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Overcoming Business Growth Hurdles: Strategic Insights for Startups with Jeff Holman
00:51:29
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- [00:16]
A
Howdy. Welcome back to another fun filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matt Bertram. Today I have a special guest for you, Jeff Holloman. He's a business focused attorney for innovation and entrepreneurs. You know, he really helps you get the expertise right with like a fractional team. Some of the questions we're going to be going over are maybe how do fractional teams differ from traditional attorneys versus startups? A business strategy on how to drive growth, businesses approach to intellectual property, how businesses could emerge sectors and help manage legal challenges. So like the benefits of maybe a fraction fractional business model and just kind of other obstacles. So if you're interested in that, please stick around. I wanted to just do some quick housekeeping. We do have a new thumbnail. It's if you're watching on YouTube, unknown secrets, Internet marketing. I got my face on it. I guess because Chris is no longer involved. We have Internet marketing secrets.com Internet marketing secrets. We also have got that handle on YouTube 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 call yesterday with a DJ that has built empire and we're generating leads all around the country. That's going to be a case study that we're going to follow. I also have some free courses that I'll be coming out with. If you're wanting to become a power user with like data analytics or keyword research. I'll have that coming on Internet marketing secrets dot com. And now I would like to bring to the call Jeff Hulman. How are you, sir?
- [02:04]
B
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Matt.
- [02:06]
A
So for, for everybody that's listening, just to kind of give everybody a time key in Houston right now, it's absolutely like crazy snowing. And this is something that, you know, around the country people are like, oh, that great. That's nice. You have some snow in Houston. No one can handle it. None of the equipment. No one left their house for the last three days. Kids have been home. It's been a little bit of a zoo. And so for any of y'all that are listening to Houston, I just want to say stay safe, don't drive on those icy roads. But Jeff, I am so glad to bring you on because, uh, we've been doing a series to really arm, you know, small business owners, business owners and, and digital marketing agencies with all the right tools to, to help them. And, and that sometimes involves things outside of SEO. SEO should be the core you layer on some digital market strategy. We have a small business package that actually absolutely just crushes it. And you know, but there people have questions about other stuff when it's, when it doesn't work. Cookie cutter. Right. When it doesn't work. And sometimes maybe there's difficult clients or you're trying to do different things or people like, I'm actually dealing with something. This is super interesting. Not exactly what you're doing, but I think it's a good lead in. I have some law firms that I'm working with and negative SEO is like a. Still a thing. And people will throw bad links and, you know, mix up the signals to Google and other search engines to, to, to help. To hurt you because they can't like beat you. Does that make sense?
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B
Right, right.
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A
I have some very competitive industries and I, I have, you know, two clients right now that are getting attacked through this negative SEO and typically like reputation management of like producing good reviews and good links to help. Help kind of bury some of that bad stuff. Well, you know, this, this law firm and, and this is like, I don't know if forensic SEO is like even a term, but, but essentially he's like, give me as close to the source as possible. We'll subpoena them, we'll find out who is doing this or purchase this or whatever and we'll sue them. And I was like, awesome, I'm down. I'm here for it. And that's not something that I have any experience with, but I will shortly. And that's something that I was working on the last few days in some free time is developing that list to be able to go after people. And it was very empowering to be able to be like, we can do something about this. Right. Like it is. And I hate when people don't compete fairly. But I think that legal is something that scares a lot of people or people don't understand it. And you know, a lot of times you run against legal challenges or clients or vendors or whatever. Like, how do you deal with this when the contract. Right. Doesn't necessarily like, like you. Everybody goes back to the contract when there's a disagreement. Right. And so, like, how do you handle that? And I think intellectual property too is like something that a lot of people like will come after you. Like, they'll send you notice using our stuff. Right. I think that there's kind of a money making game out there for that. But also some of the compliance stuff that I was at a podcasting conference last weekend that we were talking about is how to use for educational purposes only, I guess is the answer. But you know, if you want to talk about Star wars, right, and some kind of marketing or example, how do you do that? And I've always just stayed away from it because it's just, you know, anything legal scares me because I don't, I don't have those tools necessarily in the tool belt. And so I thought it'd be good to bring you on and kind of lay, laid the groundwork for that. So that was a very long winded intro. But hopefully people are, are interested, engaged and to hear what you have to say because, I mean, you've, you've really done some amazing stuff on the entrepreneurial side of things. You know, you got a degree in electrical engineering, an mba, US Patents, you know, you, you've dealt with a number of legal frameworks. And then you also offer a fractional service, right? Like, so if people just need stuff here and there, you have a way to do that where someone doesn't have like a general counsel on staff. And so I just wanted to kind of tee you up and to offer it to you to kind of maybe set the table a little bit more of what we're going to be getting into here.
