 Welcome to DAV Shark Tank. I'm your host and director of DAV Patriot Bootcamp, Nick Brophy. This program is designed for military veterans or spouses to showcase their innovative business ideas and secure investment right here today. Inspired by the popular TV show Shark Tank, this dynamic event brings together a panel of accomplished veteran investors, industry experts, and successful entrepreneurs who are eager to support and invest in veteran-led businesses. Today, we're bringing together three of our veterans who stood out from our DAV Patriot Bootcamp cohort in the spring in the field of pitching. Just as a reminder, the top contestant today will win $1,500 and non-dilutive capital, which is most entrepreneurs' favorite kind of capital. The runner-up will also win $1,000 and the third place veteran coming in third will win $500. And while there is no obligation, these no obligation rewards may help them pursue their important ventures, each entrepreneur was offered intensive one-on-one coaching to improve their ability to sell their ideas to customers and to future investors. Each contestant will have approximately two minutes, exactly two minutes, and we'll show you how 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. But before we begin, I'd like to introduce our panel of judges for today's competition. Our first judge, Marilyn Jackson, is the CEO of UnderGrid Networks, a digital technology and engineering firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. 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 Verizon Innovation Vertical Team, which served as the forward-looking think tank for new digital product services. There, she led the creation of 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 Department of Defense. Marilyn has also worked with GSMA, a global organization that unifies the mobile ecosystem to discover, develop, and deliver innovation 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 everyone's favorite artificial intelligence. She is an expert in the impacts of technology on the global connected economy. Marilyn is an Air Force veteran, veteran spouse, and DAV Patriot Bootcamp alumnus. Marilyn, welcome to DAV Shark Tank. Thank you very much. Next, want to introduce another experienced judge on the panel, Al Nardsliko, CEO of Gigatech, has mentored a number of successful executives and helped companies build and maintain high performance management teams throughout the years. He is a highly respected leader, innovator, and visionary with a rare ability to motivate and inspire. After serving in the U.S. Navy, Al worked as an engineering consultant at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the Advanced System Design Group. He received his degree in computer science and information systems from the State University of New York Empire State College. In 91, he co-founded Systems Made Simple. Under his leadership, Systems Made Simple grew from a startup to an industry leader with hundreds of employees and more than 350 million in sales before its entrepreneurial American dream sailed to Lockheed Martin in 2014. Al, welcome back to Shark Tank. We're happy to have you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Lastly, a newcomer to the DAV Shark Tank family on the panel is Chris Lafever, CEO of ISI Professional Services, also a marine service connected disabled veteran and the president and CEO of ISI Professional Services, which is a full service consulting firm with the purposes of shaping tomorrow's solutions today. As the service disabled veteran owned small business, ISI combines its large business capabilities with small business agility, delivering quality consistent solutions for its clients. ISI's solutions range from planning and management and facilities, engineering, real estate and logistics to leadership development and executive coaching. Chris brings two decades of leadership experience across defense and civilian sectors. And as CEO, he sets a people first tone for the company through and defines its long-term strategy. He has a bias for action and leading ISI and is never satisfied with the status quo. Chris assumed his leadership position during ISI's 20th year of operation and despite ISI's historical success, he challenged how the company was structured and delivering on his promises. And since 2015, Chris's leadership has resulted in transformational change and significant growth, i.e. 400 and plus percent in revenue, 153 percent or so in employees. And ISI has been named in consecutive years by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the nation, one of the best places to work in Virginia, also earned a designation as a Virginia Values Veterans at V3 Employer and our very own Disabled American Vets DAV Patriot Employer. Chris, welcome to DAV Shark Tank. Thanks, Nick, glad to be here. We're happy to have all three and Marilyn, Al, and Chris are living examples of the quality of instruction and mentorship available within the DAV Patriot Food Camp ecosystem. We're extremely grateful for their sacrifices and their commitments and what they do for us to make this program what it is today. And now, what we're all waiting for, I think the contest, right? This is what we came here to see. So a reminder of the rules. To start the program, I will take a moment to introduce each participant by name. Once they begin to speak, they will then have two minutes to present their pitch before the dreaded cowbell. And you will hear the cowbell if we hit the two minute mark, that's a guarantee. So I hope we're all ready. We're gonna get started with our first contestant and our first contestant just so happens to be Philip Bragg of 1350 Distilling. After 27 years in the Marine Corps, including four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Philip retired and decided to turn his passion for