April 23, 2026 – Unchained Bobby Mascia and Portal AI Volodymyr Panchenko

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion.

0:24 Jim Beach : Jim Beach, hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio, where we believe we can teach you the tips, the tricks and the techniques to go start a successful business. Give you the motivation to get off the sofa, to go out there and get started and to do something really cool. I really want to challenge you to listen to the first interview today and apply our principles that we don’t have to be passionate, we don’t have to be creative, we don’t have to take a bunch of risk. Very excited. Our first guest today is Jose Herrera. He built a 3000 person business in six years, bootstrapped it. He copied the model from someone else. I don’t specifically ask him that, but he’s in an industry that’s been around for a long time, and I don’t talk to him about the passion I wish I had. And he’s very passionate about this business, but I bet you he’d rather be with his family anyway, creativity and risk. Listen to Jose and apply those rules. And then another amazing interview today, another amazing entrepreneurial Vlad Panchenko is with us. He has built a new AI product I’ve been playing around with all afternoon. It’s called portal.ai and it remembers yesterday, you know, chat, GPT has all of these sessions, and it doesn’t remember the sessions. They don’t build on each other. Portal builds on each other, and it gets to know you and to ask questions from you, like, how was that event that we were working on? How did it go? Amazing, amazing. It’s the next step. And so I’m very excited to have Vlad with us today, double entrepreneur, double great show today. We’re going to get started right after this. You got to go buy my book. Thanks for being with us.

2:20 The Real Environmentalists AD : By Jim beach. It’s not about activists, politicians or professors. It’s about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers, building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause, but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book aren’t giving speeches. They’re in labs, factories and offices, cleaning the past and building clean products for the future. The real environmentalists is available now because the people saving the planet aren’t the ones you think, go to Amazon and search for real environmentalist. Thank you.

2:47 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. You know, what we need is a little bit of Unchained, raw truth, and I’m excited to welcome someone who’s going to deliver that. Please welcome Bobby Masha to the show. He is the founder and CEO of green Ridge wealth planning and also Masha Capital Group. He has just released a new book called Unchained, the raw truth about entrepreneurship, family business and life balance. Bobby, welcome to the show. How you doing?

3:16 Bobby Mascia : Jim, thanks for having me. Man, I’m doing well. I appreciate you taking the time,

3:20 Jim Beach : And I appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us. Congratulations on the book. It’s five star rated on that Amazon place. Tell Tell me about what’s the story.

3:30 Bobby Mascia : So, you know, I have a pretty, I guess, a pretty long in depth, in depth story. But you know the heart of it is, I left wall street after I had graduated. I spent a few years I was I really had my my mindset on mergers and acquisitions going back for my MBA, and both my parents, they had open heart surgery within 18 months of each other, and this is right after you remember, remember when 911 happened and basically all of the Financial districts shut down in Manhattan. Oh, yeah, sure. Well, I was part of that. And this was before work from home was even a thing. I mean, we were stranded outside of New York trying to continue to do our business, to trying to do business. We were, I was going back for my MBA. I was going back for a designation called the charter financial analyst designation, and my dad had started chirping in my ear, and the one thing that I promised myself I’d never do as a kid was getting involved in the family business. And then, like I said, my both my parents, within 18 months of each other, had open heart surgery, and I found myself doing the one thing I told myself I’d never do, which was get involved in the family business. So when I had done that, my father was franchising Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins. At the time, Rita ice had some pizzerias. We had about 20 locations, and I came in, I spent nine years in the family business. And we grew up from a. 20 to 40 locations, we were doing over $50 million in revenue. And for every reason that I didn’t want to get involved in the family business was every reason that I left and I walked away from this empire, it was the best thing I had ever done. I had no money, you know. And for those of your listeners that may have been involved in a family business where you were more an indentured servant than an employee, that was the case, but, you know, I started my own business from scratch as a founder, and I haven’t looked back since. And as this thing started to grow and I started to become more successful, my father had come to me and he says, Hey, listen, what are you doing? You’re giving all this advice to people. You seem like you’re doing really well. How come you’re not you and I aren’t working together? And just to set the stage, my father and I didn’t talk for the first year that I left, and when I came back, when I’m sorry, after, after, after the first year, we started to come back to the table and have conversations. We built the strongest relationship we had ever had at that point. So I said to him, like, Dad, I don’t want to have a working relationship with you. We’re really getting along together. Well, what is it? What is it that you need work with? Because I’ll just, I’ll just help you out. I won’t actually take you on as a client, so I sort of do a little bit of side work with him, and then advising. And then he ended up getting diagnosed with cancer, and from there it went from the battle to terminal, and he unfortunately passed about four years ago. So taking over, buying out my family business from my mother, while I’m still running my business, dealing with the estate planning and cleaning up a lot of the stuff that we had started getting to, you know, prior to his him getting sick, there was a lot that I had taken from that experience that I talked a lot to clients about in a third party story, that now all of a sudden became my first party story. And that’s, that was the book. The book, the book really came from those experiences where I said, you know, I’ve traveled a pretty difficult path, and how can I make it easier for others?

