From Rock Bottom to a $3 Million Run: Paul Roberson’s Bet on Himself.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Welcome to Vega Circle Podcast with your hosts, Pocky and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success, and culture. And this is our platform to showcase the people in our city who are making it happen. And on today's guest, we got just that, man. We're sitting down with somebody I'm really excited to sit down with. I've been running into this brother, man, everywhere, man, over the years. So he's a Las Vegas native entrepreneur and brand builder. Let's walk into the circle, founder and CEO of Flow Technology, Mr. Paul Roberts. Welcome, Robert. Welcome, Roberson. I said your last name wrong, man. It's all good, brother.

It's all good. Here in the flesh.

Yeah. So finally, man, we've been, I think we've been running each other for years, man. I'm trying to think when the first time we probably met was probably maybe three, four, maybe five years ago now. Yeah, it had to be one of these uh these little small community events around entrepreneurship.

Why Entrepreneurship Finds You

What made you jump into just being an entrepreneur, man? Because there's so much that's this here, man. Like what kind of got your uh interest in being your own boss?

Yeah, I'll I'll jump into it. I think um no one really plans to be an entrepreneur. Like my parents, they hospitality, you know. Pops work security, moms work the front desk. So that's what we grew up on. It's part of a travel and tourism program, you know. So it's just like everything was really focused on hospitality. And I honestly couldn't have written this story if God gave me the pen and paper to write the story and outcomes and journey where you can learn. So I'd say everything came about through just persevering, through darkness, right? Through darkness, okay. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, sometimes it's the downfall of certain things or a disruption in life that kind of shakes the tree and allows you to identify your core value and what you bring to this thing we call life. And that's where the journey may begin if you if you choose to accept. A lot of people they just lay down and pout, and some people they dig their feet in and you know, they they think about a North Star in regards to what they want to do, and they pursue it with tenacity. Yeah, there's only two choices. And and here you are, here I am. Yep. I think it's the same reason why you you scaled and built your your platform and how you've come here to where you are at today in this beautiful studio. Yep, I'm sure this is phenomenal, right? It feels official, it feels well equipped. You guys did the pre-show, right? The pregame. So a lot of people, I think, just don't embrace the moment and learn and build and just keep chopping that wood, especially with today's world, right? Everything seems so instant. You think of something and buy it immediately off Amazon, whereas you know, back in the 80s and 90s, we had to remember Kmart and stuff like that. Like you gotta go to some. I hope they have something. Yeah, if it's not there, it's not big ass at big five, you gotta go to the other side of town. I remember shopping for football gloves back then.

So your parents are taking you to one spot.

So yeah, so I mean, I I truly believe I've always been one that likes to play in the sandbox with friends, right? I've always been one that's inquisitive, and I've always been one that's like to solve problems and put out fires. So, you know, you know, my why today, I think I would refer to myself as a a bridge builder by nature, a problem solver at heart, you know, and that's how I got to here.

So yeah, we could dive into a few more questions, but let them say that like entrepreneurship was never the end game. So you kind of you hit a fork in a road and you're like, I'm gonna go left. And that's kind of how it navigated.

Yeah, it definitely

Rock Bottom And Rebuilding Mindset

went left. Everything went left. Like, so the downfall tore my Achilles on the job, got a DUI in between that time, right? Being bored, my little brother died. So my girlfriend left me at a time. I was too radical. Where my I lost my best friend and my brother, best friend who's like a brother. Uh, we're just not talking, not like lost or passed away. And so I think you know, you find yourself on an island, and it's just you and yourself until you realize that you know what? You start looking up and you start like this could be worse. And I started reading, and the next thing you know, you kind of pick yourself up. But that was the darkness, you know, that I found myself in on the couch, reading a book, Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I love that book. Yeah, that book and mushrooms is what saved my life. I kid you.

I haven't heard that one yet.

Yo, my roommate, White Boy Todd, is what we called him. He came through and I never even asked him. He brought some mushrooms, and it was after my brother passed. And I cussed my brother out six months before he died. And so I think that really ate me up. And yeah, that night I told myself I was gonna go find my brother. And luckily enough, I survived the night. And the next morning, I still don't know even how I ordered that book of Napoleon Hill, but tapped into that book, and I had just had Achilles surgery, so it's like, yeah, nothing but time to read. And that's also another way I came up with flow because I was on crutches. So I needed I needed something to help my dogs.

Oh man.

Tony Hsieh’s Community And Culture Lessons

Let's jump back a little bit just uh about just kind of the journey, you know, growing up here. You lived at the airstream park, right? With Tony Shea?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lived with Tony for about 15 months. Okay.

What year was this? This is when it first started, or what was that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was first started. We it was across from Atomic Liquor at the time before it moved over to what they called the Ferguson.