distilling into a business. He and his partners built 1350 from the ground up and have created nine award-winning spirits, as well as a first-class tasting room that is a Colorado Springs destination spot. Even though they opened their doors five months before COVID, a very difficult time. They have dominated their local market and are ready to expand into new markets. So ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you Philip Bragg, 1350 Distilling. Phil, take a deep breath because the timer starts when you do. Okay, greetings. Hi, my name is Phil Bragg. As mentioned, I served in the Marines for 27 years to include four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I'm a self-caught distiller. And I'm the founder and head distiller at 1350 Distilling in Colorado Springs. You see, I spent most of my adult life making people miserable, and now I get to make them happy. So what's 1350? 1350 stands for the 13 stripes and 50 stars of our own glory because we're a military and first responder themed distillery. We have nine award-winning products and each one of these products is dedicated to a different branch of the military or our first responders. For example, we have men-and-man vodka, wingman gin, guardian bourbon, Leatherneck whiskey, and our double gold award-winning code for bourbon. Just to name a few. We also give back to the community. We have pledged 10% of our profits to local and veterans charities. And to date, we've given thousands of dollars in cash, product, and in-kind donations to charities across the nation. You see, we believe that giving back is an essential element of the 1350 spirit. We opened just before COVID and the three years despite all of that, we have 1.2 million in revenue. We're in over 120 restaurants and bars. We have over 5,000 followers on social media with a 4.9 rating on Google. We have dominated our local market and we're ready to grow. What we need is partners to help us get into new markets. So if you're a distributor, a broker, a liquor store, or a restaurant owner and you pride yourself in bringing unique and authentic products to your customers, let's become allies. Together, we can make sure that every patriotic American can taste the difference and make a difference with 1350 Distill. Wow, Phil, that was literally down to the millisecond. I was getting ready to pick up the cowbell. Excellent job. At this time, I'd love to extend the opportunity for the judges for the next five minutes or so to ask a couple of clarifying questions to Phil. So without further ado, Marilyn, any questions for Phil? Yes. So Phil, where does your product normally sit on what show? Yeah, I mean, we typically sit on the top shelf. We're considered a premier spirit. And do you do online shipping of your product or is it general retail? We have both right now. We do have an online option. Unfortunately, liquor sales is very complex. So our distributor sells online direct to consumer to 35 states plus the District of Columbia. And then we're available from a retail perspective here in the state of Colorado. So have you mapped out like, I know that all the different states have different laws relating to liquor sales and whatnot. And there's a lot of controls in each state is very different. Have you sort of mapped out a territory where you feel there's low hanging fruit that you're going to have a best chance of penetrating your product within that marketplace? Yeah, absolutely. We have a plan over the next two years to move into different markets. And as you said, we're focusing on the ones where the markets are best in tune to this type of product and this type of distribution. So we just find an agreement with the state of Arizona. That's going to be our first state. And then we're looking at a lot of states in the Midwest like Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota. Because like you said, they have much more laws that are much more akin to a small producer like ourselves. Yeah, and then the logistic aspect of it, keeping it close by also helps with spreading it out. Yeah, definitely challenging to go nation. Yeah, I think for a product like this, a big part of it's a story. So we want to make sure that we can support those markets with my own personal involvement, the involvement of our other owners that we can actually be in those markets and support the products while they're out there. Do you have one that's red, white, and blue labeled? I mean, you've got the national wrapper wrap. You're wrapping a flag around yourself. You should have one bottle that's pure red, white, and blue. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've looked at that. Uncle Sam, call it Uncle Sam's whiskey. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It feel great, great pitch. You mentioned, you guys have dominated the local market. So question for you, what defines that domination and how are you going to replicate it to actually scale outside of the local market? Yeah, that's a great question. So what we've defined saturating or dominating markets, we pretty much saturate every legitimate account that will carry our type of product. Obviously, there's a whole range of different retail outlets in both on-premise and off-premise, and we're not going to be in every one, right? We're a marquee brand for a particular type of customer. So once we got to the point where we realized we had pretty much been in every account like that in our local area within our range, that's when we decided to go to our next phase, which is expanding on the market. So I think there's a couple of things to make that happen. First is you've got to find the right partners. Because of the unique nature of the alcohol industry, it's unlike any other product that we sold, we have to have the right partner at the right place. They have to believe in our