7:27 Jim Beach : Wow, a lot to unpack there. So why were you not interested in running the 40 locations, $50 million business? Why did you leave then you’d been happy for nine years. Why leave so

7:43 Bobby Mascia : It wasn’t. It was unfortunately not happy for nine years. My family was involved in that beyond my dad. My dad was the patriarch. He had some brothers and sisters involved. And my father, older, baby boomer with the mindset of, I mean, really, really was the mindset of, of everything was grit and heroics and everything was about keeping people on their toes, tribalism there. Everything was the path of most resistance. I would sit at dinners, and the dinner conversations would be about business. People were jockeying for the closest spot to my dad every opportunity they could in both in both professional and personal settings, because my dad made decisions based upon what he was dealing with in the moment. So even if he told you something was going to happen, he had every right to change it and go into a different direction. That was very frustrating, because I always felt like, I don’t know, I’m a very tight gay personality. I have tremendous drive. I’m sure it comes from both my mom and my dad being entrepreneurs and growing up around that. But I always knew that would be dad’s business, and I needed to go and put my own stamp on the world. And for every, like I said, for every reason, the tribalism, the the family drama, the the, you know, you name, you name the issues in the typical family business, I mean, I was essentially a product of a failed succession plan and then became a professional that focuses around that stuff. So it’s pretty ironic how life sometimes happens.

9:32 Jim Beach : Very ironic, very ironic. Your father seems quite imperious and yes, dictatorial. Was he aware of that and just not care? Did you talk to him and say, you know you’re going to screw up the transition.

9:50 Bobby Mascia : But I think my dad is a type of guy who has the best of intentions, but there’s this, you know, there’s this conversation. And. This would have not just with me. It would happen with sisters, his sisters, his brothers, where it’s you sit down and you have a conversation, and it all makes sense, but the minute it goes public, and he feels like he might lose an edge, an angle, or some sort of positioning, there was some change in his and he had to adapt to the environment that he wanted everybody to kind of be on, which was on their toes. So we had a little bit of an issue where we would come to the table, we have these conversations, and then all of a sudden, he had a different, you know, a different change of heart, the way that he had to deal with others and the decision that he needed to ultimately make after having a conversation. So it was tough, but he did the best he could. I was thinking he was a very successful man.

10:51 Jim Beach : Yes, 20 locations in the northeast of Dunkin Donuts is a gold mine. Yes. So very impressive. What he did. And why was there no money when you left? Wasn’t was he not willing to throw you a little bit? Did you not say anything? Oh, why was it so low when you left?

11:18 Bobby Mascia : A lot of it was, we lived in a world of the carrot and the stick. You know, everything was promised. This will all one day be yours. You will be, you know, you’ll be at the helm. You’ll be making the money. But for now, this is what you’re dealing with. And I don’t think that that was ultimately the biggest impact in terms of which I, you know, which direction I wanted to make stay or go. I think that it definitely played a role in terms of just having enough, enough to, you know, to live my life. But it wasn’t the major determinant, because there always was going to be money there. I think that the point of that is, when I did leave, and we, you know, we left, I think he was upset with me, and I was disappointed with him, and we didn’t talk for the first year. I didn’t have that I, you know, I didn’t have, you know, for your, for you this was more for your audience’s edification is I didn’t, it’s not like I came off and I had hundreds of 1000s of dollars that I was able to save or put my, you know, put away in my coffers to start a business. I think I started the same way that most of your audience has started, which was pure grit, determination and heroics, like had to make it work. Had limited resources. It wasn’t one of those things where resources were endless,

12:44 Jim Beach : Sure, and then, is that when you went into succession planning and your financial business, or is there another step in between there? I didn’t understand what you left to start.

