The Sand Slicer - Jeremy Schmidt, Founder

On this week's WHBY broadcast and Biztalk with Score podcast, hosts Rick Sense and Megan Mullholland, talk with guest Jeremy Schmidt.  The three will discuss Jeremy's unique and ongoing entrepreneurial journey, the growth of his business and other new developments, including Jeremy authoring multiple books focusing on A.I. and updates from the inventor of the Sand Slicer.

Transcript

Alex Thomas: SCORE Northeast Wisconsin and WHBY are pleased to bring you BizTalk, a chance for you to hear from entrepreneurs and professionals as they share their experiences. From starting to sustaining growth, learn the skills needed for your business to be successful. If you miss anything, you can catch the BizTalk podcast at score.org/NortheastWisconsin. And now, from the Myron Construction Studio, it's BizTalk on WHBY.

Rick Sense: Good morning, and welcome to BizTalk. I'm Rick Sense, and this morning, we have a great show planned for you. But before we get started, I just want to take a moment and remind everybody that BizTalk with SCORE is available on podcast. So, if you have an opportunity and you want to listen to the show again, or if you missed a couple episodes, you want to catch up on those, go to your favorite podcatcher, and take a listen, and look for BizTalk with Score, and you'll find us, and go ahead and subscribe, and you're off and running.

So, with that, I am very happy to introduce our guest this morning, Jeremy Schmidt. Jeremy has been on the show before, and it's been a little over a year now. Jeremy is many things, and I think we agreed today I'm going to introduce him as the inventor and founder of the Sand Slicer. But there's some other stuff that he's working on, and we'll talk about that in a little bit as well. And so I'm really excited about having Jeremy back.
Now, the first time we had you on, Jeremy, we were talking to you about this product, and you started up a business, and you were off and running. And we said, boy, wouldn't it be great if we had you on to check in with you every once in a while, to just see that whole journey, where it's taking you? That's a really great teaching tool for those people out there that are looking to start their own business. They can kind of ride along with you, shotgun, so to speak, while you're going through all these wonderful things that all business entrepreneurs need to do.

So, having said that, since your last show, maybe you can just give everybody just a quick re-explanation of what your product is, and what the business is, and then what you've—where you're at, and how much you've expanded or grown since then.

Jeremy Schmidt: Okay, sounds good. So the product is called the Sand Slicer. It is a shoreline weed removal tool that I invented in the summer of 2024, and have been able to, not just put it together in terms of a prototype, but have gone through the manufacturing, distribution steps, as well as, let's see here… oh, yeah, and have gotten it patented so far. So, I know we want to talk about all the details of those things, but have really tried to, over the past year, focus, maybe not even so much on the sales yet so much, but laying a lot of that groundwork to allow the, you know, this summer and follow-on summers to grow off that foundation.

Rick Sense: So, you mentioned sales is not the primary focus for you yet, so maybe kind of let listeners know some of the things that you are focusing on that are getting more of your attention than the sales piece at this point.

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, so, by not having the sales be the focus, what I mean by that is, because my CFO would not be thrilled hearing that, but truly to make sure that I'm finding the right farmers markets that I want to start going to, hopefully in the next few weeks, looking at other places to possibly get it on retail shelves. I know we're gonna talk about that over time, but the sales, I believe, will come. It's one of those Field of Dreams kind of feelings in my gut, but, because the tool is a tool that has, you know, been out in the field now for a couple summers. It's got 60 customers quite literally around the country, even, since you and I spoke, had a chance to have one sale happen in New Hampshire. So it's a tool that, as time goes on, it will definitely be ready for the market. And I've got a lot of the other behind-the-scenes steps that I'm working on, because the sales is, in my opinion, that's going to be the fun part once these steps are taken care of.

Rick Sense: So how do you plan to scale your production, when the demand spikes past your current inventory?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, thank you for asking that. So, for me, it's all about the logistics of, timelines from ordering to refilling inventory and stockage and that. So I have about 100 in stock right now, and I personally think that as sales start continuing, maybe not necessarily this season yet, but in the seasons to come, that they'll be able to—that I'll be easily selling 100 a month. My production timeline easily fits about 100 every 2 to 3 weeks. So once the sale starts moving, I'll be able to hopefully trend using, you know, my background that we talked about during the first show in logistics and business to make sure that I can stay ahead. But that's also why I'm trying not to let things expand too quickly without having some of that support element behind me yet.