product, they have to believe in our story, and we have to be able to partner and be able to support them in their market as well. Because really, there's no bones about it. There's a lot of good risky out there, right? What we want to do, what we have found that people are drawn to the product by the brand, and then they commit to it because of the taste. And so you really got to be out in those markets, support those people that are on the ground and get the product in people's mouth. One last question for you. So are any of your mixtures patented? None of the mixtures are patented. We do protect them with their trade secrets. And we do have trademark protection on all of our branding as well. Perfect. Excellent questions by the judges. At this time, I'd like to invite the judges into their breakout room to tally up their scores. And while we do that, within this five-minute period here, we're gonna invite somebody onto the monitor with us here to talk, ask a couple of questions, get to know a little bit more. So I'll remind you though, before we start that, that you can sign up to get updates on any kind of entrepreneurship programming that DAB offers at www.patreotbootcamp.org. We encourage you to connect with us on social media, specifically LinkedIn or Facebook at DAB, Patreon Bootcamp, where you can also find, if you happen to miss this programming, if you're someone who misses this, it'll be on the news feed on those social media profiles. So I encourage you to join with us there. So today, we're joined by an incredible, the amazing Mr. Ray Antonino, chief expectation center for permits.com. He is a mentor of ours who taught the pitch class at our spring cohort that we had in Lehigh, Utah, back in May, and has so generously offered his time continuously as a mentor, providing follow-up training with our finalists prior to this DAB Shark Tank. Welcome, Ray. Hey, thank you for having me. I'm gonna give a little background on it, if you don't mind, but Ray, if you don't know, is an Army veteran. He's a founder three times over, a two-time TechStars alumnus. And as he puts it, and I think we all think it's really funny, but also true, a master of mistakes. And at 20 years old, Ray owned a car dealership or started a car dealership. By 30, he was a licensed home builder, and by 40, tech entrepreneur. So he knows a thing or two about this. When he's not working on his current company, permits.com, Ray subscribes to the ethos of hashtag give first, and he mentors startup founders and small business owners worldwide. And he's helped our contestants, as I've mentioned a few times, today. Ray, along with his amazing wife, Rebecca, not only run a great company, but they're extremely dedicated volunteers who've supported numerous DAV Patriot Bootcamp events, along with many other events across the country and locally. And Ray actually recently completed our DAV Patriot Bootcamp accelerator challenge that we had earlier in August. So Ray, what I wanna ask you is, what did you think of Phillips Pitch, and what might we expect from our next two finalists? Well, first thing was, I love that he had a story for each of the nine offerings. That's a very important thing in entrepreneurship, is we have to tell that story, and it's up to that CEO, the person in charge of the company to do that. And I think he did a really great job. Even the brand of 1350 and how it came to be. I love that he was succinct in his answers. It allowed for a lot more back and forth dialogue between judges. He got opportunities to learn more and to answer more. It's all about an onion. You can't peel the whole onion at one time, just allowing it to unfold one petal at a time. So it was really a problem for that. And I love a statement he made about, he recognized that the entrepreneur, pardon me, that his customers are drawn to the brand, but that they return as a result of the taste. I love that. I didn't hear that before, and I felt that was a really important part of it. Yeah, and what do you think we can expect for our next two finals? I mean, you did some coaching with them. So you have a little bit of an indication of what we can expect. Yeah, my biggest thing for them was just making sure that they hit the key markers. What is the problem, the solution? What makes them different in a novel way? What, if any traction they have, and by traction, not just revenue, traction can be de-risking in early stage startups. So I think we're gonna see that in a succinct delivery. We've already started with Phil here. He did a great job. So, yeah. Good. So, I mean, as I mentioned prior, you've taught the class, you teach a segment about pitching at our boot camps. Why pitching? What inspired you to help so many entrepreneurs explore the world of pitching? Yeah, well, I sucked at it. I was terrible at it. I was going through tech stars out of Austin, Texas, and we had to prepare for pitch day. And it's a mammoth event. And you're gonna be on the main stage and it's just a lot of, and I was terrible at it. And I was so fortunate to have really good mentors in that program to break down my barriers and then to finally get to a pitch that was executed live on stage. And I think what happened for me was I started realizing I came back home. By the way, where are we on time, Nick? Just so I'm cognizant of it. We're good right now. Yeah, I came back home from being away from tech stars. I witnessed every facet of entrepreneurial journey, even missionaries that struggled with their pitch for how they raised capital. And I just said, you know, I'm a big believer in give from where you can. You don't have to wait until you hit the lottery to give whatever it is you think you're gonna be great at giving. You can give from where you can. And so I just took the education's learned while in tech stars and applied that to helping entrepreneurs. And