February 2, 2025 • 51 mins
Unlock business growth with insights from Jeff Holman, a business-focused attorney specializing in innovation and entrepreneurship. Explore the unique challenges startups face and how fractional legal teams can be a game-changer. Jeff shares strategies for managing intellectual property, tackling legal concerns, and combating unfair competition like negative SEO to protect your brand.
Gain a competitive edge by layering IP protections, balancing disclosure and secrecy, and leveraging fractional experts for strategic legal support. Jeff illustrates this with a compelling comparison to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, emphasizing teamwork and expertise.
Discover how intellectual assets boost business valuation and partnerships while shifting from traditional law firms to strategic problem-solving. Learn how assembling a fractional legal team aligns with business goals, supported by innovative lead-generation techniques using long-tail keywords to stand out in the competitive legal market.
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Guest Contact Information:
- Website: https://www.intellectualstrategies.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holman/
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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Howdy, welcome back to another front-field episode
of the Unknown Secrets ofInternet Marketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
Today I have a special guestfor you, jeff Holliman.
He's a business-focused you,jeff Holliman, he's a
business-focused attorney forinnovation and entrepreneurs.
He really helps you get theexpertise right with a
fractional team.
Some of the questions we'regoing to be going over are maybe
(00:38):
how do fractional teams differfrom traditional attorneys
versus startups, a businessstrategy on how to drive growth,
businesses approach tointellectual property, how
businesses could emerge sectorsand help manage legal challenges
so like the benefits of maybe afractional business model and
(01:00):
just kind of other obstacles.
So if you're interested in that, please stick around.
I wanted to just do some quickhousekeeping.
We do have a new thumbnail Ifyou're watching on YouTube
Unknown Secrets InternetMarketing.
I got my face on it, I guessbecause Chris is no longer
involved.
We haveinternetmarketingsecretscom
internetmarketingsecrets.
(01:21):
We also have got that handle onYouTube and we're going to be
growing that area.
If you do like this podcast,please like, follow, listen.
The coaching program is coming.
I just had a consulting callyesterday with a DJ that has
built an empire and we'regenerating leads all around the
(01:45):
country.
That's going to be a case studythat we're going to follow.
I also have some free coursesthat I'll be coming out with.
If you're wanting to become apower user with like data
analytics or keyword research,I'll have that coming on
internetmarketingsecretscom.
And now I would like to bringto the call Jeff Hallman.
How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm doing great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Matt.
So for everybody that'slistening, just to kind of give
everybody a time key in Houstonright now it's absolutely like
crazy snowing, and this issomething that you know.
Around the country people arelike oh, that's great, that's
nice you have some snow InHouston.
No one can handle it.
None of the equipment.
No one left their house for thelast three days.
(02:28):
Kids have been home.
It's been a little bit of a zoo, and so for any of y'all that
are listening in Houston, I justwant to say stay safe, don't
drive on those icy roads.
But, jeff, I am so glad to bringyou on because we've been doing
a series to really arm smallbusiness owners, business owners
(02:48):
and digital marketing agencieswith all the right tools to help
them, and that sometimesinvolves things outside of SEO.
Seo should be the core.
You layer on some digitalmarketing strategy.
We have a small businesspackage that absolutely just
crushes it, and you know.
But there people have questionsabout other stuff.
(03:09):
When it's when it doesn't work,cookie cutter right, when it
doesn't work, and sometimesmaybe there's difficult clients
or you're trying to do differentthings or people like I'm
actually dealing with something.
This is super interesting.
Um, not exactly what you'redoing, but I think it's a good
lead-in.
Uh, I have some law firms thatI'm working with and, um,
(03:30):
negative seo is like a still athing and people will throw bad
links and, uh, you know, mix upthe signals to google and other
search engines to to help tohurt you because they can't like
beat you.
Does that make sense?
And I have some verycompetitive industries and I I
have, um, you know, two clientsright now that are getting
attacked, uh, through thisnegative SEO and typically like
(03:54):
reputation management, of likeproducing good reviews and good
links to help help kind of burysome of that bad stuff.
Well, you know this, this lawfirm and and this is like I
don't know if forensic SEO islike even a term, but but
essentially he's like get me asclose to the source as possible,
we'll subpoena them, we'll findout who is doing this or
(04:16):
purchase this or whatever, andwe'll sue them.
And I was like awesome, I'mdown, I'm here for it, and
that's not something that I haveany experience with, but I will
shortly and that's somethingthat I was working on the last
few days in some free time isdeveloping that list to be able
to go after people and it wasvery empowering to be able to be
(04:39):
like we can do something aboutthis, right, like it is.
And I hate when people don'tcompete, um, fairly.
But I think that legal issomething that scares a lot of
people, or people don'tunderstand it.
And, um, you know, a lot oftimes you run against legal
challenges or, uh, clients orvendors or whatever.
Like, how do you deal with thiswhen the contract, right, um,
(05:03):
doesn't necessarily, like, likeyou, everybody goes back to the
contract when there's adisagreement, Right, and so,
like, how do you handle that?
And I think intellectualproperty, too, is like something
that a lot of people, um, likewill come after you, like
they'll send you notice usingour stuff, right, I think that
there's kind of a money-makinggame out there for that.
(05:23):
But also some of the compliancestuff that I was at a
podcasting conference lastweekend that we were talking
about is how to use foreducational purposes only, I
guess, is the answer.
But you know, if you want totalk about star Wars, right, and
some kind of marketing orexample, how do you do that?
And I've always just stayed awayfrom it because it's just, you
(05:46):
know, anything legal scares mebecause I don't.
I don't have those toolsnecessarily in the tool belt,
and so I thought it'd be good tobring you on and kind of lay
lay the groundwork for that.
So that was a very long windedintro, but hopefully people are,
are interested, engaged in tohear, uh, what you have to say,
Cause I mean, you've, you'vereally done some amazing stuff
(06:07):
on the entrepreneurial side ofthings.
Um, you know, you got a degreein electrical engineering, an
MBA.
Uh, us patents.
Um, you know, you, you, you'vedealt with a number of legal
frameworks, and then you alsooffer a fractional uh service,
right, like so if people justneed stuff here and there, you
have a way to do that wheresomeone doesn't have a general
(06:27):
counsel on staff.
And so I just wanted to kind oftee you up and to offer it to
you to kind of maybe set thetable a little bit more of what
we're going to be getting intohere.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I'd love to do that, thank you, and there was a
lot in that.
Yeah, I'd love to do that,thank you, and there was a lot
in that intro and in that kindof lead up to this conversation.
But that, just to me, isillustrative of the fact that
legal it really runs throughevery vein of your business in
some format, right.
Whether it's your branding andyou're out there trying to
market yourself or you'regetting attacked by somebody, or
(07:01):
your contracts with yourcustomers, your suppliers or
partners, whoever that is,you're bringing investors in it.
Just, it just runs throughevery vein of the business.
So it really is.
It's kind of I don't want tocall it lifeblood.
That sounds maybe too too toobig for what it is, but it
really is part of every, everypart of your business, just like
(07:21):
finance runs through all yourbusiness, right.
So it is very important andthat's why so many people
struggle with it, because it canbecome, you know, any one part
of your business.
When a legal issue comes up,you can kind of get derailed and
think, well, how do?
I got to focus on SEO, or I gotto focus on serving my
customers or whatever it is, andnow you're derailed by this one
(07:44):
issue in this one area of lawthat you don't even want to deal
with.
So it's pretty, it's impactfulwhen it's present, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I think, like when I think about legal, like
contractually, like you meetsomebody and you're like hey, I
want to work with you, right,and oh, I want to work with you
too, and so you want to workwith each other.
But until someone puts togetheran agreement of how that's
going to work and what that'sgoing to look like, it's hard to
do anything with anybody, right, and so you know that that's
(08:17):
the the initial basis to it.
But then a lot of people arelike, hey, well, people, I have
a client right now that has aname that you know.
I think it's hard to copyrightit, right, or whatever, or or to
put IP around it, but there'sand they're in a different
market, so they're across thecountry, but there's somebody
(08:37):
with that same name, differentdomain, but same name, different
logo in this area.
And then I actually had an oldclient that, um and I've talked
about this before uh, in, likethe roofing space and
everybody's like it's guardianright.
So like everybody wants to be aguardian alarm system or a
guardian roofing company, andthere was actually like five
(08:59):
companies with the same name inthe same geographic area.
And you know, I was like, well,first we got to rank for your
name, you know, and then we needto, we need to kind of control
your name.
So people have that.
And as we moved him up therankings for his name, he was
getting a lot of calls fromother companies and like, I
think that like, like IP, oreven if you're, if you're going
(09:21):
on to like a logo or likeness,what it really is is that's not
your brand, that's like who youare Like, that's, that's like
the.
The logo is the name of yourcompany, your IP is identifiable
to you and and what you'retrying to say is this is me and
this is what I'm doing, and andyou're really just trying to
(09:42):
kind of keep the copycats I'mdoing and you're really just
trying to kind of keep thecopycats trying to create some
space right.
So if you generate interest,they know that they're finding
you Is that?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I don't know if that's a good explanation.
No, it's great.
I mean, we deal with a lot ofsmall and growing businesses and
the value of their trademark,their brand protection, really
is huge.
Right, you can look up studiesand it'll say well, anybody
who's got a registered trademark, the valuation of your company
is actually higher than all thecompanies that are like it that
don't have registered trademarks.
It just it multiplies the valueof your company from a
(10:17):
financial standpoint.
And it's because of what yousaid right, people want to.
That's how they identify you,that's how they know you, that's
how they, in the legal field wesay, that's how they source
their goods or services.
You know that's the identifierof the, the, the service they're
buying or, or you know whetherit's whether it's roofing or
pest control or security.
Like that is how they identifyyou, and so I think you're
(10:45):
absolutely right.
That's the business's identity.
There's a lot.
There's a lot.
I talk with a lot of clientsabout trademark stuff.
So we go into that in moredepth if you want to.
But but really finding theright name, one that you can
protect and one that doesn'tconflict with other people,
that's a an early stagechallenge for businesses.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, and let me also provide another example of
something where we've interactedwith with, say, trademarks,
Google ads okay, Like runningads on people's names or or
Google ads.
That stops people from frommaybe doing that.
One of the things we did in thesupplement business.
So the former co-host we'vegrown a supplement company quite
(11:22):
big and the three otherpartners that started this
agency are all working in thatbusiness and we kind of did a
Red Bull situation where wecreated our own market and then
people came into that market andto kind of protect that, what
we did is we kind of renamed ourproduct and put a copyright on
(11:43):
that and then everything that wetalk about and that we promote
is related to that product name,like a tissue versus a Kleenex,
right.
And so we're growing thatmarket and we've protected that
market.
So the overall market's growingbut that market is protected
and we're able to talk aboutthat and promote that and nobody
(12:05):
else can really go after that,and so that created some space
that as we continue to grow theindustry, people are protected
in that area and also theformulation, right.