13:00 Bobby Mascia : So when I left, I wanted to get back into finance. And what I realized with a lot of the business owners, because I think, you know, when you’re in, when you own your own business, you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of other business owners, and what I was noticing, because we had multiple units, and there were a lot of people who would reach out to me and say, Hey, listen, can you come help us, because you have this multiple unit franchise going, and we’re, you know, we’re, we’re tripping over our own feet. Can you help out? And a lot of the conversations, really, you know, understanding the difference between the successful entrepreneurs and and the ones that were really making ends meet, just barely making ends meet was the ones that were super successful had good advice, good advisors, a good team, and the ones that didn’t were, like I said, very heroic, heroics driven, and I felt that there was a huge opportunity there, especially from a finance side, and How they were managing their assets and managing their dollars and their liquidity. And when I got back and when I said, I want to get back at the finance I really took me a while to hone in on what it is I wanted to do, but it was, it was to work with them in that financial planning capacity and piece together. You know, I look at business owners, they have their personal life and they have their business life, and then there’s this funky gray area in between. What we try to do is connect the dots in between all three. And that was, that was the goal when I had gotten out, was to build an advisory firm that really helped to advise those, those clients.

14:36 Jim Beach : Very interesting. And so what is the core business today of green ridge. What is the typical

14:45 Bobby Mascia : Client look like? So our typical client is an entrepreneur, usually in the growth stage or later. One of the programs that I just created that actually came from the book is the exit ready. Institute and the belief system that when you get past that grit and that heroics, because I think we really live in like this, hustle, work, worship culture, and we’re trying to get business owners to change their mindset and build a business that can work without them. So if they were to take a two or three week vacation, it would continue to operate and continue to grow. If they really did want to sell and they were exit ready, then the lack of transferability that usually holds up a deal, because when you go to the closing table to sell, most of the most of the problems that arise is the business is very hard to transfer from one owner to the other because the original owner has way too big of a hand in the operations of the business. So, you know, we have just like my Daddy. So you know, what we try to do is really just unchain and that’s why the book is unchained. That’s why my podcast is business unchained. We’re trying to unchain business owners from feeling like they bought themselves a really expensive job to wow. This is how I can build a scalable business. This is how I can grow something that transcends beyond me, while allowing them to still kind of keep their place in the world and understand what else there is out there for them to enjoy.

16:26 Jim Beach : All right, excellent. What do I need to do to get my business ready to sell? I, you know, 62 and I’d love to get rid of the damn thing. That’s why it’s the damn you know, at this point, I’m just tired of it, right? One of those people, how do I get it ready to come to someone like you and actually move on it?

16:49 Bobby Mascia : So what we typically see is that 24 to 36 months prior to sale is like the suit the latest you should be thinking about this really, the minute you start to get out of that heroics and that that grit, and you start to see it work, and you start to see that money is coming in. And you’re starting to think about, okay, how do I grow the scale this? That’s when you should really start thinking about being exit ready, even if you decide you want to pass it on to your kids when you get to the point where you’re 62 The first thing you know, the first thing we’re going to do, because you’re looking for the exit, is try to understand, Okay, well, what does this thing value? But what’s the market for something like this? And what is it that you needed to be valued from a financial planning perspective, personally? So this way we can understand what that gap looks like, because that gap is ultimately going to be your target on the horizon that you need to hit. And then we’re going to start to look at the things that buyers really, really prioritize in purchasing a business. And number one is they want to know, make sure that the numbers are right, the numbers are good. So we’re going to understand, what are the metrics that drive your business. How’s your accounting set up? Is it clear and concise? Have you cleaned up your books? And how do we get it clean so this way a buyer comes in and knows exactly what they’re paying for and and then we try to understand what the infrastructure is right? People write, see, how do we get your clear number two to take on more of the roles and responsibilities, as well as the people that are in your company, to start to own and make decisions around what they’re accountable for, so that this way, we can start to make that a little bit more transferable. And I think when we start to methodically hit on things like that, that starts to free you up to think about what your act two is going to look like. Because I think most business owners, they don’t necessarily get caught up on the mechanics of the sale and what they need to do. I think they get caught up mostly on Jesus. Once I sell this thing, what? Who am I? How do I identify with myself? My social circles are based around this. I’m used to being the boss. I’m used to being the guy or the girl, a woman in the center of everything, to where, you know, everybody needs to talk to me. What does my life look like after this? So that’s another component that we really try to work toward.