Rick Sense: How crucial is it for a business entrepreneur to sit back and think that kind of stuff through and react by planning for it versus just waiting for it to happen and reacting to it?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, I mean, I think it's critically important. I think it's also one of those steps that a lot of entrepreneurs can find themselves paralyzing themselves in if they're going to what-if things too much. So you do have to be ready to have some push and expectations that you're not gonna have every answer to it. I still have one kind of smaller thing still working on, like, nuts and bolts, literally, for the Sand Slicer. But that's a small issue compared to the big picture of finding out where the market would be, finding out where the sales can be, and then ultimately making sure that I have the distribution network to deliver on the sales.

Rick Sense: So what kind of supply chain challenges do you have as you're going through process here and developing product?

Jeremy Schmidt: Yeah, and maybe it's because of right now the simplicity in it, but the supply chain isn't an issue at the moment. Also, a credit to Wisconsin Manufacturing. Since all of my supply chain is being sourced here in Wisconsin, they're all ready to expand well above that 100 a month goal that I have for the next major target, and said to me that they could conceivably achieve about 1,000 a month. So I'm ready to scale, it's now just a matter of ensuring that the customer base is aware of the product.

Rick Sense: And you mentioned before, previously, that with your logistics background and your support background that you've had, how exactly did that expertise help you scale Sand Slicer?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, I primarily looked at where bottlenecks could occur. And so the, for example, one of the kind of bottlenecks in the production is the powder coating. Not that it's a problem, per se, but that it's the final stage after all of the disparate manufacturers are done with their pieces, getting the pieces to that one location to do the final thing. So, identifying those kind of choke points ahead of time has been where I'd be able to plan ahead a little bit more consciously versus just waiting for it to be a consecutive process. I can make a few more things happen concurrently, knowing where those choke points are.

Rick Sense: And, you mentioned, too, that you the patent that you've received, maybe you can give listeners a little update on this, the trademarks that you've secured, as well, for Sand Slicer, or the name, the logo, and how critical was that for you to get for your brand identity?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, so, for me, you know, especially having a marketing background, as well as how fast things move today when it comes to products that can either go viral or, you know, whatever the situation is, not thinking that Sand Slicer was gonna go viral, per se. But, knowing that it wouldn't take too much effort for a competitor in the shoreline world to look at this product and say, "This is pretty easy to do, I can make something like this." So I wanted to make sure that I had a little bit extra, you know, notoriety protection, that legal shielding to say, "Hey, if you really are wanting to be a competitor, you're gonna have to ensure you're nowhere close to this design." Just as a way to ensure that my idea was protected. Growing up as an aspiring inventor, I have always thought that that's what the whole patent process was, is you get your patent based off your novel idea, your widget, or your process, and it allows you to protect it to either market it or research it more. But whatever it is, it becomes something that's protected for your sake, for your future.

Rick Sense: So could you give the listeners a little hint of what the journey was like in navigating the U.S. Patent Office and trying to get all that stuff done?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, I did have a law firm help me for the majority of it, so I do want to let you know about that. The trademarking process, I did a lot more on my own. That was a—and that goes part in part with the patenting, why you asked why to get a patent. Well, the trademark was kind of the same. I wanted to have that brand notoriety right off the bat. If there's one thing I know about the shorelines that I service, the neighbors here, they're here in their summer weekends, so they're talking, they're chatting, they're having a good time. If you have a product that's going to be a good product, that they're taking care of their shores, the word of mouth is going to travel real quick. 

So having a good name, having a good logo, a good pitch, even a good tagline, those aren't requirements—you definitely want to remember what Tommy Boy taught us about just having a good product to begin with—but you do definitely need to have all of those other elements in place if you're going to want your product to go beyond just being a tool that my teams would be using for Rolling Rome, the service company side of it all.

Rick Sense: So somebody was gonna go out and try to get the patent, what one piece of advice would you give them in dealing with the patent office, or Trademark for that matter, too? What would you suggest for advice for that as well?

Jeremy Schmidt: If you can afford an attorney, I would find a patent attorney's office, and like I said, the firm helped me out with the nuances afterwards. First step, I would say, a lot of people can do. It's gonna be that second round almost that you need to have that lawyer expertise to help answer the questions that you get from the Patent and Trademark Office, and that's actually when I brought in the law firm to help me get that, because I didn't want to go back and forth over and over again. I knew I could initiate it, they would give me the initial questions. 

