Ivy Hartman: Welcome to sbtv.com’s coverage of small business week right here in St. Louis. We’re at the Gala Awards event here in the St. Louis Hilton, airport Hilton and with me is Ramos Mays and Ramos is with SOMARK and we met your business partner a little while ago. They are receiving the award for Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Talk about starting a business two years ago and launching it to being an award-winning business now two years later.
Ramos Mays: Well, it’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be. You know I was—Mark and I had just gotten out of college. I went to do my masters work and Mark went to work for a firm in New York and I kind of came up with this crazy idea and I was like “Oh you know I’ll come back to America.” I was in Europe at the time, I was like “I’ll go back, I’ll start this company and then I’ll come back and finish my masters, no problem.” Well, two and a half years later, you know here I am still. It’s very difficult and it’s lots of chicken and egg situations, you know. You always have to have a really good demonstration of your technology to get money but you have to have money to make a really good demonstration of your technology.
Ivy Hartman: Right.
Ramos Mays: So it’s getting over those hurdles, it’s getting over those chicken and eggs situations that—where you’ll really earn your badge.
Ivy Hartman: What was it that made you decide, instead of the weight until later in life to go ahead and launch your entrepreneurial adventure and do it now while you are still a little younger?
Ramos Mays: Well, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I've always wanted to own my own business and so, you know this is actually my fourth business. So I started very early. The first one I was involved with was when I was 20. So I didn’t pay much attention in school. I was out working on my own company instead of going to class.
Ivy Hartman: What kind of company did you—I know that you’ve been in computer science so were these technology companies that you started?
Ramos Mays: These were software companies before. This is my first delve into—the first time we’ve delved into other than software. So it’s been an experience. You know software is very easy to get started off and low start up costs and this is a little different.
Ivy Hartman: Mark told us a little bit about what SOMARK is and what you guys are doing, but since you're kind of the mastermind behind the idea and innovation, tell us about it in your term.
Ramos Mays: So what we’re doing is we’re creating an electronic ink tattoo. Right now if you’ve been to Illinois, they have easy pass or iPass and basically there’s a little chip, a little computer chip and a battery that beams up your car’s like number up to the system and what we’re doing is that for animals and one of the benefits is that we’re doing this without the little computer chip, without the battery, without the antennas, simply an ink. They en-cast some particulate matter in it, some ceramic actually that has electronic properties that when we hit it with high frequency microwaves, it bounces back that animal’s number. Now, why in the heck do you need to notice? It’s for disease control. So anytime an animal is bought or sold, in an environment where it’s around other animals, you can record where that animal has been, all the animals that it’s been with, and if a disease breaks out, you can trace that animal back and quarantine the disease very quickly.
Ivy Hartman: And has your dad’s farm in kind of empathy to starting this?
Ramos Mays: Absolutely, absolutely. I grew up and my father was always talking about the problems with animal ID, especially from a producer standpoint, you know he’s the little guy and so he was always complaining about costs and usability and all these things and so I just thought that it was something that could be solved.
Ivy Hartman: Anything else that you like to add about your business or taking innovation or invention to the idea and then making it a business?
Ramos Mays: Two things, one, be very careful who you choose as your associates or partners. You know, you're kind of in the driver seat and most people aren’t used to that and I think, when they first get into the entrepreneurial world, they kind of still feel like they're an employee and they don’t really take hold of the situation and choose wisely what situations they get into and who they get into them with. And so I think you should take a step back and be very careful about the choices that you make. Also, sticking with the thing of choices, you really should evaluate heavily what ideas you are going to try to implement because implementing an idea is always tougher than you think it’s going to be, it’s always going to cost more money than you think it will and it’s always going to take longer than you thought it would.
So you need to be very realistic with yourself and you know, set those expectations on a real basis.
Ivy Hartman: However, continue to dream because that’s what entrepreneur—
Ramos Mays: Absolutely, that’s where the ideas come from and that’s what makes the world great.
Ivy Hartman: Well, Ramos thanks for being with us here on sbtv.com.
Ramos Mays: Absolutely.
Ivy Hartman: Keep it right here as we continue our coverage of Small Business Week here in St. Louis on sbtv.com.
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