19:22 Jim Beach : What is a business worth? Bobby and I know that’s the most generic question of all time, but give us some sense of my income, the business’s income times. What is that business really worth? I’ve heard so many things. It seems to me like right now that we are in a buyer’s market. There’s a lot of people that are 62 and want to get rid of that damn thing, and not a lot of kids who want those businesses. So it seems to me that if I went out and tried to buy the business, I could find 1000s that would be interesting to look at that have no other option. Question, but me, so it seems like I’d have a huge advantage to drive those prices down. Oh, what’s going on as we transition out of the baby baby boomer owner market into their kids?

20:12 Bobby Mascia : So Jim, that is, that is the, I think that is the biggest issue right now when it comes to the family business and the mergers and acquisitions arena is what’s going to happen to these 3 million businesses that are about to change hands or dissolve. And you mentioned it. I mean, this is a huge wave. Every baby boomer turns 65 by 2030 mix that, pair that with the fact that AI is set to reach singularity at 2030 which means that technology and the role of technology is going to play a bigger, a bigger role in people’s businesses and whether or not they’re valuable And they’re sustainable, and I think that as many buyers and sellers that are out there, there’s going to be more sellers than buyers, and the buyers are going to be more particular in terms of what they’re buying and what they’re willing to pay. And the sellers, if they’re so anchored to a certain number or need, and they haven’t quite connected with the process and what they need to do to get their business exit ready. They’re going to find themselves in a business that’s going to ultimately dissolve or be devalued. So our goal is to have them, you know, have the value of their businesses be as strong as possible. And, you know, for those who aren’t ready to sell, it’s to get them prepared and have the business that they’re unchained to, so that this way, as they grow and they age, and they get to that very point, and you know, the next decade, two decades or three decades, they’re already prepared, and they own their market, and they own their business, and their business doesn’t own them.

22:07 Jim Beach : All right, how do we make that huge transition? Bobby, I want to tell a quick story. I went to Hawaii to do a speaking gig, and then decided to bring my wife and little baby out, and we went to the same place that Bill Gates got married, that same resort, and not a great time when we checked out. Here was the bill, sir. And then this is before cell phones. We’re talking late 90s now those cell phones were out there, but certainly not in use in the middle of Hawaii. And then they said, Sir, here is your telephone bill, and my telephone bill, Bobby was bigger than my room because I had spent the entire vacation on phone talking to the business, of course, right? Oh, my God, it was a huge disaster, huge disaster. A couple years later, we went to Turkey in Greece, and I didn’t talk to my business once during that trip. So how does that feel hired? Well during that time, what do people need to do to make that transition?

23:09 Bobby Mascia : What did you do? How did that feel for you? The difference in the experience for you, know, from Hawaii to Turkey, did you how did that resonate with you, personally and your family?

23:23 Jim Beach : You know, I was with the same woman, and so it sucked both times. She didn’t. She was the type that didn’t appreciate either. So we obviously got divorced and such. Okay, so she had, she measured on one goal. Did I bring home a check Friday or not? Okay? Her definition a good week.

23:52 Bobby Mascia : So well, you know. And I think that, if you if, for most people who have that, that mindset, that hustle, that hustle first mindset, that then hustle worship mindset. It really is hard to de identify yourself and be able to take that time when you’re in Turkey to not want to see what’s going on with the business. But I think that if your game plan is to is to ultimately run the most successful business as possible. Exit ready isn’t the finish line. It is the whole game. And when you can start to put together the mechanics within your business, to be able to take that time and disappear and not have to check in, the enjoyment should really be around the success that your people are having by not needing to call you. So I think it really depends on what your mindset is, but I think you can find a reason, whether it’s you. Cheerleading on the success of the people, cheerleading on yourself for the fact that you could take the time. If you’re the type of person who loves the experiences, that’s a big win to be able to enjoy that experience, experience instead of making the phone calls out and but not, not everybody enjoys that ever. So there are some some workaholics out there. And when you have the workaholic mindset, I think the best thing you could do is just say, Hey, listen, I’m going to cheer on my team for not having to reach out to me. And that’s a really big win.