So to talk about, maybe patentsa little bit.
You know how we mix our productand what that product mix looks
like.
Um, that's our formulationright.
(12:28):
And, um, I'll the the example toto bring in patents that I
remember from marketing I.
So I went to school formarketing.
Everything was Lego, okay.
Lego lost its patent, okay, andanybody can make those little
lego blocks, okay.
And then you just start to seethe lego movie come out and I
(12:49):
mean like the the star warspartnership and they partnered
with marvel and disney and likeeverything, because that is ip
protected like intellectualproperty.
The legos are not.
So then they're customized inLegos to make that set and that
helped extend their, theirpatent Right.
(13:10):
And I would even say, um, youknow, I was in the pharma
industry, uh, which you knowpeople have different opinions
of that.
But when the drug formulationwent off patent, they patent the
delivery system of the device.
So, like adver, it's like thedisc device is patentable but
Budesonide, what's in it, is notright and you can get that
(13:31):
inhaler.
But they continue to promotethis product with this disc
device of the delivery systemsbetter and they protect it.
And and I mean I'm just tryingto give people real world
examples of like how to thinkabout some of this stuff.
Maybe you can kind of bringthose big examples in to
situations that you deal withwith maybe small businesses.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, no, you've given a great example, because I
always talk to my clients andaudiences about the layers of
intellectual property.
You know you've alreadymentioned copyrights.
Copyrights protect a work ofart, you know, a painting or a
sculpture or a movie, whateverit might be.
Sometimes that overlaps withtrademarks.
Trademarks protect your brand.
It's your name, your logo, yourslogan, whatever that is.
(14:17):
And so, but then you have theinventions in your business,
perhaps, and that one productthat you invent.
You know you've given anexample of drugs.
You can invent all around thatproduct.
You can patent the drug itself,you could patent the way to
make the drug, you patent theway to deliver the drug, you
patent the accessory devicesthat go along with the drug.
(14:37):
And so you get all of theselayers of intellectual property
that you know and back in yourbusiness you might have all
these trade secrets.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
You know all of the processes, like people, I know,
there's a whole business aboutbuilding processes and then
actually selling it to, you know, cisco or selling it to, like.
I remember that guy.
He sold like 12 patents for $15million to Netflix and he
designed the process aroundNetflix.
You should be doing this and hedesigned the process around
Netflix.
(15:05):
You should be doing this and hedesigned it all around that.
I mean, you know it gets kindof wild, but but but I think I
think that that's where anopportunity is, and I mean,
maybe even in the digitalmarketing space there's certain
things that that I do that iskind of a trade secret, right,
and and and it.
It's how we do it.
(15:27):
In what order does thesecertain types of things with the
signals, right, and you know,and it's like.
It's like, do you make itpublic, right, and then people
copy it and then you have toprotect it, or do you do?
The Coca-Cola thing is like noone knows exactly what's in?
it Right, like, like, but.
But making all those kinds ofdecisions gets you stuck, you
(15:49):
know like, but you're in theright industry.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, because this is a conversation I have, and I
have it from the legalperspective.
But when you're talking aboutreleasing your IP to the public,
you want to.
There's this whole debate aboutwhat you should disclose to the
public and what you should keepsecret, but then there's also
this debate in trademarks how doI pick a name that's
protectable and unique, but notso unique that nobody knows what
(16:14):
I do, right?
And so the key to a lot of thisis teaming up with a good
marketing team so that, whenyou're building your product or
service, you can make theseinformed decisions.
And IP is one slice of yourstrategy, but you've got to have
that marketing slice too, tokind of fill in the gaps and
make them complementary towhatever it is that you're doing
(16:35):
in your business.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And I think that the fractional model because I
actually come on fractionallywith a lot of businesses when
they're trying to figure out amarketing strategy or like this
is what we're trying to do orlaunch, and like they don't need
me full time but they're likelike, hey, we're going to do
this and we want to stay out ofthe ditch.
Well, there's many times on onthe legal side, you're trying to
make decisions that arebusiness decisions and you're
(17:00):
like, hey, I don't know whichway we should go.
We could go right, we could goleft.
What does everybody think Right?
Like if you're talking to otherfounders or you're talking to
your team, but it's like we needa legal perspective to help
tell us what to do.
And and sometimes they justassign it to, you know, a team
member to like go, do a bunch ofresearch and tell us what to
(17:20):
think.
Or now ask chat gbt, which itcould hallucinate, um, you know.
And so like it's really good tojust phone a friend, that's the
right friend.
Like I, I would tell you.
Like, the fractional business,like even like uber, I remember
when I was paying somebody 20bucks to take me to the airport.
Hey, buddy, like it's a friend,hey, when you do it, like I'll
(17:41):
pay you.
And then it was actually likeyou had to use like social
capital to like, hey, will youtake me to the airport?
Because it's like not thatconvenient.
But now it's like you just kindof can reach out conveniently
and tap and get someone to takeyou to the airport, just like
you know, I think thateverything's becoming very kind
of gig economy, fractionalized.
Hey, I need you for this onespecific thing.
(18:02):
Can you provide me someadvisory, um consulting, and
just tell me what should I do inthis situation?
Right, and, and, and, and.
It's really, I think, as you'rebuilding in today's day and age
, having the right network,right, knowing the right people.
That's like, oh, I got thisproblem, let me pick up the
phone because I know who Ineeded to call, and and then
(18:25):
they have a model, that whereyou can tap like their knowledge
um to help you make thatdecision, to move forward,
because you know some of thesethings will get you stuck you
know, it'll just freeze upbusinesses I think the biggest
thing I see you know for sure,you know I it.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
it just brought to mind.
Um, because the one thing we dodifferently than a lot of
fractional, a lot of fractional,you find independent people
that are bringing that highlevel expertise to the team.
Right, we do it because law isboth a mixture of really high
level strategy decision makingand then the implementation.
Like you got to write thecontract, you got to, you know,
write the apply for thetrademark or help get the
(19:01):
funding in.
It really becomes our teamapproach allows people to kind
of hire once.
Nobody likes to hire anattorney ever, it seems, let
alone pay them for the work theydo and you don't want to do it
twice or three times when youhave different issues come up.
So this team approach thatwe're doing really helps people
to come to bring everything intoone hire.
(19:23):
I would say Go through thatprocess once and then get a team
that has a breadth of expertise, different attorneys they can
help with different things.
It really made me think of lastsummer.
I took a trek with some friendsand we went to hike Mount
Kilimanjaro.
I actually got helicoptered offfor health reasons a day before
(19:44):
my friends made it up there,but when we went.
You hire this team of portersand guides.
You know, you've got peoplemaking the food.
You've got people bringing upthe bathroom or the shower.
If you brought that, you've gotpeople that are carrying all
your bags.
You've got the guides who arewatching your help.
You need that whole team, right, and so you could go hire one
by one.
Hey, I'd like to find, findthis guy to help carry my bags
(20:07):
and find this guy.
But but why do that?
Right?
So, so it's really a teameffort to get up that mountain
and, in the same sense, you knowwe we're bringing that legal
team so that businesses have theright expertise from the right
attorney at the right time.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, I let me add onto that Cause I can tell you
how I, from a similar model onthe accounting side of things,
okay, like, legal and accountingare like the two things that
you need.
Um, one is yeah, if you losesomebody, you got to backfill a
(20:41):
position.
Um, certainly, if you have justa, a consultant or a contractor
, they worry about the hiringand the right people and they
have people at all levels of ofthe, the team approach and you
know what you need and and in inmy mindset, just the guys.
(21:04):
This is where I'm at is um, areyou ready to really grow your
business?
Okay, like, that's what itcomes down to, and there's a lot
of people that could do to, andthere's a lot of people that
could do the job, and there's alot of people that could do the
job cheaper.
But and and I don't even knowwhat your pricing is, I'm just
saying in general, typically,like you know um, but I can tell
(21:28):
you an SEO Okay, I can tell you, in digital marketing, you can
go spend a bunch of money, okay,at someone cheaper and it's not
an investment.
You just blew the money.
Okay, I can tell you, indigital marketing, you can go
spend a bunch of money, okay, atsomeone cheaper and it's not an
investment.
You just blew the money.
Okay.
Like doing it right the firsttime is like the cheapest,
absolute thing that you can do.
But but my mindset where I'm atis like all right, I'm ready to
scale, I'm ready to grow, likeI don't want to see problems and
(21:52):
I don't want the way in whichwe do things to reflect our
brand.
Um, because everybody, if you,if you're doing you know
accounting, sales, whatever,like it's all reflective of of
the health of your company.
And if you're ready to likegrow your company and make moves
, like you need a professionalteam, like yeah, you could hire
(22:13):
me and I'm actually dang good atSEO, but I, but SEO takes a
village, okay, like I can't doeverything.
There was even something lastnight.
So I had a client asked me aboutsomething and he's like really
wanted something.
And I was like I can't get thisdone with all this snow and my
kids home and everything likethat.
So I assigned it to our SEOmanager that I have people
(22:36):
overseas, I have people here, Ihave people everywhere.
And I was like hey, I need thisby 6 AM tomorrow and like
explain what to do and I've beenworking with this person for
five years and I gave it to himand get you know what in my
inbox.
It was there.
I could look at it, filter it,get it to the client and deliver
it like from a team capacity oryou know there's things on it
(22:58):
or something like that that Imay not be, I know a little bit
about, but I don't knoweverything about.
You need that team to accessthat and and if you're trying to
build an organization that'strying to make big decisions,
not always is all theinformation in one person's head
and at different levels, right,and so to kind of fractionally
pay for what you need, engage inthat area.
(23:20):
But I guess just where, whereI'm at mentally, the way I'm on,
is like I want a team because,yeah, I want to hire once, cause
you said that and I think thatthat is absolutely critical.
And then two is like some ofthe questions I'm going to have
are going to be down here, right, and then some of the questions
I have are going to be up hereand that person may not be the
(23:42):
best person for that, right, andand you have different people
that have different experience.
Like some of the questionscould be legal, legal compliance
stuff.
Like I, I come up with like HRand legal compliance stuff all
the time about this little thing, that little thing, and we have
actually a service for for HRtoo, right.
Like so you know not, and I'vehad HR people but then they're
(24:02):
like, oh, let me go do a bunchof research.
And then they're like guessing,right.
I even had a bookkeeper at onepoint that was like, oh, you're
not going to qualify for PPP orERC or whatever.
And I was like I'm pretty surewe do.
Like you know what I mean.
And like going having the rightteam versus like an independent
person that has a limitedknowledge base is not what you
(24:25):
need when you're scaling acompany, because what you want
is people to help you, notthings to kind of create those
obstacles.
Not not things to kind ofcreate create those obstacles,
and I mean from from.
I know you're not specializingin business contracts but legal,
like you said, runs all the waythrough your business and and
understanding.