Okay.

Gosh, man, I remember Elon Musk coming through there before I even knew who he was. Yeah. Me and my partners, we uh Well, the partners I had secondary for moving in there, they had a bus that ran off used vegetable oil, right? And so we ended up living ended up living on that for uh for almost you know six months after we moved out of the community. But it was a great time living with Tony. There's a lot of lessons learned, definitely on how to bring people together, how to create a culture, right?

They did an excellent job.

Yeah, and I I I kid you not, it was it wasn't through conversations with him because Tony is very, you know, not he wasn't closed off, but he's just very, you know, subtle, very observant, you know, very observant, right? And then when he did talk, everybody listened because he was he was pretty funny too. But yeah, I think it was uh it was a great time, a lot of learning lessons in regards to just what's out there. Yeah, and that's where a lot of the questions started. And in there I met through collision, came collaboration with others, and that's where I met my partners uh in Ponix, Ponix Farms. Oh, okay, where we got into building, where we got into building uh vertical farming, vertical farms in Atlanta.

Okay. So in in this airstream park, who was all in there? Is Tony Shea, a lot of people from Zappos that built Zappos?

A lot mostly in tech or yeah, yeah, is uh founders, entrepreneurs, musicians. Any anybody could live there, anybody can move there? Not anybody, you definitely had to have an interview. Uh because it was a protected community, for lack of better words. Sure.

Yeah.

So shout out to Brad Johnson, uh, who's a friend of mine. He was Tony's right-hand man. So uh yeah, he's the one that presented the opportunity to us. And Tony

UNLV STEM Work And Early Crypto Wins

found out what we were doing at the time. So I skipped over some things, but after leaving, you know, the law enforcement gig, that's where you know I had to leave that after the DUI. UNLV hired me to be the director and oversee their program, Gear Up, which was focused on STEM curriculums. So science, tech, injury mathematics. Okay. So I got reacquainted with academia because you know, in college, I was a I was a ball player, so I really wasn't focused on academics other than staying eligible. And so that got me re-acquainted with academia and just college campuses are almost like micro cities. There's tons of things on a campus that the majority of the citizens and residents of the city don't even know about. Like we have a machine, I think, at UNLV that creates the God particle. And so that's just pretty impressive when you think about it. Yeah, that's wild. Um, and so from there, Tony found out that, you know, we me and the student body president started up this STEM curriculum, like STEM kits that single family households can purchase for their kids to learn about a DNA extraction, you know. And so we'd send them an oculus and a petri dish and some strawberries, and they'd learn about how to do that with DIY products at the house. Wow. And so that's how I think what caught the attention of Tony, because we're just focused on impact. And yeah, everything kind of took off from there. That was my foundation. That was the launch pad for sure.

That's what's up. Yeah. Any, any, I know you said you learned from just watching him. I got a chance to see him when I took a tour at Zappos many, many, many years ago. And was there anything that's that you saw then that you kind of paid attention to that you've implemented now in some of your companies?

Listen more, talk less. Listen more, talk less.

Yeah. Okay.

Uh don't judge a book by its cover. I think everybody in there was weirdos, right? But the good kind of weird, right? Everybody's stepping into the dark to find the light in how something works. Right? That's how I find out about crypto. Well, secondary, because I was real early in finding out about Bitcoin. Me and my best friend, who I mentioned, he knew I was real early in crypto.

Okay.

And so uh one of the guys that was the community developers for Ethereum, he actually lived in our community. He told me about the and that's when I got in. 66 cents for Ethereum and $360 for a big man. Bro, this was just, I didn't know what I was doing. I thought I was spending big money too. It's just like, oh my gosh, if I wish we knew what we knew then. I know. But um those gains, those gains, because there definitely was gains, funded our operations for Ponix Farms, the vertical farming company that we built out. Okay. And so it just provided us to kind of learn, you know, on the while being on the journey versus spend the money and trick it off on XYZ.

Gotcha. So this first time, you know, you're building this brand, right? Eponyx Farms, it's really starting to develop into a company, you're starting to get some traction and scale. But this is your first endeavor into kind of building your own thing, or is it yeah, it and everything really really started.

So I already had the idea about flow because when I was on the crutches, right after that surgery, like I couldn't, I couldn't hold my dog leash, or I was always tying it to my belt loop that was stationary.

Yeah.

