 Good evening everybody and welcome to the Vermont pitch challenge entrepreneurial exchange number four insights from entrepreneurs tonight featuring a guest I've had the pleasure of speaking with before I think you're going to enjoy for a variety of reasons broken more and founder of wildlife imaging systems LLC. I'm going to tell a little bit more about him. Before he gives a presentation that I think will help a lot a lot of students who are considering or already have. Entered an inquiry about this pitch challenge so far over 200 by the way, have already submitted inquiries. But prior to that, I'd like to just give you a little background on the pitch challenge. I'll be your host tonight. John right now I've had the pleasure of working. At the University of Vermont who's sponsoring this as well as CFS brilliant pathways and nonprofit that's partnering with UVM on this. This great project an opportunity for students to enter this pitch challenge. Just a couple of dates to go over the next entrepreneurial exchange will be on January 9. And that'll be on how to create a compelling and successful pitch by speakers from UVM academic research commercialization program. A ton of experience in the area. Good tips for you as you're building your, your, you know, putting in your application, which January 15 is when that that opens. So you'll be able to actually submit your, your application at that time. So today, today's presentation, I think we'll give you some tips and helping you how to do that. And then just want a couple of things like to mention in case you're not aware grand prize is full full scholarship to tuition, tuition, comprehensive fees. That's a pretty, pretty impressive offering from UVM there. Shout out to JJ because vice vice provost of enrollment management for putting a lot of this together and offering these prizes second prize being $5,000 third 1000 last thing I'll say eligible 10th, 11th, 12th graders. Your business plan will be judged by UVM students using the following criteria does a product or service offer a solution to a problem faced in the target market. You're going to hear from our guests tonight about a little bit about the importance of that. Does the product or service create a positive impact. Is it creating something different in the market and how effectively does the plan achieve your stated goals. So that's some of the some of the rules for it. A little bit of background. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Brogan Morton, a mechanical engineer and founder of wildlife imaging systems LLC, a leading provider of advanced machine vision solutions to further the conservation of wildlife. I'll let him explain a little more about what that is, but formally a senior product manager and RG systems in Heinsberg a lot of experience in the area. There he guided a successful development and commercialization of their bat deterrent system, similar to what he's doing now using ultrasound to reduce bat mortality near wind turbines. From there, I will turn it over to Brogan Morton. Awesome. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. I'm going to share my screen here and make sure everybody can see it. Can you see that John. Perfect. All right. Thanks everybody. Appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen to me. Hopefully I can share both my journey and some lessons that I've learned along the way of becoming an entrepreneur. This is less pitch focus and this is going to be more an entrepreneurial ship focus and kind of what it takes to have a successful startup. So a little bit further on me. I'll just this will be really brief. I'm Brogan Morton. I'm the founder of wildlife imaging systems. I make my home in Vermont. I do have a education as a mechanical engineer. That's kind of how I started my career, but me entered my way into marketing and really product development and marketing, which is honestly a lot of what entrepreneurship is all about. I think one of the most important things is passions. And I put that on here because I think it's really important because if you are going to found a business and you're going to do something. It should really be something that you really are deeply passionate about because it can be a really tough journey and you'll have highs and you'll have lows. And it's really going to be your passion, I think, for what you're trying to do that kind of gets you through. And so as John mentioned, I worked at a company here in Vermont energy systems in the wind industry. I moved back to Vermont for, you know, to work in the wind industry. I was very excited. I love the outdoors. I love conservation. And I'm a big as an engineer, big, a big STEM fan. And so I'm kind of lucky enough to have passions that all aligned and came together in the job that I had and now the job that I actually have as a founder. So a little bit about wildlife imaging systems. We were founded in 2020. I started it in January 2020, which is most of you probably remember is just two months before the pandemic so it was kind of an inauspicious time to leave a well paying job and decided to strike out on my own. So it was kind of interesting but honestly it worked out as you can tell right now just fine. What we do is we're focused on bringing computer vision and machine learning technology to wildlife conservation. So we're definitely a high tech company. We've taken a little bit of a less traditional route I think most startups you hear about to really go and do a pitch and maybe get some seed funding and then some venture capital. We've gone a path of all non dilutive funding so we in a previous job that I have I knew about this program that the, in essence Department of Energy and National Science Foundation have, which is a small business innovative research grants. They, any, any one of the, you know, government agencies that provides R&D dollars has to set aside part of it for small businesses exclusively I think it's over three and a half percent. So it's a really fantastic opportunity if you've got some tech to be able to get non dilutive funding in essence they give you a grant, and they do not take any equity and you can develop your product with the idea that you will probably have to go get future funding from venture capital. So, if you get something tech focused, definitely something to check out. Now, this is going to sound really strange. But let's start with bats. And one of the reasons I keep this in here and it's a little bit odd it's a little bit of a biology lesson in the middle of an entrepreneurship talk is because through the journey, I have had to become a somewhat of an expert