Uh, to your point, the patentsand and IP, add to the IP and
(24:51):
add to, um, you know,acquisitions, like like you have
some kind of value in yourcompany, right, we have a bunch
of knowledge in our company.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, they're assets.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Right, we have computers in our company, but
intellectual assets right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Can you talk?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
maybe a little bit more about intellectual assets
and give maybe some smallbusiness examples and
medium-sized business examples.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, for sure, let me.
Let me first say I like that.
You said that you're not cheap.
We're not cheap, we're not thecheapest either.
Right, you gotta, you gotta,pay for the rights.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Cheap is really it's not a commodity, it's not.
You can't compare apples toapples and oranges to oranges,
like it's not that way, it's,it's, it's the overall value.
But like, yeah, there's a bunchof stuff that's cheap out there
, but it doesn't mean it's good,it doesn't mean it's helpful
for you, it doesn't mean it'sright, but but it, but it's
cheap.
You know, I, I, I don't, I,yeah, so I, I, I don't.
(25:49):
I think it's about valuecreation, it's not about cost.
And does this value match withwhat you're trying to achieve?
Right?
And I would just tell you thefractional way to go is you use
what you need, right, and youcan scale it up and down, and so
you get good advice and you payfor just what you need.
(26:10):
Like I don't think there's not abetter model, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
And you plug the right people in for the right
problems.
As you said, you know, mybackground is very patent IP
heavy.
I've got other people on myteam who'll do contracts,
They'll do fundraising, evenlitigation if people get into
that.
So we want to plug the rightpeople in for the right problems
that our clients have, so thatand getting through the
bottlenecks there's timebottlenecks, there's knowledge
bottlenecks those are importantparts of what we do.
(26:36):
To your question, though youasked about intellectual assets.
I mean anything that you'redoing that falls into those
categories.
I you know who owns it, how dopeople use it, Can you license
it out, All that type of stuff.
(26:57):
That to me, those fivecategories we'll call it, those
are all your IP or yourintellectual assets, and so
those can drive value.
They're creating, they'reprotecting the innovative parts
of your business, parts of yourbusiness, and studies or reports
that have come out recently saythat.
(27:18):
I think this is probably mostlyapplicable to these large
international corporate bodies84 to 90% of the value of the
company and we're talking justlike if you look at the total
value of the company in themarket 84 to 90% of that value
is held in the intellectualassets.
Now it might not be quite thesame number for smaller
(27:38):
businesses, but small businesses, I don't think it's that far
off, because you look atsomebody.
You look at a smart person witha smart team around them.
They come up with what appearsto be a good idea in a large
market and they'll be like, well, we're raising money at a $10
million valuation.
What do you have?
Well, we have this great ideaand this great team.
The fact that you have a teamand an idea and you can start
(28:01):
protecting that like it's a $10million idea, that's the full
value of your business, rightthere is placed on intellectual
assets based on intellectualassets, how would you say brand
fits into it?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Because if you look at, like Coca-Cola or you know
some of these things, theycertainly have assets.
Or you know anything in fashion, shoe company, adidas, whatever
, like there's that brand ofthat emotional connection, of
what people think about whenthey think of that brand.
They put a dollar for trumpright well, we just had the
inauguration like.
Like I mean, based on how hefeels his brand is worth, like
(28:38):
that's how, that's how what hisnetwork is right.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
He'll raise 50 million dollars overnight or 50
whatever.
What?
50 billion dollars?
What was his?
What was his coin?
That just came out?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
yeah, yeah, he is out .
Yeah, he's doing some crazythings and a lot of people are
left, right and center what'shappening?
But, certainly he raises itbased upon his name and what
that does and that does havepower.
And so I really do think thatIP and brand and I think maybe
(29:10):
brand even falls under that thatthat intellectual property in
some capacity.
I mean, how, how do you seethose two working together?
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Well, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't limit brand to justthe IP, right?
I think IP is the way that IPis the mechanism that you use to
protect your brand, the partsof your brand that you can
protect, and that's names andlogos and maybe the look and
feel of your business, theartistic style of your business,
with copyright, like you use IPas tools around the brand that
(29:41):
you've built.
Your brand is so much more thanthat, though.
Your brand is differentdefinitions.
It's how people see you in themarket, right?
It's how they trust you for theservice that you're providing,
but IP is important to protectthat, and other people will have
their own brand and they'llcome after you sometimes if they
feel like their brand is beinginfringed.
(30:02):
Their IP that protects theirbrand.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Let me give you three examples that I deal with and
if there's any web developersout there.
I know there is listening.
I was just kind of mentioningwebsites, images, video, really
looking at the contracts to makesure you own them, not for
public use and getting somecease and desist orders or pay a
fine, but also using graphicdesigners when they're making
(30:35):
something for me, but they're acontractor, they don't give me
the source file, they want youto come back to edit it, and so
you don't have that.
And then even videography a lotof times if you look at the
contracts it's like we're givingyou unlimited free royalties to
use this, but it's our content,so you pay them to video it,
and so you got to pay attentionto the fine print, because no
(30:57):
one cares until something'sgoing wrong, and then they all
go back to the paperwork andmaking sure that that's correct.
So I really think that there'sjust different use cases across
that path of business where youneed legal help, and that GBT is
not going to get you there.
I mean, what are some kind ofother examples?
(31:18):
I guess what I really wantpeople to start thinking about
is man, I really might need somehelp with this or might need
some help with that, need somehelp with this or might need
some help with that.
And there's so many thingsunder the sun that you run
across new all the time andyou're like, how do you deal
with that?
And until you deal with it, youdon't really know the best way
(31:38):
to deal with it.
But it's always better to notlearn the hard way and be an
expert if you have them in yourpocket, sort of thing, right.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, I probably should create a list of like the
top 10 issues that smallbusinesses or starting
businesses, growing businessesrun into.
You've named some of them, so alot of people get in trouble
and you can't get out of itafter you've used an image
without authorization.
You end up paying a fine atbest, although there are a lot
of scams out there now that goafter people illegitimately.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And they don't even have the connection.
They're just trying to kind ofyeah.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So you kind of got to know when it's legitimate,
because when it's legitimateyou've got to do something about
it, and when it's notlegitimate you don't have to do
something about it.
Setting up your businessinitially if people are at that
stage, I can't emphasize enoughhow much you need to plan for
the divorce when you get marriedto your founders.
That is one of the hardestthings for any company to go
(32:38):
through.
If at some point the founderssplit and you want to set up, a
lot of times you'll want to setup vesting with the founders.
You want to set up ways to getout of the contract.
Buy people out.
What if?
What if?
I've had clients whose foundershave just disappeared.
They don't respond.
I don't know if it's it's ifit's health issues, mental
health issues or what, but wecan't get ahold of people.
(33:00):
What do you do then?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
It can it can literally, literally cripple a
business or even kill a business.
So that's another issue Don'tgo 50-50 if you can help it or
you got to at least have a tiebreak right Like that's another
thing I see people do all thetime right.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
For sure.
Yeah, and that's where a lot ofthere's some vesting techniques
where you can start to grow and, as people contribute and hit
milestones, you can build yourindividual equity in the
business.
So there's a lot of techniquesthere.
50-50 from day one without anyouts is a terrible way to go.
I completely agree with you onthat.
And so when you hire employees,that's going to be one of the
(33:42):
main issues that you have.
Employees are just they addanother element.
In some people's eyes they wouldsay it's really hard to have
employees and legally it createsa lot of issues.
Hiring and firing employeesthat's something where we see a
lot of issues, and a lot ofthese issues come because
they're high emotion moments.
(34:02):
Right, I just got hired, that'sawesome.
I just got fired, that's notawesome.
Or you promised me stockoptions.
Where are they?
How come I'm not getting themyet?
Those are issues that peoplerun into.
And then, like we've talkedabout already, running with your
business, with your branding,picking your brand upfront, if I
(34:23):
could just say, here's whereyou should spend a little bit of
extra time and money.
You should spend a little extratime and money on making sure
that your brand path is clear,right, that you can both protect
your brand.
Work with a smart marketing guyto pick the right branding
(34:45):
assets.
Make sure you can protect those, and the flip side of
protecting them is making surethat you're not infringing
somebody else's assets.
So that, to me, is getting offon the right foot for your
business.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I mean, what are some legal?
So I 100% agree.
I actually brought on abranding guy that helped
companies raise money right,like, hey, we want to exit, we
want to get acquired.
Whatever Um he actually was wasyou know, this, this, this like
I.
It took a while to process it,but he basically said if you
(35:18):
launch with a certain brand andyou hit a peak um and and you
maybe identify, um, these keyareas, he said, just change the
name.
He was like literally changethe name and start over, and
that was pretty like out thereas far as what it was.
But he's like there's a storybehind it, there's the brand
(35:38):
behind it and it might not havethe legs and that's what
investors look for is.
Can they see that being theAirbnb or whatever?
Does the story and the name andthe brand all put around it?
And so you almost have to thinkof the end before the beginning
.
There's a book that Chris usedto make everybody read.
(35:59):
I still make everybody read it.
It's called the E-Myth, theEntrepreneur Myth, and it's
basically-.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I've got it back there.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Right, design the company of what it looks.
Take, take all the like.
Design the company of what itlooks like.
Take all those hats, and thenit might go down to one person
or two people or whatever, andthen, as you hire people, have
those roles and hand those out.
So you got to think about theend at the beginning.
I think that that's what you'retalking about with the brand
protection and yeah, and notstarting on something that
(36:30):
somebody else already has,because it's going to cause
problems, because nobody cares,unless you actually start to
make a difference.
That's what I see.
You're just some little mom andpop.
They don't care.
But you can start to get big,you start to make some waves,
you start to take their marketshare or go into their territory
.
If you're growing, that's wherethe issues become.
(36:51):
Yeah, you pop up on their radar.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
At that point, right, you pop up on their radar and
then they're like, oh, and evenpeople who aren't competitors,
they'll see your success andthey'll be like I want some of
that.
And they'll find ways tocomplain or sue you.
For we get clients who get suedfor ADA violations on their
website.
We think they're.
(37:13):
While ADA is really important,we think these lawsuits for the
most part, are justopportunistic predators.
Right, they're finding somebodyto use as a pawn so they can
sue somebody and the attorneyscan make a bunch of money,
settle quickly.
But it's because you'resuccessful For everybody
listening.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Ada is, like you know , vision impaired hearing
impaired and your websites needto be compliant in this area,
and there's about 10% of thepopulation that you know that
this affects and you know it isa real issue and there is teeth
(37:48):
behind it Like you can get sued,but but I mean I I've only seen
some of those cases very liketissues, like people going after
people or you know bigcompanies that that that really
should be ADA compliant, but Ithink it does.
It does impact everybody, but I, I, yeah, so I mean there's all
these areas right, like you gotto figure out that business
(38:09):
case.
The thing I wanted to saythere's.