it's just as rewarding for me as it is for them because it reminds me of the things that I need to be focused on in my own business. So yeah, it's been, I find it rewarding. So that's why I love doing it. Great. And again, we're thankful to have you as a mentor, as somebody who sacrifices and commits your own personal time for the betterment of others. We couldn't be more grateful for that. I just noticed that all the judges came back in. So we're gonna move on to our next contestants pitch. And if you haven't had the chance to meet Ron or see him online, because he's pretty active, like Phillip, Ron, he's active. He's a dynamic results oriented leader. Ron Nussbaum, the CEO of now known as Builder Combs is a conductor of change that never accepts the status quo or an excuse. After serving in the Marine Corps, he went on to add over a decade of experience in the construction industry. Ron has cemented himself as a visionary and as a leader in construction. Working in many facets from field, sales, leadership, management, you name it. He is the host of construction champions podcast and the founder CEO Builder Combs, formerly known as Nut Nest. Ron uses his knowledge and experiences to help others grow and change the overall mindset around construction, pushing the industry into the 21st century and removing the old stigmas and limiting beliefs around construction. Ladies and gentlemen, wanna welcome Ron Nussbaum to our program. Ron, fire away and remember the timer starts when you do. Look, we have all had communication breakdowns. We know what it's like to be on both ends of it. The construction industry has been plagued with this since day one, causing bad experiences, bad reviews and even causing contractors to go out of business. Hi, I'm Ron Nussbaum, founder of Builder Combs. We provide a dead simple method for contractors to communicate with their customers. I'm leveraging over a decade of experience in residential construction, from digging the hose to running the company to provide a simple solution that we've looked at as a complex problem. Over 50% of contractors have no technology for operating their business at all. We have identified this as a broken area. We have focused on solving communication for these more than 1.1 million contractors. Every contractor's got a Facebook page and every contractor's been on at least Instagram or LinkedIn and we know that. So rather than reinvent the wheel, we've used that experience. We've created an intuitive experience without all the clutter. We are excited to have 202 users with 160 yellows users onboarded in the last eight weeks and proud to say we've converted six to paid users. With a win today from DAV Shop Tank, it will help a bootstrap startup focus on converting free trial users and creating processes to repeatedly create success. We didn't have to build something revolutionary. We just had to build a simple solution, one that everybody could use. Let's face it, communication can suck. With BuilderComs, it doesn't have to. I apologize. Thank you, Ron. That was wonderful. Again, we're gonna open it up for a few minutes of questions from our judges. Chris, what did you think about Ron's pitch? Ron, supper five, first foremost. Appreciate your service. Good pitch, clearly passionate industry subject matter expert. The biggest question that I have for you coming out of the pitch is it's tied to construction, primarily residential construction industry, got it. Focused on communication, but who's using it? Is the contractor using it? Is industry using it? Or if contractor with their clients or to acquire new clients kind of have a gap in some fogginess around who the end user is. Yeah, absolutely, Chris. Great question. So contractors and builders are end users. And what we have found is that newer contractors within the last five years is all ideal customer and all fastest growing demographic currently. Who are they communicating with it? They're gonna use BuilderComs as a platform to communicate with whom? They're customers. So we're a customer facing communication platform that allows builders and contractors to effectively communicate with their homeowners in their clients. And when we say communication, we mean from pictures to documents to all text communication and videos as well. To include quotes, contracts, prices, tracking, gotcha. Okay, thank you. So, Ron, hi again. Good to see you. Can you tell me a little bit more about your revenue? Yeah, can you tell me more about your revenue streams? Yeah, so we're $97 a month for up to five projects and $197 for unlimited projects. Is that your only source of revenue? Yes. Your subscription model? Yeah, we are rolling out with the rebrand, a private label starting September 1st where we will be private labeling on software. Okay, pass it over to you. Oh, you're on mute. Sorry, who are you private labeling it for? Who's gonna be actually selling it as their product? So we have a couple of different franchises that are interested in private labeling it to their franchises. And one thing that we have found out is that bigger construction companies would like to have their name on it. So not necessarily that they would be selling it, they would be utilizing it as their product for communication with their customers, but they would like to say ABC contractors on it. Sure, because if they're interacting with their customer, they wanna market their brand to their customer as they're interacting with them. Have you looked at what competitive, what's the competitive landscape like for this product? So the competitive landscaping is text messaging and emails. It's changing how people have done it for years. Well, no, there's a number of products out there. Actually, my wife owns a construction company and she uses a product called Builder Trend. And I know there's a number