- [06:40]
B
So, yeah, I'd love to do that. Thank you. And you know, there was a lot in that intro and in that kind of lead up to this conversation, but that's, that just to me is illustrative of the fact that legal is. It really runs through every vein of your business in some format, right? Whether, whether it's your branding and you're out there trying to market yourself, or you're getting attacked by somebody, or your contracts with your customers, your suppliers or partners, whoever that is, you're bringing investors in. It just runs through every vein of the business. So it really is, it's kind of, I don't want to call it Lifeblood. That sounds maybe too, too, too big for what it is, but it really is part of every, every part of your business. Just like finance runs through all your business, right? So it's, it is very important and that's why so many people struggle with it because it can become, you know, any one part of your business. You, 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 got to focus on serving my customers or, or whatever it is? And now you're derailed by this one issue in this one area of law that you don't even want to deal with. So it's pretty, it's impactful when it's, when it's present, for sure.
- [07:55]
A
I think, like, when I think about legal, like contractually, like, you meet somebody 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 work with each other, but until someone puts together an agreement of how that's going to work and what that's going to look like, it's hard to do anything with anybody, right? And so you know that, that's the, the initial basis to it. But then a lot of people are like, hey, well, people, I, I, I have a client right now that has a name that, you know, I think it's hard to copyright it, right? Or whatever, or, or to put IP around trademarks. There's, and they're in a different market, so they're across the country, but there's somebody with that same name, different domain, but same name, different logo in this area. And then I actually had an old client that, and I've talked about this before in like the roofing space, and everybody's like, it's Guardian, right? So, like, everybody wants to be a Guardian Alarm system or a Guardian roofing company. And there was actually like five companies with the same name in the same geographic area. And you know, I was like, well, first we got to rank for your name, you know, and then we need to, we need to kind of control your name. So people have that. And as we moved him up the rankings for his name, he was getting a lot of calls from other companies. And like, I, I think that like, like IP or even if you're, if you're going on like a logo or likeness, what it really is, is that's not your brand. That's like who you are. Like, that's, that's like the, the logo is the name of your company. Your IP is identifiable to you. And, and what you're trying to say is this is me and this is what I'm doing. And, and you're really just trying to kind of keep the copycats trying, trying to create some space, right? So, so if you generate interest, they, they know that they're finding you. Is that. I, I don't know if that's a good explanation.
- [09:55]
B
No, it's great. I mean, we, we deal with a lot of small and growing businesses and, and the value of their trademark, their brand protection really is huge, right? You can look up studies and it'll say, well, anybody who's got a registered Trademark. The, the valuation of your company is actually higher than all the companies that are like it, that don't have registered trademarks. It just, it multiplies the value of your company from a financial standpoint. And it's because it's what you said, right. People want to, they, that's how they identify you. That's how they know you. That's how they, in the legal field, we say that's how they source their goods or services. You know, that's the identifier of the service they're buying or, you know, whether it's, whether it's roofing or pest control or security, like that is how they identify you. And so I think you're absolutely right. That's the business's identity. There's a lot, there's a lot. I talk with a lot of clients about trademark stuff. So we go into that in more depth if you want to. But really finding the right name, one that you can protect and one that doesn't conflict with other people, that's an early stage challenge for businesses.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah. And let me also provide another example of something where we've interacted with, with say, trademarks, Google Ads, okay. Like running ads on people's names or, or Google Ads that stops people from, from maybe doing that. One of the things we did in the supplement business, so the former co host, we've grown a supplement company quite big and the three other partners that started this agency are all working in that business. And we kind of did a Red Bull situation where we created our own market and then people came into that market and to kind of protect that, what we did is we kind of renamed our product and put a, you know, a copyright on that. And then everything that we talk about and that we promote is related to that product name. Like a tissue versus a Kleenex. Right. And so we're growing that market and we protected that market. So the overall market's growing, but that market is protected. And we're able to, you know, talk about that and promote that and nobody else can really go after that. And so that created some space that as we continue to grow the industry, people, people are protecting, protected in that, that area and also the formulation. Right. So we're to talk about maybe patents a little bit, you know, how we mix our product and what that product mix looks like. That's our formulation. Right. And I'll the, the example to, to bring in patents that I remember from marketing. I, so I went to school for marketing. Everything was Lego. Okay. Lego lost its patent. Okay. And anybody can make those little Lego blocks, okay. And then you just start to see the Lego Movie come out. And I mean like the, the, the Star wars partnership and they partnered with Marvel and Disney and like everything, because that is IP protected, like intellectual property. The Legos are not. So then they're customizing Legos to make that set and that helped extend their, their patent. Right. And, and I would even say, you know, I was in the pharma industry, which, you know, people have different opinions of that, but when the drug formulation went off patent, they patent the delivery system of the device. So like Advair, it's like the disc device is patentable, but Budesonide, what's in it is not. Right. And you can get that inhaler, but they continue to promote this product with this disk device of the delivery systems better and they protect it. And, and I mean, I'm just trying to give people real world examples of like how to think about some of this stuff. Maybe you can kind of bring those big examples in, to situations that you deal with, with maybe small businesses.
