From 1 Tesla to Thousands of Cars: Bootstrapping, EV Marketplace & Passive Income | Rei Vardi

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Speaker A: Individual can just, you know, for example, get five vehicles, put them on your platform and they can generate an additional source of income. All turnkey, correct?

Speaker B: Yeah. Even better. Start with one. You know, you don't have to go out and buy an entire fleet.

Speaker A: Yeah, just start with one but.

Speaker B: Or go with lease. Yeah. Put it on the network, connect it to our site. It becomes available for our users to book and then just kick back, relax.

Speaker A: So when it comes to revenues, what are we looking at? If you're comfortable sharing.

Speaker B: Yeah, eight figure numbers. Don't want to get.

Speaker A: That's great because I saw public mention that it generated over 10 million for vehicle owners.

Speaker B: Yes, that's right.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Not being able to raise capital was, was actually the biggest blessing the company ever had. Someone robbed a bank in the car. Now we're an eight figure company. We have around three and a half thousand cars on the platform today. Again, fully bootstrapped, started from the ground up.

Speaker A: Welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm your host, Shahid Durrani and today we have with us Ray Vardy. He's a founder and CEO of eon, a fully bootstrapped EV rental and subscription platform. He started with a single Tesla from his college DOR room, managing right now managing thousands of of EV without raising outside capital. So it's exciting. Welcome to our show, Ray.

Speaker B: Thank you, Shahid. Super excited to be here.

Speaker A: So before we get into this, because I'm really excited to talk to you, can you give us an honest picture if you're comfortable with honest picture of where EON stands today? Uh, I believe you said thousands. Uh, I believe it's. I found thousands online. But if you can just update that information. You know, how many cities, which countries, um, owner payouts, revenue range. If you're comfortable. It just helps us create a foundation of the, for the conversation, of course.

Speaker B: Um, so yeah, happy to. So basically what we do at E on is we are the largest, fastest growing electric car, uh, sharing and rental marketplace, um, at least in North America, possibly the world at this point. Uh, what we do is we connect vehicles that could be being utilized better, whether those are personally owned vehicles or they become part of a commercial rental fleet and we connect them with users that want to, want to use them. And kind of the thing that makes us special and important compared to like a traditional, uh, peer to peer or standard marketplace is that we manage everything from start to finish. So Shahid, if you want to rent my car, you and I will actually never communicate. All you're going to do is you're just going to go on the site, download the uh, app, book your eon, and then you're just going to show up to the car. Specifically, your phone becomes a Bluetooth key. You walk up to the car, it unlocks, you get in, you go. You and I will never communicate. We'll never have to, you know, hand off keys or you know, go through a whole onboarding process.

Speaker A: Sign here, sign here. Let me check the car around. Um, you know, taking pictures.

Speaker B: Exactly. That's what Aeon does for you. And so Aeon facilitates that rental so that you can just get in and out of your car in 40 seconds. And, and I, as the owner of the car can kind of kick back, relax, make some passive income and go get on with my life. And so as you said at the top, started off with just one car, my dad's car, out of my college dorm room. Now we're in uh, and now we're an eight figure company again, fully bootstrapped. Started from the ground up. We have, we have around three and a half thousand cars on the platform today. Although we're growing all the time, we're all over the U.S. we are in basically all the major cities. New, uh, York, Louisiana, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Chicago, you name it. The major American city we're in. It, um, definitely have plans to expand further out, but right now just in the US and really kind of one of the things we're really proud of is that we really just set out to make the rental experience easier for everybody involved because that was my pain point early on. But one of the nice kind of side effects is that at this stage we've managed to Prevent, you know, several million, you know, dozens of millions of pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Just because, uh, having electric cars to use has this net, you know, this uh, this positive externality of us not needing to burn carbon to get everywhere. So uh, this whole process has been an eight year journey from start to finish. A lot quite slow for many tech startups. But it's one of our proudest points as well is that we were able to do it all in house.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. So when it comes to revenues, what are we looking at? If you're comfortable sharing.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, 8 million. Sorry, 8, 8 figure. Uh, uh, numbers. Don't want to get too.

Speaker A: That's great because I saw public mention that it generated over 10 million for vehicle owners.

Speaker B: Yes, that's right.

Speaker A: Nice. That is amazing. So tell us honestly Ray, um, how many of your, how many cars do you have of your own on the platform?