of others out there because I did the analysis for her to help find the best one. And at the time, there's a number of products that support contractors and their communication with their customers. So I was wondering how detailed have you looked at that? Yeah, absolutely. So what you're speaking to our is CRMs. Correct. We're not a CRM, we're a communication platform. And we work really well with CRMs. Communication has been an afterthought for almost every CRM that's been built. And we will continue to work with them and work on integrations with them to just provide us full round solution for the construction industry. So on that note, are you looking to bring in any emerging technology such as artificial intelligence? Because I would think that a level of intelligence on top of your customer information would give you a differentiator or some other factor that would differentiate you from the market. Yeah, absolutely. Our product will have just like what Grammarly has when we talk about tone detection, Builder comms has as well and we'll continue to develop that. Any more questions from the judges? I know you referenced you have 202 users and you've converted six to subscription users. What's that customer acquisition cost right now? Obviously it's gonna be really high because the low number of current customers but have you projected that out a little bit? It's actually absolutely free. I am getting all my users from Alignable and Facebook groups that I'm a member of. So I am not paying for customer acquisition at all at this time. Any other questions? Since your bootstrap, yeah, one last question. I'm sorry, Nick. Since your bootstrap, what's your biggest challenge that you're facing today in terms of your... The biggest challenge that we face is just brand recognition. We are a bootstrap startup. We are the newer company out here that's headed into construction tech. So it's a growing market and we all position ourselves as being a leader in that but when you're a bootstrap startup, it's a grind. Yeah, it is. Well, if there's no more questions then why don't we take a moment to push the judges off into their breakout room to tally up their scores? And I see they're moving there now. Thank you, Ron, again for your pitch today and fielding those tough questions. Again, while the judges submit the scores for Ron, we have invited another mentor, another Patriot Bootcamp mentor to the program today. His name is Neil Willis. He's gonna have a little bit of a chat with us. Ask him some tough questions, hopefully. So if you don't know Neil, Neil is a serial founder, serial entrepreneur with specialization and SaaS, so software as a service based tech companies. He has successfully created and scaled multiple companies, some with annual revenues approaching 20 million. Neil loves creators and creating businesses that provide great value to people and to create a lasting and positive impact on society. He is a former enlisted turned officer in the United States Air Force and a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. Neil, thanks for coming to our program. Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here. Happy to have you. What do you think is the most important advice an entrepreneur can get to be successful in pitching? I think a lot of it is take a position of humility. I think when people are actually pitching in front of another group, there's this tendency to be able to blow yourself up a whole lot bigger than you are. Now, I think if you're honest about your numbers, you've done your market research, you know where your product fits and kind of how you're positioning your product and your service, then it'll resonate a whole lot with people who are investors, potential investors or partners. I think there's a tendency to kind of go the other direction with that, but I would encourage people to maintain that humility and that'll speak louder than words. Is that, would you consider that to be a common mistake or are there a series of other common mistakes or heavy learning curves that somebody learns in that? I think it is. I think it's a very common mistake. I think people want to end up investors, especially if you're a PE firm or VC firm, you want to develop a relationship of trust with the owner or the leader of the company. And I think when you don't believe the numbers they're positioning or don't believe the story that they're portraying, it ends up becoming, it puts some doubt inside that trust. That's got to be first before they'll agree to a kind of position with a wallet or a check. So you've got to position that trust relationship. You've got to build that first and do it with honesty, do it with humility, but also do it with confidence. I don't mean to be so, to position yourself weekly, but to see, okay, I'm confident of what I'm positioning here. I'm exercising this from a position of humility. And I think you'll end up building that trust relationship first, ultimately leading into an investment relationship. Right. So a lot of people are kind of like they're technical geniuses with great ideas. And of course we're picking on some of our friends in the engineering and tech fields, but there can be introverted in lax sales and or pitching experience. Do you have any advice or resources for people who are extremely uncomfortable pitching their ventures? I was one of those. I was a double E at the academy and I knew formulas and numbers and circuits and things of that nature, but to get in front of a group to be able to do a pitch is kind of like a race that a while ago, he made a lot of mistakes with that. And I'm right along with her with him. And I think a lot of what I learned through the years is not just a practice of being in front of a group, but I read a lot. I did a lot of reading. And I looked at some of the from a business standpoint