on a topic I never mentioned that I would ever have to be an expert on. So I, and it's kind of honestly one of I should have put one of my other passions is learning. I absolutely love learning new things and all kinds of different stuff. And so I'm just going to share a little bit about and you'll see how this all ties in a little bit later. So I don't know if you all have seen a bat before. I think we have ideas from movies and a little bit scary right bats are actually really these tiny little, I would say in a lot of cases these really cute little birds, right, they've got the little eyes the big ears. They're actually the only flying mammal. They are mammals are not birds. And we have all kinds of different species here in North America. I think one of the coolest things about bats is the fact that they fly, but how do they fly, right they actually have their wings are actually extended So this is kind of pointing out all the different parts of the bats wing. So you can see that their elbow is right here. And this is actually their wrist right up here and every one of these little appendages coming out is actually one of their fingers. So their entire ring structure is actually just supported by a membrane that's actually connecting all of their fingers together. And they're the Latin name for the, the family is actually carotterra which means and a lot of people think that bats are fairly large but I actually have a video this is when I was out in the field with some biologists I don't actually handle bats myself you have to be trained professional and I am not that I am still an engineer but I like to tag along with the biologists when they go do something cool. So this is kind of a fun little video that just shows you bats that they had captured from a bridge. And so you can see they're actually just the size of your hand when they're all scrunched up, right, and they don't have their wings extended. And a lot of times we think what a bats eat. And it really does depend. Most of them do eat insects like you'd think of traditionally, but some eat amphibians reptiles fish, some are simply fruits and nectar. And but one of the things that it's important to think about is they provide incredible what they are called ecological services. So there's one cave in Texas called Bracken cave and it's home to at its peak 20 million Mexican free tail bats live there and during the year. And when they go out at night, they have to pour out of this cave for hours, right, can you imagine 20 million of anything coming out of the mouth of the cave they pour out for hours, and then they go across the landscape, and they eat 200 tons of insects in one night. Right. And so I like this one because it kind of puts it in more human terms it's like eating the equivalent and the weight of 200 Volkswagen Beetle cars. That's incredible. Now, who benefits from that. Certainly farmers, right, because some of the insects that they eat are actually crop pests. So these bats are an important part of the ecosystems and actually are providing ecological services to the surrounding areas where they actually live. So you're probably asking yourself, I came on to this to learn about entrepreneurship and what the bats have to do with anything. Why is he droning on about these bats. Because really, bats is is where my entrepreneurial story begins. As I mentioned, I was working at a company here that was focused very much on the wind industry. And I was actually the product manager who was in charge of any sort of system that actually went on to the wind turbine itself we had a condition monitoring system and wind sensor systems and all kinds of systems. And we were actually approached by a customer and that comes from international and they said we have a real problem. Unfortunately, wind turbines do cause the fatality of bats. And we've got this technology we think you guys should develop. So that was in 2015 and I was lucky enough to be the product manager who got the assignment to try to bring this to commercialization. And so we did that. And what it does is it actually are ultrasonic speakers so I don't know if you know this but bats, they fly at night. And so imagine flying at night in the dark vision while they can see things would be a really hard way to catch an insect, you know when you're flying through the air. So they actually use something called echolocation. So they create a sound, it goes out through the atmosphere bounces off an object and by when it comes back, they listen for how long it takes and they can judge how far away objects are. And so that's actually how they forage and orient themselves in the world. So we had this idea that said well, if that's the primary sense that they're using, if we try to do something, you know, clever like create a whole bunch of ultrasound so they couldn't actually hear those echolocation returns. Maybe we can actually just make them stay away from the wind turbines in the first place. And if they stay away from the wind turbines in the first place, then there won't be any fatalities or injuries, because bats don't actually run into, you know, a stationary wind turbine. Right. It's actually the blades go very fast someone when a wind turbines go in full operation. The tip of the blade is actually going about a quarter of the speed of sound so fast, so very fast. And it's something that even if a bat could perceive it would not have a near a chance to actually take any invasive action. So that's what we did. I was part of that team, we created these ultrasonic speakers we put them on the nacelle where all the blades connect to on the wind turbine. And it pushed and tried to try to push the bats away from that rotor swept area where they were in harm's way. And that the technology worked but it didn't stop all mortality. And so we were really interested in trying to get to a solution that really just solved this whole thing just stop bats and from having any fatality. So as any group of good problem solvers, we said, Well, what we need to do is we need to go out there, and we need to see how we can improve it. So we went out to the field. And this is what we saw. You can't see what's happening because it's dark out. And so that was our founding kind of insight, which is Wow, like, there's no way to understand what's actually happening here. So it's our it was my Eureka moment. So I said, Why don't we just use thermal cameras to monitor bats around turbines. Now thermal cameras are a special kind of camera. They don't sense light like a traditional camera on your iPhone or any other BSLR. They actually sense wavelengths that are actually emitted