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Today, my guest is Stephen Somers. Stephen is the founder of Marketplace Superheroes, an online education company that's helped over 10,000 people build side incomes through Amazon and more recently whatnot. He built a or excuse me a multi seven figure Amazon business from scratch after leaving a nine to five job.    https://home.marketplacesuperheroes.com/ https://www.instagram.com/stephenjsomers/

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Stephen Somers, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Stephen Somers Yeah, I would say for me at the moment the biggest risk is me actually. So in my business in Marketplace Superheroes, I typically fulfill certain key person functions right now. That that that that is kind of insurance related, right? But so like I do a lot of webinars and and things like that are live, that like all the time, and so whenever I'm doing these live webinars, I'm on there. It's me talking. At the end of the day, if I got run over by a bus or if I was not able to speak anymore, that would be a major risk because the company then would would in its current structure struggle, and so I began mitigating that risk over the last while. My sister runs the company with me. She's a CEO. She's been working with me for over a decade, so I've been training her up to be able to do the webinars. So she actually comes on with me now. She does. I do the majority, but she does a bit of it now. But quite soon, she'd be able to do. She will be able to do all of it just like I can, and then over time we'll we'll train other people into that area as well. So that was a big risk that I spotted. I also would say tied that is the fact that our company at the moment is very personality driven, right? So people know me, they know Lisa, and at the end of the day, if we're now involved, that that's a challenge, and so we've been pivoting that since 2022, and that we've been, like I said, bringing in educators to educate our programs. They're delivering those, but over time, then we will then need to further mitigate that by essentially replacing ourselves on the webinars as well with those people. So that's a something that I'm working on, but also it is a challenge because let's face it. Sometimes it's a bit of ego. I'm great at this. I can do this, and you you sometimes don't want to let go of some of those things. But that's going to be the pathway to a more a better protected business, really, where it's not all about me or even about Lisa anymore. https://home.marketplacesuperheroes.com/ https://www.instagram.com/stephenjsomers/

Today, my guest is DJ Van Keuren. DJ is the co-managing member of Evergreen Property Partners, a real estate investment firm focused on family office capital and alternative real estate strategies. He's also the executive director of the Family Office Real Estate Institute.   www.evergreenpropertypartners.com [email protected] [email protected]

J Darrin Gross And so, if you're willing, I'd like to ask you, DJ Van Keuren, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   DJ Van Keuren Lack of education, honestly, because I I think that, and if you think about it, you know somebody spent their whole life in tires or chemicals, and when they get out, they have all this money, and they don't understand hedge funds and private equity and venture capital and real estate. They don't understand insurances that can help with what they're doing, estate planning, foundations, right? Probably due diligence and everything else.   And as I said before, the people that's typically hired is based upon trust, and so they don't know these things either. And people spend their whole life in just one area, whether it's insurance or venture capital, you know, middle market, healthcare. So I think it's a matter of of back to knowing what you don't know and and trying to understand, I think the biggest risk is is sort of going through blindly, and and that means either educating yourself properly or surrounding yourself with people that really understand like yourself. www.evergreenpropertypartners.com [email protected] [email protected]

Today, my guest is Kevin Krone. Kevin is the founder of Real Estate AI Studio in California. He spent years in commercial real estate operations and development, including asset management, on a 1.5 billion multifamily portfolio at related companies. And now he builds the AI systems for commercial real estate firms, brokerages, owners, and operators, and in just a minute we're going to talk with Kevin Krone about AI for commercial real estate professionals.   https://www.realestateaistudio.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-krone/