There's two things thathopefully I remember the other
one, but I want to say this now,while I remember it my biggest
experience with lawyers, okay,is, um, lawyers will tell you
all the things that you can do,but they don't help you shape
what you should do and give youadvice.
(38:30):
Okay, like that is my biggestissue with lawyers in general,
based on my experience, is likewhen I first started working
with lawyers, hey, I want to setup this LLC or this or that.
Like you can do everything.
Whatever you want to do, I'mhere to do it for you.
I'm like I'll do whatever youwant, and then they you know
they're they're charging you 15minutes to like you know they
(38:51):
walk you out in the hallway andyou're talking and then they're
like that's on your bill, likethose are the sort of things
that I'm like, okay, this givesme a bad taste in my mouth.
Then I found a lawyer.
He now retired, but he wouldgive me business advice.
He had worked with smallbusinesses, he had worked with
startups and he gave me goodadvice and then executing it
(39:12):
goes.
The only reason you write longcontracts this was his kind of
opinion is so that it'scomplicated right.
The simpler you can make it,the better you can get,
sometimes, people to agree right, and the more transparent you
can make it to agree right andthe more transparent you can
make it.
But I would tell you, gettingthat advice in addition to
(39:40):
someone that can actually do itis paramount and to be able to
get some direction, I think isthe biggest value.
Can you speak to that of kindof how you feel about it?
Do you know what I'm talkingabout?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, speak to that of kind ofhow you feel about it.
You know what I'm talking about.
I know exactly what you'retalking about, yeah, and I can
give you guys, I can give youraudience, the probably the
number one tip to to distinguishbetween somebody who gives you
a bunch of legal informationversus the people who give you
business advice.
And that is there's a hugedifference between somebody
who's called outside general,outside counsel right, they've,
they've, they work in a law firmand they're.
(40:07):
Their business is to bill youmoney and not that that's bad.
They're really good at whatthey do, they're specialists,
they're highly trained, but alot of times people who've never
crossed the line and gone andworked in a business, they
haven't been what we callin-house counsel.
They just they don't operatethe same way and it's kind of
like having a baby.
Until you've had a baby, youdon't know what it's like to
(40:28):
have a baby, but once you've hada baby you're like, oh, I get
it.
Now I know what my friends weretalking about.
And so when you go from lawfirm attorney to in-house
attorney out of business, theentire mindset shifts.
I could tell you a fun storyanother time about how I thought
I was going to get fired twiceand realized I was working the
(40:49):
wrong way for 15 years themoment I went in-house right,
it's just your objectives change.
You're not there to bill hours.
You're there to solve problems.
You're there to be a teammember and get the executive
team the right information sothat they can make decisions and
you can help them.
You know, give them guidance,right information, so that they
can make decisions and you canhelp them.
You know, give them guidance.
Hey, and that's what.
(41:09):
That's one thing that from youknow.
When I talk about fractionallegal team, I'm drawing on my
experience, having been generalcounsel in a technology company
that raised millions, hundredsof millions of dollars and and
knowing that my clients needthey don't just need a bunch of
options, they need, they needjudgment.
(41:29):
Right.
Who wants to go to the doctorand say, well, you might have
these 15 different types ofcancer?
Like that doesn't help us atall.
They say, hey, when you go home, you need to do X, y and Z,
like that's your best chance ofgetting better from whatever you
have to do X, y and Z.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Not all doctors do that.
I love that.
I think that's a great analogy.
So you know, we're gettingclose to wrapping up and
hopefully the internet sticksaround with us.
So thank you everybody forlistening, for your patience.
I think we've talked about somereally interesting stuff.
Is there anything else that wemissed that you really want to
insert?
And then also, I would like toknow in your mind what is one
(42:07):
unknown secret of internetmarketing as it relates to
business law, ip branding maybe,I don't know, but I want to
just kind of hear from youwhat's something that's so
undervalued that people shouldreally be doing?
And then how?
do you get in touch with them.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, I think we've talked a lot about the trademark
side of things and branding.
I would just go early to getsome direction.
You don't even have to takeaction, but get some direction
from an attorney early on aboutyour branding.
That's the number one advice Ihave about anything related to
marketing for my clients.
And if I could add one morething I would say and this is
(42:46):
for every business at any stagethink like a second time startup
, right.
Think like a founder who's beenthrough it once before.
You mentioned early on in theshow that a lot of times the
difference is that people have anetwork, and that's what a
second time founder does, afirst time founder.
They're full of fire and energyand passion and they just want
(43:06):
to move and go, but they don'thave that network around them,
they don't have those guardrails, they don't have a good trusted
attorney or a good CPA or CFO,they don't have advisors to help
guide them, and so they'll makefast, big decisions that
sometimes just burn out, whetherit's a new business or a new
division in your business or anew project.
(43:28):
Go in and think what would I doif this was the second time I
was doing this?
Who would I want on my team ifI had already been down this
path a second more, before theymake these rash decisions, to
say well, you know, I think asmart friend who's been down
(43:51):
this path would probably say letme talk to somebody about that,
let me ask somebody who's donethat before, let me find a
trusted whoever it is, whatevertype of problem you're dealing
with, let me talk to them.
And 15 minutes of time doingthat can save you.
I mean, literally in the end.
I had a client, who's who, wholaunched this ad campaign one
(44:11):
time and I saw it on my socialmedia and I I immediately got on
my email.
I'm like hey guys, um, you needto pull that down or you're
going to get into a multimilliondollar lawsuit.
As soon as, as soon as theother people see it, that you
don't want to see it and they,you know they just didn't, they
hadn't thought through thatbecause it wasn't their issue.
But but, but a quick, you know,in that case I noticed it
(44:34):
instead of them coming to me.
But a quick conversation it'snot always this case, but can
literally save millions ofdollars down the road.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
No, I love that.
I would just add to that and Idon't know you can tell me if
your firm specializes in this ornot.
But what I'm seeing is there'sreally this case of acquisition
entrepreneurship that's kind oftaking hold right now and people
are buying businesses that arefamily businesses, or kids are
taking over their parents'businesses, and I've seen a lot
(45:10):
of businesses.
I did headhunting for aboutseven years and so I know how to
staff, but I was in a lot ofdifferent businesses, really big
businesses, all different kindsof size businesses.
And then on the marketing side,I work with so many different
companies and everybody runstheir business a little bit
differently and we have a lot oflong-term clients.
That's really the goal is to,like you said, is to hire once
(45:32):
and then you don't have to thinkabout it again and the
marketing just works.
And we have a lot of 12-yearclients, 10-year clients,
eight-year clients, tons at thefive six-year client.
That's our goal, right Is totry to do that.
So we get to know thesebusinesses and I would just tell
you, oh my gosh, some of thesebusinesses are all different
cases and if you're going into abusiness or you're taking over
(45:54):
a business, one person, withwhatever experience they have
might not be all the experienceyou need to restructure that
business and kind of pull thatthing apart, because a lot of
small businesses, from what I'veseen, operate really uniquely.
(46:16):
I'll just say and if you arelooking to take over a business
or you're looking to digitallytransform it, take it to the
next level.
A lot of processes are going tohave to change, a lot of things
that you do have to change.
There's a lot of like legalissues, like if it's it's a
family, uh, own company, andthere's somebody that's you know
(46:37):
, uh, uh, you know, not engagedin the business or, uh, maybe
has a drinking issue or a drugissue or, um, you know, or you
don't want to be in a businesswith that spouse.
There's a lot of things tothink about when you're moving
into a business, and I thinkthat's where I see it.
It's like you're moving into abusiness and you're looking at
(46:59):
the P&L and you're figuring outand you're untangling everything
and you're like this businesshas a ton of potential, so it's
not just necessarily a startup,and you're like I need a team of
people that have experience tountangle this, okay, and and I
need a fractional model of likegive me, give me the, the really
experienced people that havetaken a company public, right, I
(47:21):
need maybe somebody like thatand then, but that person
doesn't need to do you know, the, the, the, the, the HR
contracts for the non-competesor something like that.
Right, like you, you need allthese different things at
different levels and it would begreat to just have a source and
let them find the right teamfor you based upon that
experience, and bring that toyou without you having to do it.
(47:43):
Like I used to do it kind of onthe recruiting side.
We'd like staff, a team, orwe'd staff individuals and you'd
build it, but it's much betterto have a person that knows what
they're doing, doing all thatfor you.
It just saves you so much time.
Like, that's like the.
You know you're paying the costhere, but you're saving so much
time, so the value is going tobe astronomical.
(48:04):
I don't know that's reallypersonally, you didn't ask me to
say that.
That's just what I see in thisbusiness, whether it's legal or
accounting or marketing orwhatever it is right.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It's super helpful to have it to you.
You've got my engineer brainworking.
I'm thinking systems all overthe place and everything's
interconnected and you needthese different pieces.
The example I like to use isyou don't hire your plumber to
install your flooring right.
They are their expert.
You also don't hire yourplumber to be your general
contractor, but you pay somebodywho's maybe not a specialist in
anything, but they're aspecialist in being a generalist
(48:40):
, to help you manage all thespecialists.
And it's no different with yourbusiness, whether you're
talking legal or you're talkingsome other marketing or some
other aspect.
You need different levels ofexpertise, different types of
expertise, to all work togetherin the system for sure.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
I love that, Jeff.
It was so glad to have you on.
We worked through thechallenges.
Hopefully everybody enjoyedthis.
If you did, please, Jeff, howdo they get in contact to you?
Uh, if they, if they liked whatyou had to say.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Oh, uh.
Yeah, Thanks, matt, it's been agreat, great pleasure being on
the show.
Um, to get in contact with meis easy.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active.
Look for me.
You'll see my face and you'llsee something about building
fractional legal teams Prettysimple.
You can also on our website andthey'll be able to schedule a
free strategy call with us.
We do a 30-minute kind ofintroductory strategy call.
We'll talk about your business,talk about the chaos that
(49:32):
you're creating, the messes thatyou've made and if there's a
way to clean them up.
So I always enjoy, like you,talking with all those
businesses.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
And Jeff, what's the domain of that website?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
It's intellectualstrategiescom.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
All right, intellectualstrategiescom.
And also just for anybodylistening, I know a lot of you
are Jeff's name is spelledJ-E-F-F and Holloman H-O-L-1-L,
mann, m-a-n, so just you canlook for him there.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you liked any of this,please share it with somebody.
(50:04):
You think it would get somevalue.
We really appreciate all thesupport and until the next time,
if you want to grow yourbusiness with the largest,
powerful, most awesome tool onthe internet that we've ever had
in my lifetime the internet,reach out to EWR Digital for
more revenue in your business.
Check out matthewbertramcom forour coaching program Really
(50:27):
excited about one of the casestudies that we're going to be
building out there.
We're going to help somebodytake a small business to a large
business, a scalable, leadgenerating business.
So I built a lot of lead gensites for a lot of different
areas and really a lot of theseweb 2.0s if you're in legal
right, like just a lawyerscombest lawyers like all those
kinds of sites.
