 Pitching. The top contestant today will receive $1,500 in non-dilutive capital, which is most veteran entrepreneurs' favorite kind. The runner-up will get $1,000, and the veteran coming in third will receive $500. And while those no obligation rewards may help them pursue their more important ventures, they each were also offered intensive one-on-one coaching to improve their ability to sell their ideas to customers and future investors. Each contestant today will have two minutes to pitch and take a limited number of questions from our judges. Should they go over there a lot of time, I will, in the most annoying way possible, let them know via cowbell. Before we begin, I'd like to introduce someone extremely special who is new to Patriot Bootcamp, but not new to entrepreneurship and not new to DAV. He is a true Blue Vettrapreneur, having served in the Royal Navy across the pond. Known best for his wildly successful food network show, Restaurant Impossible, and the author of the new hit book, Overcoming Impossible. Ladies and gentlemen, Chef Robert Irvine. Chef, welcome. Thank you very much. It's good. This is exciting. It's very exciting, sir. And thank you for joining us in the next couple of weeks here in Lehigh when we have our next DAV Patriot Bootcamp cohort. You've volunteered to go out there and mentor. Tell us about your book. Well, the book was based on having about 2,000 people a week asked to be fixed. Their restaurants or businesses be fixed by Robert Irvine. And obviously I can only do one a week on television and some big companies, Fortune 500 companies, which I work with. So I thought, well, let's put it down in writing so that you can see the failures that I had, the wins, and I call them Ls and Ws, losses and wins. And there's four basic pillars. The first one is empathetic leadership. The second one is egos, losing theirs and yours. The third one is trust. And the fourth one is authenticity. So I wrote the book to help people. It's a number one selling book in a very short amount of time, but it's full of information. It's not a book that's going to teach you, check this book, check this book, check this box, and you'll be successful. And anybody that tells you that the other writes a book like that, they're full of BS. It doesn't work like that. Trust me, having been or having 11 companies now and 5,000 employees over a period of time, and the failures I've had have all come from books telling me that. You know, people know you as obviously as a chef, as through your shows, but they don't realize it's not just your face on the family of businesses that you own. I mean, you're operating all those companies. Yes, I don't put my name on any business I don't physically own. So Fit Crunch from our clothing company, our alcohol, our food company. We own the manufacturing plants that do that, the distribution that moves that. The only thing I do have a name on is a TV show because I can't own the TV shows or the networks. But I truly believe in, at some point you're using line time to create something, but then you want to cut out the middleman or woman because that's where your profit is. So you need to be able to either partner up with people to own those distribution and manufacturing plants or you're going to lose a lot of money and we own everything. Those lessons aren't just for restaurateurs, right? No, it can be anything. So I work with Fortune 500 companies whether it be Compass, NBC, Universal American Airlines, Cisco Foods, I mean, you name it, Service Credit Unions. I work with an awful lot of businesses and then my only 11 companies, as they say, and it changes, we get into tech, we just got into technology on our 12th company. It's really about what fits your authentic self and how do you go about that and having the knowledge or hiring, and I talk about this in the book, I'm an A-type personality. A lot of people that are A's don't like to hire anything but B's because they don't like to be out shone. Me, you can outshine me every day. I want double A's in my company. I want people better and smarter than me to help me run this company. And that's what we do. And that's a lot of failure for a lot of companies because ego gets in the way. You mentioned in your book that you would be nervous to go up against some of the folks you've hired even in your younger years. Can you speak to that? Yeah, I mean, I've got four chefs, I see five chefs that are R&D and take care of restaurants and travel the globe with me with our military. And I consider myself a pretty good cook. I can drop into Afghanistan and feed 30,000 people, I've done it. But to me, I've hired better chefs than myself, better organizers than myself to set an expectation of what I require and have them execute it and me follow up. There's no good, you don't learn and you can't grow if you handcuff people. You hire people because of their knowledge and their skillset, then let them run loose. They may make a mistake, but then it's up to you to set the expectation and then hold them accountable throughout that. You talk about in the book, it seems like people start off as entrepreneurs, whether it's a restaurant or any other type of business, they start off with this idea. And then the idea morphs into all the other things that could go with the idea, the things possibly that benefit yourself. But you talk about discovering your why. Can you speak more about that? Well, first of all, I mean, when I came out of the military, which was a hard transition for an English guy, very, very different to the United States where there's a transition period and help and all those, when you leave the military in England, you leave the military and it's see a good luck. I didn't get any of the help we get here in the United States. So I went out on a limb, I joined a cruise ship, I had a vision of a food company. I started the food company while I was employed at actually by Donald Trump, funnily enough, the food company outgrew what I was making at a real job. And then from my core competency, which is food, cooking, then I surrounded myself with equipment, and then alcohol and then clothing and all the things that you would think go around that, pots, pans, knives, glassware, spirits, but my core competency is food. So everything is a derivative of my core competency. Wow, some of the things in the book, I'm sure you get asked questions about because whenever you make a hard and fast rule, that's usually the thing people bite on. One of the things that we hear and we deal with a lot of couples who are going into business after transitioning out of the military, but you say, don't go into business with family, don't involve family in your business. Can you speak more about that? Worst thing you can do is go into family business or business with your family, why? You can't control a family member and that's a strong word when I say control. There's always gonna be a leader. If you look at what we do in the military, we put a bunch of people together in basic training and out of that bunch of people emerges a leader, like an alpha male or female, it doesn't matter either one and they're always gonna take the initiative to be that leader. The problem