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Kevin Krone, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Kevin Krone Right, definitely, and there's there's definitely a few ways to to peel that banana. Just because, again, you know, sometimes it's there's the obvious, which we just talked about, which is which is the cyber component, which is hey, you know, we just don't want to delete our entire database. I think that's one of the more obvious risks: is the data security. I think the other risk that a lot of people face, which they don't realize, is the token, like the investment required, the like the forward-looking investment and being able to nail down a number, meaning that a lot of companies that have adopted have accidentally set no limits and have run you know $100,000 AI bills in their small business because it's not properly set up right, and you know the AI as powerful as it is to connect to your tools, you know, with an improper setup, again, could draw immensely on credits and costs. So I would say, kind of like an accidental misfire, I guess, to sum up, would be the biggest risk, which is I've deleted all of my data. I've accidentally emailed 50 of my clients the wrong email to send out because it's automated and there's ways to to caveat against this or to to protect yourself against kind of these axle misfires. But there's been you've seen the cases in court with lawyers citing or maybe haven't, but there's been lawyers where in court they've cited cases that don't exist, and so that human in the loop comment content concept, sorry, is so critically important. And a lot of people say, "Oh, AI is going to take my job. Yeah, I hear that. You know, there used to also used to be people that went around filling lamps with oil, but we seem to have made it past that innovation, and so the biggest risk is really you need a human in the loop. I don't know if this is a right now thing or a forever thing. I think it could be a forever thing, depending on how laws assign entities to AI agents of like, if a corporation can be a person, can an agent you know be a person and what have you? And so having that person in the loop again is now now we're not going to accidentally submit a prompt that will delete all of our data. Now we won't send out 50 incorrect emails. We won't pay the wrong person. We won't cite. Correct court cases. That human in the loop concept is the most important component of of using AI right now, because especially for real estate, it's such a relationship business that you know a lot of people don't want to see that anyway. And in terms of that, I mean, they don't want it to be just AI tech talking to AI. It's a very kind of personal business, and so as it relates to the biggest risk, as as good as AI is, you know, it's still up to us to to do our jobs.   https://www.realestateaistudio.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-krone/

Today, my guest is Giuseppe Grammatico. Giuseppe is a franchise veteran, coach, author, speaker, and consultant. Giuseppe is the founder of GG the Franchise Guide, where he advises corporate professionals, executives in transition, and military veterans on how to evaluate and enter franchise owners ownership.    https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuseppe-grammatico ggthefranchiseguide.com

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Giuseppe Grammatico, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Giuseppe Grammatico Two-parter. I think number one, by not not taking a chance on yourself and looking at a business, the risk is missed opportunity, the what ifs and the regrets. That that that's just the short. I say two part. That's the short one is not not giving it a shot and then regretting that and your last days on earth. And I think that's a huge risk, different type of risk, but betting on yourself and not just going with the safe what you feel at that time is the safest bet. Now you move forward with the business. What what's the biggest risk? Well, it's your it's your investment. It's your time. This thing doesn't work. It's the it's the money you put it you put up front. And what I tell everyone is that yes, there's absolutely a risk in any business, franchise or not. You can minimize it by obviously doing your due diligence, not rushing into a business because your neighbor did well with a certain franchise. So, with that being said, the the risk at hand is the investment you put into the business. So just say we'll call it 200k in. It's not working for whatever reason you're looking to sell. You don't walk away from the business. You are potentially selling the business, and you may sell the business for what you put in. It may be a little bit less; could potentially be a little bit more if there was some revenue generated. But there is a financial and time risk-the time that you put in that you didn't generate the income. It's also the financial risk. You put the $50,000 franchise fee down payment. Now you you've run it, put another 50k to run it for three months. It's not generating revenue, not working out. So do you lose 100k? The answer is no, because you're not walking away from it. You can go back to the franchisor. They're going to have you. They're going to either help you sell it, and or you could do it on your own. So depending on the route, you may take a hit, maybe a broker fee in there, maybe a flat fee, whatever the case may be, to sell that business. But there's absolutely a financial risk that that comes into play, like you'll you'll have with any other business. With a franchise, I feel like it'll be a little bit easier to to sell, just because you'll if it's a more of an established brand, you have a network of other franchisees to go to. If not, there are 1000s of franchise coaches like myself that will be able to put that in front of their families and candidates to help you sell it. So, so there's definitely risk in there. What I recommend to everyone is, you know, set up the right legal entity, work with an attorney and accountant to set that up. And something I didn't know if I could give, you know, my biggest piece of advice is create a successor plan. I did not have that. I didn't know what the hell that was my first year in business, 27 years old. And a successor plan has two parts: who takes over the business, should something happen to you, get hit by a bus, you're in the hospital, you're in a coma, and then. Who takes over the actual assets? Who owns the business? So, for example, for me, it was my wife owned complete had complete control of the business and assets, and then I had someone else, a neighboring franchisee, that would take over the day to day. It could be the same person depending on who it is, but my spouse had her own job. She wasn't involved in the business, so she wouldn't be able to run the day to day. So, having that successor plan in place. So what does all all that mean at the end of the day? The misc is never the risk never goes away.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuseppe-grammatico ggthefranchiseguide.com