heat so all of us are warm, we all emit heat and in bats themselves because they fly and expense so much energy are actually really hot. So we can use one of these thermal cameras, and it's actually measuring the heat signature of everything. And so bats just pop out and it can be the middle of the night. I could show you a video of a thermal from a thermal camera and you couldn't tell if it was day or night because it's looking for heat energy. It's not looking for light. Now, I do want to point out another thing. And I because I do think that sometimes there's a misconception. We were not even close to the first person to realize that to think of this idea. There had been researchers who had, you know, done some experiments with a couple thermal cameras around wind turbines. But we realized that there was a problem we're solving. But to solve it, you can't just, you know, do research and put out a couple cameras at a wind turbine and turn around a paper in a couple years. We really had to do it at a level of scale. That is not something that was really research based. It was really something that we were had to focus on commercially. Which also parlays into this, I will tell you, I'll be the first person to say I'm not a necessarily Steve Jobs fan boy but this is a quote that I think is really important. Because a lot of people say hey like I'm not creative, but it's important to know that creativity is not just something you know it's not just something that geniuses have and poof it comes. Again, this quote talks about it, but it's really just putting together different things from different things. So if you're a person who likes to like understand all kinds of different things, you'll find these natural connections to things where maybe somebody never thought about those two things together before. And it might not feel creative because it might just feel like hey I just saw this thing over here and this thing over here and I put them together. But that is the beauty that is a creative act and it is important to know that if you could be seeing things just a little bit differently than everybody else and putting those two things together could be a critical insight to starting your own business. So our solution, we would take a thermal camera and we place it near a wind turbine and we would focus it up. And I don't know if you if you all know this but if you've ever been in any sort of product development takes a really long time to do hardware. And so we said man that that's going to take us too long we would, we don't need new cameras, we just need to use cameras that are already existing and put them into novel solutions. So what we did is we got, you can see the thermal camera is on top of this tripod here. It's got a 200 watt solar panel 100 amp hour battery and so the whole thing just runs off of solar power, completely independent of the turbine. It records all of its video into a little micro SD card. And so what we would do is we go every couple weeks and swap SD cards. We can then upload all that video to the cloud where we can process all those videos into the useful analytics. Right. So all of this that right now is just commercial off the shelf products that we don't even necessarily we resell some of it but we don't sell a lot of it. This is an image actually taken from one of the thermal videos so you can see that we have some clouds in the background, they're light gray. I don't know if you know this but space is very cold. And so, and so the sky actually provides an incredible backdrop for especially little things like bats you can even see insects from quite a large distance on a really clear night when there's no clouds. And so what our magic is is not taking you know is putting these things together in a smart way, but then it's a software that can take a whole bunch of video right so we're recording 15 hours a night. And this year we're recording at over 15 projects over 100 wind turbines across North America. That's, you know, I haven't calculated the number of hours but it's too much video for anybody to review and any reasonable amount of time it's just really literally impossible. So what software does is it goes through and it makes sure that it pulls all the important information out of the video. So one of these images down here is actually one of the things our software turns out. So it takes a 10 minute video and then it distills it down so everything in gray is kind of what happened in the background, then everything in yellow is actually detection. So you can actually your eyes put it together pretty well but you can see these different bat tracks that are happening. Right. So these are the actual bats and their flight pass around the wind turbine. And they're like, wow, we can actually start telling what are the bats doing. So instead of it just being data it became something that a human can also interpret which is become something that's been incredibly valuable to us you always have to remember customers it's not just a pretty picture it's actually a useful piece of information that a biologist can look at and make a hypothesis about why do you think the bats are there in the first place. The solution is this and this is a whole bunch of just code right and so the software and how we process it is the salute really the the true value that we bring to the situation. You know we can buy the equipment, but this how we process it and turn it into something valuable with a customer. That's really our solution. And so, I'm not quite sure how this is going to come through on zoom but we'll give it a go. This is one of the thermal videos so this is one you can see the wind turbines must be very low wind, the blades are rotating very slowly, and you can see these little white dots. And there's actually in this video up to 12 of them around the wind turbine at a time. So we found that there are periods of time where the bats are just all over the place, and those are the times that you need to avoid operating the actual wind turbine. And if you want to be able to reduce that mortality, which is something that, you know, we couldn't be venturing before right so we were really just making kind of playing darts in the dark I guess is what it kind of kind of guessing and checking. So how does this help our customers. As I mentioned, we can tell them. So this is when the bats are showing up this is the time of year. This is the time and night. And so if you want to be able to conserve those bats, then you need to be able to stop your wind turbines during periods of time. It also allows us again to understand behavior and understand why bats