with family is, you go home with them, number one, you go to work with them, number two, and you can't argue and come to a general consensus because everybody wants their input. I've been married for 15 years to my wife and I say, we have 5,000 employees. My wife has nothing to do with my business. Now, let me quantify that. I hire people based on my senior leadership of about 60 people talking to the people for an hour. The last person to talk to a potential new hire is my wife, she gets the last hour. And why do I do that? Because I made three hires in 15 years that she told me not to do and she was absolutely correct. I should never have done it. It cost me over $3 million to do that. We fired the three people. So now I actually listen to my wife with the hiring of people, but that's the only thing she has to do with any of my companies. I talk to her about them, but she has no say whatsoever except, yes, I like this person, he or she fits the team. And you have to understand our team travels 345 days a year together. So they have to fit that team mentality. One thing I've learned from the military and I'm sure a lot of you would hear this many times. The military as, you know, always has your back, your front, your left, your right and your back. In the civilian world, they stand on the front, the left, the right and the back. They don't care how they get to their next position. We have a rule in my companies, if somebody does that, I don't care how powerful or how good they are in the company, they're immediately dismissed, gone. Because I truly believe in the art of honor and respect and dignity. All those things that we learn in the military, regardless of whether you're in US military, the British military coalition force, it's the same thing. Collectively and cohesively, we can make great companies, which we have done, but it's not one man's decision. I don't make the decision, it's a group of people that have input into what we do, what we buy, what we sell and what products we make. I would never have a family member in there. Well, we're glad you're part of our family anyway, chef. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for what you do through the Robert Irvine Foundation as well. Do you wanna speak a little bit more about your mission there? Yeah, I mean, I'm very happy. Our foundation was born eight years ago. I've been with Garrison East Foundation for 15 years. I still am, I sit on his board. We are primarily a physical and mental health foundation. That provides not only service dogs and wheelchairs that are especially adaptive or eye-butt program. We just go up and downstairs on the road and rise people to height level, eye level. But we also have a lot of programs where we put, in fact, a couple of weeks ago, we just put together a reunion program for the first Italian fifth Marines, 750 of them and their spouses and Gold Star families at Camp Pendleton and in San Diego for a week. Next week or the week after, we've got 100 US veterans joining 900 coalition-founded veterans in Scotland for the Cataran Yomp and then in Germany for 3000 troops having just come back literally four days ago from Poland at eight bases in five days. So we do an awful lot of travel, 150 days just with the military, but lots of programs. Check it out, Robert Irvine Foundation.org as a great organization. So thank you. Thank you, Sheffan. We'll be talking more in the next couple of weeks in Utah. Thank you for your team too. Great people. I wanna introduce your fellow judges here on the DAV National Veterans Entrepreneurship Council or from the council. Joining us is Marilyn Jackson. Marilyn is CEO of Undergrid Networks, a digital technology and engineering firm headquartered in Atlanta. She has spent over two decades in senior level assignments innovating and ushering Fortune 500 companies into the digital age. Before founding her company, Marilyn served as one of the leaders of the Verizon Innovation Vertical Team which served as a forward-thinking think tank for new digital products and services. There she led creation and commercial and product development relationships with content providers, content service providers, wireless infrastructure companies and mobile carriers. Previous senior positions include those with IBM, Cisco and the DoD. Marilyn has worked with GSMA, a global organization that unifies the mobile ecosystem to discover, develop and deliver innovative foundational to positive business environments and societal change. Marilyn now focuses her efforts on providing connectivity solutions related to the industrial internet of things, extended reality and artificial intelligence. She is an expert on the impacts of technology on the global connected economy. Marilyn is an Air Force veteran, veteran spouse, DAV member, Patriot Boot Camp alumnus and all around favorite person of everyone who ever meets her. Al Nard Slicko is joining us as well. Al is a distinguished DAV member as well. He's mentored a number of successful executives and help companies build and maintain high performance management teams throughout the years. He is a highly respected leader, revered, certainly by DAV as well. He's an innovator and visionary with a rare ability to motivate and inspire. After joining the Navy, Al worked as an engineering consultant with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Advanced Systems Design Group. He received his degree in computer science and information systems from the State University of New York Empire State College. In 1991, he co-founded Systems Made Simple. Under his leadership, it grew from a startup to an industry leader with hundreds of employees and more than $350 million in sales before its entrepreneurial American dream sale to Lockheed Martin in 2014. Both Al and Marilyn are living examples of the quality of instruction and mentorship available within the DAV Patriot Bootcamp ecosystem. We're extremely grateful for all they do to make the program possible. And now on to the contest. To start the program, I'll introduce each participant by name. When they begin, they'll have two minutes and two minutes alone to present before they experience the dreaded cowbell. Our first contestant is Simon Carmicharr. After earning his degree from Arizona State, Simon served four years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist. He is also the founder of 4C Management Consultants and LeVos.io, which is the company behind his ventures, ReFundWiz and MassDeviceCard. Ladies and gentlemen, Simon Carmicharr. Simon, take a deep breath. The timer starts when you do. Thank you so much. My father was the bravest person I know. In the 1970s, he moved our family to America to start a new life. But one thing terrified him, taxes. He didn't mind paying them, but filing them created a big knot of fear in his belly. And like most immigrants, he was afraid a simple mistake could lead to deportation. Years later, my dad told me the story of carrying me on his shoulders and peering into an H&R block office and saying, this office is too posh. It is not for us. Fast forward to 2021. I served four years as an Army linguist, earned my doctor and was working as a manager in senior tax