And it couldn't move with you. And then I bought a dog leash that was this, you know, clips in with metal loop, but it wasn't designed to swivel around you. So that's where I first had the curiosity of solving a problem, right? But problem I experienced. And so I think I had to work on other projects to learn and identify what not to do, and then also identify what works and what doesn't, and then apply that knowledge on my own project, which would save me tons of capital and accelerate the pathway. And you know, essentially, I asked this old guy one time in Nashville, I was like, How did you get he was a multimillionaire? He's like, go fast and don't crash. I was like, go fast and don't crash. Okay. Wait, what? He's like, Yeah, okay. He's also the same guy that said don't spend more on what you make. So it's just he's very sharp, very logical, right? Very short-winded. But yeah, I just think the journey will teach you, you know, how to build. But if you keep your optics open on the landscape of working to learn, you can there's tons of value around us all, but everybody wants to like work and get paid so I can buy this. And so they really don't see the true value in the experience that's available to them, like right in front of them.

So that's true. Yeah, yeah.

When did you actually launch Flow?

From Lyft Growth To Founder Frameworks

2023. Okay. And this was after, you know, I was part of the team that opened up and led the Nevada market for Lyft, the rideshare company. And so that was a crazy experience in itself.

The taxi companies and all that stuff. And Delaware.

Brother, it was it was great, but more so on a marketing standpoint, because you gotta think with startups, especially on you know, the corporate, you know, big tech, big tech level, they burned so much capital in the early phases. Like Lyft was losing about 800 million a year or something like that, crazy. And so that's essentially why we went public because you know you need more money, you need more capital, right? But they were able to secure you know the competitive landscape in each market, independent market, and then they consolidated. But I learned a lot about marketing. I was part of the like we brought Burning Man. I don't know if you guys heard of Burning Man, but you guys brought that here for a day and did and shut down the Vegas trip, did a rolling parade with burning 0.5 burning man R cars blowing fire and shitting bubbles.

You know, that ain't cheap.

You know, and it we you know, we ended that that that rolling parade downtown in Lama Lopez parking lot because that Tony Shea was our partner on the project.

Got you.

And so that big old parking lot that they have downtown is where we threw the festival of 10,000 kids and families to raise money for a lot of the art programs that are being defunded by by the administration at the time. And so, you know, just kind of having access to do cool shit with cool people that have an impact on the community. That's kind of what also infused my optics and you know, getting involved with other brands that I support, whether I invest in just my time, my knowledge, or my capital into. And that's essentially kind of how, you know, what got the the win in my sales is like, is this impactful? Is the person approaching this with the right optics on on just the business? And is the business going to be impactful for who? The community? Is it an enterprise tool? Is it is it, you know, something that can be, is it what we like to call impact investing, right? Does it will a community benefit or not? So there's just tons of things you learn just by working, being associated with other people's projects that you could apply to your own.

Yeah, that's kind of crazy because there's like so when you're navigating that, because there's I think a few different metrics that you can kind of see as you go through that process. Like this is big companies, big capital, big you know, analysis that identify what search of these behaviors sort of impact the overall experience. So as you are visualizing that and intuitively kind of just you know and get and take it in internally, how do you think that those things that you've learned, you know, or prompted you how you want to build your product and brand and awareness because of the fact that you know you're trying to accomplish some of the same things, but in a very different type of field. And I think you know, most branding plays kind of start along that same area, but I feel like you've been exposed to a much more level sophisticated level of analysis.

Yeah, I honestly, in in short, it's it's not really complicated. For me, when it comes to getting myself involved in any capacity, I usually use uh horse racing as my like analogy or metaphor for I have to like the jockey, which is the founder, I have to like the horse, which is the product or the service, and I have to like the track, which is usually the vertical of the business. So if one of those doesn't check, I can't get involved. But if it checks all three, those three simple boxes, let's get to work, let's figure this out. And with that being said, you learn that every vertical, it's the same variables that that makes a business successful. Right? It's the same variables, it's just the lipstick and makeup is different.

Yeah, all businesses ran pretty much the same way.

Need marketing, need legal, sometimes you need manufacturing or you need supply chain and logistics, fulfillment, SOPs, all the stuff. You know, if you're a SaaS, then it's like, all right, what are we doing on our back end? What type of full stack do we have? You know, what's what's our our our tech stack look like in regards to not only back end operations but front-end operations? You know, you're gonna have a bot, greet somebody when they land on your website. And there's just it's a variety of variables that go into creating the nice basket that delivers an experience, a product, or a service. And you only learn that shit by just getting in the mud and getting dirty and you know, just you know, pressing all the buttons, seeing what does what. And again, it this life is truly not about what to do. It's more of a so about what to do, what not to do. And everything else becomes a blank canvas for you to kind of experience and explore. And end of the day, you know, if we had to reverse engineer, you know, on my deathbed, you know, when that when that class when that casket comes closed, it's more so did I did I live a life that that wrote a book or did I live a life that wrote a series of encyclopedias? For me, I like I prefer the series of encyclopedias. So that's why I immerse myself in things I've never done. That's usually if I never tasted a food before, I'll say yes and taste it, right? Because it's just like not many people know how to go into the dark to find the light on how shit works.