are there in the first place so perhaps we can do something like either use deterrents in a in a different manner to make them even more effective. Perhaps we can find out why they're kind of attracted and coming to coming to the turbines in the first place and actually reduce the attractant so we can deal with less of it. So that's kind of a, I guess a thumbnail sketch of the journey that kind of how I got from, you know, just focusing on wind energy to now being at this nexus of wildlife conservation and renewable energy. And as you might imagine, I've learned a couple a couple lessons on the way that I'd like to talk about. The first one is, it's so critical that you become problem focused, right? You meet a lot of people who fall in love with their solution. They think they've got this cool new widget that they built. And you ask them, yeah, but what is it, you know, how does it help somebody and sometimes they can't answer that fundamental question. And I will tell you this right now, no one will care about your idea, unless it solves their problem. It's really important that you're focusing on how this thing is going to be used by someone else. So I have a couple of things that are here, which is maybe types of problems to focus on or ways to think about the problems. This is one that I picked up even just this year, which is create an aspirin not a vitamin. Do something that relieves that's something that's a real headache to somebody right now. It's actually causing them a pain. It's such an inconvenience. It's, it's something that they just don't like dealing with. They're going to be much more likely to adopt your solution than something like a vitamin. You know, we're coming into the time of year, but maybe gym memberships are maybe a little bit easier to sell. But, you know, the idea of like having to put in work to go to the gym, right, like it's a harder sell than it is to relieve a pain that's happening right now. So when you're looking for problems, think about it. Choose an aspirin not a vitamin. The thing is, is when you think about problems, especially in the business I'm in, I'm doing a business to business. Right. That's my company. And there's also business to consumer. When I do business when you do business to business. A lot of times people are making business decisions. So, and it'll happen even with business to consumer people will get multiple quotes if you're offering a service, they're going to get multiple quotes from different people, if you're not, you know, is differentiated. So, I always say this, don't create a $20 solution to a $10 problem. So when you're being problem focused, you also have to think about the fact that, okay, this is what the problem is worth to somebody. This is what I think they're willing to sell. And if you can't create a solution that matches that or is under that, right, because we want to make a profit here, we don't want to just break even, right, then you have to think about how much your solution costs. You may come up with five solutions, and you might not even pick the one that that solves the problem in the best way. It might be the one that solves the problem enough, and is inexpensive enough that it'll actually gain adoption. And then the final one is kiss, and this is an acronym, and it's keep it simple stupid. Don't get too complicated. If you get complicated complexity kills, and it makes things a lot more difficult, not just for you, but for your customer so keep it simple. And when we're thinking about how we create a solution to the problem. I like to think I like to think of it as this Venn diagram here right. We need to create a solution that's desirable. So that means that your customers it's something your customers really really want, right, they they really want it, because it's just so cool or just does this thing so well. But it also has to be viable. That means that you can again you can charge more money than it costs you to provide that service so it's a viable business model. And then finally it's feasible. It's your business, you have to be able to do it so if it takes a if it takes building a really complicated machine learning model and you don't know how to do that, then it's not really feasible for you right now. So you can't break laws of physics and you should be doing things where you feel somewhat you feel comfortable enough that you can put a solution together that's feasible. Right. And what we're trying to do is hit the middle of that graph. Right, desirable and create a viable business model, and it's feasible. The next one, it, I started out as an engineer and engineers, oftentimes really like to think that they've, they've got a really great solution or problem. But then it hits the hits the customer and the customer says, Oh, that's not really my problem. This is my problem all over here. Right. There's a phrase that I learned that I think it was Christian Clayton, who says people are not looking for a quarter inch drill. They're trying to have a quarter inch hole. Right. A drill is simply a solution to getting the thing that they actually want, which is a whole. So if you want to use a laser or a drill bit or whatever, like that's what you that's what you're trying to do. So, when you have your idea, and in this business idea, right, and I mean I think this might work. It's just an idea right now, freedom like it's a hypothesis right it's something you need to go test and check against other people. So get out there and talk to people. It's also important when you're talking to people to keep in mind that no one ever had an ugly baby. What does that mean. It means that you'll go say hey look at the solution look how cool it is. Right. And there's a lot of people say oh yeah yeah that's really cool, even though they may never have an intention of using it or everyone because they don't want to hurt your feelings. So it's important again not to just show them your solution to it to figure out how to, how to solve their problem. And this is the graphic I love that it's that's that's nice dear. That's the exact thing you don't want to hear from one of your customers, a little pat on the head and come back to me when you've got something that actually works. Finally, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because as I was putting my slides together, I saw that Professor Eric Munson already talked in depth about the business model canvas, but I kept it in here, because I think it's super important that this is not this is an important thing that you need to think about. Right, and they make a really great book, the business model canvas, or thanks for having