Latest / Profitable Christian Business / From Oil Fields to Faith-Fueled Startup: Curt Moore on Title Security and Tenacity

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From Oil Fields to Faith-Fueled Startup: Curt Moore on Title Security and Tenacity · Profitable Christian Business

• 0:03
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast.
• 0:07
  I am so pleased to have my new friend, Kurt Moore with me today.
• 0:11
  Kurt Moore is a exceptional business strategist.
• 0:14
  We're gonna talk a lot about business.
• 0:15
  We're gonna talk about faith as we always do on the Profitable Christian Business Podcast.
• 0:20
  But thank you so much for joining us today, Kurt.
• 0:22
  Kurt, why don't you give a brief introduction.
• 0:24
  Sure.
• 0:25
  Well, thank you for having me on Doug.
• 0:26
  I really appreciate it.
• 0:28
  Just a brief background on Kurt Moore.
• 0:31
  was born and raised in Colorado, went through the public schools in Greeley, went to the University of Northern Colorado, studied business there.
• 0:41
  I graduated from college and went into the oil and gas industry and worked there for 30 years.
• 0:48
  I retired in 2021, moved down to Oakland.
• 0:52
  to be closer to my wife's mother, just to keep a better closer eye on her.
• 1:00
  And along uh that time, I created this startup that I'm running now called Emote Title Security.
• 1:08
  I've been running that now for about two years.
• 1:12
  And that's an early stage startup, but I'm having a lot of fun doing that.
• 1:17
  uh
• 1:19
  to see how that progresses along.
• 1:20
  But again, I'm very pleased and uh excited and honored to be on your podcast today.
• 1:25
  Well, thank you so much for joining us, Colorado, you're still in Colorado, I take it.
• 1:31
  No, we moved to Oklahoma City uh in 2021.
• 1:39
  mother actually her stepfather passed away in 2021 so we needed to make a move to get closer to her and keep keep a closer eye on her so that so we reside in Oklahoma City now.
• 1:49
  Nice, nice.
• 1:50
  I have never been to Oklahoma, but I have been to Colorado.
• 1:53
  I love Colorado.
• 1:54
  We went to Boulder, Colorado.
• 1:56
  It's probably been seven years ago at this point, but such a beautiful, beautiful state.
• 2:04
  I in Colorado almost all of my life, probably 55 years in Colorado.
• 2:10
  So it's a beautiful state.
• 2:12
  Got a lot of family and friends that still reside there.
• 2:14
  In fact, we're going back to Colorado to visit some family and friends next week.
• 2:19
  So yeah, it's a beautiful state, beautiful state.
• 2:21
  Nice, nice.
• 2:22
  I like to start, we're already starting to get to know you a little bit, but I like to start the every interview with just some casual getting to know you questions, of know who
• 2:30
  you are before we dive into the deep heavy stuff about business and faith and all that.
• 2:34
  So ah what I know about you is you had a 30 year career in the energy uh sector, much like you spoke of recently.
• 2:43
  And ah what's thing you miss about being in that versus where you are now?
• 2:48
  Well, it's a great question.
• 2:49
  uh Things I miss are certainly the friends and colleagues I worked with in and out of the companies that I worked for.
• 2:57
  m Just those relationships, solving problems in teams, getting complex assignments, and working through that with friends and colleagues cross-disciplined.
• 3:11
  uh
• 3:12
  Collaboration, know, there's a lot of energy in that.
• 3:15
  There's a lot of satisfaction in those types of corporate roles.
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  uh I've got a fairly unique, at least I think it is, unique trajectory.
• 3:26
  When I graduated from college, the job market was pretty dismal uh and I needed to stay near my home.
• 3:33
  My father was pretty ill and was eventually passed away within a year of my graduating from college.
• 3:38
  So it didn't really make a lot of sense for me to jump across the United States and start
• 3:42
  know, shop somewhere else.
• 3:44
  So I just took a job as a roustabout in the oil field.
• 3:47
  said, you know, uh I'm a hardworking uh young man.
• 3:51
  I can prove myself here.
• 3:54
  And I was able to uh build a 30-year career in oil and gas.
• 3:58
  And there's not a lot of people that I talk about in my colleague network that started in that uh low of a floor uh and worked myself all the way up to a senior vice president role
• 4:09
  at the time I retired.
• 4:12
  You know, I just think, you know, people all have unique stories.
• 4:17
  That's probably a unique story in my background that I share often with people that there's nothing wrong with starting on the bottom and working your way up and working hard
• 4:27
  and, uh you know, being willing to do whatever needs to get done to move the company's goals along.
• 4:34
  Wow, that is an awesome story.
• 4:37
  I want to ask you a question about Landman.
• 4:40
  You may have watched that show or not, but first I want to just what you left off with right there is that start where you can.
• 4:49
  On a recent interview, uh I had someone on that was an immigrant from South Africa and they came to this country.
• 4:56
  I he said he had like $200 in his pocket, right?
• 4:59
  But he wanted to learn about real estate and he was willing to start at the very bottom.
• 5:05
  and learn about real estate.
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  He's picked up trash at properties and things like that.
• 5:10
  And then eventually got into the office.
• 5:12
  then, you know, and he just was seeking the knowledge, right?
• 5:16
  You know, and then, now he's a very wealthy man in real estate.
• 5:20
  So uh you're exactly right.
• 5:24
  We often don't weigh opportunity cost, right?
• 5:29
  So.
• 5:30
  Well, I mean, it's interesting.
• 5:33
  became a manager pretty early in my career.
• 5:37
  I had a handful of people that reported to me.
• 5:40
  And by the time I was getting towards a tail end of that part of my corporate life, there's at times 50 or more people reporting to me directly and indirectly.
• 5:51
  And I was uh always uh included in the recruiting to go on campuses and recruit uh future land man.
• 5:59
  And uh so you'd interview 10, 15 people a day trying to find a handful of interns and maybe a couple of people to bring on board at the various campuses.
• 6:09
  And you'd oftentimes get questions like, well, how did you do this career?
• 6:13
  mean, how did you do this?
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  I mean, you didn't go to any of the campuses that specifically train for
• 6:21
  and land man and I said no, no I didn't but really in my opinion really any job can be learned if you just put your nose to the grindstone and learn it and uh one of my mottos
• 6:33
  was if nobody else wants to do it I'll do it.
• 6:37
  If everyone else is shying away from that grumpy old landowner I'll go out and meet them and I'll do what I can to get what the company
• 6:47
  needs done, done here.
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  I think observation, Doug, in interviewing hundreds of young candidates, there's a certain percentage that you don't want to do that.
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  I don't want to do that.
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  How can I get around that and get into your chair quicker without spending all that grind time out in the weeds?
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  And I think all that grind time out in the weeds is what seasons people and makes them stronger, better employees uh through the long term.
• 7:16
  Yeah, man, I love that.
• 7:18
  Yeah, have to go, you have to experience, right?
• 7:21
  You can know so much.
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  ah You can, I've seen so many people that have had the experience surpass the people with the knowledge because they are seasoned, much like you said, they not only know, they not
• 7:37
  only get to know, they've also been through it.
• 7:41
  So.
• 7:41
  exactly right.
• 7:42
  And, you know, I was blessed to have an opportunity to work in the field for virtually half of my career and then in the corporate offices for the second half.
• 7:51
  And you get in these corporate offices in downtown Denver and, you know, we've got these engineers that, you know, they're super smart, but then they'll sit down with a
• 7:59
  spreadsheet and they'll line out a drilling schedule and, you know, they'll have drilling rigs hopping all over around the world.
• 8:05
  And, you know, coming from the field, you're like, well, no, you really wouldn't want to move those things.
• 8:09
  the way you're moving them, because we're going to spend a lot of money doing it that way.
• 8:12
  And some of those rigs don't fit on some of those locations.
• 8:15
  Everything has a reason for why we're ordering it the way we order it.
• 8:19
  oh people that have experience doing those complex in the weeds type thing, they should be, uh in my opinion, should cling on to people like that.