Today, my guest is Rhett Fruitman. Rhett is a co-founder and CEO of Inherited Property Match, a nationwide service that connects heirs, executors, and trustees with real estate brokers who specialize in selling inherited properties. And in just a minute. We're going to speak with Rhett about inherited property issues and solutions.    https://inheritedpropertymatch.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhettfruitman/

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Rhett Fruitman, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Rhett Fruitman I would say the biggest risk in the context of inheriting property is not having everyone aligned, as I was saying with the siblings, where that's like it's not the problem is it's not even a black. Swan risk-it's just like a general 30 or 40% of the time risk. In terms of like life black swan risks, as we were talking earlier, you know, humanoid robots taking over the world or something. But in general, in inherited property, the the big risk that you can try to prevent is sibling disagreement.   https://inheritedpropertymatch.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhettfruitman/

Today, my guest is Dan Keane. Dan is a second-time mobility founder who co-founded PushMe and scaled it to 5,000 battery swap sites across 40 cities before Tier acquired it in 2020, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. He led Deliveroo across 20 markets after a merge an M&A at Green Hill.    https://www.linkedin.com/in/dancbkeene/

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Dan Keane, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Dan Keene Great question. I will. I'll pull it back to robo taxis, just because we've been looking at this risk quite a bit today. Robo taxis are inspected by human eyes, and we think eyes generally tend to miss things. And what I mean by that, every time a vehicle comes back to a centralized depot one to three times per day, a human will do a full inspection. Now, I'm not talking about the cleanliness of the vehicle here. I'm talking about the tire tread. I'm talking about safety features of the vehicle, maybe an indicator is out, etc. etc. So there's a lot of risk there, and very difficult to underwrite that risk when when it's a human checking. What we can do with what we're building with ASEAN, we use cameras, we use machine learning, we can check all these things, we can record it, and we can pass it along to to insurers or under underwriters, whoever it might be. So yeah, I was a bit boring there. I brought it back to robo taxis, but it's it's obviously a it's an extension of of automobiles, right? And and the the insurance industry around that is is massive. So there's a lot of opportunities there.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/dancbkeene/

Today, my guest is David Dean. David is an author, speaker, and business AI realist who explores how artificial intelligence reshapes work, judgment, and accountability in organizations. And in just a minute, we're going to talk with David Dean about artificial tel intelligence, adapt and or how to adapt and future-proof your business.    https://www.davidchristopherdean.com/

J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, David Dean, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   David Dean Biggest risk, in my opinion, is an organization that ultimately doesn't understand itself with it, and and and and that's kind of the biggest theme thing around my book is to help create awareness around risk. So, as a leader, you only have you have accumulated information on how you're behaving in an organization. Things are presented, you know, put together in ways, and you're presented information in a certain manner with that. You don't understand everything that's going on, and and rightfully, that's very difficult to do, you know, almost nearly impossible with this. But you also have to recognize there's a lot of things you don't understand on how your business works and how it's occurring, and so that that undocumented behavior that you do as an organization tells a lot of reveals a lot of things that are gaps, issues, problems, and that introduces a lot of risk around it. So when you're a lot of times when leaders make decisions around things, they only have a portion of the picture with it, and so you are accepting risk by only having a portion of that picture with it, and and so that's the other thing is like, if you recognize that and you move forward with that, you know what are the consequences, you know, down the line relating to some of those decisions on it, and and it's kind of like that example. I'll use AI's really great example. Here are companies that have laid off people with AI replacement, and then six months go by, and they're like, "Oh no, everything's falling apart. You know, with it, we can't do the things that we do. We need to hire all these people back. That's a really good, solid example of not understanding what everyone does and why we hire people to begin with on it, and you kind of accepted that risk. So the better you can understand your organization and use AI to help you do that, the better you are going to be in the long run to avoid any kind of downstream risks in your organization. https://www.davidchristopherdean.com/

Today, my guest is Ali Nasr. Ali is the managing partner of Rise 360 Ventures and a multi-generational expert in manufactured housing communities, raised in the business, Ali brings decades of lived experience in operations, valuations, and community transformation. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Ali Nassar about why I stopped chasing hot markets and started printing checks instead.    https://rise360ventures.com/