That's for real.

And so, but somebody has to. So, you know, I just say I'll be the papy.

Talk a little bit about

Flow Technology Elevator Pitch

flow. What so what is flow for people that maybe for our listeners that don't know what it is? What how are you utilizing it now between like what you were talking about offline with you know a lot of the athletes and sports teams, and you know, if you're walking your dog and things along those lines, can you kind of give the the elevator pitch is what Chris was talking about earlier, man? That quick elevator pitch.

I mean, in short it is yeah, in short, flow, what we have here is the world's first 360 rotational harness. So it allows any tethered point to go 360 degrees around the user. Okay, and so the first application is a sports industry. That's a low-hanging fruit. I'm an ex-athlete, right? Or ex-washed up athlete now. But that's that's the market, right? But it's our patents, which we have eight patents, it covers multiple classes. So from construction industry, from tool retention, uh to you know, if Kodak wants to put a lens pouch and have an action photographer's lens pouch, if Kodak wants to attach kids to it, we even have it covered for space exploration. So if you know Boeing wants to include it in the space suits, right? So it's not tethered in one spot when they're doing a spacewalk. But the first initial market is sports, where it enables athletes to train how they play with 360 degrees of rotational freedom and resistance. And then the second evolution, because we're fortunate enough to where art hardware sells without the tech enablement, whereas it's different, like this Apple Watch would not sell if it wasn't tech enabled, just be a piece of metal around my wrist with no functionality.

Okay.

Whereas Flow provides that 360-degree function, and then outside of that function, by this time next year, we already have the app, which I'll show you guys after the cast. But we'll tech enable the harness because what you're looking at is the world's first platform to go around the waist to pair sensors to. So once we in tech enable the harness and pair our own sensors to it, by third quarter next year, we will become, by definition, the world's first smart belt. At the moment, we're the world's first 360 rotational harness. Okay.

I think it's, you know, I think the tech part of it, I think to me, it's so dynamic that we were talking about before the podcast. The fact that you're going to be able to, I would assume eventually include more sensors, more data points, more positions of each of those individual touch points, really to see how these frictions impact how you're navigating, you know, a complex variable of scenarios, like when I'm driving in a car, how is my neck being distributed? You know how what is those types of sensors and built into that app that gives you pressure points and really can push the boundaries of how people are performing, but also how we're digesting the impact of that performance, which I think that's a me, that's the first thing I think of when I see it. Less of the resistance. It's more of like what kind of insights will this potentially be able to offer a lot of people in these different fields and dynamics.

Yeah, and it'll it'll do a lot of prescriptive, descriptive analytics. You know, our end users, right, our end users right now are strength conditioning coaches and athletes. We're already broke entry in every major professional sport from NFL, MBA, MLS, MLB, NCAA. We have strategic partnerships with some of these teams where we just support them through the units and just have that brand alignment and we can showcase their brands on our site, saying, you know, that this brand has the exclusive partner, the three exclusive 360 belt partner with Flow. But right now, I'm very fortunate to where I don't have to think that far, right? I just have to be able to hire effective team members. And luckily enough, I've been blessed, you know, with with phenomenal talent. I got three of my colleagues that joined me from Lyft. So we already been in the trenches, we're battle tested, right? We're we're high-level operators. I have a phenomenal colleague that operates a lot of our business development out of Barcelona. And then one of my co-founders, Roderick, he's uh he's a strength and conditioning coach in the NFL. And so he brings that credibility, that insight, which kind of opened up the floodgates. My first investor, he's the XEO at Catapult, right? That company is now doing a hundred mil ARR on a on a yearly basis, and he's the one that helped take them there. So, and then we're bringing on two of their, you know, one of their data scientists that just came on board. So it's just like the momentum is the the snowball has been pushed over the hill to where now shit, man. You're wearing that founder head. I could breathe. I got I could breathe though, you know. It's no longer me by myself, you know, in an office wondering if the world is gonna see this the same way I do, you know, and like that's what I had to do. You know, I had to bet on myself for the last what 10 years, 13 years before I even reached the team. I got patents before I even had the functional prototype. Like, that's retarded as shit. I would never tell I would never tell any founder to go get a patent first. Yeah, like first you go build it, then prove that they want it, then then go ahead and spend that money to get the patents. Yeah, but you bet on yourself though. But and that's and that's the key. And I'm noticing that that's what you bet on yourself. And that's the key, man. I think that you know, being a a wash up athlete, like I use, like I like to say, there was there's some things that you're that's just kind of makes you hardwired to just run through brick wall after brick wall after brick wall, not listen to The noise because guess what? There's always gonna be someone stronger, there's always gonna be someone bigger, there's always gonna be someone faster. So you literally have to just take all fucks and throw that shit out the window, and then you can move with authenticity, you know. And a lot of people don't know how to do that, man. A lot of people are they're wearing a mask, they're being actors, they're they gotta be politically correct because they got XYZ looking at them, and you know, if anything, I I've I still live with authenticity, you know. I'm still, you know, I think impulsive in some areas, but at least I have guardrails now, you know. Whereas beforehand, before I started this thing, I didn't have guardrails for my personality. I was still like, you know, 29, 28, you know, 30, trying to act like I'm still, you know, a senior playing ball and going out drinking and partying, just you know, what's next? And you know, thank God for for the disruption that happened, you know, because I I truly do think that things happen for a reason. Nothing is by coincidence. You know, I learned to keep God first. It was my household wasn't really that, you know, uh stringent on being in church every Sunday, you know. And so sometimes we we leave the porch without some essential tools to go out into the world and figure out who we are. And one of those tools I was missing was emotional intelligence. I was all over the place to where I thought I had, I thought I had mental health issues, you know, but it's like, no, brother, you just you just had personality issues and you're just very colorful, I guess you could say, for lack of better words. But I think everybody learns that, you know, through maturity or through pressing that hot button too many times because not everybody comes from the same porch. At all.