• 8:30
  They know what's right and what's wrong, and they don't have to make a lot of mistakes to get to the right answer next and fast.
• 8:37
  I think it takes a combination in my experience, at least in the corporate world of people, different experiences, different backgrounds, but people that have been out in the
• 8:48
  weeds working hard, getting dirty fingernails, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 8:52
  There's nothing wrong.
• 8:55
  nice.
• 8:56
  Now back to the reference of Landman, because that popped into my head, the show Landman.
• 9:01
  Is it really as dangerous as the show depicts?
• 9:04
  You know, I get that question all the time.
• 9:06
  A lot of people will text me and say, hey, did you see the last episode of Landmen?
• 9:11
  know, were you doing that?
• 9:12
  And I'm like, you know, I think that's pretty Hollywood influenced career molding there.
• 9:19
  uh My response is where, know, we tried very hard, at least I as a manager tried very hard to keep my landmen out of uh field operations that could uh cause
• 9:31
  injuries.
• 9:32
  mean, landmen are not normally doing that.
• 9:35
  Those are operational roles.
• 9:38
  Maybe a very small company, one or two people, you know, one guy does everything and the other guy does everything else.
• 9:44
  Maybe a landman might be doing some of those things.
• 9:46
  But I think a lot of that stuff in that movie or that series is not highly representative of what landmen do.
• 9:54
  Landmen are often in times in a courthouse or clerk and recorder's office recording our
• 10:01
  reviewing and uh just checking records hour after hour after hour in front of, used to be microfiche, now it's all digital.
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  Or they're out talking to surface owners and mineral owners and leasing minerals or getting right aways or surface use agreements.
• 10:17
  They're doing a lot of negotiating and record reviewing.
• 10:21
  They're not that close to the operations of wells, generally speaking.
• 10:26
  Yeah, so really, really, really dramatized.
• 10:31
  But that's how they get viewers, right?
• 10:33
  Yeah, a good friend of mine, she's up in Canada and she said, well, I didn't know you did all that stuff.
• 10:38
  And I said, I did.
• 10:39
  We don't.
• 10:40
  uh know, that is not if landmen were doing all of that, I think there'd be a lot of uh troubled oil and gas companies are just not trained to be behaving like that and doing
• 10:51
  those.
• 10:54
  Awesome, awesome.
• 10:55
  um Let's transition a little bit to what you're doing now.
• 10:58
  So ah first off, let me ask this.
• 11:01
  How hard was that transition from going from where you were to now this startup?
• 11:07
  You know, it has its moments.
• 11:09
  I think there's times it's difficult and there's times it's rewarding and it kind of goes back and forth.
• 11:15
  know, coming from a company of, you 1500 employees, if my computer doesn't work right, I put a help desk request.
• 11:23
  Now I go to work now where I'm sitting now, if my computer doesn't work right, guess who's going to fix that?
• 11:28
  Me.
• 11:29
  You know, so, um you know, starting up a company and letting go of all the
• 11:34
  and systems that you had in your prior life and assuming all the roles from cleaning up the office to handling investor calls and everything in between, it's a different
• 11:48
  challenge for sure.
• 11:49
  It's a lot more independence, ah but with independence comes, you've got to have some internal drive there and keep yourself on track or you're just going to flounder along.
• 12:01
  A long wordy way of saying it, I think there's certainly some similarities, but there's some vast differences in doing a startup versus just working in a corporate culture.
• 12:12
  I want to sit there for a second for any of the aspiring entrepreneurs or early stage entrepreneurs that may be listening.
• 12:19
  Because I think what you talked about is having that drive.
• 12:24
  If you're in a corporate environment, if you have a job where you know all your expectations, it's a lot different than when you were trying to start something of your
• 12:34
  own.
• 12:34
  There's a lot of unknowns that uh pop up.
• 12:37
  You have to wear a lot of hats.
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  So you have to...
• 12:40
  be willing to wear those hats for one, right?
• 12:43
  uh I think entrepreneurship is often glamourized and there is a lot of great things about entrepreneurship.
• 12:49
  Don't get me wrong.
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  I love being an entrepreneur myself.
• 12:51
  The freedom, the clock in when I want to, but I clock in earlier than I would have a corporate job, right?
• 12:58
  But uh can you just speak on that about a little bit of the differences that someone should expect if they are maybe doubting their entry into entrepreneurship or thinking
• 13:08
  about entrepreneurship?
• 13:10
  You know, it's a great question, Doug.
• 13:12
  And what I would say and what I've learned uh in uh transitioning into the startup is just be prepared for anything.
• 13:21
  And you've got to keep uh your focus.
• 13:25
  um You're going to have ups.
• 13:27
  You're definitely going to have downs.
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  uh Try to smooth both of those things out.
• 13:33
  and get on more of a steady progression, hopefully going up.
• 13:37
  And again, don't let a bad day dent your whole week or your whole month.
• 13:43
  uh You can easily become overwhelmed.
• 13:47
  uh What I tell people that ask me about MODIS, I didn't know what I didn't know.
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  And every day I'm learning more about the regulatory schemes you have to wiggle through.
• 13:59
  And there's federal things, there's state things, there's local things.
• 14:02
  And I had a clue that there were things to be done there.
• 14:08
  But until I uh dug into the weeds and got deeper into it, it starts to become, or it can become a bit overwhelming.
• 14:17
  But MoDA is a little unique.
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  We're uh currently available in eight states.
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  Our flagship document.
• 14:26
  needs to be considered against each state statutes as it relates to fraud and public records.
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  And we can't just record something that might be ambiguous or at odds with a state statute.
• 14:38
  there's 42 states, most of which are reaching out to us saying, hey, you know, I want this, but I'm over here in this state and I have to reply to them all.
• 14:47
  And we're just not there yet.
• 14:49
  I've got a legal team that's working on that.
• 14:51
  We're grinding out a state or two here and there.
• 14:55
  But early stage, I didn't think that was going to be that tough.
• 14:59
  And I've switched legal firms.
• 15:02
  I'm on my second legal firm trying to accelerate that because I think it's risky to keep telling people, you can't have this.
• 15:09
  You can't have this.
• 15:10
  Keep shooing away business.
• 15:13
  So long-winded way again, sorry for some of my long-winded answers.
• 15:18
  It can get to be a little bit frustrating because steps you think can be taken quickly sometimes don't.
• 15:25
  happen that quickly and they take a lot of time and they take a lot of capital to get across this bridge so you can go to the next step.
• 15:34
  I think people that are considering uh startups certainly take a hard look at the complexity and take a good look at the timelines and be realistic with what it's going to
• 15:44
  cost and how long it's going to take to get you where you want to go and be sure that you have the tenacity and
• 15:51
  stay power to do that and have access to capital to do it.
• 15:54
  I think a fair amount of startups have some of that, but not enough of that.
• 15:59
  And it gets them in trouble early and can kind of diminish their drive if they're not careful.
• 16:09
  Nice.
• 16:09
  uh So I was going to wait till later in the interview to go here, but let's talk a little bit more about what Mode actually does.
• 16:17
  So can you kind of explain oh what your business is?
• 16:20
  And the follow-up question, so you kind of even go into this, is did you have exposure to this business prior to uh transitioning?
• 16:29
  That's a great question.
• 16:30
  I get that quite often.
• 16:31
  um What Moat does, and there is a backstory.
• 16:35
  I'll feather into this.
• 16:38
  What Moat does, what I came up with, Doug, is what is called a notice of title freeze.
• 16:45
  And what that legal document does, and that's copyrighted, protected, um it essentially performs and behaves much like a consumer credit freeze, if you're familiar with that.
• 16:57
  You know, if few uh are living in the United States uh and are alive, perhaps even if you're not alive, your personal data has been lost probably multiple times.
• 17:11
  I know mine has, and I can name them all off, um all the different things, employers, uh agencies, even one of the credit agencies got corrupted.
• 17:20
  um So I have no expectation that my personal confidential information is not
• 17:26
  wherever anyone wants it to be.