(50:47):
All they're doing is doing SEOand paid ads, like they're doing
everything that you can do andthen they resell it to you and
multiple people.
So they resell those leads, butthey're competing with you and
they're going after the bigbroad terms, but there's really
specific instances that are longtail key phrases that you can
really compete with, and Iencourage people to build their
(51:09):
own land right.
Build their own land, buildtheir own brand and grow the
business that way.
And thank you all until thenext time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Bye-bye for now.
Howdy, welcome back to another front-field episode
of the Unknown Secrets ofInternet Marketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
Today I have a special guestfor you, jeff Holliman.
He's a business-focused you,jeff Holliman, he's a
business-focused attorney forinnovation and entrepreneurs.
He really helps you get theexpertise right with a
fractional team.
Some of the questions we'regoing to be going over are maybe
(00:38):
how do fractional teams differfrom traditional attorneys
versus startups, a businessstrategy on how to drive growth,
businesses approach tointellectual property, how
businesses could emerge sectorsand help manage legal challenges
so like the benefits of maybe afractional business model and
(01:00):
just kind of other obstacles.
So if you're interested in that, please stick around.
I wanted to just do some quickhousekeeping.
We do have a new thumbnail Ifyou're watching on YouTube
Unknown Secrets InternetMarketing.
I got my face on it, I guessbecause Chris is no longer
involved.
We haveinternetmarketingsecretscom
internetmarketingsecrets.
(01:21):
We also have got that handle onYouTube and we're going to be
growing that area.
If you do like this podcast,please like, follow, listen.
The coaching program is coming.
I just had a consulting callyesterday with a DJ that has
built an empire and we'regenerating leads all around the
(01:45):
country.
That's going to be a case studythat we're going to follow.
I also have some free coursesthat I'll be coming out with.
If you're wanting to become apower user with like data
analytics or keyword research,I'll have that coming on
internetmarketingsecretscom.
And now I would like to bringto the call Jeff Hallman.
How are you, sir?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm doing great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Matt.
So for everybody that'slistening, just to kind of give
everybody a time key in Houstonright now it's absolutely like
crazy snowing, and this issomething that you know.
Around the country people arelike oh, that's great, that's
nice you have some snow InHouston.
No one can handle it.
None of the equipment.
No one left their house for thelast three days.
(02:28):
Kids have been home.
It's been a little bit of a zoo, and so for any of y'all that
are listening in Houston, I justwant to say stay safe, don't
drive on those icy roads.
But, jeff, I am so glad to bringyou on because we've been doing
a series to really arm smallbusiness owners, business owners
(02:48):
and digital marketing agencieswith all the right tools to help
them, and that sometimesinvolves things outside of SEO.
Seo should be the core.
You layer on some digitalmarketing strategy.
We have a small businesspackage that absolutely just
crushes it, and you know.
But there people have questionsabout other stuff.
(03:09):
When it's when it doesn't work,cookie cutter right, when it
doesn't work, and sometimesmaybe there's difficult clients
or you're trying to do differentthings or people like I'm
actually dealing with something.
This is super interesting.
Um, not exactly what you'redoing, but I think it's a good
lead-in.
Uh, I have some law firms thatI'm working with and, um,
(03:30):
negative seo is like a still athing and people will throw bad
links and, uh, you know, mix upthe signals to google and other
search engines to to help tohurt you because they can't like
beat you.
Does that make sense?
And I have some verycompetitive industries and I I
have, um, you know, two clientsright now that are getting
attacked, uh, through thisnegative SEO and typically like
(03:54):
reputation management, of likeproducing good reviews and good
links to help help kind of burysome of that bad stuff.
Well, you know this, this lawfirm and and this is like I
don't know if forensic SEO islike even a term, but but
essentially he's like get me asclose to the source as possible,
we'll subpoena them, we'll findout who is doing this or
(04:16):
purchase this or whatever, andwe'll sue them.
And I was like awesome, I'mdown, I'm here for it, and
that's not something that I haveany experience with, but I will
shortly and that's somethingthat I was working on the last
few days in some free time isdeveloping that list to be able
to go after people and it wasvery empowering to be able to be
(04:39):
like we can do something aboutthis, right, like it is.
And I hate when people don'tcompete, um, fairly.
But I think that legal issomething that scares a lot of
people, or people don'tunderstand it.
And, um, you know, a lot oftimes you run against legal
challenges or, uh, clients orvendors or whatever.
Like, how do you deal with thiswhen the contract, right, um,
(05:03):
doesn't necessarily, like, likeyou, everybody goes back to the
contract when there's adisagreement, Right, and so,
like, how do you handle that?
And I think intellectualproperty, too, is like something
that a lot of people, um, likewill come after you, like
they'll send you notice usingour stuff, right, I think that
there's kind of a money-makinggame out there for that.
(05:23):
But also some of the compliancestuff that I was at a
podcasting conference lastweekend that we were talking
about is how to use foreducational purposes only, I
guess, is the answer.
But you know, if you want totalk about star Wars, right, and
some kind of marketing orexample, how do you do that?
And I've always just stayed awayfrom it because it's just, you
(05:46):
know, anything legal scares mebecause I don't.
I don't have those toolsnecessarily in the tool belt,
and so I thought it'd be good tobring you on and kind of lay
lay the groundwork for that.
So that was a very long windedintro, but hopefully people are,
are interested, engaged in tohear, uh, what you have to say,
Cause I mean, you've, you'vereally done some amazing stuff
(06:07):
on the entrepreneurial side ofthings.
Um, you know, you got a degreein electrical engineering, an
MBA.
Uh, us patents.
Um, you know, you, you, you'vedealt with a number of legal
frameworks, and then you alsooffer a fractional uh service,
right, like so if people justneed stuff here and there, you
have a way to do that wheresomeone doesn't have a general
(06:27):
counsel on staff.
And so I just wanted to kind oftee you up and to offer it to
you to kind of maybe set thetable a little bit more of what
we're going to be getting intohere.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I'd love to do that, thank you, and there was a
lot in that.
Yeah, I'd love to do that,thank you, and there was a lot
in that intro and in that kindof lead up to this conversation.
But that, just to me, isillustrative of the fact that
legal it really runs throughevery vein of your business in
some format, right.
Whether it's your branding andyou're out there trying to
market yourself or you'regetting attacked by somebody, or
(07:01):
your contracts with yourcustomers, your suppliers or
partners, whoever that is,you're bringing investors in it.
Just, it just runs throughevery vein of the business.
So it really is.
It's kind of I don't want tocall it lifeblood.
That sounds maybe too too toobig for what it is, but it
really is part of every, everypart of your business, just like
(07:21):
finance runs through all yourbusiness, right.
So it is very important andthat's why so many people
struggle with it, because it canbecome, you know, any one part
of your business.
When a legal issue comes up,you can kind of get derailed and
think, well, how do?
I got to focus on SEO, or I gotto focus on serving my
customers or whatever it is, andnow you're derailed by this one
(07:44):
issue in this one area of lawthat you don't even want to deal
with.
So it's pretty, it's impactfulwhen it's present, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I think, like when I think about legal, like
contractually, like you meetsomebody and you're like hey, I
want to work with you, right,and oh, I want to work with you
too, and so you want to workwith each other.
But until someone puts togetheran agreement of how that's
going to work and what that'sgoing to look like, it's hard to
do anything with anybody, right, and so you know that that's
(08:17):
the the initial basis to it.
But then a lot of people arelike, hey, well, people, I have
a client right now that has aname that you know.
I think it's hard to copyrightit, right, or whatever, or or to
put IP around it, but there'sand they're in a different
market, so they're across thecountry, but there's somebody
(08:37):
with that same name, differentdomain, but same name, different
logo in this area.
And then I actually had an oldclient that, um and I've talked
about this before uh, in, likethe roofing space and
everybody's like it's guardianright.
So like everybody wants to be aguardian alarm system or a
guardian roofing company, andthere was actually like five
(08:59):
companies with the same name inthe same geographic area.
And you know, I was like, well,first we got to rank for your
name, you know, and then we needto, we need to kind of control
your name.
So people have that.
And as we moved him up therankings for his name, he was
getting a lot of calls fromother companies and like, I
think that like, like IP, oreven if you're, if you're going
(09:21):
on to like a logo or likeness,what it really is is that's not
your brand, that's like who youare Like, that's, that's like
the.
The logo is the name of yourcompany, your IP is identifiable
to you and and what you'retrying to say is this is me and
this is what I'm doing, and andyou're really just trying to
(09:42):
kind of keep the copycats I'mdoing and you're really just
trying to kind of keep thecopycats trying to create some
space right.
So if you generate interest,they know that they're finding
you Is that?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I don't know if that's a good explanation.
No, it's great.
I mean, we deal with a lot ofsmall and growing businesses and
the value of their trademark,their brand protection, really
is huge.
Right, you can look up studiesand it'll say well, anybody
who's got a registered trademark, the valuation of your company
is actually higher than all thecompanies that are like it that
don't have registered trademarks.
It just it multiplies the valueof your company from a
(10:17):
financial standpoint.
And it's because of what yousaid right, people want to.
That's how they identify you,that's how they know you, that's
how they, in the legal field wesay, that's how they source
their goods or services.
You know that's the identifierof the, the, the service they're
buying or, or you know whetherit's whether it's roofing or
pest control or security.
Like that is how they identifyyou, and so I think you're
(10:45):
absolutely right.
That's the business's identity.
There's a lot.
There's a lot.
I talk with a lot of clientsabout trademark stuff.
So we go into that in moredepth if you want to.
But but really finding theright name, one that you can
protect and one that doesn'tconflict with other people,
that's a an early stagechallenge for businesses.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, and let me also provide another example of
something where we've interactedwith with, say, trademarks,
Google ads okay, Like runningads on people's names or or
Google ads.
That stops people from frommaybe doing that.
One of the things we did in thesupplement business.
So the former co-host we'vegrown a supplement company quite
(11:22):
big and the three otherpartners that started this
agency are all working in thatbusiness and we kind of did a
Red Bull situation where wecreated our own market and then
people came into that market andto kind of protect that, what
we did is we kind of renamed ourproduct and put a copyright on
(11:43):
that and then everything that wetalk about and that we promote
is related to that product name,like a tissue versus a Kleenex,
right.
And so we're growing thatmarket and we've protected that
market.
So the overall market's growingbut that market is protected
and we're able to talk aboutthat and promote that and nobody
(12:05):
else can really go after that,and so that created some space
that as we continue to grow theindustry, people are protected
in that area and also theformulation, right.
So to talk about, maybe patentsa little bit.
You know how we mix our productand what that product mix looks
like.
Um, that's our formulationright.
(12:28):
And, um, I'll the the example toto bring in patents that I
remember from marketing I.
So I went to school formarketing.
Everything was Lego, okay.
Lego lost its patent, okay, andanybody can make those little
lego blocks, okay.