- [13:54]
B
Yeah, no, you've given a great example because I, I always talk to my, my clients and audiences about the layers of intellectual property. You know, you've already mentioned copyrights. Copyrights protect the, a work of art, you know, a painting or a sculpture or a movie, whatever it might be sometimes that overlaps with trademarks. Trademarks protect your brand. It's your name, your, your logo, your slogan, whatever that is. And so, but then you have the inventions in your business perhaps, and that one product that you invent, you know, you've, you've given example of drugs you can invent all around that product. You can, you could patent the, the drug itself, you could patent the way to make the drug, you patent the way to deliver the drug, you patented the accessory devices that go along with the drug. And so you get all of these layers of intellectual property that you know, and back in your business you might have all these trade secrets, you know, all of the like, processes.
- [14:48]
A
Like people I know there's a whole business about building 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 $15 million to Netflix and he designed the process around Netflix. You should be doing this and you designed it all around that. I mean, you know, it gets kind of wild. But, but, but I think, I think that that's where an opportunity is. And I mean, maybe even in the digital marketing space there's certain things that, that I do. That is kind of a trade secret, right? And, and, and it, it's how we do it. In what order does these sort of. With the signals, right? And you know, and it's like, it's like, do you make it public, right? And then people copy it and then you have to protect it or do you do. The Coca Cola thing is like, no one knows exactly what's in it, right? Like, like, but, but making all those kind of decisions get you stuck, you know, like, but you're.
- [15:51]
B
But you're in the right industry, right? Because this is a conversation I have, and I have it from the legal perspective. But, but when you're talking about releasing your IP to the public, you want to. There's this whole debate about what you should disclose to the public and what you should keep secret. But, but then there's also this debate in trademarks. How do I pick a name that's. That's protectable and unique, but not so unique that nobody knows what I do, Right? And so the, the key, the key to a lot of this is, is teaming up with a good marketing team to. So that when you're building your product or service like you, you can make these informed decisions. And IP is one slice of your strategy, but you've got to have that marketing slice, too, to kind of fill in the gaps and make them complimentary to whatever it is that you're doing in your business.
- [16:37]
A
And I think that the fractional model, because I actually come on fractionally with a lot of businesses when they're trying to figure out a marketing strategy, or like, this is what we're trying to do or launch. And like, they don't need me full time, but they're like, like, hey, we're going to do this and we want to stay out of the ditch. Well, there's many times on, on the legal side, you're trying to make decisions that are business decisions, and you're like, hey, I don't know which way we should go. We could go right, we could go left. What does everybody think? Right? Like, if you're talking to other founders or you're talking to your team, but it's like, we need a legal perspective to help tell us what to do. And, and sometimes they just assign it to, you know, a team member to, like, go do a bunch of research and tell us what you think. Or now ask Chad gbt, which it could hallucinate, you know, and so, like, it's really good to just 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 20 bucks to take me to the airport. Hey, buddy, like it's a friend. Hey, when you do it, like, I'll pay you. And then it was actually like you had to use like social capital to like, hey, will you take me to the airport? Because it's like not that convenient. But now it's like you just kind of can reach out conveniently and, and, and tap and, and get someone to take you to the airport. Just like, you know, I think that everything's becoming married kind of gig economy, fractionalized. Hey, I need you for this one specific thing. Can, can you provide me some advisory consulting and just tell me what should I do in this situation, right? And, and, and, and it's really, I think as you're building in today's day and age, having the right network, right, Knowing the right people, that's like, oh, I got this problem, let me pick up the phone because I know who I need to call. And, and then they have a model that, where you can tap like their knowledge to help you make that decision to move forward. Because, you know, some of these things will get you stuck. You know, it frees up businesses. I think the biggest thing I see.
- [18:39]
B
You know, for sure, you know, I, it just brought to mind because the one thing we do differently than a lot of fractions, a lot of fractions, you find independent people that are bringing that high level expertise to the team. Right. We do it because law is both a mixture of really high level strategy, decision making and then the implementation, like you got to write the contract, you got to, you know, write the apply for the trademark or help get the funding in. And it, it really becomes our team approach allows people to kind of hire once. Nobody likes to hire an attorney ever it seems, let alone pay them for the work they do. And you don't want to do it twice or three times when you have different issues come up. So this team approach that we're, that we're doing really helps people to kind, to bring everything into one hire. I would say make the, you know, go through that process once and then get a team that has a breadth of expertise, different attorneys, they can help, help with different things. It really made me think of last summer. I took a trek with some friends and we went to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. I actually got helicoptered off for health reasons a day before my friends made it up there. But when we went, you hire this team of Porters and guides. You got people making the food. You got people bringing up the bathroom or the shower. If you brought that. You got people that are carrying all your bags. You got the guides who are watching your health. You need that whole team, right? And so you could go hire one by one, hey, I'd like to find. Find this guy to help carry my bags and find this guy. But. But why do that? Right? So, so it's really a team effort to get up that mountain. And in the same sense, you know, we're bringing that legal team so that businesses have the right expertise from the right attorney at the right time.