So at all, yeah.

Like Father God and Mother Nature will teach you some things if you let it. Yeah. If you let them, yeah.

Betting On Yourself And Leading A Team

Jump back in real quick about the Ponix Farms. I mean, you and I talked about when we first, I think one of the last times we were we were together, you shared about Ponics Farms and what you guys are doing for the impact. Can you kind of give your whole you know breakdown of how you why you launched that and then what you guys are actually doing now?

Yeah, so right now we're essentially connecting, you know, all the silos in a city. So we're doing supply chain logistics for people who are growing produce who may be licensed to sell like farmers markets, whatnot, right? Trying to help expand their sales, their sales reach because some people are growing hydroponically in their house now, right? In their rooms, and they're that means that they're growing produce every 30 days. So what originally started with Tony and Tony Shea's community, so through, like I said, through collision came collaboration with others. So that's where I met my partners at Ponics. Okay. And, you know, we're already living together for a year, and so it's more so like, how can we do keep this going? What, you know, impact can we have? And food was a big issue for you know some communities in the world, right? And you have people building wells so they can have water. And so we're like, well, shit, how do we how do we leverage that? And so we're like, you know what, what's the issue? They're not eating. And so it's like, what's the issue with people not eating on a consistent basis? It's not the amount that we don't grow food, because we grow tons of food, we waste food. You know, as a human population, we waste millions of food.

But it's not healthy a lot of times with ingredients and so our whole solution was don't move the food, move the farm.

Because the supply chain was the issue on why some communities, you know, had food deserts or why some countries just didn't have access to fresh produce. And so that's where we took old shipping containers, equipped them, and tech enabled them to where they become indoor farms, and to where you know a farmer can now grow produce every 30 days versus every 75 days outdoors, naturally, right? And so with hydroponic farms, plants sit in uh water, uh 24-7, the dosing, we control nutrients, lighting, humidity, temperature, the whole nine. And yeah, it's been great. We started operations out in Atlanta, spoke at the Smart City Expo with uh Keisha Bottoms, who was the city council president at the time, and Atlanta has opened up its arms for us to where we're still operating in Atlanta at this time.

And right now, so is that where your headquarters is? Is in Troponics, yes. Okay, okay.

Troponics. And so once I am I hit a few milestones with flow here in the next you know 12 to 16 months, I may be you know pivoting to trying to bring a food campus from here to Vegas. That was gonna be my next question.

When is that coming here?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm hoping to announce the project by 2030. Okay. So it's give us about you know three good solid years to organize.

Okay.

I do think that that announcement may come

Ponix Farms And Moving Farms Not Food

between like 2028 and 2029, especially with all of the learnings that are coming with flow, right? I just came from a family office week in Rhode Island and just understanding how money is allocated, distributed, collected, just the whole nine, the ecosystem. You you kind of understand.

You're talking about Newport, Rhode Island, right?

Yeah, okay. And that was just eye-opening. And I think that was one of those last little bits of lived experience I did not have. And so being able to close that loop and have that understanding on how you know $80 million project, $80 million is able to come up out of like two, three months, you know, from somebody raising a fund that is supposed to be deployed into other companies that are focused on impact. It's just like, oh, wait, what? Yeah, we could do that. Yeah.

And so you just mentioned it, you're talking about just family office. A lot of people don't talk about family office on how to set that up and you know what the details of that is and the foundations and then how that grows, everything.