• 17:28
  So I'm a big fan of freezing my credit.
• 17:30
  I just freeze it.
• 17:32
  And I've got two credit cards, a Southwest card and a United card.
• 17:37
  And one of those cards will blow out uh probably at least once a year.
• 17:41
  Because they'll just send me a message saying, hey, look, we noticed some strange activity on your card.
• 17:46
  We shut that down.
• 17:48
  We're going to send you a new card.
• 17:49
  um Be sure to change all your...
• 17:52
  uh
• 17:54
  payments that are attached to that card when you get it.
• 17:57
  And I think that's great.
• 17:59
  10, 15 years ago, some of that stuff may have tried to stick to the consumer, but it certainly keeps my eyes open to just uh how little confidence I have of my personal
• 18:11
  information and banking information and credit information being protected.
• 18:15
  So I just freeze my credit and there's nothing wrong with that.
• 18:18
  I think that's a safe thing to do.
• 18:20
  think that's your most risk.
• 18:22
  of someone attacking you is opening up new credit and stinging you with a new fraudulent credit and that just gets stopped in its tracks by a credit freeze.
• 18:34
  If I've got my credit frozen, I can't even apply for new credit.
• 18:40
  can't.
• 18:41
  If I apply for a credit card or apply for a loan, it's stopped.
• 18:45
  It just won't go.
• 18:46
  I have to unfreeze my credit for action to be taken and I think that's fine.
• 18:51
  So I modeled the notice of title freeze after that.
• 18:53
  You record a public document that says, hey, look, I own this property.
• 18:56
  I'm worried about title fraud for myself and my property.
• 19:01
  I'm going to record this notice of title freeze.
• 19:05
  In the absence of my uh written recorded uh permission, there should be nothing else recorded without my consent.
• 19:14
  so title companies, real estate agents, escrow folks, they're all going to see that and say, whoa, what's this?
• 19:20
  um
• 19:21
  So even legitimate business that I want to do on my house with my wife, I'm gonna have to release that freeze before we can take out a mortgage or sell that home.
• 19:30
  And I think that's fine.
• 19:32
  uh It keeps people that are trying to do fraudulent things like sell my home for me or um put a loan on my home in their name, it keeps that stuff at bay.
• 19:44
  ah So that's the flagship document.
• 19:48
  We've also got another document.
• 19:50
  uh
• 19:50
  called a notice of occupancy and that was built to protect property owners from squatters.
• 19:56
  ah So we've got a fair amount of property management folks and people, real estate investors that...
• 20:05
  You see it in the news all the time now, people just in different states just say, look, I'm going to move into this empty house.
• 20:11
  I'm going to claim I have right to be here.
• 20:13
  And, you know, it's going to be meet my word against the actual owner's word, whether I'm a tenant that's legitimate or not.
• 20:19
  And they can probably wind that out for three to six months before they finally get evicted.
• 20:23
  And meanwhile, destroying the property.
• 20:26
  And our notice is similar in that respect that says, hey, look, I own this property and I have no intent of anyone else being in it.
• 20:34
  And if I ever do lease it out, I'm going to record a notice of property lease and I'm going to identify who the legitimate tenant is.
• 20:41
  And anyone else that's ever found to be in that property that's not named that party is a squatter.
• 20:47
  And we built that to make it easier for uh local authorities to get to the right answer quick.
• 20:57
  So those are our documents.
• 21:00
  People ask me, well, how did you ever come up with that?
• 21:02
  All the way back in 2014, title fraud tried to happen to my elderly mom.
• 21:06
  So that was 11 years ago.
• 21:08
  So this isn't just something that's starting here in the last few years.
• 21:12
  It's getting more and more momentum.
• 21:15
  But I witnessed that firsthand.
• 21:17
  My mom was elderly.
• 21:18
  She had had a fair amount of medical.
• 21:21
  interactions.
• 21:22
  She was just not healthy at all.
• 21:24
  She was out of her home for long periods of time in and out of hospitals and whatnot.
• 21:29
  some foster decided, you know, I'm just going to try to steal your mom's home.
• 21:33
  And I was lucky enough to catch that and keep an eye on that and stop that.
• 21:37
  But that's when the light went off in my head that there's something funny going on here.
• 21:41
  And what can I do?
• 21:43
  What can I think of to uh protect people like my mom?
• 21:48
  predominantly these things happen or try to happen to people like my mom, elderly folks that are uh high value homes and little or no mortgages.
• 21:58
  Those are the low hanging fruit that these fraudsters target generally.
• 22:02
  So that's where I got the idea for it.
• 22:05
  uh Over the years, uh even before I retired, spent a fair amount of time working on those documents, getting legal help and building them.
• 22:15
  So...
• 22:16
  Moat was ready to launch when I was ready to retire from my other career.
• 22:21
  Nice.
• 22:21
  um So your primary clientele, I heard real estate investors in there, definitely for the one document.
• 22:31
  uh So for the credit freeze, is it just the basic consumer?
• 22:38
  Well, our notice of title freeze, it's anybody with property that's worried about uh fraud.
• 22:43
  uh And our website has just a fair amount of uh news articles from across the United States of how this works.
• 22:53
  People that have a vacant lot that they bought somewhere in Vermont or somewhere where they want to retire and they bought this lot.
• 23:03
  And they're both working and you know, their retirement plan is to build their dream home on this lot when they both retire.
• 23:11
  Meanwhile, someone sees that lots empty.
• 23:14
  They record a fraudulent deed.
• 23:16
  They in the records take over that property, sell it to someone and they go on, go about life and build a home on it.
• 23:24
  And there's stories out there where people that went to check on their vacant lot and there's a home on it.
• 23:29
  It's well, how long did that happen?
• 23:30
  You know, it's like you go research the public records and say, well, here's where it started.
• 23:34
  know, John Frobster recorded this quick claim deed from you to him, and he took off and mortgaged the thing and sold it and did all kinds of crazy stuff.
• 23:44
  And that, think, is just a ridiculous uh misuse of everything that's right and wrong in the world.
• 23:54
  uh
• 23:55
  I think the best way to stop that is to stop it where it starts in the public records by recording a notice of title freeze.
• 24:02
  And if John Fraudster would have seen that when he was considering that lot to attack, maybe you would have said, you know, there's gotta be a uh better place to attack.
• 24:10
  These people seem like.
• 24:14
  So it's a twofold thing.
• 24:15
  It's a deterrence.
• 24:17
  If I'm going to attack, say I'm a bag down, want to attack no 3000.
• 24:23
  property, ah I'm going to have to go to the public records in the county or parish where your property is located.
• 24:29
  I'm going do some research on you.
• 24:31
  And that's exactly where I'm going to bump into this notice of title freeze.
• 24:34
  So it's the first thing it does is say, yeah, maybe this is not your best target.
• 24:39
  So if they see it and move on, you win.
• 24:43
  If they don't see it or don't care and attack anyway and start and record a fraudulent deed and then try to mortgage it or sell the property,
• 24:52
  you're going to be in a lot better shape to go quiet your title.
• 24:54
  With that notice of title freeze in hand to go to the courts and say, you know, there's fraud here.
• 25:01
  Look what I did to protect myself from fraud and look what happened here.
• 25:04
  Someone recorded this.
• 25:05
  This couldn't have happened.
• 25:06
  uh It should have been for it to be legitimate.
• 25:09
  It needed to be released before something was recorded.
• 25:11
  This got recorded without a release.
• 25:13
  It has to be fraud.
• 25:15
  So we want to make that a very black and white process that A, deters.
• 25:20
  from starting in the first place and if it does happen, uh it's easier to suppress and get corrected uh for the affected party.
• 25:29
  So that's how the Notice of Title Freeze works and that's what we're, we feel pretty good ah as a startup company that when people are given the options of A, do nothing, B,
• 25:42
  monitor my title or C, record a Notice of Title Freeze, we believe ours is gonna be the most.
• 25:50
  comprehensive and proactive defense to this type of.
• 25:54
  I didn't even know.