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A
Well, I. Let me add on to that, because I can tell you how I view the world. And, and I'm looking at this from a similar model on the accounting side of things, okay? Like, legal and accounting are like the two. Two things that you need. One is, yeah, if you lose somebody, you got to backfill a position. Certainly if you have just a. A consultant or a contractor, they may or may not be available. They may or may not get back to you. But, but, but being part of a service that has people at all levels, they worry about the hiring and the right people, and they have people at all levels of, of the. The team approach and you know what you need. And, and in. In my mindset, just the guys, this is where I'm at, is are you ready to really grow your business? Okay? Like, that's what it comes down to. And there's a lot of people that could do the job, and there's a lot of people that could do the job cheaper. But. And, and I don't even know what your pricing is. I'm just saying in general, typically, like, you know, but I can tell you in 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? Like, doing it right the first time is like, the cheapest, absolute thing that you can do. But, but, but my mindset where I'm at is like, all right, I'm ready to scale. I'm ready to grow. Like, I don't want to see problems, and I don't want the way in which we do things to reflect our brand. 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, like, grow your company and make moves like, like you need a professional team, like, yeah, you could hire me And I'm actually dang good at SEO, but I. But SEO takes a village, okay? Like, I can't do everything. There was even something last night. So I had a client ask me about something and he's like, really wanted something. And I was like, I can't get this done with all this snow and my kids home and everything like that. So I assigned it to our SEO manager that I have people overseas, I have people here, I have people everywhere. And I was like, hey, I need this by 6am tomorrow. And like, explained what to do. And I've been working with this person for five years and I gave it to them. And yet, 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 or, you know, there's things on it or something like that that I may not be. I know a little bit about, but I don't know everything about. You need that team to access that. And if you're trying to build an organization that's trying to make big decisions, not always is all the information in one person's head and at different levels. Right. And so to kind of fractionally pay for what you need, engage in that area. But I guess just where I'm at mentally, the wavelength I'm on is like, I want a team because, yeah, I want to hire once, because you said that, and I think that that is absolutely critical. And then two is like, some of the 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 here, and that person may not be the best person for that. Right? And. And you have different people that have different experience. Like, some of the questions could be legal. Legal compliance stuff. Like, I, I come up with like, HR and legal compliance stuff all the time about this little thing, that little thing. And, and we have actually a service for, for HR too, right? Like, so, you know, not. And I've had HR people, but then they're like, oh, let me go do a bunch of research. And then they're like, guessing, right? I had a bookkeeper at one point that was like, oh, you're not going to qualify for PPP or ERC or whatever. And I was like, I'm pretty sure we do like, you know what I mean? And like going. Having the right team versus like an independent person that has a limited knowledge base is. Is not what you need when you're scaling a company, because what you want is people to help you. Not, not things to kind of create, create those obstacles. And I mean from, from I, I know you're not specializing in business contracts, but legal, like you said, runs all the way through your business. And to your point, the patents and ip add to the IP and add to acquisitions, you have some kind of value in your company. Right? Like we have a bunch of knowledge, they're assets. Right. We have computers in our company. But like intellectual assets. Right. Can you talk maybe a little bit more about intellectual assets and give maybe some small business examples and medium sized business examples?
- [25:17]
B
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 the cheapest either. Right. You gotta, you gotta pay for the right.
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A
Cheap is really, cheap is really expensive. It's not a commodity. It's not, you can't compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Like, it's not that way. It's the overall value. But like, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that's cheap out there, but it doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean it, it's helpful for you. It doesn't mean it's right. But, but it, but it's cheap. You know, I, I, I don't, I, yeah, so I, I, I don't, I think it's about value creation. It's not about cost. And it, and does this value match with what you're trying to achieve? Right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, and two and, and I would just tell you the fractional way to go is you use what you need. Right. And you exactly scale it up and down. And so, so, so you, you get good advice and you pay for just what you need. Like, I, I don't think there's not a better model, you know, and you.
- [26:13]
B
And you plug the right people in for the right problems.
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A
Yeah.