me show a business model generation. It's a great book. It's not terribly expensive. If you're really interested in this, read it, take the lessons, and it's a super important tool and way to think about how to build your business. And so the only thing I'm going to add is to say that when you're on the beginning of your journey, you want to think about kind of the top right hand corner of this. And this is value proposition so it's the value you bring to your customer, and then on the right hand side is your customer segments and there's two things that you talk about which is customer relationships you need to build. You're going to communicate with those customers to tell them you have the coolest thing, right, and then the channels, which is now how are you going to actually deliver that service, right. So, in our business, we don't actually do any sort of remote installations we work with end clients, but oftentimes there's a third party and environmental consultant who actually is the boots on the ground who does a lot of the work. So one of the channels that we work with to help deliver our product to an end client which is a wind company is oftentimes a consultant. Right, and they make money because they get paid to do that, and they also get paid to use the data in intelligent ways. And you have to think about how you're going to reach those customers and it's not doesn't always just have to be you. You know in a retail and think about a retail setting right you may have a cool widget, but you're going to have to sell it at the store. You know, or maybe you do have a digital, you know store front or something like that, but all those things require very different solutions, right. So you got to think about those things right up front. So in the beginning, really focus on the delivery of value to those customers. And then this is my final one, and I would always be remiss if I if I didn't include this one perseverance right as I said, if you're passionate about it and you believe it and your problem focused. You're going to you're going to probably find a way to make it work right. I'll also say it's only a mistake if you don't learn from it you will make plenty of errors. And if long as you view them as learning opportunities and ways that you know how to do it wrong now right. I think it was Thomas Edison and said like you know I know you know 9999 ways to you know not make a light bulb. That's true you have to keep keep trying and keep trying as long as you are learning every time you make the mistake. So this is what I share with everybody. This is actually an email I got so I was talking to you about the SBIR program this is the second SBIR I put in. And this is the I regret to inform you letter, which is you didn't get the funding. And again, in the early stages of a company, not getting the funding can can be a life or death, you know, sentence so you got to pivot and you got to say okay. What did I do wrong. I'm going to look at the reviews what the reviewer said yada yada, and you have to learn from it. Again, only a mistake if you don't learn from it. And I would love to keep talking about this and I'm sure john's got a few questions and you all have a few questions. So I'm going to turn it back over to john. Thanks, bro. A lot there for sure. I still like the only it being an only a bat the only flying mammal I've always that's right off. But you know, overall, I just, you know, you and I have talked about this before just the idea of finding a legitimate problem out there that needs a solution. And you had said something really interesting to me, like in your let's just say you know students looking to put forth a proposal for this contest, and in their head. You know, it's a great idea it seems like there's, it's a problem. You had suggested having students or anybody who's thinking of launching an entrepreneurship entrepreneurial venture to ask people go out and ask. Experts in the field if you will. Yeah, is this legitimate me a problem and legitimately and what you know, yeah, to talk a little bit about that because some kids are hesitant to do that understand. But you're saying people love to talk about it. Yes. So I will tell you, if you find a problem that is that is like really worth solving people and you and you say hey I'm you know I'm doing this and I think that I am trying to create a solution to this problem. And it's something that, you know, touches a nerve with somebody and they say, Oh, wow, that problem really needs a solution. I would love if someone could do that for me. They will absolutely talk to you about it. I'm going to tell you I didn't I was not comfortable. Excuse me networking was a decade ago, I, you know, or maybe a little bit more than that. I was, I did not like it. I just didn't like it. And getting out and putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. And it's okay to feel uncomfortable. And as you're an entrepreneur you're going to doing a whole bunch of things that probably make you uncomfortable. And for some people networking comes really easily. And there are some folks who myself included, it was a skill that I had to learn, and then you eventually get comfortable with it. So it's not like I'm going around knocking on every neighbor's door, you know what I mean or doing anything like that. And, but it's something that I think it's a skill that you need to get comfortable with. So, so, so think about that. And even if it's just starting a conversation to practice take small steps you don't have to go and find a customer right away it's just like those small steps making small conversations. Maybe you find a, you know, we're in the holiday season maybe you find a relative at a party you're at and you know maybe the one that you don't know as well, and you just find a way to connect with them and then maybe you test your idea on them and see what they think you know maybe don't take that data point but use it as practice right it networking and getting comfortable with getting customer feedback. I was actually part of a, as part of the DOE and NSF programs, part of an entrepreneurial boot camp. And in six weeks, they require you to have over 30 customer interviews and in six weeks. So, it's a critical thing and that's just and they tell you like that's just the start, you know this is this is the six week boot camp version, you should be having if you're starting a company, you should be having over 100 of these. Because by the way, if you, and don't talk about your solution when you're talking about just talk to them about the problem people love to talk about, you know, that their experiences