• 25:57
  It's sad to think that there's those type of criminals out there that are just looking for properties to seize.
• 26:02
  ah
• 26:04
  I didn't either.
• 26:05
  It literally in August of 2014, I had never heard of it.
• 26:08
  And you you've got your elderly mother in the hospital, you know, you and your siblings are pretty distraught over all of that.
• 26:18
  And then for something like this to pile on, just think, number one, I didn't even, I couldn't even believe it was a thing.
• 26:25
  And I was talking to the corporate
• 26:27
  attorney at the company I brought it up to him.
• 26:30
  said, yeah, that's the thing.
• 26:31
  That's happening.
• 26:31
  People do that.
• 26:32
  that's you need to protect and they're going to be attacking people like your mother.
• 26:36
  They're always trying to attack the most vulnerable.
• 26:38
  He just kind of matter of fact about it.
• 26:39
  And I'm like, how is this even possible?
• 26:41
  mean, and how how how is that not something that could be legislatively fixed or, you know, somehow somewhere somebody should be saying that's wrong.
• 26:51
  And how can we stop that?
• 26:53
  But it's uh it seems like the market's going to have to be the fixer.
• 26:58
  Yeah, sounds like the oh one of the main entrepreneur stories is like you experienced the problem and you set out to provide the solution.
• 27:07
  So oh that's awesome.
• 27:09
  Kind of a fun question, but almost oh really, I really almost really mean this with the credit freeze, does that stop the credit card companies from sending you the applications?
• 27:19
  You know it doesn't.
• 27:20
  I still get those.
• 27:22
  It's remarkable when you freeze your credit there's three credit agencies and you have to freeze your credit at each one.
• 27:27
  Different banks and different credit cards they use different ones so you can't just say well I'll just do this or that one.
• 27:33
  You got to do them all.
• 27:35
  But remarkably when you do that suddenly those credit agencies are like well you know if you ever need to unfreeze this you know here's how you do it and it's almost like they
• 27:43
  don't want you to do this and it's like well you should be happy that I did that because you and I are both vulnerable when something goes wrong.
• 27:49
  your reputation is on the line and my personal finances are on the line.
• 27:53
  I would think they'd be encouraging that, but they seem to be discouraging that and almost trying to get you to stop it and unwind it and trust us.
• 28:03
  We can monitor your credit.
• 28:05
  I said, well, please do.
• 28:07
  Currently, I've got two different companies monitoring my credit because my personal information has been lost.
• 28:15
  And their solution is to send you a letter saying, you can sign up for free credit or credit monitoring for a year through some service I've never heard of.
• 28:21
  So you do.
• 28:23
  And it's free.
• 28:24
  And they're just going to watch to see if something fishy is happening.
• 28:27
  And they'll alert you.
• 28:28
  And I think that's fine.
• 28:30
  And that's similar to what title monitoring is doing.
• 28:33
  But I'd rather stop it before it starts than wait for it to happen and then try to catch up to it and fix it.
• 28:40
  So monitoring, think, is way better than nothing.
• 28:43
  But
• 28:44
  freezing both in credit and in title, think, is a stronger proactive thing.
• 28:49
  Yeah, I think from a consumer side too, puts an extra layer on credit decisions.
• 29:00
  If you're hesitating to maybe do this thing with unleveraged credit, you're thinking twice about it.
• 29:06
  Whereas before, you might be making a bolder move than you need to be.
• 29:13
  Well, you you're exactly right.
• 29:15
  And you you see it all the time.
• 29:16
  You go up to buy some merchandise somewhere and you know, you're in a sales call as soon as you're at the cash register.
• 29:24
  Oh, you can save 20 % if you do supply for credit.
• 29:27
  It takes like 30 seconds.
• 29:28
  Like, oh, don't need credit at this big box store.
• 29:32
  I don't need credit at this clothing store.
• 29:34
  I just want to buy this and leave and go home.
• 29:38
  I'm not trying to make a credit decision today, but a fair amount of people, if you watch that check register for eight hours, there's probably going to be 10 or 20 people that did
• 29:47
  that.
• 29:48
  And I don't know if they really need to do that.
• 29:51
  It's not helpful to your credit to open up too many credit lines.
• 29:55
  It's actually going to harm your score.
• 29:57
  And if you have more credit, you might use more credit.
• 30:00
  So I think credit is...
• 30:04
  It's useful, but it's a double-edged sword.
• 30:06
  It can be misused and cause trouble if you're not careful.
• 30:10
  Yeah, just like anything, like I'm just thinking if you have a lot of cards, it's a lot more to keep track of and it's a lot harder to manage.
• 30:19
  So it's just better to consolidate as much as you can.
• 30:22
  uh
• 30:23
  yeah, have enough credit.
• 30:25
  Two credit cards seems to be worth plenty for me, you know, and it's funny when I froze my credit, the bank that I use is the same bank that I use for MoTitle security.
• 30:37
  Like, oh, well, you need a corporate credit card.
• 30:39
  I'm like, okay.
• 30:40
  So I just fill out the same, send it in, stopped it, did it in its tracks.
• 30:43
  The credit freeze just stopped it.
• 30:45
  Absolutely didn't in its tracks.
• 30:46
  And so you're have to unfreeze your credit for us to proceed.
• 30:48
  And I'm like, you know, now that I think about it, I don't really need a corporate
• 30:52
  Why do I need that?
• 30:53
  So I just let it go.
• 30:54
  But I mean, it proved, it showed me clearly that this credit freeze is a pretty sharp idea.
• 30:59
  I would encourage anyone listening to this to consider that.
• 31:03
  share that with your parents and grandparents, friends.
• 31:08
  It's not that hard, unless you're a super compulsive buyer, it's not that hard to unfreeze your credit if you do want to get a new mortgage or...
• 31:18
  buy a car and at a car dealership and apply for credit.
• 31:23
  It's just gonna take a day or two and you're right back there doing your business and when you're done, you can freeze it up again.
• 31:29
  Yeah.
• 31:30
  Awesome.
• 31:31
  Awesome.
• 31:32
  We do something on every single proper Christian business podcast show called the fill in the blank question.
• 31:38
  And this we're going to dive a little bit into faith now.
• 31:40
  So Christian entrepreneurship is really about blank for you.
• 31:45
  Christian entrepreneurship for me is a great question.
• 31:50
  I love that question.
• 31:52
  It would be partnering with brothers and sisters in faith to follow the will of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
• 32:02
  dug in my life.
• 32:06
  That is a motto that I would take to anybody.
• 32:10
  Make sure you're partnering with people of faith.
• 32:13
  and you're growing faith, you're being that light in the world.
• 32:17
  um You know, help those that are the least of these.
• 32:22
  I mean, there's so many parts of scripture that it's so easy to hear but don't act upon.
• 32:27
  Hear it, you know, have eyes to see and ears to hear and then do something with that, you know, and partnering with people of faith is uh a huge cornerstone part of
• 32:42
  I love that you said, I think a lot of Christians miss out on the action piece.
• 32:46
  Like they'll do the religious practices, right?
• 32:50
  They'll go to church, they'll read their Bible.
• 32:53
  But there are a lot of things that God calls us to do in the Bible that we should be doing, evangelizing, Helping, as you mentioned, the least of these, right?
• 33:06
  Yeah, the scriptures are so clear, you know, and I'm not good at quoting exactly what book they're in, but people are asking, Jesus, how can I get into heaven?
• 33:20
  Well, follow the Ten Commandments, love your neighbor more than you love yourself, and any of these lists them all out there.
• 33:30
  He says, well, just sell all your worldly possessions, give them to the poor, pick up your cross and follow me.
• 33:34
  And what does the guy do?
• 33:35
  He just turns around and walks away.
• 33:37
  And you think, you know, didn't he just tell 12 other folks, follow me, and they did, and they became the disciples of Christ.
• 33:45
  And he literally told you to sell all your worldly possessions, pick up your cross and follow me.
• 33:49
  And he just turned around and walked away.