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B
As you said, you know, my background is very patent IP heavy. I've got other people on my team who'll do contracts, they'll do fundraising, even litigation if people get into that. So we want to plug the right people in for the right problems that are, that our clients have. So that's that and getting through the bottlenecks. There's time bottlenecks, there's knowledge bottlenecks. Those are, those are important parts of what we do. To your question though, you asked about intellectual assets. I mean anything that you're doing that falls into those categories I mentioned before, copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and I would even add A fifth category, it's not technically ip, but the contracts that you're putting in place around that ip, you know, who owns it, how do people use it, can you license it out, all that type of stuff. That's that. To me, those five categories we'll call up, those are all your IP or your intellectual assets. And so those can drive value they're creating. They're. They're protecting the innovative parts of your business. And, you know, studies that, or reports that have come out recently say that I think this is probably mostly applicable to these large international, you know, corporate bodies. You know, 84 to 90% of the value of the company. And we're talking just like if you put value, you know, you look at the total value of the company in the market, 84 to 90% of that value is. Is held in the intellectual assets. Now, it might not be quite the same number for smaller businesses, but small businesses, I don't think it's that far off because you look at somebody, you look at a smart person with a smart team around them, they come up with what appears to be a good idea in a. In a large market, and they'll be like, well, we're. We're raising money at a $10 million valuation. What do you have? Well, we have this great idea and this great team. The fact you have a team and an idea and, and you can start protecting that like it's a $10 million idea. That's. That's the full value of your business right there, is placed on intellectual assets.
- [28:12]
A
How would you say brand fits into it? Because if you look at, like Coca Cola or, you know, some of these things, they certainly have assets or, you know, anything in fashion, shoe company, Adidas, whatever. Like, there's that brand of, that emotional connection of what people think about when they think of that brand. They put a dollar Trump, right? We just had the inauguration. Like, Like, I mean, based on how he feels his brand is worth, like, that's how. That's what his net worth, right?
- [28:42]
B
He'll raise $50 million overnight, or 50. Whatever it was. $50 billion. What was his. What was this coin that just came out?
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A
Yeah, yeah, he is. He's. I mean, he's doing some crazy things, and a lot of people are, Are, are, you know, left, right and center. What, what's happening. But sure, certainly he raises it based upon his name and, and, and. And what that does. And that does have power. And, and so I, I really do think that IP and brand, and I think maybe Bran even falls under that that, that intellectual property in some capacity. I mean, how do you see those two working together?
- [29:19]
B
Well, I wouldn't limit brand to just the ip, Right. I think IP is the way IP is the mechanism that you use to protect your brand, the parts of your brand that you can protect and that's, you know, names and logos and maybe the look and feel of your business, the artistic style of your business with copyright. Like you use IP as tools around the brand that you've built. Your brand is so much more than that though. Your brand is, you know, different definitions. It's how people see you in the market. Right. It's how they trust you. For what? For the service that you're providing. So, but IP is important to protect that. And, and other people will have their own brand and they'll come after you sometimes if they feel like their brand is being infringed. Their IP that protects their brand.
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A
Let me give you three examples that, that I deal with and if there's any web developers out there, I know there is. Listening. I was just kind of ment, you know, websites, images, video, really looking at the contracts to make sure you own them. I've had issues with, well, people using images that are maybe not for public use and you know, getting, getting some cease and desist orders or pay a fine, but also using graphic designers when they're making something for me. But they're a contractor, they're, they don't give me the source file. They want you to come back to edit it. And, and so, so you don't have that. And then even videography, a lot of times if you look at the contracts, it's like we're giving you unlimited free royalties to use this, but it's our content, so you pay them to video it. And so you got to pay attention to the fine print because no one cares until like something's going wrong and then they all go back to the paperwork and making sure that that's correct. So I really think that there's just different use cases across that path of business where, where you, where you need legal help and, and that GBT is not going to get you there. I mean, what, what are some kind of other examples? I guess I, what I really want people to start thinking about is, man, I, I really might need some help with this or might need some help with that. And you know, I, I just, there's so many things under the sun that you, you run across new all the time and you're like, how do you deal with that? And until you Deal with it. You don't really know the best way to deal with it, but it's always better to like not learn the hard way and good expert if, if you have them in your pocket sort of thing. Right on a phone.
- [31:47]
B
Yeah, I probably should create a list of like the top 10 issues that small businesses or starting businesses, growing businesses run into. You've named some of them. So a lot of people get in trouble and they have to. You can't get out of it. After you've used an image without authorization, you end up paying a fine at best. Although there are, there are a lot of scams out there now that go after people illegitimately.
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A
They don't even have the connection. They're just trying to kind of. Yeah.