Speaker B: Actually I used to have um, almost 20 of my own cars. Uh, but at this point I only have two. It's not because it's not profitable. It actually is very profitable. The thing is though that I just realized that um, the parts that the additional work of me managing a few more cars could uh, be much better converted into me building out the platform and making the opportunity happen for other people. And so the value add was just, uh, let's expand the platform. That's going to have a bigger impact on my bottom line, other owners, bottom line and the company generally.

Speaker A: So literally somebody could create this as a secondary income source. Uh, just lease a bunch of Teslas for example. Or I believe there's another brand as well that you carry.

Speaker B: Rivet, Tesla's, uh, Rivians Lucids. We're expanding kind of the, the opportunity with other cars too.

Speaker A: Yeah. So people, individual can just, you know, for example get five vehicles, put them on your platform and they can generate an additional source of income. All turnkey, correct?

Speaker B: Yeah. Even better. Start with one. You know, you don't have to go out and buy an entire fleet.

Speaker A: Yeah, just start with one but.

Speaker B: Or go with lease. Yeah. Put it on the network, connect it to our, to our site, it becomes available for our users to book and then just.

Speaker A: We can scale though.

Speaker B: Of course. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, we've got owners that started with one car and now have 30. Right. And they've been able to grow that within a year because it's just, you know, as soon as you see that it's starting to generate revenue, um, scaling it is relatively easy. It's one of the few kind of industries and assets that you can get into, get financing for at a very basic and simple level and immediately start making positive cash flow. There's very few other places you could do that. You can't go and take out a loan to go make bets in the stock market, but you can go out and take, uh, a loan to go get a car and then immediately start making money on it. Of course, one. And have a positive cash flow.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, this is good.

Speaker B: And the best part is that, you know, you've got. If for some reason it's not working out, you can always give the car back, return it, sell it and you know, uh, and exit the, exit that market. Whereas with a lot of other investments, it's a very much a fixed thing. You're locked in for a long period of time. And that's kind of what makes it such a cool vehicle for people to get started with, uh, the side business.

Speaker A: What do you, what do you think?

Speaker B: So easy to get in and out. Mhm.

Speaker A: So what do you think about the autonomous vehicles that are coming out? They're nowhere near full, ah, capacity or structured in every city, but it's coming. Right. So have you thought about that?

Speaker B: Of course, yeah. We're really excited about where this, the space is going. Um, if you ask me my personal opinion, I think that it's a little bit longer and further away than most people expect. I think we're looking at like five to ten years. Um, but you know, this is. Everybody could be proven wrong. What we definitely know for sure. Yeah, well, what we definitely know for sure is that, you know, one, uh, thing it's not going to replace is the need to rent a car. Right. Everybody kind of thinks as soon as, you know, autonomous driving comes around, no one's going to need to have a car. You know, we could all get taxied everywhere. Uh, but the reality is that, you know, if you and your friends want to go out for a weekend trip upstate, you know, the reality is nobody's taking an uber to drive 400 miles off for the weekend. Right? Yeah.

Speaker A: What you m. Actually autonomous can be on your platform as well, Right?

Speaker B: That's exactly the point. What you do want is to rent a car that can drive itself, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, you're going to want to have that car that's parked, parked at the Airbnb with you. You're knowing nobody's, nobody's going to the Grand Canyon and then just hoping that there's an Uber available to take them back to Los Angeles. Right, so what people are going to be doing is they're just going to be renting autonomous vehicles to get around.

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Speaker A: Yeah, exciting times. So take me back to your beginning, uh, before the success happened. Uh, you were a bio medical engineer. Uh, you were working around Alzheimer's research, and then, you know, went into this project. What was the moment where you realized that, um, you know, or was it a side hustle? I'm not sure when you started off, but did you realize this is going to be really big at certain point? And what was that time of your life look like if you could share with the audience?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm glad you asked. Um, look, I never got into this space thinking that I would run a rental brand or a rental platform, uh, back in, back in the day. You know, I always thought I was going to be a doctor, right? So I studied biomedical engineering. I was doing an internship at a, at a, at a research lab for Alzheimer's. And at the time, I had this car that, you know, it belonged to my dad. Ah. He was going to sell it because he was moving out of state. But I was so, you know, in love with this. It was like the second generation Tesla. You know, it's like the Model S had just come out, um, and he'd had this car and it was like, so advanced and so futuristic that I basically told him, like, look, I'll do anything to keep this in the family. Please don't sell it. Give it to me. I'll find a way to pay you for the monthly, you know, for the lease on it, the thousand bucks A month or whatever it was, uh, at the time. Now, for me, as a college student with no income, that was like a tall order. But I started renting it out on the side, thinking that, you know, hey, maybe I can make this thing kind of pay for itself.