And then you just start to seethe lego movie come out and I
(12:49):
mean like the the star warspartnership and they partnered
with marvel and disney and likeeverything, because that is ip
protected like intellectualproperty.
The legos are not.
So then they're customized inLegos to make that set and that
helped extend their, theirpatent Right.
(13:10):
And I would even say, um, youknow, I was in the pharma
industry, uh, which you knowpeople have different opinions
of that.
But when the drug formulationwent off patent, they patent the
delivery system of the device.
So, like adver, it's like thedisc device is patentable but
Budesonide, what's in it, is notright and you can get that
(13:31):
inhaler.
But they continue to promotethis product with this disc
device of the delivery systemsbetter and they protect it.
And and I mean I'm just tryingto give people real world
examples of like how to thinkabout some of this stuff.
Maybe you can kind of bringthose big examples in to
situations that you deal withwith maybe small businesses.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, no, you've given a great example, because I
always talk to my clients andaudiences about the layers of
intellectual property.
You know you've alreadymentioned copyrights.
Copyrights protect a work ofart, you know, a painting or a
sculpture or a movie, whateverit might be.
Sometimes that overlaps withtrademarks.
Trademarks protect your brand.
It's your name, your logo, yourslogan, whatever that is.
(14:17):
And so, but then you have theinventions in your business,
perhaps, and that one productthat you invent.
You know you've given anexample of drugs.
You can invent all around thatproduct.
You can patent the drug itself,you could patent the way to
make the drug, you patent theway to deliver the drug, you
patent the accessory devicesthat go along with the drug.
(14:37):
And so you get all of theselayers of intellectual property
that you know and back in yourbusiness you might have all
these trade secrets.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
You know all of the processes, like people, I know,
there's a whole business aboutbuilding processes and then
actually selling it to, you know, cisco or selling it to, like.
I remember that guy.
He sold like 12 patents for $15million to Netflix and he
designed the process aroundNetflix.
You should be doing this and hedesigned the process around
Netflix.
(15:05):
You should be doing this and hedesigned it all around that.
I mean, you know it gets kindof wild, but but but I think I
think that that's where anopportunity is, and I mean,
maybe even in the digitalmarketing space there's certain
things that that I do that iskind of a trade secret, right,
and and and it.
It's how we do it.
(15:27):
In what order does thesecertain types of things with the
signals, right, and you know,and it's like.
It's like, do you make itpublic, right, and then people
copy it and then you have toprotect it, or do you do?
The Coca-Cola thing is like noone knows exactly what's in?
it Right, like, like, but.
But making all those kinds ofdecisions gets you stuck, you
(15:49):
know like, but you're in theright industry.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right, because this is a conversation I have, and I
have it from the legalperspective.
But when you're talking aboutreleasing your IP to the public,
you want to.
There's this whole debate aboutwhat you should disclose to the
public and what you should keepsecret, but then there's also
this debate in trademarks how doI pick a name that's
protectable and unique, but notso unique that nobody knows what
(16:14):
I do, right?
And so the key to a lot of thisis teaming up with a good
marketing team so that, whenyou're building your product or
service, you can make theseinformed decisions.
And IP is one slice of yourstrategy, but you've got to have
that marketing slice too, tokind of fill in the gaps and
make them complementary towhatever it is that you're doing
(16:35):
in your business.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And I think that the fractional model because I
actually come on fractionallywith a lot of businesses when
they're trying to figure out amarketing strategy or like this
is what we're trying to do orlaunch, and like they don't need
me full time but they're likelike, hey, we're going to do
this and we want to stay out ofthe ditch.
Well, there's many times on onthe legal side, you're trying to
make decisions that arebusiness decisions and you're
(17:00):
like, hey, I don't know whichway we should go.
We could go right, we could goleft.
What does everybody think Right?
Like if you're talking to otherfounders or you're talking to
your team, but it's like we needa legal perspective to help
tell us what to do.
And and sometimes they justassign it to, you know, a team
member to like go, do a bunch ofresearch and tell us what to
(17:20):
think.
Or now ask chat gbt, which itcould hallucinate, um, you know.
And so like it's really good tojust phone a friend, that's the
right friend.
Like I, I would tell you.
Like, the fractional business,like even like uber, I remember
when I was paying somebody 20bucks to take me to the airport.
Hey, buddy, like it's a friend,hey, when you do it, like I'll
(17:41):
pay you.
And then it was actually likeyou had to use like social
capital to like, hey, will youtake me to the airport?
Because it's like not thatconvenient.
But now it's like you just kindof can reach out conveniently
and tap and get someone to takeyou to the airport, just like
you know, I think thateverything's becoming very kind
of gig economy, fractionalized.
Hey, I need you for this onespecific thing.
(18:02):
Can you provide me someadvisory, um consulting, and
just tell me what should I do inthis situation?
Right, and, and, and, and.
It's really, I think, as you'rebuilding in today's day and age
, having the right network,right, knowing the right people.
That's like, oh, I got thisproblem, let me pick up the
phone because I know who Ineeded to call, and and then
(18:25):
they have a model, that whereyou can tap like their knowledge
um to help you make thatdecision, to move forward,
because you know some of thesethings will get you stuck you
know, it'll just freeze upbusinesses I think the biggest
thing I see you know for sure,you know I it.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
it just brought to mind.
Um, because the one thing we dodifferently than a lot of
fractional, a lot of fractional,you find independent people
that are bringing that highlevel expertise to the team.
Right, we do it because law isboth a mixture of really high
level strategy decision makingand then the implementation.
Like you got to write thecontract, you got to, you know,
write the apply for thetrademark or help get the
(19:01):
funding in.
It really becomes our teamapproach allows people to kind
of hire once.
Nobody likes to hire anattorney ever, it seems, let
alone pay them for the work theydo and you don't want to do it
twice or three times when youhave different issues come up.
So this team approach thatwe're doing really helps people
to come to bring everything intoone hire.
(19:23):
I would say Go through thatprocess once and then get a team
that has a breadth of expertise, different attorneys they can
help with different things.
It really made me think of lastsummer.
I took a trek with some friendsand we went to hike Mount
Kilimanjaro.
I actually got helicoptered offfor health reasons a day before
(19:44):
my friends made it up there,but when we went.
You hire this team of portersand guides.
You know, you've got peoplemaking the food.
You've got people bringing upthe bathroom or the shower.
If you brought that, you've gotpeople that are carrying all
your bags.
You've got the guides who arewatching your help.
You need that whole team, right, and so you could go hire one
by one.
Hey, I'd like to find, findthis guy to help carry my bags
(20:07):
and find this guy.
But but why do that?
Right?
So, so it's really a teameffort to get up that mountain
and, in the same sense, you knowwe we're bringing that legal
team so that businesses have theright expertise from the right
attorney at the right time.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, I let me add onto that Cause I can tell you
how I, from a similar model onthe accounting side of things,
okay, like, legal and accountingare like the two things that
you need.
Um, one is yeah, if you losesomebody, you got to backfill a
(20:41):
position.
Um, certainly, if you have justa, a consultant or a contractor
, they worry about the hiringand the right people and they
have people at all levels of ofthe, the team approach and you
know what you need and and in inmy mindset, just the guys.
(21:04):
This is where I'm at is um, areyou ready to really grow your
business?
Okay, like, that's what itcomes down to, and there's a lot
of people that could do to, andthere's a lot of people that
could do the job, and there's alot of people that could do the
job cheaper.
But and and I don't even knowwhat your pricing is, I'm just
saying in general, typically,like you know um, but I can tell
(21:28):
you an SEO Okay, I can tell you, in digital marketing, you can
go spend a bunch of money, okay,at someone cheaper and it's not
an investment.
You just blew the money.
Okay, I can tell you, indigital marketing, you can go
spend a bunch of money, okay, atsomeone cheaper and it's not an
investment.
You just blew the money.
Okay.
Like doing it right the firsttime is like the cheapest,
absolute thing that you can do.
But but my mindset where I'm atis like all right, I'm ready to
scale, I'm ready to grow, likeI don't want to see problems and
(21:52):
I don't want the way in whichwe do things to reflect our
brand.
Um, because everybody, if you,if you're doing you know
accounting, sales, whatever,like it's all reflective of of
the health of your company.
And if you're ready to likegrow your company and make moves
, like you need a professionalteam, like yeah, you could hire
(22:13):
me and I'm actually dang good atSEO, but I, but SEO takes a
village, okay, like I can't doeverything.
There was even something lastnight.
So I had a client asked me aboutsomething and he's like really
wanted something.
And I was like I can't get thisdone with all this snow and my
kids home and everything likethat.
So I assigned it to our SEOmanager that I have people
(22:36):
overseas, I have people here, Ihave people everywhere.
And I was like hey, I need thisby 6 AM tomorrow and like
explain what to do and I've beenworking with this person for
five years and I gave it to himand get you know what in my
inbox.
It was there.
I could look at it, filter it,get it to the client and deliver
it like from a team capacity oryou know there's things on it
(22:58):
or something like that that Imay not be, I know a little bit
about, but I don't knoweverything about.
You need that team to accessthat and and if you're trying to
build an organization that'strying to make big decisions,
not always is all theinformation in one person's head
and at different levels, right,and so to kind of fractionally
pay for what you need, engage inthat area.
(23:20):
But I guess just where, whereI'm at mentally, the way I'm on,
is like I want a team because,yeah, I want to hire once, cause
you said that and I think thatthat is absolutely critical.
And then two is like some ofthe questions I'm going to have
are going to be down here, right, and then some of the questions
I have are going to be up hereand that person may not be the
(23:42):
best person for that, right, andand you have different people
that have different experience.
Like some of the questionscould be legal, legal compliance
stuff.
Like I, I come up with like HRand legal compliance stuff all
the time about this little thing, that little thing, and we have
actually a service for for HRtoo, right.
Like so you know not, and I'vehad HR people but then they're
(24:02):
like, oh, let me go do a bunchof research.
And then they're like guessing,right.
I even had a bookkeeper at onepoint that was like, oh, you're
not going to qualify for PPP orERC or whatever.
And I was like I'm pretty surewe do.
Like you know what I mean.
And like going having the rightteam versus like an independent
person that has a limitedknowledge base is not what you
(24:25):
need when you're scaling acompany, because what you want
is people to help you, notthings to kind of create those
obstacles.
Not not things to kind ofcreate create those obstacles,
and I mean from from.
I know you're not specializingin business contracts but legal,
like you said, runs all the waythrough your business and and
understanding.
Uh, to your point, the patentsand and IP, add to the IP and
(24:51):
add to, um, you know,acquisitions, like like you have
some kind of value in yourcompany, right, we have a bunch
of knowledge in our company.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, they're assets.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Right, we have computers in our company, but
intellectual assets right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Can you talk?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
maybe a little bit more about intellectual assets
and give maybe some smallbusiness examples and
medium-sized business examples.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, for sure, let me.
Let me first say I like that.
You said that you're not cheap.
We're not cheap, we're not thecheapest either.