- [32:16]
B
So you got, you kind of got to know when it's legitimate, because when it's legitimate, you've got to do something about it and when it's not legitimate and you don't have to do something about it. Setting up your, setting up your business initially, if people are at that stage, like I can't emphasize enough how much you need to plan for the divorce when you get married to your founders. Right. That, that is one of the hardest things for any company to go through. If at some point the founders split and you want to set up, vest, a lot of times you'll want to set up vesting with the founders. You want to set up outs, you know, ways to get out of the contract, buy people out. What if, what if. I've had clients whose founders have just disappeared, they don't respond. I don't know if it's, it's, if it's health issues, mental health issues or what. But we can't get a hold of people. What do you do then? It can, it can literally, literally cripple a business or even kill a business. So that's another issue.
- [33:09]
A
Don't go 50, 50 if you can help it because. Or you got to at least have a tie break. Right. Like that's. I was just. I see people do all the time. Right.
- [33:18]
B
For sure. Yeah. And that's where a lot of. There's some vesting techniques where you can start to kind of grow and as people contribute and hit milestones, you can, you can build you, your individual equity in the business. So there's a lot of techniques there. 50, 50 from day one, without any, without any outs is a terrible way to go. I completely agree with you on that. And so when you hire employees, that's going to be one of the main issues that you have. Employees are just. They add another element in some people's eyes. They would say, it's really hard to have employees, and legally, it creates a lot of issues. Hiring and firing employees. That's something that. Where we see a lot of issues, and a lot of. A lot of these issues come because they're high emotion moments. Right? I just got hired. That's awesome. I just got fired. That's not awesome, or you promised me stock options. Where are they? How come I'm not getting them yet? Those are issues that people run into. And then, like, we've talked about already, running with your business, with your branding, picking your brand up front. If, If I could just say, here's where you should spend a little bit of extra time and money. You should spend a little extra time and money on making sure that your brand path is clear. Right. That you can both protect your brand. You know, work with a smart marketing guy to. To pick the right branding assets, make sure you can protect those, and. And that the flip side of protecting them is making sure that you're not infringing somebody else's assets. So that, to me, is, you know, getting off on the right foot for your business.
- [34:57]
A
Yeah, I mean, what. What are some legal. So I. I 100% agree. I actually brought on a branding guy that helped companies raise money, right? Like, you know, hey, we want to exit. We want to get acquired. Whatever he actually was, was, you know, this, this, this. Like, I. It took a while to process it, but he basically said, if you launch with a certain brand and you hit a peak and. And you maybe identify these key areas, he said, just change the name. He was like, literally change the name and start over. And that was pretty, like, out there as far as what. What it was. But he's like, there's a story behind it there. There's the. The brand behind it, and it might not have the legs, like, and that's what investors look for is can they see that being the Airbnb, like, or whatever. Like, does the story and the name and the brand all. All put around it. And so you almost have to think of the end before the beginning. There's a book that Chris used to make everybody read. I. I still make everybody read. It's called the E. Myth, the entrepreneur myth. And it's basically, I've got it right there, right? Like, take. Take all that. Like, design the company of what it looks like. Take all those hats, and then it might go down to one person or two people or whatever. And then as you hire People have those roles and, and hand those out. So you got to think about the end, at the beginning. I think that that's what you're talking about with the brand protection.
- [36:27]
B
Yeah.
- [36:28]
A
And, yeah. And not starting on something that 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. Right. Like you're, if you're just some little mom and pop, they don't care. But you start to get big, you start to make some waves. You start to take their market share or go into their territory if you're growing. Like, that's where the issues become.
- [36:51]
B
Yeah. You pop up on their radar at that point. Right? You pop up on their radar. And, and then they're like, oh, and even people who, who aren't competitors, they'll see your success and they'll be like, I want some of that. And they'll, they'll find ways to complain or sue you for. You know, we get clients who get sued for ADA violations on their website. We think they're, While ADA is really important, we think these lawsuits for the most part, are just opportunistic predators. Right. They're, they're finding somebody to use as a pawn so they can sue somebody and the attorneys can make a bunch of money, settle quickly.
- [37:25]
A
Listening. ADA is like, you know, American impaired, hearing impaired, and your websites need to be compliant in this area. And there's about 10% of the population that you know that, that this affects and you know, it is a real issue, but, and there is teeth behind it, like you can get sued, but, but I mean, I've only seen some of those cases very licticious, like people going after people or, you know, big companies that, that, that really should be ADA compliant. But I think it does, it, it does impact everybody. But I, I, yeah. So, I mean, there's all these areas, right. Like, you got to figure out that business case. The thing I wanted to say, there's, there's two things that hopefully I remember the other one. But I want to say this now while I remember it. My biggest experience with lawyers, okay, is lawyers will tell you all the things that you can do, but they don't help you shape what you should do and give you advice. Okay. Like, that is my biggest issue with lawyers in general, based on my experience, is like, when I first started working with lawyers, hey, I want to set up this LLC or this or that. Like, you can do everything, whatever you want to do, I'm here to do it. For you, I'm like, I'll do whatever you want. And then they, you know, they're charging you 15 minutes to like, you know, they walk you out in the hallway and you're talking and then they're like, that's on your bill. Like, those are the sort of things that I'm like, okay, this gives me a bad taste in my mouth. Then I found a lawyer. He now retired, but he would give me business advice. He had worked with small businesses, he had worked with startups, and he gave me good advice. And then executing it goes. The only reason you write long contracts, this was his kind of opinion, is so that it's complicated. 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. But you know, I would tell you getting that advice in addition to someone that can actually do it is paramount. And to be able to get some direction, I, I think is, is the biggest value. Can you speak to that of kind of how you feel about that? You know what I'm talking about?