preparer at H&R Block. Every day, we turned away Hispanic customers with nabla español. The look in their eyes was the same look I saw in my father's eyes when I was a kid. Hola, I'm Dr. Simon Carmicharr, serial entrepreneur and technical founder of MassRefund. It's a bilingual Spanish-English DIY tax filing app for non-English speaking filers. We take fear out of filing taxes and let good people file with confidence. We're disrupting the industry by making tax filing as easy as uno, sign up, dos, scan a couple of documents and tres, hit submit. With the MassRefund app for $24.99, people file accurate return in just minutes. No complicated tax forms, no tax software, no need to understand complex IRS lingo. We're starting with the Hispanic community because it's the fastest growing minority, yet there is no Spanish mobile filing option. The tax prep industry is $14.4 billion and Hispanics represent $3.5 billion. MassRefund launched in nine states this February in Google and Apple Playstores. We've had 5,000 downloads. We're raising 500,000 and just as of yesterday, 300,000 remain available to close the round. Come join our mission, where purpose meets profit. With MassRefund, we make tax filing as easy as uno, dos, tres, gracias. Well done, well done. I'll turn things over to our judges. You wanna start, Al Nardsliko? Yeah, how long have you been in business for? So we became Incorporated January of 2022 and we launched this tax season. Okay, you launched just this tax season? Yes. Okay, great. And your app is download, you can download it from Apple, iPad, what's- Yep, you can download it, you can download it from Google. Here's a QR code right on my sleeve and you can download it from Apple. Nice. Any other questions? Nothing comes to mind. Okay. Since you've incorporated, well, first of all, thank you for your service. Congratulations on your idea. How many people have signed up since you started? So we've had 5,000 people download the app and to date we have 28 paid customers and that's actually a win for us because it's a brand new name and we're asking people to give very personal, confidential financial information like their social security number. How is your platform secured? Which I'm sure somebody else is gonna ask in a minute. I can see you. Yeah, absolutely. So it's secured, we're partnering up with AWS which offers tremendous amount of security and then our DevOps team has another layer of security and it's like depositing a check. So nothing actually gets stored on the phone at all. Where does that get maintained? So it's a serverless model and so everything is stored with AWS. Okay. My second thing is how many employees do you have? So I'm a solo founder and I'm in the process of building out my team but I have a deep bench of advisors with all serial entrepreneur successful exits and they're currently entrepreneurs as well. So what is your first... I'm sorry, I'm monopolizing this. What is your first year's revenue in your brain? My first year's revenue in my brain is going to be $10,000. And what is the cost to make that $10,000? $10,000. So you're gonna break even your first... No, that's okay. That's okay. First year break-even is a good business. Yeah, absolutely. So once the software is built out the costs are constant. So what's to stop me, Robert Irvine, doing exactly the same? I can take your products and replicate your product. Yeah, so a couple of things come into play. One is the individual, like myself, needs to understand tax code, tax law, get certified with the IRS. Yeah. Get the company certified with the IRS. Know how to code because ours is a very progressive tax system and then also a linguist, right? So they understand what the Gen Zs and the millennials are looking for. So you're telling me nothing can stop because I have all of them, right? Right. So there's nothing to protect you from somebody ripping your idea off. There is nothing to protect this idea. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Marilyn, do you have any questions? Yeah. I really love what you're doing. I think that there is a huge market for you out there. And I think that the differentiator that you can bring to add that level of protection is you got to get the customers. So you've got, you know, I would think that you would put whatever resources that you have into a very strong marketing campaign. And once you get a customer, you focus on customer loyalty. Regardless of who else pops up or whoever is out there, I think that there are things that you can do around that. And as well as expand across the language barriers, Spanish is just one of those areas. I think there are other areas that you could put into your growth path, especially if you, you know, get a really, really strong marketing campaign together. So good luck to you. I love what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry. Competitors. I did a quick Google to find out Spanish tax preparation. So it looks like a couple of competitors out there already. So the competitors that are out there. Yeah, absolutely. So the competitors that are out there, they don't have a mobile filing option and they're not using the OCR and AI technology that we have on the backend. So for example, if it's a school teacher that downloads the app and they answer a couple of interview questions and they say, I'm an educator at the backend, the algorithm and the AI will say, ah, so this person needs a schedule one and they get a $300 credit. And so this is all from using just the phone app itself. Everyone else has you actually go to a desktop and log in and fewer than 18% of Hispanic households have access to PCs or broadband. So whilst I agree with everybody saying, yeah, it's a great idea. I would, I, if I'm you, right? With that, I, that you have, you have to protect that in some way, shape or form, right? Because I'm going to tell you there will be somebody and you just set it right there. There are other competitors that could take you and learn the AI very quickly, right? Very quickly. Believe me, because I've done it with, with a new company I just bought. You have to protect the backend of that or that information because otherwise you are no different other than the language of course, but you're no different to somebody else. And I use Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, right? Who is one of my dear friends who would say you are nothing without protection because I could literally replicate your business in a week. Now that being said, I love the idea and you are exactly right with different languages and different, and different ethnicities. But the, but unless I know about you, you're never going to grow fast enough regardless of how much money because your burn rate is far too fast. Your, your acquisition costs of a human being and trust is, is going to outweigh your revenue stream. And then it's going to drag you down to the bottom of you don't know where you want to go. Believe me. Thank you, chef. We're going to send our judges into the room to make tabulations. And while we do, I want to bring on a very good friend of ours, Ray Antonino. Before I do that, let me first remind everyone, applications are open for our fall 