• 33:52
  And, you know, Jesus said, you know, it will be easier for a rich man, it will be easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
• 34:02
  When I hear things like that, I think, you know,
• 34:04
  This striving for money stuff is, you gotta put it in its place.
• 34:10
  It's not what is important.
• 34:12
  What's important is the Word and the Scriptures and it's all in there and it all comes back to do you have eyes to see and ears to hear?
• 34:19
  mean, the Living Christ was here on this planet and what did we do to the cruise planet?
• 34:28
  And you just think, you know, there's something that we can all learn from that if we just.
• 34:33
  attention and not just read it and then, okay I read my Bible for the day and I'm gonna go back to do what I do or I went to church on Sunday so I'm good for the week or whatever
• 34:42
  the people are doing it practice that uh that day and that week.
• 34:46
  Just read it and then put it aside.
• 34:49
  Yeah, I love the reference to the I think I guess it was the rich young ruler from recalling correctly that that Jesus told to sell all his possessions and follow him.
• 35:00
  It was really a heart check.
• 35:02
  Right.
• 35:03
  It was like, where are your priorities?
• 35:05
  Would you do that for me?
• 35:07
  Right.
• 35:07
  And Jesus already knew what is it?
• 35:09
  Jesus already knows what we're going to say.
• 35:11
  Jesus already knew his heart wasn't in the right place and he knew what he was going to do.
• 35:15
  But it wasn't so much about the
• 35:18
  about the possessions themselves.
• 35:20
  Who knows?
• 35:20
  He could have followed Jesus and still kept his possession, right?
• 35:23
  But it was the fact his heart was was prioritizing his worldly goods over his heavenly father.
• 35:29
  So.
• 35:31
  That that it still gives me chills to hear and read that now that when there has that that is largely shaped my life.
• 35:40
  You know, I look at that and I think you know these these these worldly possessions.
• 35:44
  I drive an old pickup and it's good enough and I.
• 35:49
  My wife and I live in a nice neighborhood and a nice home, but our neighbors are just driving some of the most exotic, wild cars.
• 35:56
  And I just think, what's the point?
• 35:58
  What is the point?
• 35:59
  I've got an old Ford pickup.
• 35:59
  It's good enough.
• 36:01
  It's not about all the things.
• 36:03
  You're not taking any of that with you.
• 36:05
  So I think those are good words to live by.
• 36:09
  Yeah, yeah, I love all of that.
• 36:11
  ah Another, we could talk about that for a long time, let's talk, let's ask the secret question.
• 36:18
  We ask a secret question on every one of these episodes as well.
• 36:21
  And your secret question is, what's the secret to handling a challenge of starting a business from scratch?
• 36:28
  that's such a deep and it's a great question.
• 36:31
  get that one fairly often.
• 36:33
  I think.
• 36:35
  OK.
• 36:36
  went out.
• 36:36
  I'll ask that question again.
• 36:38
  Okay.
• 36:42
  change headphones.
• 36:44
  Sure enough.
• 36:51
  Good thing I edit this.
• 36:52
  For those of you watching live.
• 36:54
  Yeah, there you go.
• 37:00
  Say something, Kurt.
• 37:01
  Can hear me?
• 37:03
  Yes, okay.
• 37:03
  All right, so I'll ask that question again and we'll start over from that.
• 37:06
  ah So the secret question for you, Kurt, is what's the secret to handling challenges of starting a business from scratch?
• 37:15
  It's a great question.
• 37:16
  I get that one all the time, Doug.
• 37:17
  And I think it comes down to, do you have passion to do this startup?
• 37:22
  Is this something you just saw scrolling through Facebook and it just became kind of a shiny object to you?
• 37:29
  Or do you really have passion to do this?
• 37:32
  And do you have the stay power and the wherewithal and the, I call it the grind?
• 37:39
  grind it out to get through the long hard days that don't look like this is going to work?
• 37:44
  Are you going to give up?
• 37:47
  Do you have access to enough startup capital?
• 37:50
  uh Starting up a business uh is expensive.
• 37:54
  I've poured a tremendous amount of capital into the startup of Moat.
• 37:58
  um And different startups are going to have different capital requirements.
• 38:04
  But at the same time, I don't know if any of them are going to be
• 38:09
  necessarily light on capital.
• 38:11
  There's just a ton of stuff you have to spend money on.
• 38:14
  Stuff that you're prepared to spend money on and stuff that you were never prepared to spend money on and you have to do all of it to keep it going.
• 38:21
  uh You're going to be more apt to do that, Doug, if you're passionate about what you're doing.
• 38:27
  If you're just doing it because, I might make money doing that because I saw it on Facebook.
• 38:32
  That's not deep enough, in my opinion, to stick with it when it gets difficult.
• 38:37
  If you're going to do a startup, do something that you're passionate about and you want to see succeed and you're going to stay with it and you're going to grind it out when it gets
• 38:49
  tough because it will be tough.
• 38:50
  There are days when a startup, I can't imagine that Facebook had its uh soft easy trajectory.
• 38:59
  I'm sure there was a lot of struggles there.
• 39:01
  I'm sure there was struggle with Google.
• 39:02
  They were all in deep uh competitive.
• 39:05
  uh
• 39:08
  environments and they rose to the top and good for them and there is many that didn't that were like them.
• 39:16
  But at the end of the day, do something that you love to do that makes you get up and go, if you find yourself driving to work dreading it, you're probably in the wrong spot.
• 39:25
  And that's the same way with startups.
• 39:27
  If you get up and think, I don't want to do this, why am doing this?
• 39:29
  I don't like this, then you're probably not going to succeed as a startup.
• 39:33
  If you get up thinking, I love this, then you're probably going to get it gone.
• 39:38
  Yeah, yeah, I love the fact that you point out, like, a lot of people, the first thing they think about entrepreneurship is I can write my own ticket, I can blaze my own path.
• 39:48
  But they, they don't think about what it takes to takes to do all that the sacrifices you have to make some like, I think doing some research in the beginning, what what is it
• 39:57
  you're pursuing?
• 39:58
  Look at, like, look at what it takes to build something like that, right?
• 40:03
  Oh, is it going to take a lot of capital you may not have right now?
• 40:06
  Because if you don't have capital, you have to spend a lot more time.
• 40:08
  ah And sometimes that's not even enough, right?
• 40:11
  No matter how much time you spend, because you're competing against people that do have capital, right?
• 40:16
  So.
• 40:17
  oh
• 40:18
  Go ahead.
• 40:20
  No, no, go ahead.
• 40:23
  Other things I did when I was toying with the idea of actually launching MoT, I just talked to people that had done startups, and there's any number of places you can reach
• 40:32
  out and just chat with folks that have actually started up businesses.
• 40:37
  And they told me a lot of things that I just said.
• 40:40
  Kurt, are you passionate about this?
• 40:42
  Do you have enough capital to do this?
• 40:44
  Do you understand how complicated it's going to be to launch a 50-state business?
• 40:50
  with all of the legal uh implications that you've got recording legal documents in thousands of counties across 50 states.
• 40:58
  Do you understand the magnitude of how complex that is and how much legal dollars you're going to spend getting that ready to launch and then launching it?
• 41:07
  then you've got to educate a market that is generally unfamiliar with what you're even protecting them from.
• 41:14
  So you've got a pretty big uh ramp to...
• 41:19
  crawl up, are you ready for that?
• 41:21
  And obviously I must have said yes to all of that at some level, but it's very eye opening to hear some of that from people that have started up successfully and ran businesses to
• 41:33
  say, prepare yourself for what you're getting into.
• 41:36
  is not just, someone's gonna call you next week and say, good for you, pat on the back, look what you did, you're super successful now.
• 41:46
  You made it.
• 41:47
  It's just going to take a lot more time and effort than that.
• 41:51
  Yeah, you have and I want to just go back to what you said about having the right motivation, the right why we often call it why you're doing what you're doing.
• 42:01
  Because it's not when the valley is coming.
• 42:04
  It is coming.
• 42:06
  Right.