25:31 Jim Beach : That is, that’s a huge, huge win. And it

25:35 Bobby Mascia : Takes time. It takes it takes a lot of mindset changing. It takes a lot of working on the business, as opposed to working in the business, which I’m sure a lot of you know. A lot of your listeners have, have heard those two dynamics before, working in the businesses, getting in through the day to day, working on the businesses, looking at the bigger picture in the game plan, and how you’re going to get from point A to point B and C and beyond. But when you can start to work on the business, more so and less in the business, it’s amazing how, when you give people the opportunity to become accountable and take it to the next level, how much more they appreciate it, how much better they perform, and how much longer they stick around with You, and the type of loyalty that they give because you’re going to do something that a lot of other business owners don’t tend to do naturally.

26:30 Jim Beach : Yes, Bobby, how do I raise a second, third generation of kids that are going to respect the hard work that I’ve done and not piss the money away and such people receive $25 million and then go off and become ski lift operators. How do you raise a good kid with money?

26:54 Bobby Mascia : So you know what I always kind of found, I mean, every kid’s going to be different. I have three children. Each one of them is different from the other, and working with different clients, and just working with my own family and and talking to other experts in the field, I think at the end of the day, the main two pillars that I built green Ridge off of, which is communication and transparency, are kind of transcend. They transcend over to how you deal with family as well. And I think the level of transparency has to have some sort of like a paradigm shift as they get older, but the communication needs to be there. This is this is what we’re doing. This is why we’re doing it. This is what it took for me to get here, being able to see the hardships, communicate the hardships they become, learning lessons. And what I found more so than not, are the second generation, or the third generation that ends up receiving this windfall, not really understanding what it was that was coming their way. They’re the ones that tend to kind of go a little bit off the rails and overspend. They don’t think about money the same way. They don’t appreciate money the same way, because it becomes like the lotto winning newfound money that they weren’t brought up around understanding and appreciating.

28:29 Jim Beach : Do you work, and I think to push your kids as hard as your father pushed you,

28:35 Bobby Mascia : I do it differently. I do it differently in a sense of I know I do it in a little bit more of a a supportive teammate that challenges and appreciates but talks about what they could do more and better. So when my kids come back and they go like, my oldest son, my oldest son just, he’s a sophomore in high school, and he just got brought up to varsity, this is something that he’s he’s been thinking about since before the season. He’s like, I want to be on the varsity team. And they don’t necessarily take sophomores into varsity, and he worked his butt off, and he got brought up, and I said, that’s great. I’m really proud of you. I think one of the things that we talked about was the playtime that you get on JV is going to be a lot. The playtime on varsity, while you’re going to be on varsity, is going to be a little so now, what’s the next goal? You only hit your first goal. Doesn’t end there. What’s your next goal? And he goes, my goal is to get into center field, or get into into left field and be able to play more to play more innings. I said, Okay, how are we going to do that? So I’m encouraging talking about. Out, you did great. Now, what are we going to go for? For next that’s been my that’s been my technique. Does it work always? I don’t know, but it seems to work with him. Seems to work with my middle guy, seems to work with my daughter. And I just think that this created a really good relationship with us as well.

30:19 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Bobby, great stuff. Congratulations on the book, and thank you, Jim, success, how do we find a copy? Listen to your show, come to your house for dinner. All of the above.

30:33 Bobby Mascia : Doors always open for dinner, especially for you, Jim, if you go to Amazon’s got my book Unchained, the raw truth about entrepreneurship, family business and life balance. Right on Amazon, you could pick it up. It’d be delivered to your house. Jeff Bezos does a great job. He even, he even gift wraps it for you. Everything is on my website. Bobby masha.com you could find out more about green ridge. You could find out more about my my manufacturing company, the 18 Duncan’s, I run. We just bought a a construction company. You know, we we have our hands on a lot of different things. So I have a lot of different people who come to me just to pick my brain and ask for advice about about what it is they’re doing. And, you know, if we haven’t done it, we know somebody who has, so we, you know, we embrace and and encourage people to reach out if they’re running into issues, because if we can help them, just like the book, get through something a little bit easier than if they were to do it on their own, then at the end of the day, we feel like we won.