- [39:47]
B
I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I can get and I can give you guys, I can give your audience the, probably the number one tip to, to distinguish between somebody who gives you a bunch of legal information versus the people who give you business advice. And that is there's a huge difference between somebody who's called outside general, outside counsel, right? They've, they work at a law firm and they're their businesses to bill you money. And not that that's bad. They're really good what they do, they're specialists, they're highly trained. But a lot of times people who've never crossed the line and gone and worked in a business, they haven't been what we call in house counsel. They just, they don't operate the same way. And it's kind of like having a baby. Until you've had a baby, you don't know what it's like to have a baby. But once you, once you've had a baby, you're like, oh, I get it now. I know what my friends were talking about. So when you go from law firm attorney to in house attorney out of business, the entire mindset shifts. I could, I could tell you a fun story another time about how I thought I was going to get fired twice and realized I was working the wrong way for 15 years the moment I went in house. Right. It just, your, your, your objectives change. You're not there to bill hours, you're there to solve Problems you're there to, to be a team member and get, get the executive team and the, the right information so that they can make decisions and you can help them, you know, give them guidance. Hey, and that's what, that's one thing that from, you know, when I talk about fractional legal team, I'm drawing on my experience having been general counsel in a technology company that raised millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, and knowing that my clients need, they don't just need a bunch of options, they need, they need judgment. Right? Who wants to go to the doctor and say, well, you might have these 15 different types of cancer? Like that doesn't help us at all. They say, hey, when you go home, you need to do X, Y and Z. Like that's your best chance of getting better from whatever is you have. Do X, Y and Z. Not all doctors do that.
- [41:46]
A
I love that. I think that's a great analogy. So, you know, we're getting close to wrapping up and hopefully the Internet sticks around with us. So thank you everybody for listening, for your patience. I think we've talked about some really interesting stuff. Is there anything else that we missed that you really want to insert? And then also I would like to know in your mind, what is one unknown secret of Internet marketing as it relates to business law, IP branding? Maybe? I, I don't know, but I, I want to just kind of hear from you. What, what, what's like something that's so undervalued that people should really be doing and then how to get in touch with you.
- [42:25]
B
Yeah, I, I think, I think we've talked a lot about the trademark side of things and branding. I would just go early to get some, some direction. You don't have to take action, but get some direction from an attorney early on about your branding. That's the number one advice I have about anything related to marketing for my clients. And if I could add one more thing, I would say, and this is for every business at any stage, think like a second time startup. Right? Think like a founder who's been through it once before. You mentioned early on in the show that a lot of times the difference is that people have a network and that's what a second time founder does. A first time founder, they're full of fire and energy and passion and they just want to move and go, but they don't have 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 make fast big decisions that sometimes just burn out. And so if somebody could go into, you know, whether it's a new business or a new division in your business or a new project, go in and think, what would I do if this was the second time I was doing this? How who would I, who would I want on my team if I had already been down this path? And I think that's, that will make a huge difference and it'll cause people to think just a second more before they make these rash decisions to say, well, you know, I think a smart friend who's been down this path would probably say, let me talk to somebody about that, let me ask somebody who's done that before. Let me find a trusted, whoever it is, whatever type of problem you're dealing with, let me talk to them. And 15 minutes of time doing that can save you. I mean literally in the end, I had a client who launched this ad campaign one time and I saw it on my social media and I immediately got on my email, I'm like, hey guys, you need to pull that down or you're going to get into a multimillion dollar lawsuit. As soon as, as soon as the other people see it that you don't want to see it and they, you know, they just didn't, they hadn't thought through that because it wasn't their issue. But, but, but a quick, you know, in that case I noticed it and instead of them coming to me, but a quick conversation, it's not always this case, but can literally save millions of dollars down the road.