For a trademark, I was familiar with the concepts of it needing to be unique. You know, you can look up on the trademark search if there's anything else that's already bearing the name. And so I knew enough of what to do to ensure that it had the ability to be trademarked. Where my intelligence or understanding of the Patent and Trademark Office world falls short, then, is when they ask the questions of, they're what-if questions, I guess would be the best way to say it. You know, the lawyers are really gonna wanna try to nickel and dime it, devil's advocate it, right? To make sure that it's not—and they're doing that as in the best interests, you gotta look at it for the applicant. If it's not gonna pass their office standards, that probably means that I didn't give them something good enough. So you gotta make it clear and articulate, but if it's unique, the trademark's pretty easy. The patenting process, that's a little more serious, because they're looking for something that is possibly not just the same, but something that could be similar enough where the original patent holder could say, "Hey, that's infringing on it." So then the lawyers will write the verbiage also broad enough so that somebody can't infringe on it. So it's that balance of being specific, but you also want it broad enough so that people aren't just trying to find those gaps and walk around your patent that way. So that's where you need the legal expertise. That's where I say round two, have your experts come in. Round one, explaining the five W's, if you will, most people can start, you know, and then you can save maybe a couple hundred dollars. I would not giving legal advice, of course, but I would probably bet you most lawyers would rather it be from the start.

Rick Sense: All right, with that, we're going to take our first break. You're listening to BizTalk with SCORE on WHBY, and we will be right back after these messages.

Rick Sense: Welcome back to BizTalk with Score on WHBY. I'm Rick Sense, along with Megan Mulholland, who's joining us this morning. Megan, welcome to the show.

Megan Mulholland, APR: Thank you very much. Nice, hello, Jeremy.

Jeremy Schmidt: Hi.

Rick Sense: Before we get too much further here, I just want to take a few moments to talk about SCORE. SCORE Northeast Wisconsin serves a 30-county area, primarily in Northeast Wisconsin. We have more than 30 volunteers, each an expert in their field, offering entrepreneurs no-cost and confidential mentoring. Those areas of expertise include IT, social media, marketing, cash flow, accounting, strategic planning, workflow, retail, best practices, and many, many others.

In order to register for a no-cost confidential mentoring session, and or to learn more about SCORE Northeast Wisconsin, please visit our website at score.org/wi/northeast-wisconsin. You can learn more about how the SCORE chapter can assist you with starting and or growing your business, and you can complete an online application for a mentoring session. Simply complete the form and submit it to SCORE. Within a few days, a SCORE mentor will be contacting you to set up a meeting. And remember, SCORE is no cost, and offers experts who can offer assistance in many different areas.

To support small business people, SCORE Northeast Wisconsin is always looking for new mentors. If you have experience that you'd like to share with others, we'd love to talk to you. We welcome volunteers with experience in all aspects of business. Small business owners need your help, and your experience can make a real difference to their success. Go to score.org/wi/northeast-wisconsin. Click on the volunteer button, and fill out the short application, and we'll get back to you to explain more.

And finally, this reminder about the BizTalk with Score podcast. The BizTalk with Score podcast brings the same real-world information and insights from experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders, just like BizTalk with Score does on WHBY. However, the podcast is available when you are, so listen and subscribe. Available on most podcatchers and podcast apps. So thanks again for joining us on BizTalk, and now back to the show, and I'm going to turn the show over to you, Megan.

Megan Mulholland, APR: Thank you very much, Rick. So Jeremy, I understand, I mean, it's not just one company, Sand Slicer, you've got two, with Rolling Rome, as you call them, as you mentioned, sister companies. So, with that, how would you describe the two? How do they fit alike? And, you know, what's so how are they like? How are they different? And what about the customer base for them?

Jeremy Schmidt: Sure. So, Rolling Rome is actually what started all of this, in the beginning of the summer of 2024, and it's a service provider, so it is the company that, utilizing primarily the Sand Slicer and another product called the Beach Roller, I will, with my teams, go to the shores here that are dealing with invasive weeds, just heavily fertilized water that is causing just the weeds that are already there to grow sometimes as much as 6, 7, 8, 9 inches a week. It's crazy as it sounds, but it very much happens. And so that's what Rolling Rome does, is we're the service provider, and then throughout the summer of 2024 is when I came up finally and had the gift from above to say, "Come up with the idea of Sand Slicer," and so they work in tandem. And quite honestly, the demographic customer base is pretty much the same, just in terms of geographic distance is different. Rolling Rome is right now here in Rome in the Tri-Lakes area of Adams County. We have expanded up to Nepco Lake, and have looked at the potential over the years to come of expanding beyond that, and maybe even expanding the company's scope to being more of a franchise organization. But the success of Rolling Rome is now part of the success of Sand Slicer, and the customer base, even if Rolling Rome can't be everywhere, or if you're a do-it-yourselfer, you can still have a beautiful shoreline if you have a Sand Slicer.