31:37 Jim Beach : Fantastic Bobby. Thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it. We’d love to have you back and congratulations. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Jim, appreciate you, and we will be right back.

31:55 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. I’m very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Vlad panchiko to the show. He is the founder of Portal AI, which is helping understand people for every conversation. And I think that I understand a little bit about it, and we’ll see if I get it right or not. Vlad does the portal. It’s an AI conversation that remembers you the next time. Welcome to the show. Vlad, how am I doing?

32:29 Volodymyr Panchenko : Jim, thank you very much for the invitation. It’s an honor to converse and to talk and to be invited. You’re amazing, and thank you again. The days are great here in California, and everything you’ve said about well is 100% true. I’d add there that I believe in the teaching where everyone has a personal AI agent, which can remember, care and do anything you want for you, about you and with you. That’s what we’ve built, and what we continue to build.

33:15 Jim Beach : All right, I love it. I have certainly asked about that feature. So is this a standalone AI that we should use instead of grok, or is it an add on? Where does it fit into the ecosystem Vlad,

33:31 Volodymyr Panchenko : It actually leverages, or maybe most of it AI models present on the market. And the best of them include, by the way, so under the hood, we have all of it, from rock to Gemini to Opus to all the image, video generation, sound generation, but it’s all under the hood. So how we like human beings use it. I always had my mom in my head when activating they just talk. So for now, you can use it. I message or telegram channel, and then you text, or you will just talk, and you say what you want, and you get it, and everything else is under the hood. You don’t you don’t care about how. You just care about what you want, and it makes it done. I can’t make it actually right, Uber for you now, but the rest most of it,

34:27 Jim Beach : Okay, so give me an example of what people have done with it and what they’re

34:33 Volodymyr Panchenko : Using it for. Well, I can start with myself and I, well, I registered trademarks. I published worldwide songs which were created by my friends, and now I can listen to that on Spotify. But what people actually do, I know, put together grant and wanted to know. As writing a book. I know the person who is now managing a network of coffee shops, including all the taxations, legals, administrations. I know. Oh, by the way, like another friend of mine in LA, she won tender for the brand of Owen shoes, and now she’s directing worldwide commercial. And actually her posters and videos are already worldwide, everywhere, and all of it was done not leaving our application. So as I said, just don’t be shy to say what you want. And one more important thing is that I don’t take no as an answer and just ask him or her whatever up to you, or just go and try again, find a way to do it and just do it.

35:54 Jim Beach : All right. Very interesting. And who is your primary customer for this is it? Who are you hoping uses it?

36:08 Volodymyr Panchenko : My primary customer is an average person. So I’m targeting like 100 million people in the United States who are not technological geeks from the Silicon Valley that are normal human beings who are right now. They may be working on a restaurant or in a legal firm or whatever jobs in the work we have, but the obligation is built in the way for anyone to leverage the best and the most advanced AI to empower, to unleash the talent. So again, my target audience is the, as they say, as the average joint male in the US

37:01 Jim Beach : All right, and you have to have a code to get in right,

37:06 Volodymyr Panchenko : Sure, sure, sure, sure. You have to have a code. And brave new world with the code, which you can use either on the website and telegram or in your I message. And after that, feels like just let go your imagination.

37:25 Jim Beach : All right, tell us the history you know. So I know that I kind of interrupted your introduction unfairly because I asked a question in the middle of it and got lost there myself. But you also have seven patents, 50 plus algorithmic versions, and you’ve previously co founded the market and raised three $50 million there. That was it. I don’t know what that company did, but it seems like it was related to NFT somehow. Walk me through your career from the very beginning all the way through starting portal and also where you are now, walk me through the whole