2023 DAV Patriot Bootcamp cohort for new to the program founders. The event will be held October 12 to 14 at DAV national headquarters in Cincinnati. You can apply and sign up to get updates on entrepreneurship programming at Patriot Bootcamp.org. We need mentors to support that program as well. If that's of interest, please email us at info at Patriot Bootcamp.org. Back to Ray Antonino, the service mark registered chief expectations center for permits.com. Ray actually taught our pitch class amazing job at our winter cohort. He's so generously offered his time as a mentor, providing follow-up training for our finalists. Ray, I'm sorry, I got to keep introducing you here, but Ray's an army veteran, two-time Techstars alumnus. And as he put a master of mistakes at 20, he owned a car dealership by 30. He was a licensed home builder and by 40, he was a tech entrepreneur. Ray is also the lucky husband of an amazing person in Rebecca Antonino. They not only run a great company, they're extremely dedicated volunteers who've supported numerous Patriot Bootcamp events. Ray, what did you think of the pitches so far? Well, certainly love the story of the why for Simon's business. Robert brought up all the points that are absolute about what builds defensibility. I felt that that was the part where needs a little bit more improvement. But at the end of the day, one could look through the lens of any company having to defend itself. How do you do that in today's world? And short of some IP and some other things, yeah, it's a delicate balance in startup world. But at the end of the day, people are doing it. You can do it better. The question is, are you building trust, community and authenticity along the way? Are you impressed with how these folks, I mean, I'm just going back to the cohort. Are you impressed with how Simon was able to refine his message? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He left a lot of room for space for people to resonate with what he was saying. At least that's the way I took it. I've really tried to remove myself a lot when I hear, because I've been part of helping practice, get him prepared. But he did today, took the time to deliver it. And I was thrilled to see it coming under the two minutes because that matters in your pitch. It sure does. And speaking of pitching, you've not too long ago come out of retirement from pitching yourself. Can you speak about your experience? Well, the opportunity was just too big. So I had won 100,000 at Atlanta startup battle on my birthday in 2018, I believe. And I kind of hung up the hat of pitching and that was kind of the pinnacle, right? 100 grand. And then USAA launched a USAA 100 year anniversary pitch contest for the whole year. And they went and scoured the country at six different locations through the help of Bunker Labs, another great outfit for military veterans. And I was able to make a regional cut, ultimately get on the main stage at corporate in San Antonio, take second place and put 50 grand in the pocket, non-diluted, which is always a good thing. That is awesome, Ray. You and Rebecca have a great ethos, hashtag give first. That's your slogan. Can you speak about that? Why is that important? Yeah. So I borrow that from Techstars, which is an organization that plays a big part in the development of where I've evolved to. But we really take the mindset of give from where you can. In my first business, I had rose up pretty fast, made more money than I've ever made in my life at a young age. And then when I crashed, there was no one around. In three years of muddling through and trying to figure out what did I do wrong, what could I do better, I realized that there were just a lot of people I didn't do anything for to help along the way. And so one day I was hearing the same thing you hear from people all the time where they say, you know, when I win the lottery, I'll do X. And it just got me thinking, why don't you just do something from where you are now? And everybody's got something to contribute. And if they're honest with themselves where their limitations are, then they can make for a great mentor to help other people around them. And the point being is that the next time I go up that ladder, which I've been on now two additional times, you know, there's going to be a time I may fall again. And when I do, I don't want to crash. I just want to jump over to somebody else's ladder and help them. And by building up those friendships, partnerships and helping them along their journey, it's an easy transition. Ray, thank you so much for all you do for us. We appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you and Rebecca in Utah. And we'll move on to our next contestant now. Like Simon before him, Stephen Morel served as a Russian linguist in the Louisiana National Guard. He earned his undergraduate degree and Juris Doctorate from LSU. And he is the CEO and co-founder of Juris Deed. Stephen, the clock starts when you begin. Good luck. When a property owner dies or experiences a financial delinquency, that property is at risk of falling into a state of perpetual distress, costing US taxpayers over $25 billion a year. Every year, 8 to 10 million properties will experience some adverse ownership issue just like these. What's the fate of these properties? That depends on whether industry professionals will be able to track down and notify all current legal stakeholders. That's while using stale data and slow, antiquated paper and manual heavy resources. My name is Stephen Morel. And in the 20 years I've been a real estate attorney, I've painfully cleared just thousands of distressed properties. And that's using the old Dewey decimal era text. Now we have Juris Deed. Data-focused B2B startup that's pioneering the title tech space and hiring real estate professionals to clear distressed property titles with clicks, not copies. In a month, in minutes, not months. And we've assembled the expert team to pull this off. Besides myself, my co-founder, the three-time elected tax collector of a large county in Missouri and double barred. And our tech lead built the very first platform for local government to collect delinquent tax legal compliance. We've hit the ground running. In 2021, we've generated over a half billion dollars of revenue selling our digital data, real estate data and digital mailings to our addressable marketplace, which is investment real estate investors. Which is a $5 billion marketplace right now spending money on real estate data, research and due diligence. We know our number one competitor is the status quo. But for all the others, we'll fortify our existing defenses with IP patent protection and data ownership. Now we're ready to storm our beach head marketplace of institutional real estate investors starting with online marketing and trade shows. You've heard of PROC tech, legal tech, but you may not have heard of title tech, but you will. Injuricy will be the reason why. Thank you. Steven, great job. As I annoy everyone with the cowbell, I need to remind you that it is not it's not intentionally to offend you, but to stop things. If you're not cheating, you're not trying. You went over your time a little bit, but