right. And by the way, if you do end up coming for a solution with them, you've already got people who you know already have the problem and they will be very comfortable when you come back in a year or six months and say, Hey, by the way, the thing we talked about, I actually developed it would you mind testing it for me. And I'm going to say nine times out of 10 people are like, absolutely, it solves a problem you feet feeling listened to. And being able to be a really good listener is an underappreciated skill and people love to feel like they were listening to. So, super important. Yeah, let's have a quick question here I'll get to in a second, just a quick follow up to that. You know you have those anecdotal evidence you talk to people, you know and you get ideas for people in the field. What about it's anecdotal though so data wise you know you have you have an issue a problem you want to solve. And you want to find out is it truly on what scale is this truly a problem not necessarily you know five people said it was whatever. How about just doing research on what you think you're about to solve and actually make a lot of money doing an ideal you know, and help people on the way. How about how about just research I mean, what would you suggest to get legitimate data. So, even before I became an entrepreneur I was lucky enough to my previous company to they we went through this something called the voice of the customer training, which is even something a developed company can use to understand what the features are that they want to put into a new product. And so with those sorts of things, it's talking about, you know legitimately 30 to 60 people, you know. And now I will tell you this, they will be conversation you have and there's just some people who are. There's some people like to talk more than others and some people who are more articulate, you might have 30 conversations and five of them might be stellar. And the others may be okay and some might just be bad. But like, so you know quantity in a lot of ways you will find the quality ones just by doing the quantity of them. If you go and you talk to five people and you're like I think I know what I'm doing. I want to tell you either you certainly could be find a solution to the problem, but you're undervaluing what your problem is, because if you talk to more people you might find that oh wow I can solve this even bigger problem, right. And so don't settle for the first thing right talk to those 30 people even if you feel like, excuse me you're not, you know, learning, you know, something revelational with every conversation. If you get to the 30th you're probably hearing a lot of repeat stuff and but that validation that it's it's a it's a repeating theme and digging into it is an important thing. Yeah. Question the chat box here I think it relates to what you started off talking about having passion. You just got to have passion for that for what you're going to this venture or just, you know, and this particular question of a student about basically just you know procrastinating and we're trying to work through this I know I have a lot to do but I'm, I'm struggling a little bit with they're struggling a little bit with kind of overcoming this procrastination to, you know, in this case it might be to submit their application. I'm guessing it's tied you know if this particular student does find something they're passionate about to to submit this application that would light a little bit of a fire but any tips you may have on that feel free to. Yeah. So, it's a hard one. So, I don't want to procrastination to me typically like when I find I'm procrastinating something. I'm doing something that I'm not comfortable with, and I don't know what the outcome is going to be. But that's scary. You know what I mean, like, even to, you know, like, I may have started this business but it's not like I just, you know, to be like, there's still, there's still things that make you uncomfortable, because they're new things that you're doing. And so typically what I find is procrastination you're doing something that is out of your comfort zone. So give yourself a little pat on the back because you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone and and try to break it into the smallest incremental you can. Right. Just say, Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go work on this for 15 minutes. I'm set a schedule. I'm a big, and again, not everybody does this. I'm a big proponent of scheduling blocks of time right. If you know I'm going to get I'm going to get home and from six to 615 630 maybe start 15 minute increments. I'm just going to work on this I'm going to put the phone away. I'm going to turn the TV off. I'm going to, I'm really going to like, take something and make progress, and then measure that I'm going to see that you every if you're doing that 15 minutes you're going to find that progress and it's going to build a confidence. I'm going to say like, I know that putting a pitch into this is probably a scary thing because you're putting yourself out there. It's an idea that you had. And that idea is something that like, and someone's going to, someone's going to judge it. Right. That is not the easiest thing. So validate yourself and say yeah this is this is a hard thing I'm doing. But you know what I think in the long run, it's worth it. Right. And I'm going to work a little bit at a time and I'm not going to try to just get it all done in a three hour shot. And I don't know so that's, I work best based on time based schedules but. That's a great that's a great tip and I think helpful for students that are trying to get you know meet this this January deadline, not to chip away at it and increments like that. That's great. And speaking of you know I'm glad you brought up, you know it is a personal that you're putting forth something about you know I think this is a good idea this is me and you, you showed your rejection letter like not always pretty. So this leads to a question that a student asked me to ask you. Why do you think because he threw out a number I'm not sure if it's accurate but still of something like 100 entrepreneurial ideas or pitches that are that are given only like three actually make it or turn into a to a business. Well that's not the numbers law. What he had the question was, why do you think so many ideas pitches entrepreneurial ideas fail. Yeah, because I mean to it's it's hard identifying a new problem that you have a novel solution for that, you know to mean like kind of other people haven't noticed, and that is kind of in your wheelhouse is it's a hard