Being a kid, you know, from Vegas, right, and just being a historic West Side resident, you don't hear a lot about, you know, a lot of things that I've been able to experience, fortunate to experience, right? You don't hear about black inventors that live on the West side. You don't hear about, you know, outside of people that may invented a butter, you know, XYZ, right? Some type of products. But in regards to creating brands and inventing products that are being sold across state lines in other countries, whatnot, that are actually bringing big name organizations together. We're we're really small when it comes to that, right? We're known we got plenty of great athletes that made a name and put Vegas on the map, right? Plenty of those. We got some music artists, right? Shamir that that kind of put Vegas on the map with music, but where where is it at when it comes to entrepreneurship, right? And hopefully, you know, I could be that bridge builder, the one that kind of brings that light to the room of darkness on like how to do this if I have an idea. I think that you know, we don't have that that landmark on like where to take an idea to or who to take an idea to in Vegas. And so hopefully, you know, I could create that opportunity for others behind me. And I think that's what, you know, again, I want to level up as a bridge builder for others. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Spocky talked about a lot. That's kind of why we built this podcast. It's for that specific reason. We want to give people that insight because we've noticed a little bit of a drought when it comes to knowledge and experience and connections in Vegas amongst people trying to build things. But there's a lot of people that have done it just like you. And I think as the more we could get information out to those people and shared experiences, I think the better we could collectively do as a community. And that's always been kind of our vision.

So yeah, it's just like you were born and raised here and you see it, and then the strip gets all the shine and all the marketing dollars and everything. But there's so many successful people off the strip, like yourself, that are born and raised here that are building, you know what I mean, and then bringing it back also because I know you travel a lot too. So yeah, and you know, I you and I had that conversation over the phone too. We would talk about, yeah.

Yeah, and I I think I brought a few more things for you in my bag from other brands because that's one thing as a founder. You know, you travel enough, you get outside the lines, you see what's going on, you go to events, whether it's an art bossel, whether it's a New York Tech Week, whether it's, you know, Can Lions, whatever the case may be, you'll learn by just getting up there and connecting with people. I agree. You know, a lot of people they go to places to be seen, whereas I would go to places to connect, right? And I think that's what it's about is kind of building a lot of those relationships and growing the perspective that you have so that essentially you could be more value or bring that value back to your own backyard. I agree. You can't do it yourself.

I so agree. What's what's one brand of mistake that you that you see you know startups make over and over again? Shit. Just one. Yeah.

Lack of brand DNA. And when I say lack of brand DNA, some people think of a name because it sounds cool. Some people will think of a name because it has some either biblical context or it might have some Greek complicated name associated with King of Thunder or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm just like, come up with a name that kind of aligns with the the experience that people will receive, right? For instance, I got a friend, Ryan Chen. You guys probably heard of his company, it's called Neurogum. And you heard of it. So me and Ryan met back when I lived in California, back when he was still working at at Hulu. And so our company name for Ponix was Ponix, right? Ponix Farms. Got it, right? So it's like you kind of know what it may be associated with, right? Water. And it's like the roots sit in water. That's it's just everything's growing strictly out of water. Yeah. Ryan Chen, his gum, which is a nootropic, right? But it's called neurogum. So that's what makes sense. It makes sense, and then everything that goes into the development, whether it's the fonts, whether it's the color scheme, the color palette, and then of course the experience, the inexperience. Like that's what kind of makes things stand out. That's kind of what makes things

Vegas Entrepreneurship And Building Bridges

that's what kind of creates a culture behind a product.

Yeah, that makes sense.

In my humble opinion.

I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. I agree. Just finishing up on like the last kind of two business questions. What business trends are you seeing everyone excited about right now and then think that it maybe might be overrated?

Shit, AI.

AI. I had a feeling you were gonna say that. Why, why? You'll get hit fired up.

Honestly, you just have a you have a lot of impostors right now. And AI is phenomenal. AI is absolutely phenomenal if you were already an operator prior to being introduced to AI. So if you already had a manual process on how you approve manual proving process, it just enhances it. It enhances it by 10 to 20x. But guess what? If you're Joe Joe Schmod at security, right? You know, at I don't know, seven C's or something like that, and you say, Oh, I wanna I wanna be a podcast host and make this background, make this one pager, make this and this, and they can have that a website up the next day, and it looks like they've just been chilling it. It looks excellent. And guess what? They run the podcast and they get people on there stuttering, they just don't have a guided direction or a script for the for the podcast, nothing is branded, poor lighting, like, but holy shit, did it look great on paper. Like, and I think that's the thing, it's like a bad relationship. Everybody's it's the cliff notes. It's cliffs. Catfishing is no longer on dating ads. Catfishing is now with Facebook ads, right? Um and events, yeah.