Megan Mulholland, APR: So you'd mentioned about expanding to Nepco Lake, so what criteria do you use to pick or expand in the regional markets, or beyond, like you just did?

Jeremy Schmidt: Oh, yeah, well, I mean, right now, it's just proximity. And I found out very quickly that Nepco Lake is dealing with some pretty crazy weed situations as well. And during my first two summers, when I was doing a lot of the market research, and just seeing what the capacity was for a business like Rolling Rome or Sand Slicer, I was finding out that these weeds issues are, even though it's a relatively new phenomenon for Wisconsin lakes, only maybe within the past 5, 10, 15 years, that it is becoming a fairly widespread issue, and it's obviously impeding on people's lifestyles.

Megan Mulholland, APR: So you and Rick were earlier were talking about patents and about trademarking and, you know, that's getting into policy, or, I mean, government and a little bit more red tape. Is there any, like, regulatory or environmental hurdles, you know, that you've had to either experience when you were launching or even expanding?

Jeremy Schmidt: Certainly not so far yet. You know, here at the Tri-Lakes, I do know that the Tri-Lakes Water Management District is dealing with a myriad of problems on these lakes, and quite honestly, and I mean, I'm no studied environmentalist myself, but just watching the way the weeds are kind of taken over in certain parts of these lakes, that if nothing is going to be done, if there's a policy of, you know, "let the environment take its course," these were never lakes to begin with. They were made by the paper-baron guys back when they were developing this area. And due to a lot of other issues, there's just these lakes are feeling a lot of distress. So I try not to get into all of those portions of it, but just try to remember that this is something that's relatively new, in that there's a lot of symptoms for the problems that are causing these lakes to be turning into not beautiful lakes.

Rick Sense: With that, we're going to take our next break. You're listening to BizTalk with SCORE on WHBY, and we'll be right back after these messages.

Megan Mulholland, APR: You're listening to Score BizTalk. I'm Megan Mulholland, and I'm co-hosting with Rick Sense. We've got Jeremy Schmidt, who is the inventor of the Sand Slicer, and a business owner in central Wisconsin. And we'll join Jeremy in just a few minutes, but I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a non-profit. Patrick's Gifts and Books in Northland Mall here in Appleton. In 1976, Father Timon Costello was looking for a way to help fund two halfway houses he had helped charter, Villa Hope and Villa Phoenix. As a result, in July of that year, he opened St. Patrick's Bookstore, a non-profit Catholic and Christian store in Appleton. Less than a decade later, the halfway houses were self-sufficient, and St. Patrick's turned to helping fund other nonprofits in the area, including warming shelters, food pantries, youth organizations, and abuse shelters, among others. The store has been serving the community for 50 years. Retail marketplace changes, the difficult decision to close the store July 31st has been made. Closing sales and the endowment previously established by St. Patrick's Gifts and Books will be used to continue supporting Fox Valley nonprofit community organizations in the future. Please visit the store inside the Northland Mall before the final day to take advantage of closing sales, use gift cards, or just say goodbye to the manager for the last 35 years, Patty DiMarco and her dedicated staff. SCORE would like to thank St. Patrick's for their 50 years of providing needed community assistance, as well as thanking everyone for 50 years of support for St. Patrick's.