Speaker A: Um, he was okay with that.

Speaker B: And, well, he was like, listen, I'm giving you the car. Like, any. Any hot water you get into, that's. That's on you now, you know?

Speaker A: That's on you.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So, um. So very, very quickly, I realized that this was, like, the worst decision I'd ever made. Right. Because in addition to not being able to afford this car, I, um, was renting out the car, and it was just getting destroyed. Right. People were smoking in the car, scratching the car, bringing it back late, not bringing it back at all. Someone robbed a bank in the car, you know, and I had to, like, go through that entire process. Yeah. Within the first two months, that's what. That's what happened. Right. And that's what. And that's when it kind of, like, became clear to me that, like, hey, this is, uh. This is. This is really tough. Like, there's actually no such thing as sharing your car. You know, it's not like I can share my sandwich. This is. I'm sharing a car. It means I'm giving somebody, uh, a 60, 70, $80,000 asset that they can drive off into the sunset with and never have to return. And then I'm the one who's stuck holding the bag, trying to figure out how to make this work. And that's kind of when I started to realize, wait, but these cars are very, very intelligent. There's, you know, uh. It's basically a computer on wheels that I can connect to its API. What if I built a system around that so that it could actually be passive? And that idea was so interesting to me that I kind of just basically said, you know what? I was never really as passionate as I thought I was about, you know, the medical space. Let's. Let's just try and solve this problem first. You know, I'm never. I'm never going to be this young with as few responsibilities where I can, you know, just kind of throw everything away to focus on a problem. So, um, so that's how it started.

Speaker A: And then in your, uh, in your product, how do you protect the owners of the vehicle from these kind of, uh, uh, issues, damages, you know, or do. When. As soon as they get the car, they make a video or something?

Speaker B: So I'll. I'll explain One of the things that makes us, uh, that makes my proudest KPI in the company is we pride ourselves on being the safest platform in existence at the moment. And that means that compared to the industry standard for rentals, we sit at about a third the level of damages, incidentals, issues that arise. And that's come from eight years of fine tuning how this entire system works. Basically, the theory goes like this. You're an amateur with a car who is not trained, uh, as an expert in renting out cars. You just want to share out your car and make a little bit of money. I'm an amateur as a guest who all I care about, I'm not here to understand every little aspect of the car and safety features and how to make sure that nothing wrong happens. All Hm, I care about is getting in the car and driving to my destination. That's it. So neither of us has the incentive structure to make this handoff process as safe and easy as possible. We both kind of want different things. You want to be hands off and I want to be get in and go. Don't bother me. So what we've done is we said, let's us take on that entire process. Let us do the check in, let's us do the safety inspections, let us go through and validate, you know, all of the verifications on the guest so you don't have to do it. Let's us do the education for the guest so that, that way, you know, instead of having two amateurs try and juggle, you know, this extremely expensive, dangerous asset between them, let the professionals do it. Take the people out of the equations. And so there's a ton of stuff that we do behind the scenes and some of it's proprietary that I'm not going to talk about. But on a basic level, it starts with, number one, making sure that the person who's actually renting your car is safe. Somebody who we are more or less comfortable driving the vehicle. And beyond that, it goes into education and showing them everything that they need to know about the vehicle, what they can and can't do in the vehicle. We actually quiz people before they can activate their digital key on everything that they need to know before a rental starts. And so what ends up happening is once when you're able to guide people along the way that you want them to, hey, this is how you're going to, you know, this is what's expected when you pick up the car. This is what you're allowed to. This is not what you're allowed to. Adding Frictionless parts in some parts of the experience, making other parts of the expense have more friction, you know, places we don't want people to go. Um, what ends up happening is that the renter just has a much smoother experience. The owner is as minimally involved as possible, which is what they want. And you just have a rental that just goes as planned 99% of the time. And that's really where you start seeing a lot of that safety mechanism kind of come into play and reduce the stress for people. That make sense?

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's all visible in the app for the consumer, I assume.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Everything that I've said is extremely verification. Yes, exactly.