we're in good shape. We'll turn it over for questions. Can we start with Marilyn? Yeah, very interesting. So where are you acquiring your data sets for your input for your engine? So we consume a good bit of data. There's some of the biggest big data companies out there in property and property. So the big data is companies like First American and Black Knight Core Logic. These are, they play in that big data space and we're tapping into it programmatically through APIs to be able to consume the ingredients to make the product that we're producing. So you're pretty much relying on static data. You're not doing anything to make it dynamic. We are. In fact, that's one of the key differentiators of our product versus anything else in the marketplace. So we have a lot of real estate transactional history and then cross reference that with credit header, like skip tracing, investigative research to literally track these folks down of where they are right now to be able to contact them and provide legal notice or to try to do a deal with them. Okay. And one last question. So is that algorithm protected? Yes. So while I currently, currently it's locked in a drawer and this is a strategic timing of when we do that, when we're able to actually that's a costly long-term expense, but we are working with our legal advisors on the right timing to proceed. Thank you. So how do you put this to market without revealing your secret sauce? We don't. We grow really fast. We raise capital and grow really fast and there's a period of vulnerability to your point. And, you know, our other strategies are not only to just put ourselves out there, but to partner with strategic in other parallel industries so that we're getting a little bit more stickiness in there as well and become, we live is an integration and other software programs because we're augmenting workflows. We're part of a much bigger workflow that is to have these properties transacted or to move them back into commerce and we're providing a digitization to a part of those workflows that's entirely just a void of technology right now. Thank you. Thanks so much. Al Nardsico. Yeah, now is this are the searches your access to this data is it just local or is it nationwide? It's nationwide. It's all properties nationwide. The degree of variability there is the same that everybody faces in this space, which is just the how much has been digitized at the county level in one county versus another at this at this stage though in 2023, so much of it has risen to that level of availability digitally that it's almost insignificant to talk about what's not available. So is the data source always going to be there for you? Yeah, as long as so eventually one of our plans is to acquire our own data so we become less self we've become more self-reliant but these are ingredients that like similar to I imagine how chef would go to the farmer's market to get something for his dish or something that only he can cook right eventually mean that you're not worried about bananas and and peppers running out you know so he's going to be able to get his ingredients and that's what we're working on the same kind of premise and not not to rest on our laurels but that's the kind of basic ingredients that we're consuming so we can be put that together in a in a product that's that's valuable to consume. Thank you so much Chef Irvine how are you making money with that? So to this point everything's been on a transaction pay-as-you-go basis so customers we say this is the data we have available we can tell you that you give me a list of properties and I can give you the stakeholders as of right this moment so you can do what you need to do with your job that costs X amount of dollars for this kind of data so we bucket it essentially in about three different buckets this cost this much this is tier two tier three this is how many you need times that and there's a product. There's a lot of different lines of revenue streams right other than those three buckets by the sounds of what you're telling me right and how much are you paying so basically you're getting information I buy information from from about the way we spend money in supermarkets right I buy the same kind of information to decide which products we put in where as you as you move forward you said you made how much in the first six months or whatever you so it's it's been a two about almost a two-year period now since we put our first beta customer first bit of orders for them and that was about half we just over half million dollars in revenue and how many staff members you have now and how many staff members you have now we have two full-time and we have a couple of teams of part-time teams and a couple of part-time employees okay so so in that half million dollars in revenue in the amount of time you've had what is your net profit on that revenue um so on average our net profit is I mean our margins are somewhere in the 70% um and this is leveraging our own technology and they are data purchases essentially um as as a you know looking at EBITDA looking at down like the whole business we're almost breaking even which again at this point I didn't realize that was actually a good thing until someone told me it was yeah it is in the first year for now right I would go back to to that technology and and that recipe and the draw that I have that you have there is no good in a draw because again somebody can follow it and copy it and whatever so as soon as your strategic partners tell you I would definitely put that in in in IP for sure 100% agreed thank you all so much for your time while the judges submit scores for Stephen we have an extremely important Patriot Boot Camp alumna ABC Shark Tank Contestant and amazing speaker, mentor and volunteer joining us Angela, major mom Cody Rouge is a former U.S. Air Force Missile Team crew co-commander or co-commander and a certified professional organizer she is founder and CEO of major mom and generously volunteers to help prepare our contestants Angela what do you think is the most important advice an entrepreneur can get to be successful in pitching thank you Dan that's a great question it's being on Shark Tank myself the most successful thing you can do to pitch your business is to be authentic to your brand and know your numbers and get to the point and so I think the most important thing that some of the pitch contestants are learning now is going over time is no good so you have to stick within the time so I would say that if you have a two minute pitch practice it to one minute 45 seconds when we usually coach people if you aren't getting done it one minute 45 seconds then you've written too much for your pitch and winning a pitch contest is a little bit doesn't necessarily equate to all the time a giant investment in your business and what we see sometimes at Patriot Boot Camp is we see some veterans who are geniuses in tech or geniuses in engineering but they're also first off they're veterans so they don't like to brag they're introverted they lack sales or pitching experience do you have any advice or resources to help our friends who are introverts who are inherently uncomfortable pitching their ventures