In this protective episode, Jeff Holman, Founder and CEO of Intellectual Strategies, shares fractional legal strategies for business protection. If you struggle with legal blindsides or IP risks as a startup, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why early legal audits prevent costly disputes in stage 2

- How fractional teams deliver expert advice without overhead

- What IP roadmap aligns with your growth goals

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Jeff Holman, founder of Intellectual Strategies, is changing the way startups and scaling businesses access legal support. As the creator of the first Fractional Legal Team at Intellectual Strategies, he’s made it possible for companies to tap into expert legal advice at key points in their growth—without needing a full-time, in-house team. This innovative approach means businesses get exactly the help they need, when they need it, and without the hefty overhead. His Fractional Legal Team model is revolutionizing how companies access the legal support they need, empowering them to focus on their core business. At the same time, he handles the complexities in the background.

Want to learn more about Jeff Holman's work at Intellectual Strategies? Check out his website at https://www.intellectualstategies.com/ to sign up for a free 30-minute consultation and learn more about how you can benefit from a fractional legal team.

Mentioned in this episode:

Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today

If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the start, scale and succeed podcast. It's the only podcast

that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as

a founder, and I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and I've seen

this happen all the time. There's founders who've

successfully built a thriving organization. They're leading

their team, they're setting big goals, they're taking ground.

Maybe they're even writing magazine articles about you,

we'll see. But then suddenly, like, out of nowhere, they're

blindsided by a legal issue they never saw coming. And in my own

experience and what I've walked others through the in their

coaching relationship, I have seen nothing take the wind out

of your sails faster. It just like, like, literally sucks the

blood from your head and it just like, all the all the things,

all the things, I'm feeling it already, I gotta stop all right,

but the question is, like, what do you do about that? Can you

avoid all of it? When do you avoid all of it? And what you'll

realize is, hey, we've been spending a lot of time growing

the business, but we've not spent a lot of time protecting

it, and now it's not like those early days when you had nothing

to lose. We actually have something to lose, and we need

to learn how to protect it. And so here to help us do exactly

that is the one and only Jeff Holman, who is founder of

intellectual strategies and is changing the way that startups

and scaling businesses access legal support, as the creator of

the first fractional league legal team at intellectual

strategies, he's made it possible for companies to tap

into expert legal advice at key points in their growth without

needing a full time in house team. This innovative approach

means businesses get exactly the help that they need when they

need it, and without all the hefty overhead. His fractional

legal team model is revolutionizing how companies

access the legal support they need, empowering them to focus

on their core business at the same time, he handles the

complexities in the background. Well, Jeff, welcome to the show.

Excited to have you here. You know, we've kind of opened up

with this, but like it just feels like nothing can stop the

train, and right at the moment that it does, all of a sudden, a

wheel falls off. Why does this happen? And what do we need to

do to think differently about it as founders?

Yeah, no, Scott, thank you for having me. It's a

pleasure to be here. You're speaking my language. Scaling

companies is awesome, and it's chaotic and it's fun and it's

full of surprises. Sometimes the bad surprises, like you talked

about, there's really two reasons why, why legal issues

pop up into the business and deflate the leadership a lot of

times. The first ones may be more obvious, and that is,

people let these things fester. They know they should have done

something before, and they didn't do it, and it sits in the

background, and all of a sudden you start to see success, and

one of your former employees, or an employee who's on the edge,

comes and says, Hey, where are my stock stock options? You

promised me stock options? Well, you knew you hadn't done it.

It'd been sitting in the background. You were going to

get to it, and it just didn't happen. So one, you let things

kind of slide, because you're in growth mode, or you're in, you

know, just startup mode generally, and those things pop

back up later. The other is kind of interesting phenomena that

we've seen, and that is when, when you start to see success,

people out in the world start to see that you're seeing success,

and when people out in the world start to see that you're seeing

success, sometimes they want a piece of your success. And so we

see a lot of people who get hit early on, after they've, you

know, they've hit their stride, and then they start, you know,

they start to say, hey, let's, like, get out there more broadly

in the world. Let's expand our market share, whatever. And they

get hit with some of these kind of, what I would call nasty

lawsuits, these nuisance, nasty people, other attorneys, who

come out and they say, Hey, I've got somebody who's going to sue

you for ADA compliance issues with your website, or I'm got

somebody who's going to sue you for, you know, whatever your

business is, they're going to find some regulatory issues,

federal or state, and they're going to say, You owe me some

money for that. They want 10 or 15 or $25,000 from you and and

you know that may or may not be, you know, gut wrenching for some

businesses, but it's like, what? Why does this happen? You know,

and it's, it's probably too, too naive to say that it's just part

of the business. But it really does come. You know, success

brings some of these challenges with them.