Now, I'd like to rejoin the conversation with Jeremy, and we're going to talk about one of my areas of expertise, which is marketing. And this is a very unique product and service that you have to market, and I understand you use a lot of YouTube videos and other things like that, so how do you market this, and what types of content, if you're especially doing social media, what does that resonate with your customers?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, and that's probably the quite literal billion-dollar marketing question, isn't it? So, the Sand Slicer, I've made some videos, I am trying to convince my Rolling Rome crews to help me start doing some TikTok-style stuff. They're about as reluctant as I am to do TikTok videos, it seems. Maybe it's because they're gonna be the star instead of just scrolling and watching it. No, to be honest, the marketing has not been that easy. I enjoy making all the marketing stuff and getting it out there. The marketing analysis of, like, "Hey, did that person learn from this, or that person from that?" That's the part that is still, I think I'm just in the infancy stage for both companies. With these being seasonal companies, I only really have the attention of Wisconsinites, primarily right now, Wisconsinites, for about 4-5 months. And then after that, no one's thinking about cleaning weeds in their lakes. So, that marketing aspect, I've shifted, and I'm gonna start working this summer on more face-to-face stuff, doing getting out to more farmer markets, letting people hold the product, and I think going to what you and I speak in terms of how do you find your customer base, my sense is, at least from the Rome farmer's market here, is that I'm gonna find a lot more of the lakefront owners perusing those farmers markets, either on the weekends or even some of those evening ones that are out there around the state.

Megan Mulholland, APR: Well, one of the things I've always found is, especially in marketing and communications, it's the communications. It's the mingling, it's the networking, it's getting out, especially with a new product and something that's not as easy to explain, like what you have.

Jeremy Schmidt: Yeah, exactly. I mean, saying to somebody that you take weeds out of the lake is not—even my own brothers don't quite understand exactly how the Sand Slicer works. My dad even says he's like, they just don't get it because they aren't using it. It's not, you know, if you're not a lakefront, waterfront owner, it's not going to make sense. And if you are a waterfront owner, you know, you're only now starting to find out that it's going to require a lot of maintenance. Having another type of landscape on your property is going to be double the tools, double the time commitment. You know, so people don't realize that they need these tools until they see it, and then they say, "Oh. Wait a minute, we do have weeds. That would be nice."

Megan Mulholland, APR: So, you have done, though, some unique marketing. I understand you had a physical billboard on Highway 13, and then even a sports marketing partnership with those...

Jeremy Schmidt: Yep. Yeah, it's part of being part of the small community, you know, that here is in central Wisconsin, so I wanted to make sure that the billboard on 13, I thought was a wonderful location, and that actually, I can genuinely say that has driven some sales. You know, when the Rome residents are coming back from their Wisconsin Rapids runs, it's right there, and it's even right before one of the stoplights, so it's got a location, location, location. I found a nice, great spot for that. But after that, you know, you just gotta get out, like you said, out in front of the people and let them touch it. Touching the product and them seeing it really changes people's understanding of what it is that it does. So, that's the next step for me, for sure.

Rick Sense: Well, and I could—I was just gonna say, in the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters, what kind of marketing are you doing with them, Jeremy?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, they were kind enough to have an arrangement where both Rolling Rome and Sand Slicer are on the foul line poles. So, it's not a big marketing campaign, per se, but again, for—and there's a personal element to it as well. When you get to see the product that you put a lot of effort into, being advertised, and especially a community baseball team right on the foul line. I mean, it's not a huge billboard-side sign, but it's definitely something that you look at and you say, "Yeah, that works well."

Rick Sense: So the players can hit a home run, and so can the fans if they buy your product, right? One off the foul, right?

Jeremy Schmidt: Exactly! Well, and the kind of fun part is, and I didn't know they were gonna do this, but anytime—for about the first two to three innings, if there's a foul, depending on which way it goes, they'll then do a quick 15 seconds, either if it's a Rolling Rome foul or a Sand Slicer foul, and say what the product is. So, I mean just even people hearing the names Rolling Rome and Sand Slicer, are they buying it the next day? Maybe not, but that's the kind of, from my marketing days, the longer kind of planting the seed marketing that I'm trying to do with those kind of campaigns.

Megan Mulholland, APR: Well, it is about reputation, and having people hear your name 3, 5, 7 times, you know, and in different locations, whether it's at the ballpark, or a billboard, or on the Shermalot ski team's truck, you know, they're seeing it around town.

Jeremy Schmidt: Exactly. Eventually, people start asking, "What the heck is a Sand Slicer?" And then if they look it up, and if you Google Sand Slicer today, it's pretty consistently the number one search result, and you'll see video pop-ups on it and everything, so it's got the name recognition that it needed for the internet era, right? To quite literally slice through all the fog, so that if somebody's researching it, it's coming right up on top, you know, without me having to pay Google Ads kind of thing. You know, that's just doing it through the metadata world.