With the promoters or using even like this is like a nonstop conversation with us. We always say AI is supposed to be an enhancement, not supplemental. That's the conversation we always talk about. Like if you already have the behaviors, like you said, you're very knowledgeable in this specific experience and you want to further you know create efficiencies or create enhancements, that's what my mind should be utilized for. But to your point, I've had people that you talk to and you give them a outline before for years you've known them, they didn't know, couldn't put together an email. Now all of a sudden they're sending you page long emails like it's them. Like I think using words they never can't spell.

But what the thing is that if you were to ask them like this ain't cool, I saw them sitting in ego, we laugh about that. So you know they came and pronounced ambiguous. They got ambiguous in their background and experience.

But then you meet them for the first time, and then you've had all these email exchanges,

Why AI Is Overhyped Without Operators

and you're like, This, I have no idea what's happening. But that definitely is a huge negative of the experience. But to me, I'm obviously I'm the positive part of it.

But yeah, I I like going back real quick, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole like with Bill Gates, but I mean, Bill Gates talked about it what 35 years ago now was high-tech, high touch. I think I've talked about it probably multiple times on the pod over the years. Is I definitely like the high-tech side of it. Like what you're in, Chris is very high-tech, but then you also have the high touch. You have to have the people side of it. You know what I mean? You have to have the dialogue, you have to have that connection of it. You know what I mean? And what Bill Gay said many, many years ago is whoever can figure those things out of connecting both are winning. And I think that's what's gonna happen with AI, is like you just said to the imposters, but I use it as like the avatars to like make myself better to learn. You know what I mean? Like, hey, teach me this. Hey, what what does this mean? 100% that's that's what I look at it as and and that's the beauty about AI.

It's literally a tool. Agree, right? It's a tool. Yeah, and how do you lose utilize that tool? You can you can build shit work, you can build great work, yeah, right? But it's a tool end of the day, and you're the operator, so you're the one giving you the prompts, yeah, right? You're the one that's baking in the like you you literally gotta treat AI agents, right, as if you're raising a kid.

Yeah, right.

And so you want to see what not to do or what to do, what what others have already been doing out there, right? Maybe grab some templates, yeah. But definitely keep if you're gonna use AI, keep the optics of the student so at least you can learn as you go along. I agree.

I agree. Present yourself with AI the same way that you would present yourself in person.

Bro, just watch at least 10 hours on like how to build an AI agent on YouTube before you try to say your company does this and does that, and everything's built on AI.

Because what we notice uh a lot of is like what people invest with, I know you get a lot of you know, angel investors that invest with you, right? Is they invest in that CEO or founder. And if you got a whole bunch of BS on AI and you can't do an elevator pitch like you mentioned, or have that passion, or there's just a vibe that you you're not gonna bet on that particular founder, right? Or invest on a particular founder, because you're not feeling them. That's where the high touch comes in. And there's so people are forgetting that communication, you know, rules of nation, you know.

Yeah, and and just like you're saying, right? There's levels to this thing. 100%. Right. There's levels to this. 100%. Yeah. And I I truly believe it's the fountain, that's why I think about the the the three metaphors of horses, right? The jockey, the horse, the track. Keep it super simple. All right. And the horse, that's just the product. And you find out that product is nothing, it's just all AI, and they don't have a background to support that development or that full stack behind the AI protocols, right? And it's like, yeah, you're using AI, but like, what's your website built off of? And you know, is it what's your mobile app built off of? Do you use Ruby on Rails? Do you use you know Python, like C, JavaScript? And you you can see you just if I'm talking and you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, yeah, you lost. Yeah, I'm gonna change it up and talk about something that we can talk about. Let's just start that.

Yeah, I agree. And that's that.

Advice On Faith Commitment And Purpose

Yeah. When it comes to just business and just life advice, man, what would you share with anybody right now? Because everybody, you know, they always have these dreams, these goals, and things like that, and it's all talk, but they never want to actually do it. What would you share with maybe a business owner or somebody that wants to start right now? What would you leave them out on or or a nugget that can help them?

I so I frame this question as if I was talking to myself in the beginning. Right? Mirror to mirror, basically. Mirror to mirror. And I say, trust God first. And and focus on what not to do. Right? And then, you know, everything else, depending on the direction you choose, it becomes a learning experience. But it's like you gotta trust the process.

That blank camera, right?