• 42:07
  Or not.
• 42:08
  It's not if the valley is coming.
• 42:09
  There is about there.
• 42:10
  You will experience peaks and valleys and you have to have enough of a why in the valley to get through the valley to the to the next stage.
• 42:17
  So I think a lot of people think
• 42:20
  My why is I would just want to, like, kind of like you said, I want to make a lot of money, right?
• 42:24
  That's not going to be enough.
• 42:26
  Well, I think anybody, someone could say, I could have invented scooters.
• 42:31
  They're all over downtown.
• 42:32
  Every downtown I'm in now, there's scooters everywhere.
• 42:34
  And I could have done that.
• 42:35
  oh you probably, anyone could have done it.
• 42:38
  But do you have any idea how complicated that would have been to build out the infrastructure and build oh thousands and thousands of scooters and computerize them and
• 42:49
  pay on the scooter handlebars and all that stuff?
• 42:52
  It's probably not that easy.
• 42:53
  All these things that you see that are successful.
• 42:56
  I imagine there's for everyone success story, there's probably 100 swinging misses.
• 43:03
  if money is your motivation, I think it's risky that you keep taking more steps.
• 43:10
  I believe there needs to be more to it than that.
• 43:12
  um But you know.
• 43:16
  I'm glad I went one of the first entrepreneurs I grew up uh in in Florida in Fort Myers, Florida area and Thomas Edison had a winter home there.
• 43:25
  And he was one of the first entrepreneurs as a young person that I actually read about and learned about.
• 43:30
  And the amount of times that he failed in order to succeed.
• 43:33
  oh That really I'm glad that stuck with me because I knew for like early on that there were going to be many times that I
• 43:42
  was probably it wasn't going to hit, right?
• 43:45
  But I had to keep persevering until it does.
• 43:48
  That's exactly right.
• 43:52
  It's a lot like sales.
• 43:53
  And I'm not a good salesperson, but uh you talk to people that are in sales, it may be different now in the internet phase, but back in the day, literally pick up a phone and
• 44:03
  call 100 numbers trying to get one person to keep talking to you.
• 44:07
  And if you think about 99 rejections to get one person to maybe have a conversation and maybe become a sale,
• 44:15
  That's a rough day at the office, no matter how you uh gauge days at the office.
• 44:24
  To me, that's just a little bit.
• 44:28
  your Edison story is exactly right.
• 44:30
  How many things did he not do before he got the things that he did do right?
• 44:35
  And how do you get through all the failures to find the successes?
• 44:39
  And I think that's a big part of life.
• 44:42
  Yeah, you have to that's part of the entrepreneur mentality.
• 44:45
  I think not every entrepreneur like a lot of entrepreneurs can maybe come from money or they have capital maybe to to put into a thing, uh which helps ease it a little bit.
• 44:58
  there are many that haven't may have made a sales call.
• 45:02
  Right.
• 45:02
  And then they experienced that first rejection.
• 45:04
  And then they're like, Oh, maybe this is it for me.
• 45:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 45:09
  mean, it's, you know, Moat's not exactly like that, but we've got channels in our website.
• 45:15
  We try very hard to be more of an old school customer service company.
• 45:22
  And that's driven by me.
• 45:24
  know, I am not a big fan of 1-800 numbers.
• 45:28
  I'm not a big fan of chat robots for customer service.
• 45:33
  I don't have good experience with, I'll just give you an example.
• 45:38
  We had to move our corporate office here in the last 60 days.
• 45:42
  The building we were in got sold and they're going to repurpose it, so we moved offices.
• 45:47
  So you move into a new office and well this office has internet.
• 45:49
  The office you had, you had your own internet.
• 45:51
  So you go to cancel your internet, it took literally hours to get through the customer service of that internet provider.
• 46:00
  but so frustrated by the time I finally got to the point where they were canceling that account.
• 46:07
  But I thought, you know, I feel like canceling my home service now.
• 46:09
  You guys are just so poor with your customer service.
• 46:14
  It's just, it doesn't feel like a relationship I want to be in.
• 46:17
  But I don't want a moat customer to go through that.
• 46:21
  So if someone's on our internet and they want to chat to somebody, there's information.
• 46:26
  uh
• 46:30
  address you can just write a question to and someone will get right back to you if you are in a state that we are currently active in or not.
• 46:39
  If you hook up with a person that's your person.
• 46:42
  We call them an agent.
• 46:44
  And you don't have to go through a 1-800 number.
• 46:46
  You don't have to call and say I want to talk to somebody about my Notice of Title freeze because I'm selling my house and I want to release that so it doesn't get clogged up in a
• 46:55
  closing.
• 46:55
  You've got one person to talk to.
• 46:57
  And that's my view of customer service.
• 47:00
  It's what I prefer as a customer.
• 47:02
  So that's what I want a Mote client to have access to, one person to talk to, one point of contact for the life of your relationship.
• 47:11
  And you think about it, if I freeze my title, my wife and I froze our title on our home when we moved down here, it could be 10 years before we need to do it.
• 47:21
  So we don't need to do anything more.
• 47:23
  We froze our title, you just said it and forget it.
• 47:25
  You pay for it and you're done.
• 47:27
  You don't pay for a monthly service.
• 47:29
  And that's another thing I'm not a big fan of.
• 47:31
  Everything you try to buy nowadays, they want to upsell you into some monthly subscription.
• 47:35
  If you're not careful, you can have dozens of them.
• 47:38
  You can hear 20 there and it's just, what am I paying for?
• 47:41
  What happened?
• 47:42
  Didn't I already buy that?
• 47:44
  So off track here a little bit, but I think it's important to differentiate yourself.
• 47:51
  things that you personally believe are not satisfactory in terms of customer service and trying to make yourself better than that.
• 47:58
  think customers in our experience oh is people are attracted to the things I'm talking to here.
• 48:05
  They appreciate that, especially elderly property owners.
• 48:09
  I think back to my mom.
• 48:10
  My mom was never going to interact with a chat robot on the internet.
• 48:13
  My mom was never going to call a 1-800 number and every time she calls, she's going to talk to someone new.
• 48:18
  and she's going to have to tell her whole story over to someone else and they're in a phone bank in a foreign country, but you can't understand what they're saying.
• 48:25
  I just think that's a customer service model that is not very genuine.
• 48:31
  Yeah.
• 48:32
  I want to sit here just for a minute because this is coming from someone we do things with AI and uh we do a lot, but at the same time we are big on relationships that we all of our
• 48:43
  clients, that's what we talk about.
• 48:45
  We, you, you will have so much success based on the relationships you build.
• 48:49
  uh So it's just, it's, it's a weird world we live in right now with, the growth of AI and how much it's impacting businesses and businesses that are adopting it.
• 49:00
  I really think the hybrid businesses, the ones that do personal interactions are going to be the ones that stand out.
• 49:08
  And especially the ones that maybe are all in person type of, I think like event, the more we get the human interaction is going to become a luxury.
• 49:20
  people will seek that out because they're tired, much like you said, they won't want to call the 1-800 number and just go through that over and over again.
• 49:30
  they want to speak to an actual person.
• 49:33
  So I know we're headed in one direction, but I think there's a balance.
• 49:39
  Yeah, I totally agree.
• 49:42
  The pendulum is certainly swinging towards less and less human interaction.
• 49:45
  But we're pushing back against that at Mo.
• 49:49
  And I just think it makes more sense, at least in our business model, to have people talking to people.
• 49:55
  ah When I think of AI, and I have a lot of respect for it, I think it has a lot of applications.
• 50:01
  I think of like doctors diagnosing uh
• 50:05
  Patients, unless you've been around for 30 years and you've seen a lot of stuff, you might misdiagnose someone in the emergency room if you've been around three years and haven't
• 50:15
  seen a lot of stuff.
• 50:16
  So to backstop that with AI, that makes a lot of sense.
• 50:20
  And the legal, there's all kinds of applications.