Rick Sense: Jeremy, I'd like to ask you, you know, you and I were talking offline, and you recently mentioned that you hired a CFO. Could you maybe walk listeners through what that experience is like? How did you determine, first of all, that you needed a CFO? And then, secondly, the process of finding the right person for the job? Can you just walk listeners through that?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, sure, I can definitely say that I am in need of several more folks over the months and years to come to make these businesses grow. The CFO, he actually, being a fellow Marine veteran, reached out to me. And because of his career and what he's doing right now, working a lot of what he does is in the let's just say non-physical space, so when he came across what I was up to with Sand Slicer, he reached out to me, and he presented to me wanting to be my CFO. And so we went back and forth and had some conversations, and over time, he will actually be earning equity in the company. And especially one of the main things is we're gonna be transitioning it from an LLC to an incorporated company to be able to start possibly bringing in a couple investors. And that's the kind of insight he's really offering for me. What he does in his day job, you know, he's not the CFO for the company that he works for, but he kind of does those kind of finance management forecasting tasks for the company he works for. So now he's just helping me out, doing that, earning the same type of sweat and blood equity that I have for the past couple years, and he and I really do believe that Sand Slicer has, if not a Midwest potential, a national potential. I mean, the product is good, it's a sturdy product, I will place it next to any other of the beach products that I've seen out there these past 3 summers now. And I'm not just simply saying that just because it's my product, either. I'm saying that because it's been field tested in ways that I wasn't even thinking I would field test it, and can say, "Oh, it stands the test."

Rick Sense: You mentioned the background that you both have, being Marines, how does that style of discipline and Marines train people to basically be disciplined and understand process. So how does that impact not only his work, but your work in working together going forward?

Jeremy Schmidt: It does two things, actually. One, what you said with that kind of a background allows us to really want to try to figure out how to break things down. You know, like I was talking earlier about the bottlenecks, you know, trying to figure out where points of friction are gonna be, and in military training and planning, that's what you do. And especially the logistics side that I was doing, and he did service support as well, you'll always find that that's how you focus your efforts. The other kind of funny thing is, having that mutual background, and you don't need to have this as a requirement, but it is definitely helpful. You gotta be candid with your inner circle of people if you're gonna build a business or company like this. I mean, I definitely could use two to three other people in key roles, like a communications director someday, helping me with the social media stuff, and an accountant would be very nice as well. But when the time comes, it's gonna actually be the CFO and my planning that can get us to that point, because we're gonna be breaking it down, and we're also going to be very candid about what can and cannot be done. And the nice thing about his and my history together is we know that we can sometimes misspeak out of enthusiasm, so if we trip over our words sometimes, we know that we have to just give the other person a little bit more grace to come back and explain what the heck's going on. And that, I mean, that's advice for everybody all the time, but in the Marine Corps setting, having a fellow Marine that I can be unabashed with is a very nice way to have those conversations that sometimes don't get easy when it comes to the finances of things. I mean, sometimes I just have to tell him, "No. I mean, that's a great idea, but no."

Rick Sense: So you talked, too, about investors, and maybe you can walk listeners through the process that you both are going to go through in determining when, how to attract, what type of investors you're looking for.

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, and we're actually already talking to one person right now who's looking to invest in the company. As Mark and I keep working on our forecasting and putting the structure together of how we're gonna get from point A to B to C all the way down, that level of legitimacy on paper, combined with the efforts that I'm hoping to continue over these next several weeks, allow the investors to not only just see, "Hey, they've got long-range projections here." And, unlike a lot of folks in an early phase of an investment round, there's usually not a product in place already. There's usually not sales already in hand. So I, you know, when I'm talking to investors, I'm also not looking for millions of dollars, either. We're talking to investors who are looking to help us with much more of a mid-sized range than it is 7 figures, because that's what it's gonna take for Sand Slicer's next round to go off. So it's kind of an interesting situation where I'm so small that I'm looking for the mini investors, the micro-investors out there right now, but we're building that legitimacy through his and my efforts in planning.

Rick Sense: You say you're small, but do you have to plan differently because you're small? I mean, does it take any of the pressure off, or do you just have to do less stuff because you're small, or is it more work because you are small?