yeah the best advice I could say is especially to veterans because those are the only people that I coach right now are military spouses and veterans is you are a bad ass at one point whether you're an introvert or an extrovert going through Boot Camp or whatever you went through whatever job you did in the service 90% of Americans never going to know the training that you endured and went through so just pull back to that person that you that you know you can be that on stage pull everything out pull out all the stops because you've got two minutes to make an impression that could take your business to the next level or you know you could just keep keep where you are hey tell us about your experience on Shark Tank well my experience on Shark Tank wow that was something else I have to say that I'm with Chef Irvine on I love Mr. Wonderful he was great in the tank he was absolutely not what I thought he was going to be based off of you know his personality on TV but what I what I loved about the tank was you get in there you do your pitch they've got a well oiled machine and I think entrepreneurs don't always do well in well oiled machines but the military folks out there if they said be at the briefing at 7am they said be here at this time we respected that so the military folks out there got in there sat down front row and so my experience was really seeing the different entrepreneurs that would listen to the rules or not listen to the rules and I feel like 100% of the veterans were all years and listening and didn't break as many rules as some of the civilians did it's a victory alone to be on the show you didn't walk away with a deal from the Sharks but what did that do for you and for your venture oh my goodness I mean we went from you know being the largest organizing home organizing company in Colorado to franchising our concept and being in five states and you know just really taking off and people realize that I had built not just a cute logo but I built systems HR systems counting systems training systems I mean everything I learned in the military I duplicated in my business operations manuals checklist so I was like here you go here's how you do it what did you think when the when when chef Irvine working with family or I guess going into business with family oh gosh and in respect for my husband I won't tell you how many times I fired him um but I ended up buying my husband out so I agree with chef Irvine 100% usually when my husband was involved in business decisions um it did not go well we did not agree on anything so yes I agree family is not always great however I have loved now that my kids are 18 and older I love hiring them to help me now that is fun bringing your family in to organize and teach them the business that's pretty cool that is that is very cool um what do you expect we'll see from our next pitch oh the next pitch well you know go faster I love this I remember seeing him at patriot boot camp and I think he's going to nail it um I'll be eating my Robert Irvine crunch bar while um I watch the pitch that's a that's a great point that you made there while I read my book here um getting a quick sale for for the chef um do you have what other lessons have you learned from from the chef that maybe you apply to your your business oh gosh I've I've watched the chef for so many years I can't even believe I'm having the opportunity to be in this program with him right now but what I've learned is um you know he gets to the point and I think that's what entrepreneurs need to be able to do in a pitch get to the point even if you're not pitching if you're at this um patriot boot camp anybody you talk to stop talking so much and get to the point I love that about chef Irvine and I think military folks need to get back to that when they're in networking events thank you so much ladies and gentlemen that is the kind of tough love you can expect from Angela if you're lucky enough to be in a cohort where she is involved the judges are back thank you for deliberating um and we're ready to proceed with our final contestant Alan Parvis is a United States Marine who has been extremely successful as an R&D leader and system engineer he had a perfect GPA in earning two undergraduate degrees and holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Cincinnati emphasizing his education because my colleagues at DAV sometimes like to tease Marines and Alan Parvis is no crayon eater his goal is to provide amazing products and give back through his venture go faster Alan good luck the clock starts when you do I cannot confirm or deny crayon eating by the way Dan um thank you Dan um my name is Alan Parvis and I'm the founder of go faster running after serving as a Marine in Iraq Afghanistan I pursued my education and engineering and physics and I worked across the aviation and medical device industry I also started competing in endurance racing completing long distance triathlons swims and running races as a runner I faced a dilemma that many runners face when they run on mixed terrain running a route that goes from pavement to trail runners must choose between a less than durable road shoe or a less than comfortable trail shoe that doesn't perform on road with a background in physics and engineering I created a propulsion plate that protects the foot from rocks runs comfortable like a road shoe and delivers the durability to go off-road our first product in my hands right now is being tested by runners looking at the $20 billion US athletic market specialty running is the largest category of major brands doing $600 million to a billion dollars in sales however there is a gaping hole in the market primed for a brand to speak to the veteran and first responder community so I thought back to my time at boot camp when a pen was not a pen it was an ink stick a flashlight was not a flashlight it was a moon beam and your running shoes well they were go fasters and the competition's marketing is undifferentiated how about running happy competing for glory for taking the podium go faster for those who push themselves to the limit for those who go where they are needed we face our fears and when others are running away we run in go faster thank you great job on your timing I'll turn it over to our judges Fervin first of all I'm really interested in this and I'll tell you for why I'm one of your potential customers I take 100 folks a year in a couple of weeks to Scotland double amputees, triple amputees burn victims 92% burn from Afghanistan in Iraq on a 100 mile 56 mile march and that is one of the problems do you wear sneakers, do you wear hiking boots after mile 45 it gets heavy and I have a company of my own that serves the military or branches that does clothing fitness equipment etc etc this is my wheelhouse what makes your shoes unique and I know you said you were just having them trying by runners I don't care about runners that's a leisure part your marketing doesn't match what you just told me so there's two things here Chef one from a product perspective we need the product to be competitive and needs to be a higher performance shoe because runners, athletes, third discerning customers you can't give them something