Right, you gotta, you gotta,pay for the rights.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Cheap is really it's not a commodity, it's not.
You can't compare apples toapples and oranges to oranges,
like it's not that way, it's,it's, it's the overall value.
But like, yeah, there's a bunchof stuff that's cheap out there
, but it doesn't mean it's good,it doesn't mean it's helpful
for you, it doesn't mean it'sright, but but it, but it's
cheap.
You know, I, I, I don't, I,yeah, so I, I, I don't.
(25:49):
I think it's about valuecreation, it's not about cost.
And does this value match withwhat you're trying to achieve?
Right?
And I would just tell you thefractional way to go is you use
what you need, right, and youcan scale it up and down, and so
you get good advice and you payfor just what you need.
(26:10):
Like I don't think there's not abetter model, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
And you plug the right people in for the right
problems.
As you said, you know, mybackground is very patent IP
heavy.
I've got other people on myteam who'll do contracts,
They'll do fundraising, evenlitigation if people get into
that.
So we want to plug the rightpeople in for the right problems
that our clients have, so thatand getting through the
bottlenecks there's timebottlenecks, there's knowledge
bottlenecks those are importantparts of what we do.
(26:36):
To your question, though youasked about intellectual assets.
I mean anything that you'redoing that falls into those
categories.
I you know who owns it, how dopeople use it, Can you license
it out, All that type of stuff.
(26:57):
That to me, those fivecategories we'll call it, those
are all your IP or yourintellectual assets, and so
those can drive value.
They're creating, they'reprotecting the innovative parts
of your business, parts of yourbusiness, and studies or reports
that have come out recently saythat.
(27:18):
I think this is probably mostlyapplicable to these large
international corporate bodies84 to 90% of the value of the
company and we're talking justlike if you look at the total
value of the company in themarket 84 to 90% of that value
is held in the intellectualassets.
Now it might not be quite thesame number for smaller
(27:38):
businesses, but small businesses, I don't think it's that far
off, because you look atsomebody.
You look at a smart person witha smart team around them.
They come up with what appearsto be a good idea in a large
market and they'll be like, well, we're raising money at a $10
million valuation.
What do you have?
Well, we have this great ideaand this great team.
The fact that you have a teamand an idea and you can start
(28:01):
protecting that like it's a $10million idea, that's the full
value of your business, rightthere is placed on intellectual
assets based on intellectualassets, how would you say brand
fits into it?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Because if you look at, like Coca-Cola or you know
some of these things, theycertainly have assets.
Or you know anything in fashion, shoe company, adidas, whatever
, like there's that brand ofthat emotional connection, of
what people think about whenthey think of that brand.
They put a dollar for trumpright well, we just had the
inauguration like.
Like I mean, based on how hefeels his brand is worth, like
(28:38):
that's how, that's how what hisnetwork is right.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
He'll raise 50 million dollars overnight or 50
whatever.
What?
50 billion dollars?
What was his?
What was his coin?
That just came out?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
yeah, yeah, he is out .
Yeah, he's doing some crazythings and a lot of people are
left, right and center what'shappening?
But, certainly he raises itbased upon his name and what
that does and that does havepower.
And so I really do think thatIP and brand and I think maybe
(29:10):
brand even falls under that thatthat intellectual property in
some capacity.
I mean, how, how do you seethose two working together?
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Well, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't limit brand to justthe IP, right?
I think IP is the way that IPis the mechanism that you use to
protect your brand, the partsof your brand that you can
protect, and that's names andlogos and maybe the look and
feel of your business, theartistic style of your business,
with copyright, like you use IPas tools around the brand that
(29:41):
you've built.
Your brand is so much more thanthat, though.
Your brand is differentdefinitions.
It's how people see you in themarket, right?
It's how they trust you for theservice that you're providing,
but IP is important to protectthat, and other people will have
their own brand and they'llcome after you sometimes if they
feel like their brand is beinginfringed.
(30:02):
Their IP that protects theirbrand.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Let me give you three examples that I deal with and
if there's any web developersout there.
I know there is listening.
I was just kind of mentioningwebsites, images, video, really
looking at the contracts to makesure you own them, not for
public use and getting somecease and desist orders or pay a
fine, but also using graphicdesigners when they're making
(30:35):
something for me, but they're acontractor, they don't give me
the source file, they want youto come back to edit it, and so
you don't have that.
And then even videography a lotof times if you look at the
contracts it's like we're givingyou unlimited free royalties to
use this, but it's our content,so you pay them to video it,
and so you got to pay attentionto the fine print, because no
(30:57):
one cares until something'sgoing wrong, and then they all
go back to the paperwork andmaking sure that that's correct.
So I really think that there'sjust different use cases across
that path of business where youneed legal help, and that GBT is
not going to get you there.
I mean, what are some kind ofother examples?
(31:18):
I guess what I really wantpeople to start thinking about
is man, I really might need somehelp with this or might need
some help with that, need somehelp with this or might need
some help with that.
And there's so many thingsunder the sun that you run
across new all the time andyou're like, how do you deal
with that?
And until you deal with it, youdon't really know the best way
(31:38):
to deal with it.
But it's always better to notlearn the hard way and be an
expert if you have them in yourpocket, sort of thing, right.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, I probably should create a list of like the
top 10 issues that smallbusinesses or starting
businesses, growing businessesrun into.
You've named some of them, so alot of people get in trouble
and you can't get out of itafter you've used an image
without authorization.
You end up paying a fine atbest, although there are a lot
of scams out there now that goafter people illegitimately.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And they don't even have the connection.
They're just trying to kind ofyeah.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So you kind of got to know when it's legitimate,
because when it's legitimateyou've got to do something about
it, and when it's notlegitimate you don't have to do
something about it.
Setting up your businessinitially if people are at that
stage, I can't emphasize enoughhow much you need to plan for
the divorce when you get marriedto your founders.
That is one of the hardestthings for any company to go
(32:38):
through.
If at some point the founderssplit and you want to set up, a
lot of times you'll want to setup vesting with the founders.
You want to set up ways to getout of the contract.
Buy people out.
What if?
What if?
I've had clients whose foundershave just disappeared.
They don't respond.
I don't know if it's it's ifit's health issues, mental
health issues or what, but wecan't get ahold of people.
(33:00):
What do you do then?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
It can it can literally, literally cripple a
business or even kill a business.
So that's another issue Don'tgo 50-50 if you can help it or
you got to at least have a tiebreak right Like that's another
thing I see people do all thetime right.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
For sure.
Yeah, and that's where a lot ofthere's some vesting techniques
where you can start to grow and, as people contribute and hit
milestones, you can build yourindividual equity in the
business.
So there's a lot of techniquesthere.
50-50 from day one without anyouts is a terrible way to go.
I completely agree with you onthat.
And so when you hire employees,that's going to be one of the
(33:42):
main issues that you have.
Employees are just they addanother element.
In some people's eyes they wouldsay it's really hard to have
employees and legally it createsa lot of issues.
Hiring and firing employeesthat's something where we see a
lot of issues, and a lot ofthese issues come because
they're high emotion moments.
(34:02):
Right, I just got hired, that'sawesome.
I just got fired, that's notawesome.
Or you promised me stockoptions.
Where are they?
How come I'm not getting themyet?
Those are issues that peoplerun into.
And then, like we've talkedabout already, running with your
business, with your branding,picking your brand upfront, if I
(34:23):
could just say, here's whereyou should spend a little bit of
extra time and money.
You should spend a little extratime and money on making sure
that your brand path is clear,right, that you can both protect
your brand.
Work with a smart marketing guyto pick the right branding
(34:45):
assets.
Make sure you can protect those, and the flip side of
protecting them is making surethat you're not infringing
somebody else's assets.
So that, to me, is getting offon the right foot for your
business.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I mean, what are some legal?
So I 100% agree.
I actually brought on abranding guy that helped
companies raise money right,like, hey, we want to exit, we
want to get acquired.
Whatever Um he actually was wasyou know, this, this, this like
I.
It took a while to process it,but he basically said if you
(35:18):
launch with a certain brand andyou hit a peak um and and you
maybe identify, um, these keyareas, he said, just change the
name.
He was like literally changethe name and start over, and
that was pretty like out thereas far as what it was.
But he's like there's a storybehind it, there's the brand
(35:38):
behind it and it might not havethe legs and that's what
investors look for is.
Can they see that being theAirbnb or whatever?
Does the story and the name andthe brand all put around it?
And so you almost have to thinkof the end before the beginning
.
There's a book that Chris usedto make everybody read.
(35:59):
I still make everybody read it.
It's called the E-Myth, theEntrepreneur Myth, and it's
basically-.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I've got it back there.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Right, design the company of what it looks.
Take, take all the like.
Design the company of what itlooks like.
Take all those hats, and thenit might go down to one person
or two people or whatever, andthen, as you hire people, have
those roles and hand those out.
So you got to think about theend at the beginning.
I think that that's what you'retalking about with the brand
protection and yeah, and notstarting on something that
(36:30):
somebody else already has,because it's going to cause
problems, because nobody cares,unless you actually start to
make a difference.
That's what I see.
You're just some little mom andpop.
They don't care.
But you can start to get big,you start to make some waves,
you start to take their marketshare or go into their territory
.
If you're growing, that's wherethe issues become.
(36:51):
Yeah, you pop up on their radar.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
At that point, right, you pop up on their radar and
then they're like, oh, and evenpeople who aren't competitors,
they'll see your success andthey'll be like I want some of
that.
And they'll find ways tocomplain or sue you.
For we get clients who get suedfor ADA violations on their
website.
We think they're.
(37:13):
While ADA is really important,we think these lawsuits for the
most part, are justopportunistic predators.
Right, they're finding somebodyto use as a pawn so they can
sue somebody and the attorneyscan make a bunch of money,
settle quickly.
But it's because you'resuccessful For everybody
listening.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Ada is, like you know , vision impaired hearing
impaired and your websites needto be compliant in this area,
and there's about 10% of thepopulation that you know that
this affects and you know it isa real issue and there is teeth
(37:48):
behind it Like you can get sued,but but I mean I I've only seen
some of those cases very liketissues, like people going after
people or you know bigcompanies that that that really
should be ADA compliant, but Ithink it does.
It does impact everybody, but I, I, yeah, so I mean there's all
these areas right, like you gotto figure out that business
(38:09):
case.
The thing I wanted to saythere's.
There's two things thathopefully I remember the other
one, but I want to say this now,while I remember it my biggest
experience with lawyers, okay,is, um, lawyers will tell you
all the things that you can do,but they don't help you shape
what you should do and give youadvice.
(38:30):
Okay, like that is my biggestissue with lawyers in general,
based on my experience, is likewhen I first started working
with lawyers, hey, I want to setup this LLC or this or that.
Like you can do everything.
Whatever you want to do, I'mhere to do it for you.