reading business books that were very relevant and what I was trying to be able to educate myself on and became very educated on the topics I was gonna be that related to what I was pitching to. So I think I've heard that there was a saying that says the difference you hear, the difference you year after year are the people you meet in the books you read. And so I became a big prolific reader. So not only presenting, but also reading to build my level of knowledge in business because I came from a technical background. I'm still faking it as a CEO. I'm just like, you know, so I'm just, I really wanna be in front of this whiteboard just drawing out circuits and stuff. But because of my love of reading and love of learning and self-improvement is actually, you know, allowed my business to succeed as well. How can you, so I know you have some pitching experience. Can you tell us about a memorable one like one that went really well or one that went really poor or one that you scored a big chunk of cheddar? Is there one that stands out to you? I can tell you one that went very poor because it was, I'd started a business back in 1998 after moving from being at Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. And I was starting the aviation company which ultimately became the largest in the Southeast US. But my first pitch was in front of a school district. It was for $850,000 contract for a school. And I had got the equipment that I was demonstrating the night before, was trying to set up, nothing worked. Nothing worked. I went to do the demonstration, the streaming devices and stuff that we were doing and the network equipment, it was at nothing worked. I literally did my presentation with business cards. And that's the only thing I had. But as I said earlier, I was very honest about it and I exercised humility, but also knowledge of what I was talking about. And ultimately I won the contract. You know, so my first job for my new AV integration company was a $850,000 contract that I'd presented with business cards. Wow, awesome. Well, Neil, thanks for sharing your experiences with us today. I see that the judges are back. We're really excited that you were able to join us today and share with us that a little bit of knowledge. And we hope to get more knowledge out of your head in the future. Absolutely. I'll be honest. All right, man. All right, y'all be good, thank you. Thanks. So the judges are back and so we're gonna move on to our third and last contestant. And if you don't know, if you don't know William, William Hill that is of uncharted territory, William started his career working as a phlebotomist in Minden, Louisiana, while actively serving in the United States Navy Reserve where he deployed to Afghanistan. Once he returned back from the deployment, William was able to complete nursing school in 2015 where he began working in the intensive care unit. After several years working bedside, William decided that he wanted to do more for his community. And in 2019, he established the first location for uncharted territory, which is a company that's taking individuals from a minimum wage to a livable wage by providing quality and affordable healthcare training in 12 weeks or less. Uncharted territory has since grown into an established business that continues to serve and help those in need. Today, uncharted territory offers a variety of entry-level health careers and proud partners with some of the premier organizations across the country. Phenomenal, William, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Good luck. And remember, clock starts when you do. Can you imagine going to work each and every day, not being able to meet your family's basic needs? In 2021, the US Census Bureau released a report saying that 38 million Americans are living in poverty. Hi, I'm Dr. William Hill. Growing up in rural Louisiana, I watched my family struggle living paycheck to paycheck. I decided I did not wanna live like that. So I decided to join the United States Navy, so Go Navy, as well as can further my education by becoming a registered nurse. After working in the ICU for several years, I decided I could and wanted to do more for my community. So I decided to establish uncharted territory solutions based out of Houston, Texas in 2019. Uncharted territory solutions focused on gaining, helping individuals gain entry-level employment by getting recognizable credentials for courses such as CNA medical assistance, lobotomy, and many more. Uncharted territories really focused on pushing the needle by providing rapid training for those recognizable credentials so that individuals can go from that minimum wage to a livable wage. I would like to sincerely thank DAV for the opportunity and thank you all for listening. All right, thank you, William. Judges, I turn it over to you for questions for William. Yeah, what is it you actually sell? So we have a fully functional vocational training school. Okay, so it's mainly a training program. This is primarily one of the- A school, yes, okay, so training program, yes. How many students do you have a year? What do you have? Are you currently running classes or- So last year, I think we had 125 is the exact number, but over 100. This year we're on pace to go over 250. Okay. So William, can you explain your revenue model? So we really, so starting off, of course, we wanted to really help the community, but we figured out with the ongoing crisis with employment as well as inflation, we decided to transition and try to partner with the nonprofits who have the scholarship funding. So now that we're doing that, we're seeing a bit more traction because we have to charge a little bit more because of all the reports and compliance things that come into dealing with federal funding. So our model has since transitioned, but we aim to do about a 30% profit