• 50:23
  If I'm a law clerk, using AI and being into the law books of the state of whatever state you're operating in at that level versus opening up law books and
• 50:34
  trying to read cases and a position of what your client's position might be against a defendant or vice versa, think oh AI makes a lot of sense.
• 50:45
  You can get a lot more information out uh very quickly and accurately than if you trudged through it individually as just a law clerk or as an intern, as a doctor.
• 50:56
  But when it comes time to pick up the phone and talk about a product,
• 51:00
  It feels like AI is, it's not what I want to do as a consumer.
• 51:05
  So it's not what I want to put our clients through.
• 51:09
  Can I tell you about one of my fears of AI is we will no longer seek knowledge?
• 51:15
  Because I mean, when search came around, I think it was a little bit of that, right?
• 51:20
  We uh could just search it and find it.
• 51:23
  But now knowledge is really at our fingertips, right?
• 51:27
  uh With AI being able to tell us how to solve this problem.
• 51:32
  uh So my fear is like, do we just dumb down or is it going to dumb down our society?
• 51:39
  I agree, I really worry about our youth.
• 51:43
  you know, what, how hard is it to teach our youth, K through 12 and then on out into college now when they have access to information through CHAPGTP?
• 51:54
  It's just, you know, when you're in the real world, I used to tell, I'll show my age here, I used to tell young land men,
• 52:03
  You know, you're going to be in a room someday when I'm not there and I'm not going to be backing you up and you can't look at me for the right answer.
• 52:10
  So you need to know this stuff.
• 52:12
  You need to know the provisions of an oil and gas lease.
• 52:15
  You need to know how these things work and what can and can't happen because you're going to get pushed by an engineer or a geologist or someone that wants to get something done.
• 52:24
  And you need to be the knowledgeable person in the room that says what can and can't happen there.
• 52:31
  Don't rely on
• 52:33
  If you're relying on artificial intelligence to be your safety net when you're at your desk, you're not going to have that in a meeting room somewhere.
• 52:41
  At some point, you're going to have to know what you need to know, and it's going to have to be up in here, not on your iPhone.
• 52:48
  And I just think that's tough.
• 52:50
  And I was seeing that all the way back in early 2000s, 2010s, not so much with artificial intelligence, but some of our younger...
• 53:00
  uh
• 53:02
  would rely on not knowing things, but just they don't want to do what they have to do to gain the experience sometimes.
• 53:12
  And experience matters ah and knowledge matters and artificial intelligence might, like you say, dumb us down if we're not careful.
• 53:20
  Yeah.
• 53:22
  Wow, the time has flew by there are several things I kind of I want to get to before we close here.
• 53:28
  And one of those uh is, I want to touch on one faith question and one other business question.
• 53:35
  And that business question has to I know your business relies a lot on educating the potential consumers.
• 53:41
  So how do you what?
• 53:44
  How do you guess what's the best way for me to say this?
• 53:48
  What is
• 53:50
  What is your method?
• 53:51
  How do you go about educating uh the consumers?
• 53:55
  That's a great question.
• 53:56
  primary avenue right now is just a very inclusive website.
• 54:02
  There's a lot of information on our website about our products and about the risk of title fraud and squatters.
• 54:07
  We try to keep that up to date.
• 54:09
  We have a lot of news articles on that.
• 54:11
  We drop podcasts on that.
• 54:13
  I would say that's a primary source of information for educating our consumers and our clients and our leads.
• 54:21
  We are interactive with Google and Facebook and other social media, uh pushing out our messages and our information.
• 54:30
  We have dabbled in some TV commercials and some select uh markets.
• 54:34
  Very, very good uh response on that.
• 54:37
  It's pretty pricey.
• 54:38
  uh But I think TV commercials and other uh old school forms of media are going to be helpful.
• 54:47
  uh
• 54:49
  Our model is as much as possible to place agents in each state.
• 54:56
  And we're going to have uh more of a, we'll augment what we can do nationally at the national company level with what agents can do at their local level by being more
• 55:08
  interactive in their communities, having little mini websites and approved advertising they can do on their local level.
• 55:16
  I think.
• 55:17
  We're going to be more of a grassroots uh old school advertising campaign.
• 55:22
  uh having said that, we've got to be flexible and we've got to move uh where our client base takes us.
• 55:30
  So we're pretty early on though.
• 55:32
  Again, we're only in eight states.
• 55:34
  By the time we get, by the end of the year, we hope to be in about half the states if we're on a good pace for that.
• 55:41
  We'll learn more and adjust as we go, but that's primarily how we'll do our education of our consumers.
• 55:46
  Real quick follow-up question.
• 55:49
  Do you find that your sales cycle is longer than typical industries because of the education piece?
• 55:56
  Yeah.
• 55:57
  By the time someone gets to our website, um we've worked very hard on our SEO, our keywords, and all of that stuff.
• 56:05
  So people are gravitating to our website based on freezing your title.
• 56:10
  um But it's important for us to always remember, I know a lot about this.
• 56:18
  I knew a lot about this before I ever started this.
• 56:21
  I spent 30 years fiddling around in public records and how things are recorded and why you record them, what it means if this is recorded before that.
• 56:28
  And so it's easy for me to understand a lot of these things.
• 56:31
  The average homeowner, I was talking to a title company guy the other day, I the average homeowner, including myself, you're probably going to go to five or six closings in your
• 56:41
  life, whether you're buying or selling.
• 56:44
  So if I'm buying five houses, there's five of those and there's five closings, so maybe 10, 12 closings.
• 56:50
  That's going to be in the midst of preparing a home for sale and probably getting ready to move either across town or perhaps across the country.
• 57:00
  There is a lot going on your head when you're changing residence.
• 57:05
  About the last thing you're worried about is that day when you go to a closing.
• 57:09
  And now that's all pretty remote anyway.
• 57:10
  But back in the day,
• 57:12
  You'd go to a title office, you'd start signing things, they're notarizing things, they're sliding things in front of you.
• 57:18
  You probably signed 20, 30 things and then suddenly it's over.
• 57:21
  Someone gets a check, someone gets keys in a garage door opener, shake hands, everyone's nice, you walk outside, you got a big pile of paper, you take that home, like, what is
• 57:28
  this?
• 57:29
  You put it in the drawer, you never look at it again, you're done.
• 57:32
  That's the average person's understanding of property ownership.
• 57:37
  and public records.
• 57:38
  there's a ton of long-winded way of saying there's a ton of educating people about what happens when your deed is recorded and if you've got a mortgage, if there's a deed of
• 57:48
  trust recorded, people can see that.
• 57:50
  It's all in the public records.
• 57:51
  It has to be in there for a lot of reasons.
• 57:54
  People can see that you own this.
• 57:55
  People can see exactly when you bought it.
• 57:57
  They can see what you paid for it.
• 57:59
  There's a lot of uh information that bad guys can use to attack you.
• 58:03
  So be aware of that.
• 58:06
  uh Let's transition.
• 58:07
  This will be the last question.
• 58:10
  Well, next to last question.
• 58:12
  uh So you've said, I think it's two years, you've had the startup going, growing the startup.
• 58:19
  ah How has your faith played into that journey of this two years?
• 58:25
  That's a great question.
• 58:26
  uh That's just a great question.
• 58:28
  know, my faith is the most important thing of my life.
• 58:34
  uh When I look back on my life, the ups and downs, uh I'm so thankful that uh Jesus has saved me.
• 58:43
  uh When I look at the things I've accomplished, I remember driving to work knowing that there's just a terrible, terrible, terrible
• 58:51
  bunch of trouble here, either internally or externally, and I'm in the middle of all of it, and I've got to somehow calm a bunch of silly waters, and I would pray and pray and
• 58:59
  pray all the way to work.
• 59:01
  And then invariably, I'd be driving home thinking, it all worked out.
• 59:05
  It didn't work out exactly the way I thought it did, but guess who fixed all that for me?
• 59:09
  Guess who was there right with me the whole time?
• 59:12
  So faith is the absolute bedrock of everything I do, and it certainly is for Mo.
• 59:20
  It's been probably an hour a day uh reading and listening to uh scriptures and praying.