I'm like I'll do whatever youwant, and then they you know
they're they're charging you 15minutes to like you know they
(38:51):
walk you out in the hallway andyou're talking and then they're
like that's on your bill, likethose are the sort of things
that I'm like, okay, this givesme a bad taste in my mouth.
Then I found a lawyer.
He now retired, but he wouldgive me business advice.
He had worked with smallbusinesses, he had worked with
startups and he gave me goodadvice and then executing it
(39:12):
goes.
The only reason you write longcontracts this was his kind of
opinion is so that it'scomplicated right.
The simpler you can make it,the better you can get,
sometimes, people to agree right, and the more transparent you
can make it to agree right andthe more transparent you can
make it.
But I would tell you, gettingthat advice in addition to
(39:40):
someone that can actually do itis paramount and to be able to
get some direction, I think isthe biggest value.
Can you speak to that of kindof how you feel about it?
Do you know what I'm talkingabout?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, speak to that of kind ofhow you feel about it.
You know what I'm talking about.
I know exactly what you'retalking about, yeah, and I can
give you guys, I can give youraudience, the probably the
number one tip to to distinguishbetween somebody who gives you
a bunch of legal informationversus the people who give you
business advice.
And that is there's a hugedifference between somebody
who's called outside general,outside counsel right, they've,
they've, they work in a law firmand they're.
(40:07):
Their business is to bill youmoney and not that that's bad.
They're really good at whatthey do, they're specialists,
they're highly trained, but alot of times people who've never
crossed the line and gone andworked in a business, they
haven't been what we callin-house counsel.
They just they don't operatethe same way and it's kind of
like having a baby.
Until you've had a baby, youdon't know what it's like to
(40:28):
have a baby, but once you've hada baby you're like, oh, I get
it.
Now I know what my friends weretalking about.
And so when you go from lawfirm attorney to in-house
attorney out of business, theentire mindset shifts.
I could tell you a fun storyanother time about how I thought
I was going to get fired twiceand realized I was working the
(40:49):
wrong way for 15 years themoment I went in-house right,
it's just your objectives change.
You're not there to bill hours.
You're there to solve problems.
You're there to be a teammember and get the executive
team the right information sothat they can make decisions and
you can help them.
You know, give them guidance,right information, so that they
can make decisions and you canhelp them.
You know, give them guidance.
Hey, and that's what.
(41:09):
That's one thing that from youknow.
When I talk about fractionallegal team, I'm drawing on my
experience, having been generalcounsel in a technology company
that raised millions, hundredsof millions of dollars and and
knowing that my clients needthey don't just need a bunch of
options, they need, they needjudgment.
(41:29):
Right.
Who wants to go to the doctorand say, well, you might have
these 15 different types ofcancer?
Like that doesn't help us atall.
They say, hey, when you go home, you need to do X, y and Z,
like that's your best chance ofgetting better from whatever you
have to do X, y and Z.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Not all doctors do that.
I love that.
I think that's a great analogy.
So you know, we're gettingclose to wrapping up and
hopefully the internet sticksaround with us.
So thank you everybody forlistening, for your patience.
I think we've talked about somereally interesting stuff.
Is there anything else that wemissed that you really want to
insert?
And then also, I would like toknow in your mind what is one
(42:07):
unknown secret of internetmarketing as it relates to
business law, ip branding maybe,I don't know, but I want to
just kind of hear from youwhat's something that's so
undervalued that people shouldreally be doing?
And then how?
do you get in touch with them.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, I think we've talked a lot about the trademark
side of things and branding.
I would just go early to getsome direction.
You don't even have to takeaction, but get some direction
from an attorney early on aboutyour branding.
That's the number one advice Ihave about anything related to
marketing for my clients.
And if I could add one morething I would say and this is
(42:46):
for every business at any stagethink like a second time startup
, right.
Think like a founder who's beenthrough it once before.
You mentioned early on in theshow that a lot of times the
difference is that people have anetwork, and that's what a
second time founder does, afirst time founder.
They're full of fire and energyand passion and they just want
(43:06):
to move and go, but they don'thave that network around them,
they don't have those guardrails, they don't have a good trusted
attorney or a good CPA or CFO,they don't have advisors to help
guide them, and so they'll makefast, big decisions that
sometimes just burn out, whetherit's a new business or a new
division in your business or anew project.
(43:28):
Go in and think what would I doif this was the second time I
was doing this?
Who would I want on my team ifI had already been down this
path a second more, before theymake these rash decisions, to
say well, you know, I think asmart friend who's been down
(43:51):
this path would probably say letme talk to somebody about that,
let me ask somebody who's donethat before, let me find a
trusted whoever it is, whatevertype of problem you're dealing
with, let me talk to them.
And 15 minutes of time doingthat can save you.
I mean, literally in the end.
I had a client, who's who, wholaunched this ad campaign one
(44:11):
time and I saw it on my socialmedia and I I immediately got on
my email.
I'm like hey guys, um, you needto pull that down or you're
going to get into a multimilliondollar lawsuit.
As soon as, as soon as theother people see it, that you
don't want to see it and they,you know they just didn't, they
hadn't thought through thatbecause it wasn't their issue.
But but, but a quick, you know,in that case I noticed it
(44:34):
instead of them coming to me.
But a quick conversation it'snot always this case, but can
literally save millions ofdollars down the road.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
No, I love that.
I would just add to that and Idon't know you can tell me if
your firm specializes in this ornot.
But what I'm seeing is there'sreally this case of acquisition
entrepreneurship that's kind oftaking hold right now and people
are buying businesses that arefamily businesses, or kids are
taking over their parents'businesses, and I've seen a lot
(45:10):
of businesses.
I did headhunting for aboutseven years and so I know how to
staff, but I was in a lot ofdifferent businesses, really big
businesses, all different kindsof size businesses.
And then on the marketing side,I work with so many different
companies and everybody runstheir business a little bit
differently and we have a lot oflong-term clients.
That's really the goal is to,like you said, is to hire once
(45:32):
and then you don't have to thinkabout it again and the
marketing just works.
And we have a lot of 12-yearclients, 10-year clients,
eight-year clients, tons at thefive six-year client.
That's our goal, right Is totry to do that.
So we get to know thesebusinesses and I would just tell
you, oh my gosh, some of thesebusinesses are all different
cases and if you're going into abusiness or you're taking over
(45:54):
a business, one person, withwhatever experience they have
might not be all the experienceyou need to restructure that
business and kind of pull thatthing apart, because a lot of
small businesses, from what I'veseen, operate really uniquely.
(46:16):
I'll just say and if you arelooking to take over a business
or you're looking to digitallytransform it, take it to the
next level.
A lot of processes are going tohave to change, a lot of things
that you do have to change.
There's a lot of like legalissues, like if it's it's a
family, uh, own company, andthere's somebody that's you know
(46:37):
, uh, uh, you know, not engagedin the business or, uh, maybe
has a drinking issue or a drugissue or, um, you know, or you
don't want to be in a businesswith that spouse.
There's a lot of things tothink about when you're moving
into a business, and I thinkthat's where I see it.
It's like you're moving into abusiness and you're looking at
(46:59):
the P&L and you're figuring outand you're untangling everything
and you're like this businesshas a ton of potential, so it's
not just necessarily a startup,and you're like I need a team of
people that have experience tountangle this, okay, and and I
need a fractional model of likegive me, give me the, the really
experienced people that havetaken a company public, right, I
(47:21):
need maybe somebody like thatand then, but that person
doesn't need to do you know, the, the, the, the, the HR
contracts for the non-competesor something like that.
Right, like you, you need allthese different things at
different levels and it would begreat to just have a source and
let them find the right teamfor you based upon that
experience, and bring that toyou without you having to do it.
(47:43):
Like I used to do it kind of onthe recruiting side.
We'd like staff, a team, orwe'd staff individuals and you'd
build it, but it's much betterto have a person that knows what
they're doing, doing all thatfor you.
It just saves you so much time.
Like, that's like the.
You know you're paying the costhere, but you're saving so much
time, so the value is going tobe astronomical.
(48:04):
I don't know that's reallypersonally, you didn't ask me to
say that.
That's just what I see in thisbusiness, whether it's legal or
accounting or marketing orwhatever it is right.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It's super helpful to have it to you.
You've got my engineer brainworking.
I'm thinking systems all overthe place and everything's
interconnected and you needthese different pieces.
The example I like to use isyou don't hire your plumber to
install your flooring right.
They are their expert.
You also don't hire yourplumber to be your general
contractor, but you pay somebodywho's maybe not a specialist in
anything, but they're aspecialist in being a generalist
(48:40):
, to help you manage all thespecialists.
And it's no different with yourbusiness, whether you're
talking legal or you're talkingsome other marketing or some
other aspect.
You need different levels ofexpertise, different types of
expertise, to all work togetherin the system for sure.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
I love that, Jeff.
It was so glad to have you on.
We worked through thechallenges.
Hopefully everybody enjoyedthis.
If you did, please, Jeff, howdo they get in contact to you?
Uh, if they, if they liked whatyou had to say.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Oh, uh.
Yeah, Thanks, matt, it's been agreat, great pleasure being on
the show.
Um, to get in contact with meis easy.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active.
Look for me.
You'll see my face and you'llsee something about building
fractional legal teams Prettysimple.
You can also on our website andthey'll be able to schedule a
free strategy call with us.
We do a 30-minute kind ofintroductory strategy call.
We'll talk about your business,talk about the chaos that
(49:32):
you're creating, the messes thatyou've made and if there's a
way to clean them up.
So I always enjoy, like you,talking with all those
businesses.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
And Jeff, what's the domain of that website?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
It's intellectualstrategiescom.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
All right, intellectualstrategiescom.
And also just for anybodylistening, I know a lot of you
are Jeff's name is spelledJ-E-F-F and Holloman H-O-L-1-L,
mann, m-a-n, so just you canlook for him there.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you liked any of this,please share it with somebody.
(50:04):
You think it would get somevalue.
We really appreciate all thesupport and until the next time,
if you want to grow yourbusiness with the largest,
powerful, most awesome tool onthe internet that we've ever had
in my lifetime the internet,reach out to EWR Digital for
more revenue in your business.
Check out matthewbertramcom forour coaching program Really
(50:27):
excited about one of the casestudies that we're going to be
building out there.
We're going to help somebodytake a small business to a large
business, a scalable, leadgenerating business.
So I built a lot of lead gensites for a lot of different
areas and really a lot of theseweb 2.0s if you're in legal
right, like just a lawyerscombest lawyers like all those
kinds of sites.
(50:47):
All they're doing is doing SEOand paid ads, like they're doing
everything that you can do andthen they resell it to you and
multiple people.
So they resell those leads, butthey're competing with you and
they're going after the bigbroad terms, but there's really
specific instances that are longtail key phrases that you can
really compete with, and Iencourage people to build their
(51:09):
own land right.
Build their own land, buildtheir own brand and grow the
business that way.
And thank you all until thenext time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
Bye-bye for now.
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