thing there's no I would say a lot of times the way that I, and I think there's been some research on this but I don't remember any numbers but I think honestly a lot of it is, and that's why I focus so much on my presentation on this is not being problem focused. It's saying, I just, I have this idea, I have a solution to a problem. If there's anything that you want to do by the way what the solution and again I didn't have time to get in this the solution that I have today, or doing this at wind turbines is not at all what I pitched the first time to NSF. I had to pivot, because I realized like I, but I was for a long time I was really stubborn, and I was just like man like I really feel like I should make this work. And sometimes you get into the trap of thinking that you should just work harder, and that'll make it work and sometimes you have to know that no it's just, I need to rethink, I need to fall in love with the problem, not my solution. The solutions, that's why I also like to think of everything as a hypothesis. It's just an idea you have right now, right, treat it casually. I mean be serious about it but don't be like, this is definitely going to work right because it might not but you, but I guarantee by solving if you come and you're trying to solve this problem, you're going to find a different way to maybe solve it instead of the initial one that you had. I'd be interested just to hear, you know, I'm not going to get into status but I'm going to guess a lot of founders will say like, the thing that I ended up doing was very different than what I thought what I set out to do. So if you so know when to know when to hold them know when to fold them, and just know when to pivot, right like that's, and that's okay that's not a loss, right. Admitting that your first idea wasn't the right one and taking that turn and saying I'm going to do this a little bit differently is how you keep your business alive and how you keep the dream alive, right. And so don't hold those, hold those ideas like very, very gently and be willing to let them go free if they need to be. I like that I like thinking of it as a hypothesis that then test, you know, in different ways. And like you said, maybe you find out not really and then you pivot to whatever it is. That leads to a quick question so say a student is going to submit something by January by deadline or when it's sorry when it when it's open to it's open for a while so. And they, is there a way for them to sort of test it prior to submitting because I could see it like they submit it time passes and they're like, geez. I think maybe I, you know, I should have gone this way or whatever. Yeah, their ways to sort of like poke at it and get kind of test it early. Yes, there absolutely is. So the company that makes the business model canvas also makes another book called like testing business hypothesis, and it can be as simple as, you know, to mean like just going out there. The first thing you could be doing is going out and just making sure again, if you know the problem, and you know it inside and out and you know, then you're, you're 90% of the way to the right solution. You know, will probably become apparent to you. If you really know the problem so just really understanding that space, really, really well, and having those conversations. And so I would say if you're trying to prepare, and you're trying to keep everything fresh. It's again it's those conversations, right, like conversations are free, you know to mean like spending 15 minutes or half an hour somebody if you can get them on the phone or you can just meet them in person even better. And having a conversation with them is that's the way you do it. And so it doesn't take, you know, a million dollars to do that. It just takes you billing will to put in the effort and to go do it. Yeah, yeah, interesting. I had a student ask if you thought the student likes to watch Shark Tank. And, you know, that you stand up there you got five minutes, and it gets shot down or they love it or whatever. Do you think most the question is basically do you think most ideas entrepreneurial ideas when when sort of presented like that, that some people that kind of know what they're doing in the field really could say it can tell that quickly. Like, you know, yeah, no that that's a great idea I did invest in that. Or, you know, you know, the guy that always says no that's terrible get off the stage. I mean you think most of them are, you know, for somebody to submit something. Do you think it's something that most people can tell who are professionals, you know that it's probably as a chance. Yeah, I mean, maybe it yeah a chance. So here's the thing it depends on like how specific, you know something I will be honest like we've had. We've had our commercialization plans written when we do proposals for these things that have been, you know, kind of criticized for not being realistic. And I'm just like, well, we're kind of proving and like it's sometimes it's so niche that like someone on the outside like if you talk to a general person and you're just like, Hey, do you think a company that like focuses on monitoring bats around winter would be successful. People like you're crazy what are you even talking about get away from me. You know what I mean, like, and so it don't. If you, if you have an idea and and you pitch it and you haven't talked to anybody else and you haven't verified. So that's the beauty. You can go on a shark tank but if you've talked to 100 people and they've said it's a problem, and your solution solves that problem. It doesn't matter what that one person's opinion, who may not be your target market by the way, right so that's another thing that that Professor Monson talked about market segments and target markets like who are you selling to it may not be the person who's who's on the other side judging them they may not have that problem. And whether that's a you know to mean like where they live or like how they live or whatever like that's just may not be something they've ever encountered. And so as a parent like people, you know, if I didn't have kids, there'd be a whole series of problems I wouldn't know, you know what I mean that I wanted the solution for but I know that I want to And so, I would not, if you rely on the data and the interactions you have with people who would actually buy the thing that you're in and put your faith there, not in someone else who's going to judge who doesn't really who you by the way you and someone's going to pass judgment. But it does mean that you need the data on the other side, right if you're if you're going to be if you're going to have the confidence to not listen to somebody. Right, then you should have the data, or at least in the own knowledge that this is something that's really going to solve the problem. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up because I mean you're right you're like your field technically, you're, you know, it's an it's a niche product and it's field niche need, but it's needed, obviously it's working. Exactly. It's a great point because some students might think God has seemed like a little bit of a crazy niche ID I have well, I mean, doesn't mean it's not needed. Exactly. It does not mean it's not needed and it doesn't mean that there's, you know, not someone willing to pay for the thing, you know what I mean, like, and so, so, again, but you got to find them, and you got to be confident that there's enough of them that you can do it. And then if you do that research, and you find it, you should be confident in your research not someone else's opinion, because what they have is hypothesis. And they don't have the data like you do. Yes, believe in your own data. Exactly. Well, we're coming up a little bit on time I just want to see if any other tips or things just kind of leave students with any thought or two about, you know, as they kind of, because it's getting down to crunch time soon they're going to have to submit and I know. Yeah, some close any advice you may have to kind of close it out be great. Yeah, no, I mean, again, I don't want to sound like a broken record but really think about the problem that you're trying to solve right and not and not just your solution so if you go in pitching, you know, to the in this and you and you say here's the problem on trying to solve. You're going to get a lot better response than here's the here's the solution I have. And when someone asked what problem you're trying to solve like I don't know but like I got a pen that you know changes color whenever it's like well who's going to buy you know to me and like that's you're really trying to solve a problem. And so, so really focus on that to start, and the solutions will come. Yeah, me squeeze one more and prior to that. We have a question here about, and I think it's an interesting one because it says you know what would you say is a billion dollar idea well, if you knew that you'd be. But it's a scale question. I mean there, if your idea made the market maybe this size for your idea and that's. But if you're just like I just want to make as much money as possible that's a different thought process and you're trying to. Yeah, I mean is there any any thought that or do you just are you just like stick with what you know. Yeah, it takes an exceptional human being to, and I am, I have no interest and I don't think I could deal with the pressure of running, you know, like running a billion dollar company or scaling ability. It is, it's it that would be a pressure cooker because I will tell you this, as soon as you take is to make a billion dollars you have to start with $50 million of somebody else's money, and those investors are going to expect results and your but is on the line to deliver them. And, and so, so actually I'm glad that you brought this up. I think sometimes people use the term like lifestyle business as a little bit of a pejorative I don't really like the phrase because it makes it sound like I mean mine is a niche business, and some people have called it a lifestyle business, because it's not a billion dollar market and it never will be and that's okay with me, because I'm doing something that I love that I'm passionate about that I can make a living at and that I feel like is making a difference in the world. And, and so know, know your why also of why you're starting a company if you're starting a company to make a billion dollars. You're in a totally different trajectory than someone who is starting a business that maybe just says hey, I want to the benefits of owning my own business and making my own schedule and and trying to use my own wits to solve this problem. You know what I mean like is very different than saying I want to make a billion dollars. So, I personally, if you want to make a billion dollars go find that market. Right now if you're not, if you're not an AI researcher out ahead of everybody else like you're probably not going to make a billion dollars right now but maybe you're you've got the next big thing. But I would say for now maybe start maybe your first business can simply be a $10 million business. You can work up to a billion right like Elon Musk didn't start Tesla and didn't start SpaceX. Like, he started PayPal way back when I think a lot of the kids who were submitting were probably maybe not even born. So, it doesn't all just magically. I think actually another another great phrase is behind every overnight success is a company that's been at it for, you know, 10 years. Everything looks like it magically happened overnight right whenever it hits the press and whenever it's big. Oh my gosh, chat GPT like that, you know, oh my gosh that's so huge right. People have been working on that for a while. Right like this isn't something that just sprung out that in the last year someone just said hey I got an idea let me try this like this has been stewing for a long time. So, maybe make your first business a $10 million and then your second business can be a billion dollar one. Yeah. Now that's good. I mean that that's a reality check to about the you know these things don't don't happen overnight but but the theme that you throughout the evening here I think too is, you know, the passion for what you think will solve a problem and ideally help a lot of people. The other thing I would encourage people to do which is like yeah maybe maybe you're not going to be a billionaire or millionaire or whatever but if you can go home at the end of the day and be like I put in an honest days work and I'm doing something that's actually helping people. Right. Like, that's that's that to me is amazing. And so think about that too. Right. Like, our is what you're doing. You know, helping people. Yeah, that's I think that's a great, great place to leave it, because I think that's it's often overlooked it is actually one of the criteria of the pitch challenges you know who are you helping you know. Yeah, so, yeah, I will leave it there I could talk all night about it but I really appreciate the presentation a lot of great insight and if any students have any follow up questions or if you have any time and you're busy. Well, we can send them your way and that's great. Okay, really appreciate it. Thanks john. Take care.