for each course, but I'm guilty of having a heart. So sometimes I do cut prices to try to help people, but for those nonprofits, we don't really do that. We just try to keep the standard prices across the board. So there's no confusion. Is all of this in classroom or do you offer a virtual as well? So we have hybrid online and in-person. We have all three. Okay. Well, listen, I think a 30% margin is not bad, especially starting out and especially for the domain, but it's still got a scale for that to be anything, obviously above and beyond 100 students a year. So what are you doing right now to market? So right now we do a lot of digital marketing and then I'm always in a community networking. So we have students come from all over and word of mouth is starting to pick up because of unique design with the hybrid and online training. Now how about, I mean, listen, the labor market is a complex and very competitive one right now. So even from an instructor standpoint, I mean, if this were to scale, I mean, from your current professors or trainers that you have now, I mean are you at a good scale for the 100 plus a year that go into the 250 and how are you gonna find your next leaders and teachers? So we're doing pretty good in that department. So because I was a nurse on the floor, I knew a ton of nurses and I typically hire nurses because they can train in multiple employment occupations. So right now we have about eight on staff that are as needed. And as we scale, we'll be able to bring more and more on. So we're doing pretty good as far as like labor. Thank you. So your revenue, I'm sorry, your overhead for this has to be pretty high. So does your revenue cover your operational costs and your overhead? The revenue does cover, it gets kind of tricky. The highest portion is always gonna be supplies for like books as well as like the actual medical supplies depending on which program they're using. But outside of that, and payroll of course, outside of that, we don't really have much of a cost. Specifically if we're doing like an online training or hybrid then that helps us because we don't have to have an instructor up there each and every day. What are you actually training on now? Can you, in a short and sweet, what are your training mostly focused on what demographic, who? So we do all healthcare. So that's gonna be anyone, our ideal time is gonna be looking for either a new career or just graduating at school or transitioning from college because we have a lot of kids that don't complete college or maybe they wanna be a nurse in the future. So maybe they wanna take medical assistant or CNA to kind of get in the field. What's the timeline from a new student coming in to sort of let's say the lowest level certification to the highest level certification? How long are they in your coursework? I mean, it really depends on the course but programs and shortages is gonna be six weeks. That's gonna be like CNA or phlebotomy all the way up to 12 weeks, which is gonna be like pharmacy tech or medical billing and coding. And you cover all the research right now that you just mentioned? I can't hear you. You cover all of those courses, all those certifications, you cover those all right now? Yes, we have about eight different programs. Okay. Have you looked at whatever funding might be available for COVID awareness, that kind of thing? Yes, that's why I mentioned the nonprofits because typically funding goes to a nonprofit and we aren't a nonprofit. So we have to partner with the nonprofits. So why would I choose you over some other educational means like a community college? Because we have the community feel. A lot of times you go to a community college and it's just somebody in there teaching. Well, with our program, I'm directly involved. You're talking to me, the program director who has the knowledge to help you get to the next level. Because a lot of students come in and they don't know what they wanna do and they don't know what they don't know and somebody might have scammed them because there's a lot of scam schools popping up. Well, I just tell them the truth and try to help them get to that next level. And that helps me, you know, help them but also that's how I get my blessings just by being honest and real. Well, thank you. Yeah, judges, thank you. Those, wow, William on the grill, tough questions, tough questions all around by the judging panel. So I think I speak for William when I say, let's push the judges off into their room so they can tally up their scores. But thank you for all those questions. Thank you for fielding those questions, William. They were tough. So while the judges are doing their thing, we're gonna take a few moments to shout out a few announcements that we have for our community, for those of you who are watching. First, I know the judges just pushed off into their breakout room, but I do wanna extend a public thanks of gratitude to our judges, Al, Marilyn and Chris for dedicating some time for all of their contributions to the program or for volunteering time and time again for our program. So we're very, very grateful for that. Also want to take a moment to extend a special thanks to Ray and Neil again for volunteering and being able to share their experiences, kind of put them in the hot seat for a minute. And I know those of you who are watching have benefited from all of our participants today, everybody that's volunteered. If you're looking to give back to Patriot, the DAV Patriot Bootcamp and support veteran entrepreneurs, of course, we are always welcome to have volunteerism or any other kind of support. You can find additional information at patriotbootcamp.org or as I mentioned earlier by following us on LinkedIn and or Facebook under DAV Patriot Bootcamp. If you're interested in applying for a future program, our applications for our