Jeremy Schmidt: You know, I mean, not knowing the other side of the fence just yet, I would say right now it feels like it's pretty hard being the smaller aspect of it, because there's a lot of these things that, while I have understandings of, I don't have the bandwidth or expertise to really be the guy. Mark is the CFO, like, and he's even been helping me with a few things that are kind of like, beyond the scope of the CFO, because, quite frankly, in every small business, you're all gonna be multi-headed. So it's not even just having a CFO on board, it's having another person to help with all of the tasks that are at hand. So yeah, having the small—I'm looking forward to kind of the next phase of Sand Slicer, where I'm not necessarily so sales crazy that I'm wondering where my next warehouse is gonna be, but more just... yeah, the proof of concept, we're now past the proof of concept, and now we're in the growth phase, yeah.

Rick Sense: I have to ask you, as we wrap up our third segment here, are you having fun, Jeremy?

Jeremy Schmidt: More fun than struggles, yes. Anybody who tries to say it's all fun all the time, you need to probably take them to a corner and sit them down for a little bit. But, the joys and the fun and the people that I've been able to meet during these past two years trying to build this, all outweighs whatever frustrations are keeping me up sometimes at night, or you know, having me tussle before the alarm wakes me up in 2 minutes kind of thing. I always love waking up 2 minutes before the alarm.

Rick Sense: All right, so with that, we're going to take our next break, and you're listening to BizTalk with SCORE on WHBY, and we will be right back after these messages.

Rick Sense: Welcome back to BizTalk with Score on WHBY. I'm Rick Sense, and along with co-host this week, Megan Mulholland, and we have had the great pleasure of talking with Jeremy Schmidt, who is the inventor and founder of Sand Slicer, and we're going to get back to that conversation in just a moment, but before we do that, I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors. Hailing & Associates helps small businesses and individuals not just prepare tax returns, but plan for the future. Hailing & Associates, personal connection, positive results. Wherever you are in life, or the life of your business, Johnson Financial Group works to match the banking and wealth services needed to help you complete your mission. Thank you to the Business News for promoting our weekly program in the bi-weekly business newspaper serving Northeast Wisconsin, with the latest business news and topics for the region. We are grateful for the support of Community First Credit Union. At its core, CFCU is a community of member owners where people work together to improve their financial well-being and help one another. New North, the regional marketing and economic development corporation, is an active supporter of SCORE. The New North facilitates economic growth and helps people in the region live their best lives. Since 1919, Baird has guided families through investment, trust, estate, and tax planning advice. So no matter what the future brings, you can be confident you're ready, because your family is Baird's focus.

So, thank you for those sponsors, and Jeremy, can you share with listeners how they can find out more about you and the Sand Slicer?

Jeremy Schmidt: Absolutely. You can find Sandslicer at sand-slicer.com. Sand Slicer also has a Facebook page, and there are some videos on YouTube as well.

Rick Sense: All right. Now, Jeremy, I have to ask you this. You're a busy guy, and I've gotten to know you a little bit, and in the time you and I have had conversations over the last year now, you mentioned to me that you really like to write, and you've been doing stuff on Medium and publishing books on Amazon. So, how do these creative outlets support your entrepreneurship, and why are you doing it?

Jeremy Schmidt: Well, I'm doing it because I'm having fun, again. Writing is definitely something I've liked and enjoyed throughout my life, but really haven't explored it as much as I probably should have. Doing the work with these businesses, putting together the small business plans, and utilizing today's technology that is AI, I started realizing that when I'm doing my writing, and utilizing the benefits of all the tools around me, that I needed to write a little bit more about the tools, too. 

And so "Conversations with Aiden" is actually about how I personally feel AI can be used for yourself and in society. And it goes into really the conversation of it's a lot of people in the social media world and public media is trying to put it into a camp of either it's a really good thing and it's gonna save everybody, or that it's a very bad thing and we should never use it and turn it off immediately. But so my book is basically kind of taking a third stance, and saying that just like every other amazing invention and discovery and tool that society has come up with, it's a lot more like a table saw, and you gotta be very cautious how you use a very powerful tool, or you'll lose a finger. That's how I try to use it, more as a tool that I can improve my writing with, and not just something that's going to do something for me.

Rick Sense: Well, I have to let listeners know I've had a chance to start reading one of Jeremy's books. It's a very interesting read. And you're out on Amazon, correct? Yes. People can find you there. So, go ahead and take a look out there on Amazon, and do yourself a favor and check out one of his books. So, thanks again, Jeremy, for being our guest this morning. We appreciate having you, and you're listening to BizTalk with Score, and we will catch you next week.