that's got great branding and doesn't perform we're delivering that technology but we're going after this major gap in the market to speak to the audience that's not being spoken to currently so it's two angles Chef how long have you been in business? so our first products in development right now as I said it's getting tested and that first product is going after the mixed use so if you look at runners that run from a pavement then they hit the trail for a little bit they're choosing between a revised shoe in both scenarios and if you talk to the runners today they're looking for a product that has durability and comfort in both my question is then what's the stop adidas or somebody coming after you and it's happened to me on a pizza scale where I made a pizza and put it into retail somebody came across a big player paid $200,000 and bought me out of that market right it's definitely something that we have to watch out for I think that we have an opportunity to look at technology patenting for our product and we have a pipeline of ideas that we're looking for for our future products that we'll certainly look to protect as well revenue? no revenue yet right? getting shoes off the ground is a high capital business and we want to make sure that we get that first one right we're going to plan to launch at the end of the year to gain that initial traction and we'll I'm going to ask a question what is your minimum run and where are they made? right now they're being made in Asia and the minimum run is a few thousand great thank you so much chef I'll turn it over to Al Nardslicko yeah well I don't do the things that the chef does and her running around but I do love running in the trails it's one of my favorite things the thing that I'm struck with is what's the technology difference between your product and I mean I've got probably six pairs of running shoes for running trails I'm a big trail runner I would just love it what makes your product better sell me on the technology give me something that I can hook my hat on and say yeah but I want to wear to go faster because it gives me what? yep so the difference in our shoe is the plate that's in the shoe and the foot against rocks but our positioning of the plate and the shape of the plate is giving it a feel of a road so we've got all the midsole interacting with the foot and it's got a little bit more flexibility than you'd find with the existing technology so you get the comfort that you're used to with a road shoe and our outsole is durable to go outside so most of the trail shoes that I've got are the high-end trail shoes that keeps you more your weight on the front of your foot is your shoe designed like that also? so our shoe is going after it's a neutral shoe if you're familiar with that terminology I am so all different types of feet shapes and different shoes out there for different types of runners this first product is a neutral shoe okay thank you so much and the talented last but not least Marilyn Jackson I find this very interesting because I'm in the market right now for a new pair do you have a lady size eight and a half? we'll have the full range of sizes yes ma'am? I've looked at sketchers I've looked at Nike, I've looked at Reebok and you're absolutely targeting a gap because I'm not a runner but I am a walker and I do hike and so to find a good shoe is almost impossible so I settle for both of sketchers simply because they have the arch fit they have so many different options you can put together to really customize what you're doing so in your shoe how do you compare to those high performance shoes that are already in the market that are targeting the runners and how does that convert over to the walkers as well? great question in the performance space lots of different shoes for different types of runners different types of walkers and different shoe fits this one again is going after the neutral shoe so a neutral fit, neutral runner as we look to explore different product lines we'll start to offer a wider range of shoes but we want to make sure that we're offering products that meet our target customer so the activities that veterans and first responders are competing in that's where we're going to put our future effort how fast do you think you'll make it to market? like I said we have the shoe in hand right now it's being tested with runners so it'll take a few months to get a couple hundred miles on our shoes and end of year we'll be ready to do a first run are you collecting any kind of data scientific data to support your position? enough data to do qualitative data it won't be quantitative in nature but it'll be enough data to inform the shoe can I just jump in here again? your niche market you're going after two places I think you go in the wrong direction and I'm just going to say this before we go because you have something that nobody else has you have service on your side your testing should be with the military because the niche market there right now I am telling you from AFIS to exchanges is a $10 billion company on each side that's where I see your market because of your expertise as a marine not eating crayons because your favorite color is probably green but because that's your marketplace I think your testing should be with the military not with runners we're testing both to be clear chef we're testing and both so we've got runners casual runners that are also military we're making sure that we hit both demographics Marilyn did you have anything else? no that's it well thank you so much we'll let our judges convene for a very very difficult decision I want to thank chef Irvine Al, Marilyn, Ray and Angela for all your contributions to the program what you're seeing now is just scratching the surface of what these wonderful people do for us all the time if you want to give back to DAV Patriot Bootcamp and support veteran entrepreneurs please email us at infoatpatriotbootcamp.org applications as I mentioned before are open for our next new to DAV cohort which will be held in the Cincinnati area October 12th through 14th I'm also happy to announce that we'll be hosting an accelerator event for Patriot Bootcamp alumni in Atlantic City August 3 and 4 you'll want to attend that if you can participants are asked to pay their way and cover their lodging but beyond that the world-class instruction and network of support that you receive through Patriot Bootcamp is absolutely transformative 100% every single respondent who was in our last cohort said they would attend an event again in the future and recommend it to others so it's a good program if you can get in whether you can attend or not please visit the website and sign up to receive updates if you're interested in programming that can help you and your venture succeed and grow our next DAV caffeine connect is June 1 and we're covering a topic we've never tackled before Jeff Bevis a volunteer mentor an extremely successful entrepreneur will be speaking to franchising 101 what to know before you go if you join our mailing list you can get updates on these things and can participate via zoom where you will have a chance to be involved as a new face on the team who will play an extremely