38:06 Volodymyr Panchenko : Thing, sure. Well, I was born and raised in Ukraine. Let’s say I wasn’t born with the silver spoon. So so my head to make money to random table. And I still love video games, and I love reading sci fi, so connecting all of that together, I built multiple businesses, like more than four. Every time I was some new technology which was discovered, which I would take and think actually, what could I imagine I would like it to be doing for me in the next couple of years, so we all can have fun. And every time it was like that, so there wasn’t, there is a business of trading, games in digital form. Then there was a business of trading in game items. And then the market was out of the box solutions for the triple A game developers who actually bought it in 2022 to enable them to trade items, and also all the KYC, IML financial taxation. So all of it will be transaction hundreds of millions of dollars a year for 10s of millions of customers worldwide. And then there was, once again, a moment for me. It was the when the chat GPT, as the chat GPT software, was released, I got a feeling that I don’t chat anymore with a linear equation. So this is something bigger than that. And then, as usual, the process started of me to envision the future. And then Mike. Stop myself from building it. I always blessed, and I am blessed to have a friend for more than 10 years and co founder, who is a technological genius and was and is in the air from the very beginning. I asked a lot of questions. He’s always eager to answer. This is how it all started with sporliar, yeah, that took us two years to get to this point, because realize evolution by evolution by evolution, we have six fully approved patents. The last one is still pending, but from optimizing and making end to end sales from the website or just a photo of a product for small and medium businesses, which we actually did the first iteration of the product. Then we got to this point where, here it’s as simple as it is, so everything is under the fluid. It’s being orchestrating, orchestrated by the technological genius of technological genius, but for us, as I’m a less technical person, it’s just something that remembers you, learns what you like and helps you to get what you want on a daily basis. And I honestly build it, first for myself, then for my friends, for my mom, and it is the best AI now can provide to people, and it’s getting better and better every day.

41:59 Jim Beach : Okay, I have a lot of follow up questions there the app or the platform. Does it help you build agents? Or is it, it is an agent, right? It takes the AI to a more personal level, but then, does it involve my agents as well, or help me build agents that make it more personal. How does the agent make it more personal?

42:28 Volodymyr Panchenko : Oh, that’s social. Everything you’ve said, it’s impossible. Vice versa, it’s the question from the person who understands how it works. I’m working on myself to communicate in a way and build the product in a way for the people who may less understand than you and me. So that was my thinking about how to answer your question. It is practically an agent, and it’s a separate space for each person, which has secured, encrypted and card build. But that agent whenever you want, like to, for example, like, there’s one influencer, she just asked, like, can you like, do the audit of my Instagram account and help me, like, make money? And then, like, he did the audit. He built the website. He did build the payment solution. He’s building the stores. He’s iterating and doing all the marketing, so I know, like the record was where under the hood, one person got, like 45 sub engines. I know people who are running crypto exchanges, like just using the chat, what, let’s say, but how it gets first, it talks with you on your language, and is always very, very different from person to person. For example, like 75% of users, they name their agents, very different way. And then I remember the first time when we had a service shut down, like, for an hour, the amount of people who had texted me, like, with a lot of emotions saying, like, bring me back my like, life, like, there’s an emotional connection. Because it works for you. It remembers you and it don’t get me wrong, humans build AI and we’re not perfect, I’m not perfect. So it can hallucinate and can be wrong. So it’s okay, but it’s still. Gets the shit done. Assumption, which, like, I don’t know, that influencer, she wouldn’t be able to put together the website, the audit, the stories, the analysis, like, all of it by herself, in the matter of, I don’t know, half an hour. But then, like, instead of making works well, she’s her reach on Instagram got like 40 times more, and her revenue got like 20 times more. And you have to try it. So if you want to feel it, usually it takes like, two, three days, and after that, that’s your best friend or Chief of Staff. It’s always different from person to person, but when, for example, in my case, I’m still working, like, 2am and then she can tell me proactively, like, robot, like, it’s too late go sleep. Like, don’t worry. Like, I’ll get all the shit done, and when you wake up, it’s gonna be all working. It’s an interesting vibe, which I’m happy to share.

46:22 Jim Beach : I love that sleep thing that you just mentioned. I got an email from my virtual assistant, who’s in the Philippines, and he said, I’ve been tracking your night and when you’re going to bed. And I’m like, how he’s like, when you send your last email, I see that you’ve worked and he’s like, you’re going to bed really late, Jim. Are you? What time are you getting up? And I was like, Oh, that’s really nice of you. Virtual Assistant, a real person in the Philippines. The idea that the AI would do that, I think, is what’s desperately missing. I’ve been talking with chat GPT 5.2 and I’ve been trying to tell it that that when I show up again, you should ask about what we were doing last time. You know that’s what’s not real about you, is that you know when I see my perfect human assistant. They’re going to say, how’d that meeting at four o’clock go, you know? And so that’s what I tell chat GPT to do and or to be. And it’s getting a little bit better. I’ve sort of been impressed that it’s figuring out to do that a little bit more. So it’s interesting to see it kind of learn, how does that? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Jump in, please.