February Patriot DAV Patriot Bootcamp will be opening sometime in late September, a date to be determined, but you can expect to see that on our social media platform. So wink, wink, nod, nod, go to our social media. Participants are asked, if you're not familiar with the program, they are asked to pay for their way to cover their lodging. But beyond that, this world-class instruction estimated at $7,500 for a program and the network of support they gain is truly transformative. And if it's any indication, 100% every single respondent from our last cohort and really our last couple of cohorts said that they would attend another event again in the future if they had the chance. And I know an array is living proof of that. He's attended an additional program. So again, special thanks for that. Whether you can attend or not, please visit the site, sign up to receive updates from us, put you on the marketing list and you'll be able to get those alerts on future programming. So we can help your venture succeed and grow. Also, we have a DAV Caffeine Connect coming up, DAV Patriot Bootcamp Caffeine Connect. Our next one is on September 21st. If you're not familiar with this, this is a webinar series where we highlight a veteran entrepreneur who teaches our community something. And in that next session or segment, we have a DAV Patriot Bootcamp alum, Rachel Costello is gonna be focusing on the first two stages of the business model, Canvas. We call that segment customer discovery 101. So tune in to learn how you can better understand your customers. One of the most important things sometimes gets overlooked. Also walk, roll, run and ride to thank those who serve and raise awareness for our ill and injured veterans by participating in our 11th DAV 5K, which takes place in Cincinnati, physically in Cincinnati on November 11th. Or if you prefer to do that virtually, you can do that between the dates of November 11th and 30th. And you can register at DAV5K.org. It's a fun event, build teams, raise money, raise awareness, all good, all around. And lastly, if you are a veteran looking for support with your any kind of service connection benefits or you're exploring the idea of doing that or you just want a new form of representation, DAV, we are the resident experts and you can get started by visiting our website, specifically benefitsquestions.org. We'd love to be able to help in that capacity. I don't see that the judges are back just yet. But I'm gonna invite Ray, do a little audible here and invite Ray and Neil back on for a quick hot wash. If we can get a couple of extra questions while we have some time. So once they pop in here. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, Ray's back. You say hot wash. There was a question I wanted to ask you that we didn't get a chance to last time. And we know that, and this is for both of you, you take turns if you will, but we know both of you are successful entrepreneurs. So what attracted you to become a mentor, not only in our program, but in your communities? Neil? I guess I get a little bit of a charge of actually seeing someone I'm working with to grow. It's almost like, if you're a father and you actually see that happening and what you actually teach, you actually see them using and doing it whether they're playing baseball or in sports or whatever the case may be. I think that instinct of being a father, being a teacher, being a mentor all kind of goes hand in hand. And so I think when I've got a group or a younger entrepreneur that I'm trying to be able to teach some certain things and seeing them using what I'm teaching them, it gives me a little bit of a, it kind of honors me in what I've taught them too. So I love the feeling of actually what I get by helping. Yeah, for me, it comes down to having a tough start in life. And at the end of the day, having an uncle that was a retired Marine Corps Gunny stepped up, pulled me out of a dark place and he was there for me through the end. So when I pour mentoring into others, I understand where they are, they're in their journey and I wanna pour everything I can into them to see them succeed. Well, once again, I can't thank you guys enough for coming on here and sharing your thoughts with us. Thank you for being part of our community first and foremost. I noticed the judges are back. So we're gonna go ahead and get to the scores. If we can, so I wish I had a digital drum roll or so, but we're gonna do this in reverse order. So what would that be? First runner up, runner up, winner, okay? So the first runner up for the $500 is coming in at Ron Nussbaum, Noosebomb, sorry, Builder comms. Congratulations, Ron, for the $500 win. Put that towards all your business ventures. We're happy to be supportive of that. Our runner up is going to be Phillip Bragg, 1350 Distilling. Congratulations, Phil, use that thousand bucks to help push your venture into the future. And then lastly, our winner for today is William Hill Uncharted Territory Solutions. So congratulations to all of you guys, $1,500 to William, $1,000 to Phillip, $500 to Ron. Thank you all so much for participating in today's DAV Shark Tank. Thank you again to our judges. Thank you again to our special guests, Neal and Ray. And if any of those who joined us, thank you for showing support to our finalists as well. It's difficult enough to narrow this field down, but it's important to note that these funds, the funds that these folks received are gifted to DAV by the Patriot Poop Camp Board of Directors is totally insignificant, frankly, in comparison to the instruction that they received through DAV Patriot Poop Camp. So from those of you who are watching out in cyberspace and beyond, thank you again for joining us today. And until next time, I know we're a little early. Until next time, everybody activate, mentor, create and grow, Patriot,