And the only way that you can trust the process is by keeping God first. And it took me years, brother. Like honestly, honestly, I didn't really consider myself like a strong man of faith until probably like two, three years ago, right? When I had my daughter. I got three kids, six, six, four, and one. My daughter's right in the middle. So even with my son didn't learn, didn't learn us, right? But it it's truly that, man. Because if a lot of us, if we kind of look back at at the the road that took us to where we're at, you really some some of us like, yeah, a lot of people wouldn't have survived this this this pathway. A lot of people wouldn't survive this route. And I think that's the same thing that could be said for you know professional athletes, right? Like you're betting on yourself. So it's like successful, you know, businessmen and founders, you bet on yourself. So I mean that's the the key thing. You gotta bet on yourself. You don't bet on AI to make you successful, you bet on yourself. It's the person behind the AI that's creating the the protocols and the feedback and and the guardrails for the AI, but it's like end of the day, we are the brand. Yeah, and I really didn't understand that. And I told you like my good friend was like a brother to me, he understood it. He got it. Because one night I remember he and I were driving in the car, and he was like, We just came back from a trip too. My 30th like birthday just shenanigans, right? But I think he saw the potential because he's like, Paul, let me let's sit down, let's start, you know, molding, like you know, rounding off. I didn't know what the hell it meant. I was like, Yeah, all right, cool, you know, onward and upward. And kid you not, man, I I'm blessed again for the experiences, and I don't even hold it against them because I think some of us need to kind of go down the pathway on our own to really truly figure out who we are, right? And and what we're made of, and and discover like that why. Because if you don't have that why, locked, if you're not locked in on that why or your purpose, you might just be a flag in the wind, right? And so, you know, hopefully it might be an act of God that kind of disrupts and kind of changes the course as it did for me, but it doesn't always look like that, right? Everybody could tell you, like, why me? And uh and so again, it's trust the process, just keep God first. But anything that you do, just just commit, yeah, just commit tenacity.

I agree. Last

Favorite Vegas Food And What’s Next

question for you, man, as far as restaurants, man, especially you being from Las Vegas, man. I always ask everybody this, man. What's your favorite restaurant in Vegas?

You know what?

Ah, man, that's that's tough, bro. I know it is, yeah. Especially you got so much good food here.

Yeah, that's tough.

But give us one, give us one of your go-to's.

I started doing, I started cheating too. Okay, I can't even tell, I can't even tell the miss the kid's mom about this. Okay, okay. Because I'll be doing this during the day, right before I pick up the kids sometimes. But brother, the man, the uh oyster bars. Oh, yes, man. What but those lines be mad crazy?

But first, we started at Orleans, yeah. Or not Orleans, I'm sorry, uh Palaystation. Yeah, PalaStation had the best one.

Man, but between 11 and 3, 11 and 2, yeah, Durango Hotel.

Yeah, it's fire. That's good to know. I would go to Santa Fe. My favorite, what's that bowl of whatever the hell it's called? Gumbo, something's gonna be that one.

Man, what I'm that's a home run. I go up there and I feast by myself. I feel you now, God forgive me. I'm selfish that day.

I'm gonna tell you, shout out to Dave Maven McCovey. I'm gonna tell you something about him that's been a past guest of ours that I'll tell you about what that he did for us, man, which was amazing. Okay, those those oyster bars are legit. Yeah, fire. That's a good one. A good one. What else, man? What else is up for you, man? So what what are you gonna finish up strong for this year?

Yeah, so this year we just kicked off a three million dollar round. So we are confident we'll have that wrapped up by December. Okay, and then we'll start kicking up.

Just with flow?

Yeah, just with flow. Okay. Just with flow.

Okay.

We'll go ahead and start with the tech enablement, expand, expand our sales team, uh, because we're already, you know, expanding our sales team across the nation. Sure. Gotta go UK into the next month to open up that that market as well because we had demand growing out there. But once, you know, let's say we tech enable the belt, the next up is bringing light to those who live in the dark.

There you go.

And that's with the visually impaired. People that are walking with C and I dogs, always had that dog just on one side. Sure. Imagine that dog now giving them the pinpoint on what direction to walk into to the zero degree. But all of these guys, but check out all of these guys, these turn into proximity sensors and these turn into vibrational haptics on the inside. So now it's almost like Daredevil. A blind person walks in a room with their belt on, yeah, they got their CNI dog, but their belt is vibrating on it low intensity, high intensity based on direction. Not to know just where everybody is in the room. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. You can feel where everyone is in the room, and that's you now brings light to your surroundings to those. That's another great dark idea, man. That's my next mission. That's my next like focus point after you know that's easy for flow, but once I get that off with the RD side, then it's on to bringing pioneers to Vegas. That's what's up, brother.

Man, keep watching what he's doing, man. Shout out, shout out to what you're doing, man. Yeah, you're excellent in explaining. So, what's your social handles, man? People can reach out to you on.

Velzar, V-E-L-Z-A-R 702 on IG, Paul Roberson, any other platform.

Yeah. Check him out, man, and check us out at VegasCircle.com, man. I appreciate you sitting down with us, brother. Thank you so much. Yes, indeed. Great stuff.

Thank you for your time, man. Indeed.