47:45 Volodymyr Panchenko : Vlad, I want to just so how does it How does it work? If I’m sorry for interrupting, but if you want to tell us, how does it work in our on our side, well, first of all, it takes around technically, it takes around the day for your personal and private assistant to learn from your conversations. How do you converse? But as an example of how it works later, there’s another girl she was just sharing on our form, When was the moment when it clicked for her? Was when her agent just wanted, like, something she wanted to do, or she said, like, she says this way, he answered, like, oh, like, No, that’s good. Get out of here. I’m not gonna do it. Like, that’s good. So like, and I’m very polite, right now, it was a little bit harder. And she said, Oh, okay, so that was the moment when I realized that I that’s not chatgpt, because it’s not just didn’t agree. It just actually like disagreed and I had an opinion. So this is one of the examples how it works.

49:12 Jim Beach : Well, I know that it integrates with Google calendar right

49:20 Volodymyr Panchenko : Up to you. So we have a lot of integrations. It always comes with user requests. For example, really like his bicycle is like one of a kind, and he’s doing what? So he integrated with multiple apps for tracking. If you do that, I be honest, like I gave my Olis a credit card was maybe, like a few $100 limit, but whenever I need to buy some tickets on my kids gala or something, I just tell her to buy it, and she does it so some integrations with. Then cross propagate for all of the users, some of them, they stay yours. But if you want something or integrate into something, just tell her, and she will do

50:12 Jim Beach : The app will integrate with whoever I want it to.

50:22 Volodymyr Panchenko : It may take time. So the last time, for example, where I was publishing that song, I didn’t actually believe that it would be possible. It took her, like, almost 24 hours, and like 20 different tries. We tried building something like but then she was able to do all of it, like register, doing all the websites, got the rights, published that worldwide. And then, like, as I said, don’t take no as an answer. And also, as I said, the integrations which users ask, we do it quickly on ecosystem level. And so if you go to the portfolio, go into your profile, you will see all the apps you can connect. But on a personal level, it’s even easier. Okay, will it do things that was his upside? I was trying to remember Stella, he collected Strava.

51:22 Jim Beach : What does Strava do? I’m sorry,

51:25 Volodymyr Panchenko : That’s the main application for those crazy people who like cycle a lot. Ah, okay,

51:35 Jim Beach : That is very cool.

51:37 Volodymyr Panchenko : And garden, yeah. Well, as I said just I am sometimes surprised by the capabilities of the system. As another example was when there was another shutdown of the system because we’re broke all the limits in one day of Google anthropic, and they saw that this is like a shock or something, so we had to deal with it, but I also had to talk with some of the customers in How I was thinking about next steps was that we would have different agents for different tasks. As you know, the tabs in chat, GPT on the left, when one would be iodine for some like personal stuff, work stuff, legal stuff. But that woman I talked to, she didn’t know about it, and she’s running a restaurant, so she actually built from her voice. So just talking to the agent built by five different personalities. Each one of them was like her employee, with different voices and different tasks, and they would do their different jobs and respond there in different voices. So I wouldn’t even think that it is possible. She didn’t. She built it, and she was using it for a month, and it works so

53:03 Jim Beach : Very cool. Glad. How do we sign up? Get to be part of it.

53:07 Volodymyr Panchenko : Interact. As I said, either I message or Telegram, the code is a brave new world.

53:20 Unknown Speaker : Just try it. It’s fun.

53:23 Jim Beach : All right. Thank you so much Vlad for being with us, and I appreciate I can’t wait to see how this is I’m going to play with it here. In a second. You get addicted to it.

53:35 Volodymyr Panchenko : Well, whatever happens, it’s for the best. Thank you for the conversation and have a wonderful, wonderful

53:44 Jim Beach : Day to you as well. We are out of time for today, but you know what we do? That’s right? We come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, go make a million dollars. Bye. Now you.