choice to market it on YouTube and are there any ways like if we just put our banner and like publish it on YouTube, would that still be a marketable thing or would you suggest that to not go on YouTube and go for these platform like Spotify and Apple?
[01:07:02] Speaker B: I would say go on YouTube and I don't know how comfortable you are using new software but there's a software called Cap Cut, which I use and I like, not a software person, but I. This. These AI softwares are so much easier to use now than they were five years ago. A year ago.
Cap Cut, you can lay down your audio track and you can put any images or short videos or anything you want on top of that.
So you can just, yes, put your podcast cover and have it go the whole time if you have a great podcast cover.
Or you could put other pictures in along the way for YouTube to make it more interesting for YouTube. But you really have to go on YouTube for marketing purposes. It's very important. And when you go on YouTube, this is something I kind of left out because there's a lot of time to talk. YouTube has an incredible analytics associated with it. So you can go. Once you're on YouTube, you can go into YouTube analytics and when you have enough data there, it will tell you all sorts of things about your listeners. It'll suggest episodes, etc. So that is another. And it's all free.
So that's another reason to use YouTube.
[01:08:13] Speaker F: Okay, thank you so much.
[01:08:14] Speaker A: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Manaza.
I think I said it wrong again. I'm sorry. You're good.
[01:08:22] Speaker F: That, that's fine.
[01:08:23] Speaker B: Great.
[01:08:23] Speaker F: All good. Yeah. I do have a question for Elizabet of all. Thank you so much for mentioning some very valid points, which is know your why the use of AI and so on. The question is as follows. So for someone looking to market their YouTube channel, is there a mathematical formula to go about that in the sense that what are the fundamental variables one has to adhere to at that stage?
[01:08:45] Speaker E: Thank you.
[01:08:46] Speaker B: So I don't know. There might be. So there is a really good software that's expensive that I don't use called Refonic, that gives you just a treasure trove of information analytics. You can go into YouTube analytics and you can ask also social media to analyze what you're doing or not social media, I'm sorry, AI. You can ask chat. Do you use Chat GPT?
[01:09:14] Speaker F: Yes, occasionally.
[01:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Do use Gemini? Google Gemini?
[01:09:19] Speaker F: Not that much. Is there one better than the other?
[01:09:23] Speaker B: Google Gemini's gotten a lot better. It was really crummy. Like I tried using. Because I use all of them. So I tried using them all a few months ago and it wasn't. But everybody is saying that Gemini is really improving. And the reason I like to use Google Gemini is because It's Google and YouTube is Google. And so it's probably going to give you the best answer. Hopefully you can pick its Brain, that's what I would ask it to analyze what I'm doing and give me suggestions to make it do exactly what you want it to do. But as far as know, and maybe I don't know any programmers here, if someone could come up with a mathematical formula, that would be awesome. Also something that could really calculate roi because it's so hard to get ROI on all this content that we're doing.
[01:10:07] Speaker F: That is correct. And maybe one final question, since we're on the point when one is looking to do content creation, let's say is it a good idea to focus on a particular platform or should we diversify right from the get go?
[01:10:20] Speaker B: Well, it depends on what you're doing. If you're very visual, then I would just do YouTube. But it's pretty easy. So what I would, what I do first is I do video. Everything we do is video. And you get a video track and you get an audio track and I, we take, we put the video on YouTube separately because what we try to do is optimize our videos for YouTube. But then we can take the audio track and, and we can put it on the other side.
And it's really. Once you get it, it takes a little bit to get it set up and you might need some help with that or you might be. If you're a software person, it's pretty easy to figure out if you like using new software. Once you get it set up, then it's just really easy to just upload each episode to that and you do episode art, which you can also do in canva. I don't, I mean, I'm so deep in this. I don't know how other people are. If you love software and you like playing around Canva is amazing.
So I do main episode art for the podcast and then each episode I do another, a new little piece of art and I and you in Canva, you can resize that so you can do it for YouTube and for the other one. So YouTube is like a rectangle and the other ones are a square.
But yeah, I start with YouTube and then go to the other ones.
[01:11:33] Speaker F: Sounds great. Thank you so much.
[01:11:35] Speaker A: Yes, thank you so much. Final question, Franklin, did you want to speak it?
You're not on video so I can't spotlight you. But are you there?
[01:11:46] Speaker G: Yeah.
[01:11:46] Speaker B: Hello?
[01:11:47] Speaker G: Yeah, I'm here.
Yeah, I have questions. It can be divided like into three questions. It's about CEO and domain names.
My question is like having a domain name, very descriptive domain name with ending with com versus the more like localized like same name, the domain name but ending like FR or another country. I don't know like us for example.
What can be the. The.
The bad sides of if competitors they own the local kind of domain name versus me owning the the dot com. And also this is connected to the company name and brand that it's different from the domain name if this is like viewed very negative as a redirecting when for example billing the invoices and so on. But it's from the. The company name is different from the platform name.
And yeah my third name, my third question is actually how much it makes sense to make this effort if organic traffic is that or it's still valid to fight for organic traffic.
[01:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Anybody want to take that question? So the question relates to whether your domain name should match your company name. Is it even worth it to try to do that? Because there's all these other extensions, you know, like you know country extensions and stuff like that.
And, and you know, is it even worth it given SEO? Anybody have any experience with that?
I think it was probably was a little bit off topic Franklin, but maybe if you contact me directly I can talk to you a little bit about the domain name system and how that kind of relates to trademarks and stuff like that. But probably a little bit off topic for here. So I'll, I'll.
[01:13:51] Speaker B: I'll.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: I will chat you separately and then send me an email and I'm happy to schedule some time. Okay.
Okay.
That is all.
We are way over time. I want to thank everyone who has.
Who has joined.
Thank you for. Thank you to Andrew, Elizabeth, Emily and Chris. Thank you for parting your knowledge. Check out the book Marketing your invention product or journey. It's available on Amazon at the ABA and all sorts of different place. It's a great read.
If you the. The for the speakers if anybody if you want to get in touch with them. I think all of them shared their information in the chat but if they didn't, please do.
We will be back again in August, the last week of August as we the last Thursday of the month.
We will have information about what that topic is shortly. Thank you for joining. Thank you to our speakers. Have an awesome summer summer. Thank you for your knowledge and looking forward to seeing you all again. Take care everyone. Bye.