important role in the program moving forward DAV Patriot Bootcamp director Nick Brophy a veteran of the United States Army just joined the team Nick why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you yeah thanks Dan and special thanks to our Shark Tank contestants as well as our gracious mentors and judges I feel very blessed to be part of this team and you know I'm charged to lead the Patriot Bootcamp program and subsequently our veteran for newers to greater heights so you'll be seeing a lot more of me as I get more embedded in the programs I'll see a lot of you in Utah earlier later this month rather and I look forward to all those great interactions and doing great things in the future back to you Dan thanks hey thank you so much Nick it's always awesome to have someone a veteran who has the experience that Nick has and is willing to loan it to our cause very important stuff I want to bring Ray back if he's there Ray one of the comments you had about the folks pitching was that it's you said this is an important area where show don't tell is important can you speak more to that oh yes so when speaking when Stephen no no pardon me when Alan was speaking to the shoe what really differentiates what he has is this plate that he's genuinely built and available but just simply showing that shoe and that plate and explaining the difference that visual aid would support a pitch 10x what just talking about it does when you when you look at the contestant so far I mean we don't do slides one of the things you say it's almost a hard and fast rule like Chef Irvine's going into business with family which is another rule that you don't espouse to can you talk about one of your rules is don't have video in your presentation if you're using a deck yeah no videos if you no video I mean you're going to have it's going to screw up and when it does the people that have not been prepared for how to continue moving on it almost always is jarring to everybody but particularly the person speaking and at the end of the day you don't want to take away from the moment so don't have video you can walk through the highlights of what's important click click click and tell a story of what your app does in seconds or whatever your shoe or technology innovation without the need of video just a better storytelling and a process for clicking through and rapid succession you Angela did a great job mentoring these folks when we saw three very tight sets someone went over but they were tight sets but one of the things you said when we spoke before was something about having some space or room to breathe or maybe a strategic pause can you can you talk more about why that's important well when I go to what Angela said she said that you know if it's a two minute pitch make it in a minute and 45 and that's absolute because you want the time to just and then when you get to these key inflection points or these points that really matter you allow for the person to connect with what it is you've said and this of course is especially in a pitch like this where you don't have anything in the back to support what you're talking about and yeah time is everything giving yourself that pause is very important to the to the pitch what do you think I asked Angela this too and maybe I sound like an obsessed introvert myself but there are folks who just because you have a great company idea you have you're capable of all these things you're a great leader doesn't mean that you're a someone who wants to be a spokesperson and get involved in sales do you have any advice for people who are terrified by the prospect of pitching well I mean I was terrified when I started down this path of a patriot boot camp in 2015 and you just you have to commit to look whether you're comfortable uncomfortable doesn't matter you've got to get out there you've got to do it you're the CEO of the company you're going to be the one that's going to reign in the investors and sell probably to your first million in revenue and so your voice needs to be heard so you're going to have to get double down in practice and get more comfortable with it thank you so much Ray I think do we have our judges back are the judges back in yes there they are chef Irvine you have the honor of announcing the the placements sir I'll kick it over to you well I think I think based on all of you doing great jobs of the presentation and all of you needing slightly more information on based on what your your relative product is but we'll go in second runner up I think that's what you say in America I think would be I'm going to make sure there we are I can read it there yes so Simon of refund with second runner up congratulations first runner up would be Steven from jurors deed and the winner Alan from go faster congratulations I mean guys all of you are doing something really special which is called entrepreneurship and having done veterans entrepreneur done chart tank before there's a lot of work that goes into your presentations congratulations for doing that and I thank you and I think the other judges would agree on that do they have any questions I mean I don't know what the format is here but somebody tell me somebody's we usually don't do that but I think it's worth doing now that Alan's bought you guys all off with tennis shoes do Simon Alan do we have any questions from the group Steven all right we just got unmuted but I was just going to say thank you chef for being a part of this that was really awesome for you to donate your time and we appreciate having you here yeah same figuring out the technology with the host really appreciate the time also really appreciate the insights that you guys are providing as you listen to it one of the things that really makes us successful in building these ventures is getting all the different perspectives that people have and the questions that you are providing is really impactful for us so thank you well thank you thank you all thank you chef Irvine thank you to our distinguished judges Angela thank you so much for the special magic that you bring to the events thank you Ray as well congratulations to our finalists and thanks again to each of them for their time we wish them the best luck as they take on their exciting ventures and hope these funds will help them with their revenue greatly thanks again to our judges and thank you all for joining us to recognize our finalists it was difficult enough to narrow the field but it's important to note that the funds these folks will receive which are gifted to the DAV by Patriot Boot Camps Board of Directors are totally insignificant in comparison to the instruction that was available to all Patriot Boot Camp participants and this group especially we look forward to meeting our next cohort in the Silicon Slopes we want to thank Financial Data Company MX for hosting that event thanks again Chef Irvine for your time and we look forward to seeing you and Lehigh and we also want to give a special shout out before we go to Carl Churchill a Patriot Boot Camp alumnus and his wife Lori who are donating alpha coffee products and volunteering on our next event in Lehigh, Utah thank you everyone for joining us until next time grow