Speaker A: So is this. Is this close to, uh, Toro? Have you heard of toro? T probably did, obviously. T o R O. Uh, but they're all kinds of car sharing, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, again, the biggest difference between us and Arturo Turo is just a pure marketplace. Turo is I have my car, my profile. Go ahead. You come in and you say, I want race car. I'm going to book it. And now you and I figure it out. You know, now that you've booked my car, I'm the one who comes to you and says, here's what my expectations with the car is. Here's what you can and can't do. Here's, you know, I'm the one who's educating you on it. Uh, and, you know, you kind of just hope that I'm. I'm a good host and I hope that you're a good guest and we kind of figure it out. Where we're different is that we don't. We don't have, uh, you know, an individual profile. When you're renting an Eon, you're not renting from Ray. You're just booking an Eon, and that's where we take the rest from there. And so that. That becomes the question. Okay, how do you do quality control? How do you make sure that, you know, Shahid, when you arrive at the car, everything's actually good, ready to go, et cetera. And that's where we directly talk to the vehicle instead of the owner. If I have to ask Ray every single time, is the car ready? You know, uh, that's a lot of work for Ray. And. Yeah. And if. And if Ray doesn't answer in time or, you know, if there's some kind of, uh, you know, Shahid, you. You need support at 3am in the middle of your trip. But I'm asleep. You know, that's. That's kind of it, we're stuck. What we do is, let's say you book a car on the E on platform, and Ray has gone rogue. You know, he's not. He didn't prepare the car. It's not charged. It's not what it's supposed to be. Well, our system can actually see that before you even arrive, and we say, hey, go ahead. Sorry to say, but, you know, the car that you booked is not. Is not available. Something happened. Don't worry, we moved you over to one across the street. You know, here's like $20 for Uber credit if you need it. Uh, but what happens is that you don't arrive and find out that you have no car, you know, way in advance. And that right there is the difference between, you know, making it to your meeting on time and having your entire business trip ruined because, you know, a, uh, host messed up. Yeah.

Speaker A: And the whole. The part that's really exciting is the bootstrapping. Um, you know, you had investor, uh, interests, you had term sheets. And then, you know, I heard things fell apart. So for founders that are listening, who think raising money, um, will make them safer, what did that experience teach you about that? Outside validation.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, first of all, I want to just be very clear. Different businesses have different, uh, requirements. Right. A lot of sometimes you're. You're the type of business who you have no choice. You have to raise money. I want to be very clear about that. But, um, my, My experience was one where I tried to raise capital for a very long time. It took me a lot of pitches for somebody to finally see the vision and say, okay, here's some capital. Here's where we're ready to get behind this. Um, ended up falling apart because of an issue with, uh, the co founder I brought on at the time. But what ended up happening is that for me, that actually ended up becoming. Not being able to raise capital was actually the biggest blessing that the company ever had. Um, generally, what people think need to understand is when you bring in an investor, they're a partner. They now own part of your business. And so this is really key. Sometimes that's great. Uh, other times, oftentimes their key interest in your business is that you grow really, really fast. And because they want to see an roi, they want to say, I bought it at this price, I'm going to sell it at that price. Right. And so, uh, your company valuation is the most important generally to make that work. They want you to grow as rapidly as possible. Oftentimes that strategy to grow as fast as possible, says, let's sacrifice the unit economics, let's burn money a little bit and then we get to a certain size, then we can kind of figure out the unit economics, we can kind of steer the ship the right way. But now it's a big company, so it's worth a lot more. That's all great in theory, except that in a lot of industries, especially in the mobility space, let's say, um, you can't just get really big and then change your unit economics. It doesn't work that way. There are real costs on the ground, there are real factors that need to be built in that if you ignore them at the earliest stage and then you scale really, really quickly, you're going to have an absolute titanic mess on your hands. And so that's why if you, if you're actually interested and you look into an industry like the mobility space, there's very few winners for startups that play in the mobility space. A lot of this, this, this industry for mobility is kind of like a startup graveyard. There's so many different companies that came, raised a bunch of capital, scaled really, really quickly and ended up shutting down. Because you cannot ignore the basic, you know, margins on, on what you're, what you're doing that might work with, you know, a pure SaaS product. It just doesn't work here. So for us it was a blessing because it forced us to say, okay, we can't grow yet. We have to get this right first. We have to fix the holes in our system, fix the holes in our platform. And then once it, once it's actually off the ground a little bit, then we can start moving it a little bit faster. So I would say to any entrepreneur that, that is looking at, sometimes, you know, if you're not able to raise money, uh, sometimes it's, it's the universe's way of pushing you in the right direction. Question is whether you're, you're listening to it. Mhm.

Speaker A: And you mentioned this niche is a graveyard for startups. So you probably knew this when you were getting into it. Can you share how you dealt with the, the inner barriers or um, what you were hearing and did it produce any delays for you to go after this knowing that it's highly risky.