I think one of the things that makes it so hard

is you sometimes, like, the dollar number can be like, game

ending, like, that does happen. I don't want to downplay that.

But even if it doesn't, like, even if it's 10 grand and like,

that's a rounding error in your strategic planning process, if

that, there's something about the principle of it that just

goes to the heart of a founder and so here's where I want to go

first, actually, is like, how do you deal with that? How do you

deal with the emotion of, hey, this just hit, and I, if I let

it, it's going to take all of my thought process. It's going to

take all of my time. But is it worth it? How do you help folks?

Through those that that first early window?

Well, you're absolutely right, because it

does. We see we see really busy, really successful people who get

totally sidetracked on this. They're like, Hey, I read

through this, and I was reading through this, and I did some

research, and I came back, I think this is what we should do.

And I'm like, that's totally fine. Let me tell you, we've

seen this before. We've handled it before it's going to probably

work out this way. There might be a little bit of posturing

back and forth. So a lot of is really just working with people

who've been there and done that, right? Yeah, and having see it's

just like a coach. It's like coaches seen either themselves

or working with lots of people they've seen behind lots of

different curtains. And so you you can help people who haven't

seen around those same curtains know what to expect when, when

we pull the curtains back, it's going to be okay and and there

is a, there is a playbook for this. The other side is

following their own playbook. It's similar to what we've seen.

So it's really just knowing that, knowing that there's some

confidence in going down that road, and that it probably most

of these things are manageable. They're, you know, not fun, and

you don't want to pay any money if you don't have to. But

they're, but they're financially feasible to tackle and overcome.

And there's, there's a lot more to your business to be focused

on than some of these hiccups,

Right, And that brings us to a lot of the

work that you guys do there is Ritzheimer mentally to save

folks from that time. There's so much. It's not just the emotion

of it, but it's the time of it that it can get sucked into the

endless Googling and now the endless chat, GPT ing. So the

problem with that, though, is getting the when in because

there's kind of two equal but opposite extremes. You could

bring a bunch of people in too early, pay a ton of money and

not really ever amount to anything. Your business doesn't

grow, and there's nothing to protect. Be in the extreme. Or

the other extreme is we wait until you know, not. We've not,

we've been sued or had the the notice, but like, we've tried to

fight it nine different ways, and it's like on its very last

breath, and then we bring somebody else in. There's these

two kind of wide extremes. Somewhere in the middle is the

Ritzheimer and the right way to bring in someone to help you

out. What is that? Right time and right way?

There's 2.1 it's not the it's not the last one

that you described. It's not after the fact, after

everything, everyone's entrenched. The issues become

bigger than it needs to be. That's that's not the one. The

two points are this one, get somebody in early to roadmap.

You know, it's just like, it does not cost a lot, whether, if

it's 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, $5,000 like, get somebody to

roadmap, what you're working on in your business for the next 18

months, and say, Where are my legal issues going to come up?

What are the critical things? Right? There's because you

mentioned risk. Like, it doesn't always have to be like

significant consequences to the risk, and it doesn't always have

to be a high likelihood that risk is going to happen, but

some combination of, will it happen and how hefty will those

consequences be? You've got to kind of balance those out. So if

you roadmap, like, there, there are, you know, just like you do

stages in the business, there are definite points of, you

know, like a business objectives, people working

towards movement, actions that the teams are going to take,

that you can say, well, you're likely in the next 18 months to

have these five items come up. That's big things you would

imagine, fundraising, hiring people, firing people, bringing

on a new strategic partner, you know, new suppliers, launching

new products. You know, reworking your brand, like those

are, those are major mile points that are likely to have some

legal impact to them. So road mapping those out in the first

instance will give you, I think, a lot of clarity and hopefully,

a lot of comfort in knowing that you have at least a heads up as

to what's coming down the road. Then when things do pop up, you

know, getting somebody involved early again, even if it's just a

quick phone call to say, hey, we had this happen. Should I be

worried is this? Is this likely to blow up? What, you know, what

should I be thinking about? You don't necessarily need memos

and, you know, filings and everything for every little

issue that comes up, but a quick phone call, five minutes, 15

minutes, an hour, depending on the issue, can really save you.