• 59:27
  uh I don't tell anyone how to pray, but I would say I don't pray for, God, can you make Moat successful for me?
• 59:38
  I pray for, hey, if this is what you want me to do, please be in that with me and guide me to take the right steps to do what I need to do to make it successful.
• 59:46
  And if it is successful, let me give all the glory to you because it's all in your hands.
• 59:50
  So uh to answer your question, it's an absolute paramount part.
• 59:55
  is a paramount part of my life, day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.
• 1:00:00
  couple things in there.
• 1:00:02
  I've been um the conversations especially around entrepreneurship, there's a lot of overwhelm, a lot of anxiety.
• 1:00:09
  And so many places in the in the Bible, you just you just gave an example of you were you had a lot of anxiety about all these terrible things, driving to driving to and then on
• 1:00:20
  the way home, you realize he took care of all of it.
• 1:00:23
  Right.
• 1:00:23
  And he says for us to not have anxiety because he is going to take care of it not necessarily the way we want it taken care of.
• 1:00:30
  Right.
• 1:00:31
  We have his plans are always greater than ours.
• 1:00:33
  And it took me a while to realize that, you know, and entrepreneurs, we have plans.
• 1:00:38
  Right.
• 1:00:39
  And we sometimes get upset when our plans don't go according to plan our plan.
• 1:00:43
  Right.
• 1:00:44
  ah And I think when we just have the when we just turn it over to him, turn it over to the Lord and we can have peace in that and joy knowing that it's going to be taken care of
• 1:00:55
  better than you could probably have taken care of it.
• 1:00:57
  Right.
• 1:00:58
  Not not.
• 1:00:59
  It will definitely be better.
• 1:01:01
  It's not an if or it will be better than you could have ever done.
• 1:01:05
  ah yeah, I love all that.
• 1:01:11
  there was one.
• 1:01:12
  Go ahead.
• 1:01:13
  you think about it, uh during the COVID crisis, there were two big words that both started with F during the COVID crisis.
• 1:01:19
  One was fear, one was faith.
• 1:01:23
  And my brother, who's also just an amazing Christian, we would have lunch and I would say, people have got to be in faith.
• 1:01:32
  Fear is not of God.
• 1:01:34
  Fear does not come from God.
• 1:01:37
  We all know where fear comes from.
• 1:01:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:39
  faith is what we all need to lead into here.
• 1:01:42
  And the more I, when I look back on my life, you know, I'm in my later years now, I look back, the best parts of my life when I had more faith, the darker parts of my life when I
• 1:01:54
  had less faith.
• 1:01:55
  So I'm going to lean into faith.
• 1:01:57
  It works and prayer works.
• 1:02:00
  So with you being said that, I'm going to ask the listeners, or if you're watching this on YouTube or wherever you're seeing this, use that as an exercise.
• 1:02:08
  Look back on your life, no matter how old you are right now.
• 1:02:10
  Think of the times that you had the most fear.
• 1:02:13
  Think of the times you had most faith.
• 1:02:14
  And then just compare and contrast the two.
• 1:02:16
  And I'm sure you're going to get the same experience that Kurt and I have had in my life.
• 1:02:20
  So it's a moment to practice gratitude at that point, right?
• 1:02:25
  So awesome, awesome.
• 1:02:28
  uh
• 1:02:29
  So a couple last things.
• 1:02:30
  First of all, where can people go and find out more about Moog?
• 1:02:34
  So our website is moattitlesecurity.com, one word.
• 1:02:39
  uh Again, that's a pretty inclusive website there.
• 1:02:42
  There's a lot of pages to it.
• 1:02:43
  There's a lot of information on there.
• 1:02:45
  At any time, if someone wants to talk to somebody, you can go to the contact part of that and click on info at Security.
• 1:02:53
  Write whatever question you like.
• 1:02:55
  That'll probably get to me.
• 1:02:57
  or one of my folks here and you're immediately connected to someone and having a conversation that's not a chat robot or artificial intelligence.
• 1:03:06
  There's also a number, you can call a number.
• 1:03:09
  We've got a phone number there, we think that's important.
• 1:03:12
  That will be directed to an agent if you're in a state that we operate.
• 1:03:15
  If not, we'll get that message and we'll reach back out to you and have a conversation with you.
• 1:03:20
  So we try to be very available through that website.
• 1:03:25
  All right, awesome.
• 1:03:26
  We will put the links if you're watching this uh on video.
• 1:03:29
  They'll probably be in the show in the description or in the comments.
• 1:03:32
  If you're uh listening to this, they'll be in the show notes.
• 1:03:36
  oh anywhere else that we can send people anything else that you want.
• 1:03:40
  Well, let's just do this.
• 1:03:41
  uh I have one last question that I ask everybody before they depart from the show.
• 1:03:47
  And I hate to leave any stone unturned.
• 1:03:49
  uh I'm all about sharing.
• 1:03:51
  We talked about knowledge, knowledge and wisdom, right?
• 1:03:54
  I think everybody that comes on here has different experience, different knowledge.
• 1:03:58
  So I'm all about getting that out to everyone that is listening.
• 1:04:02
  So any parting words of advice for anyone listening?
• 1:04:08
  As it relates to title fraud, I would certainly just be uh aware of what it is.
• 1:04:15
  Depending on your circumstances, it may not be something that's uh top of your mind if you're 25 or 30 years old with a starter home.
• 1:04:24
  ah But take a look at your parents and your grandparents and see if they fit the mold for someone that might be a target.
• 1:04:31
  um
• 1:04:34
  educate yourself.
• 1:04:36
  There are other things you can do.
• 1:04:38
  You can monitor your title.
• 1:04:39
  It's about $20 a month.
• 1:04:40
  They'll do that for you.
• 1:04:43
  But if you want to do monitoring, most counties now, at least that we come across, every county in the state of Florida will monitor your title for you for free.
• 1:04:52
  So if monitoring your title is interesting, check with your county, they might do that for you.
• 1:04:56
  They'll just ask that you opt in for it.
• 1:05:00
  And then if something gets recorded,
• 1:05:02
  They'll give you a note.
• 1:05:03
  Again, I would say monitoring is a lot better than nothing.
• 1:05:08
  It's going to let you know that an attack has been made and you've got to fight to fight.
• 1:05:11
  That's why we think freezing your title is a stronger defense, but it's better than nothing.
• 1:05:17
  So my parting shot would be educate yourself and be aware of vulnerable family members that might need your help if your circumstances are not such that you're worried about it.
• 1:05:31
  Nice, nice.
• 1:05:32
  It kind of makes me think of the picture in my head between monitoring and what you what you do at your business is it's like having the no trespassing sign people just walk up
• 1:05:43
  but versus having a wall.
• 1:05:46
  Right?
• 1:05:46
  You can't get it.
• 1:05:48
  So ah very, good.
• 1:05:51
  We just think it's stronger, more proactive defense.
• 1:05:55
  uh But again, if you're more attracted to monitoring, do something.
• 1:06:01
  The worst thing you can do is do nothing and hope it doesn't happen to you.
• 1:06:04
  There's any number of cases on Google and our website that showed if they make an attack and you're not aware, they can do a tremendous amount of damage before you.
• 1:06:15
  catch on and there's a ton of money to be spent to correct it.
• 1:06:21
  All right, so we'll uh put the link to the website below anywhere else that you want, we'd want to send people.
• 1:06:26
  Well, we're also on Facebook, Instagram, most of the LinkedIn, or on most of the other social media platforms as well, if they want to check us out there.
• 1:06:34
  There's a lot of information on the other social media sources.
• 1:06:37
  So we'll put the link to the website and all the social channels below.
• 1:06:40
  Be sure to check out uh Moat on those channels.
• 1:06:43
  And thank you so much, Kurt.
• 1:06:44
  This has been a fabulous interview.
• 1:06:46
  And until next time, entrepreneurs, keep moving forward.
• 1:06:50
  Thank you, appreciate it.
• 1:06:54
  Alright