Speaker B: Yeah, so, so it's, first of all, it's worth noting that I, I came into this not knowing anything. I never studied anything in the space. You know, I, I came from a completely different industry. I learned everything the hard way. You know, when I, when I first started the company, I didn't even know that. Like I didn't know, uh, how stocks worked. Like I genuinely didn't know how equity functioned. You know, all that had to come kind of along, along the way. But very often I was hearing, especially when I was trying to pitch to investors, I was kind of understanding that, you know, for a lot of investors there's these kind of waves for industries. Mobility had a really hot phase in the early 2000 and tens. This is when Uber and Lyft, uh, uh, and all these companies started really popping in. Then the scooter companies and investors kind of have a shell shock once the wave is over and a lot of the bubble bursts a little bit. Right now we're definitely in an AI wave. Um, but once kind of that bubble burst a little bit, a lot of investors are kind of left shell shocked and burned and they just don't want to touch, you know, an industry that they see as it didn't really work out. You know, there was one or two winners and then nobody else could really make a big dent. Um, so to kind of learning that, you know, learning, uh, one of the first things you kind of really learn is that investors are very smart people, but no one knows your industry as, as well as you do, even if you feel like you don't know it that well. Right. And so that's, that's kind of like what you have to bring with yourself anytime you get into those meetings and understand I'm the expert here, right? In my space, they're the expert in money and making money, that's great. But what you're working on, you know best. So keeping that in mind and not letting that get to discourage you because especially again, someone like me, I came in with, with zero knowledge in this space, but I learned it by being, by being in it. And that's how most entrepreneurs will be too.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's the best way. Here's something I've noticed. It's almost never the idea that holds people back. It's the setup. Picking a builder, a domain, an email tool before anything's even live. Hosting or fixes that domain, website, business, email, all in one place and their AI actually builds your first website for you. Just describe what you want and it's live in minutes. It's affordable too, so cost isn't an excuse anymore. If you got an idea sitting there, go to hostinger.com S u p e r e p20. The code is S u p e r e p 20 for 20 off just go and start. This is jump into the Fire. That's what, uh, uh, every new skill, everything that I learn is throwing myself into the uncomfortable, um, is the best thing. So kudos to you. That was great. Now, for someone who's starting from zero today, do you have some sort of a practical process or a framework for turning a painful problem into a m. Monetizable business? Um, if there's any steps that you can share, you have, if you have anything like that.

Speaker B: Sure. Um, look, I wouldn't say that there's any steps, but I could just, I could definitely give you m. A couple of things.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's so first of all, if it sucks for you, it probably sucks for everybody. Right. Like I, I decided to tackle this problem because it was such a painful and annoying situation for me. I just wanted to make passive income on my car and it became a full time job. I, uh, became the world's tiniest car rental company. I didn't want that. If I can solve that for me, I can solve that for other people. Same thing with any business that you're working through. Right. So whatever it is that, that is painful to you, lean into it, try and figure out how to solve that. And then that thing becomes. You become the expert in solving that for other people. That's where you get your leverage. But that also means doing the hard work that other people don't want. Right. So that's, I guess tip number one. Number two is this is going to take a lot longer than you think and it's going to be more painful than you think. Um, if you think that you can kind of get into the entrepreneur space and not, uh, and kind of expect it to function and succeed as many other things in your life as before, um, then maybe this isn't the right thing for you, but you kind of have to like this, this uh, suck. Right. Like you have to like that, it, that it's painful. Um, and if you do that, if you are actually get up every day and you're like, I like solving problems, if that's your mindset, that, that more than anything is going to bring you to the fore. Right. It's like, it's like going to the gym, you know, like if you go to the gym and you say, oh my God, this is painful, I really don't want to lift this weight, you know, um, then, then, then guess what? You know, you're just not gonna, you're not gonna get stronger.

Speaker A: Yeah. If you don't have the mindset, then you can work on that, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And you have to you have to like, let's say you have a goal, you know, to transform your body. You just have to come, uh, in with it, with the understanding of this is gonna be painful, this is gonna take longer than I want it to be. This is going to be really disappointing sometimes, but this is worth it. And if, and that right there, that kind of going to the gym mentality is the same as when, when you're starting a business.

Speaker A: So Ray, um, based on how the world is changing with EV subscriptions, AI, um, you know, flexible work, for example, um, what can you share up to five business ideas that someone could realistically launch in the next 12 months, you know, without needing millions. Uh, especially with AI now.