- [44:42]
A
No, I, I, I love that I would just add to that and I don't know, you can tell me if your, your firm specializes in this or not. But what I'm seeing is there, there's really this case of acquisition entrepreneurship that's kind of taking hold right now. And people are buying businesses, okay, that are family businesses or kids are taking over their parents businesses. And I've seen a lot of businesses, I did head hunting for about seven years and so I know how to staff, but I was in a lot of different businesses, really big businesses, all different kind of size businesses. And then on the marketing side, I work with so many different companies and everybody runs their business a little bit differently and we have a lot of long term clients. That's really the goal is to, like you said, is to hire once and then you don't have to think about it again. And the marketing just works. And we have a lot of 12 year clients, 10 year clients, 8 year clients, tons at the 5, 6 year client. Like that's our goal, right? Is to try to do that so we get to know these businesses. And I would just tell you, oh my gosh, some of these businesses are all different cases. And if you're going into a business or you're taking over a business, one person with like whatever experience they have might not be all the experience you need to restructure that business and kind of pull that thing apart. Because a lot of small businesses from what I've seen, operate really uniquely. I'll just say. And, and, and if you are looking to take over a business or you're looking to digitally transform it, take it to the next level, a lot of processes are going to have to change. A lot of things that you do have to change. There's a lot of like legal issues, like if it's, it's a family owned company and there's somebody that's, you know, you know, not engaged in the business or maybe has a drinking issue or a drug issue or you know, or you don't want to be in business with that spouse or you know, if they die. Like there's a lot of things to think about when you're moving into a business and I think that that's where, that's where I see it. It's like you're moving into a business and you're like looking at the P and L and you're figuring out you're untangling everything and you're like, this business has a ton of potential. So it's not just necessarily startup and you're like, I need a team of people that have experience to untangle this, okay. And, and I need a fractional model of like give me, give me the, the really experienced people that have taken a company public, right? I need maybe somebody like that and then, but that person doesn't need to do, you know, the, the, the, the, the HR contracts for the non competes or something like that, right? Like you, you need all these different things at different levels and it would be great to just have a source and let them find the right team for you based upon that experience and bring that to you without you having to do it. Like I used to do it kind of on the recruiting side. We'd like staff a team or we'd staff individuals and you would build it. But it, but it's much better to have a person that knows what they're doing doing all that for you. It just saves you so much time. Like that's, that's like the, you know, you're paying the cost here, but you're saving so much time. So the value is going to be astronomical. I don't know that that's really personally. You didn't ask me to say that. That's just what I see in this business, whether it's legal or accounting or marketing or whatever it is. Right? Yeah, it's super helpful to have it.
- [48:19]
B
You've got my engineer brain working. I'm thinking systems all over the place and everything's interconnected and you need these different pieces. You know, the example I like to use is you don't hire your plumber to install your flooring. Right. They are their expert. You also don't hire your plumber to be your general contractor, but you pay somebody who's maybe not a specialist in anything, but they're a specialist and being a generalist to help you manage all the specialists. And it's no different with your business. Whether you're talking legal or you're talking some other marketing or some other aspect, you need different, different levels of expertise, different types of expertise to all work together in the system for sure.
- [48:55]
A
Love that. Jeff is so glad to have you on. We worked through the challenges. Hopefully everybody enjoyed this if you did. Please, Jeff, how do they get in contact you if they like what you had to say?
- [49:10]
B
Oh, yeah, thanks, Matt. It's been a great, great pleasure being on the show. To get in contact with me is easy. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active. Look for me, you'll see my face and you'll see something about building fractional legal teams. Pretty simple. You can also a lot of potential clients will jump on our website and they'll, they'll be able to schedule a free strategy call with us. We do a 30 minute kind of introductory strategy call. We'll talk about your business, talk about the chaos that you're creating, the messes you've made and if there's a way to clean them up. So I always enjoy it like you talking with all those businesses.
- [49:39]
A
And Jeff, what's the domain of that website?
- [49:41]
B
It's intellectual strategies.com all right.
- [49:44]
A
Intellectual strategies.com and also just for anybody listening, I know a lot of you are, Jeff's name is spelled J E F F and holloman H O L1L man M A N. So just you can, you can look for them there. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked any of this, please share it with somebody you think they'd get some value. We really appreciate all the support. And until the next time, if you want to grow your business with the largest, powerful, most awesome tool on the Internet that we've ever had in my lifetime, the Internet, reach out to EWR Digital for more revenue in your business. Check out matthewbertrom.com for our coaching program. Really excited about one of the case studies that we're going to be building out there. We're going to help somebody take a small business to a large business, a scalable lead generating business. So I built a lot of lead gen sites for a lot of different areas and really a lot of these Web 2.0s. If you're in legal, right, like just a lawyers.com, best lawyers like all those kind of sites, all they're doing is doing SEO and paid ads. Like they're doing everything that you can do and then they resell it to you and multiple people. So they resell those leads but they're competing with you and they're going after the big broad terms. But there's really specific instances that are long tail key phrases that, that you can really compete with. And I encourage people to build their own land, right? Build their own land, build their own brand and grow the business that way. And thank you all until the next time. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for.