Speaker B: Sure. I'll give you probably your safest and easiest one is you could join. Join eon. You could bring in a car, start sharing it out.

Speaker A: I didn't even think of that.

Speaker B: It's true, It's. Yeah, I'm not kidding. You can make easily a 50% return month over month, you know, and that's, and that's not uncommon. Uh, and the cool thing is collab.

Speaker A: Sorry, Ray. And you can get a Tesla, I think for zero percent now, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, you can get it for zero percent down. Even better. Get one used, you know, get a used car that's uh, already taken the bulk of its depreciation. You can get one for half the price of a new one and uh, already just start earning from day one. And that's going to give you the leverage to continue to grow. So that's definitely one thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, another I wanted to ask you about, um, someone as outside of America and they wanted to participate. Could they, for example from Canada, could they buy a vehicle, put it on your platform from here?

Speaker B: They definitely could. We've got a lot of partner hosts that, that basically what they do is they manage cars for other people. So we don't do that for you, but we will connect you with our partners where you can, you can work with them directly. They'll clean and charge the car between trips, you know, manage it for you. They'll take up obviously percentage of what you make. But.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, ah, that's excellent, excellent. You can even incorporate that in your platform.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, totally. The coolest thing is that again you have with vehicles, there's so much additional benefits too. You can depreciate vehicle, uh, depreciation on your taxes, for example, and that helps give you additional cash flow at the end of the year. So there's a lot of different ways to play with it that A lot of businesses, a lot of ideas. Okay, I'm going to take 100k, I'm going to throw it into this. I'm going to hope that it doesn't all evaporate. That's the nice thing about actually investing in these assets is that worst case scenario, you can't always exit and not, you know, not, not take losses on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's great, Ray. It was wonderful speaking to you. If there's any final words you would like to share, please go ahead.

Speaker B: Uh, honestly, I've just had a great time chatting with you, Jahed.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, same here.

Speaker B: Uh, I would say anybody who's thinking about, you know, getting into the entrepreneur space, I think there's this perception that being an entrepreneur is like really risky and it's really a scary place to be. And it's not incorrect. I will say right now, you know, it is a lot of risk. You are taking a leap of faith and you are kind of, um, thick skin, putting everything, you need a thick skin. You're putting everything in your hands. But I will say that if you look around you, where is it right now that you think that you can be where you don't need those things, where it's not going to be a risk. If you have a white collar job, you know, you're looking around, seeing what AI is doing to a lot of people's jobs.

Speaker A: Everything is a risk.

Speaker B: How companies go in them, um, everything's a risk. The question is, are you, you know, if you're sitting there thinking, should I do this, should I, should I not? I would say start with something, you know, you don't have to go and quit your job and you know, pursue, you know, becoming a Broadway star. Right. But do do something on the side, get your toes in the water, see that it's not that bad and, and you'll, and eventually like you'll understand this is a risk and that's a risk. So, uh, trust yourself and give yourself that benefit of the doubt.

Speaker A: So if you're online business owner and you're trying to scale, I want you to think about AI more than just adding in some tools, but, uh, more towards adding a digital workforce like a digital employees that can actually think, decide, act with the human in loop as much as you would like. And because what that does is it increases the value of your company because you're not as the business is not as dependent on you. So AI is wonderful. But if we're all scattered, you can't see the ROI from it, then you need a digital team. And also if you are curious about income sources using AI, uh, we're launching a platform called Throttle and and basically you can sign up now for the wait list. It's in the show notes as well. And uh, once we launch you'll be the first to try it. It's exciting. And also if you find value in our show, we really appreciate it. If you could subscribe, if you could share with someone who may need it, um, you know, drop a comment, let us know what you think or if your audio just leave a review feedback, we'll get an email. Uh, because it actually does help us reach more people and we're very passionate about making uh, or helping people out there, adding more true value in our marketplace. So that'll be much appreciated. Thank you so much. Great Ray. And if you face any self sabotage or doubt, uh, definitely consider working on your inner world because that is the power center, who you are, the human behind the initiative that has the foundation work that would allow you to do a lot more than just trying to fight the barriers that are popping up and stopping you or overthinking and not taking the action. So foundation work is super important.

Speaker B: Absolutely. What I said about going to the gym, actually go to the gym. That's going to help you too.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Ray, thank you so much. Great having you on the show.

Speaker B: Thanks Shahid. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience and their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsynads. Com, that's L, I B S Y N Ads.

Speaker A: Com Today.