And that's, I'll admit, that's where the legal profession has

really failed its clients. To a large extent, we have created

some of the biggest obstacles, either financially or

psychologically, even to say, hey, if you've got an issue,

call me. I want to be accessible for you. And instead, people are

like, I don't know he's going to bill me 15 minutes for a phone

call. And I like, we've made it so people don't want to call us

to get our advice. And that's absolutely the opposite of what

it should be.

Yeah, I want to drill a little further on

that, because it can feel, especially with the way that a

lot of founders are wired, that you're kind of damned if you do,

damned if you don't. Right. Sometimes you're like, Hey, can

you look at this contract for me? And it's like, you know, as

soon as you send it, they're going to write it back with

like, 100 things wrong. And. Somehow, like, it's worse than

never having children or something. There's this kind of

like, it feels like an overreaction to a lot of

founders who just like, how hard can it be? Like, let's move on

past it. So I'm gonna use a different group that we have a

similar problem with as founders, and that is, never ask

a development team, can we do this? Okay? Right? Because the

answer is always yes. It's the real question is, how much is it

going to cost to do this? Yes? So is, what is the parallel of

that in the attorney world? How can we get founders and

attorneys communicating more effectively?

That's, that's the key, right there. I think you

know every founder that you got your sales guy or your technical

guy, right in a lot of businesses. And then the other

people that they bring on really readily and easily is some

finance guy. They like, hey, we raise money. Hey, we need to do

our bookkeeping, we need to pay our taxes. And they bring a

finance guy on. I think founders need to start thinking of legal

at least like finance, like it's just a function that you bring

on because they because not only is it a service, but if you've

got the right attorney, you know, just like your CFO is

doing financial projections and helping you anticipate where

some of those cash flow issues might be, your legal guy should

be doing the same thing. It should be, Hey, you guys are, as

I said, road mapping, and you should be anticipating when

those things are coming up, not just reacting to them. You know,

the key is, how do you get to that point with your legal guy

when you're used to knowing that, you know you don't want to

talk to legal let alone talk to multiple legal people, if you

have multiple issues going on at once?

Yeah, there's this. There's a thing that

happens at this stage for founders, when they're kind of

building out their leadership team. They're looking at who

they're gonna allow to advise them on their decision making.

And there's kind of the obvious sales and the obvious

operations, and then there's just, like this junk drawer of

everything else, right? Like, we think of administration as

legal, HR, technology, financial, like, all of it kind

of gets GNA, yeah, sgna, all of it, and and so the question is

like, well, who in the world can can answer all of these things?

Because if you get someone who's very technically sound, they

don't know anything about the legal aspect of it, and vice

versa. And so what I really like about the way that that the

industry is developing, especially fractional, is that

you can, you can kind of address the junk drawer approach with an

equally kind of dispersed set of help. And so here's, here's

because there's the I've seen folks who've come through have

been fractional legal, you know, fill in the blank. What I

haven't seen is a fractional legal team, and you've really

stressed that in a lot of your website and the work that you

do. So tell us a little bit like, this isn't a fractional

attorney. This is a fractional legal team. What's the

difference?

Yeah, I mean, that is the difference. It's a team

approach. The reason it's a team approach several things. First

of all, you don't have one legal issue in your business. You have

multiple across sales and employees and investors and your

corporate entity, and you name it. Legal is there. It may not

be an active issue, but there's a potential for it to become

active, and not one attorney should be handling all of that.

For you, my background is patents. I'm excellent at

patents. I'm really good with trademarks, and I've become very

proficient as a general counsel, helping to guide small

businesses in all their illegal issues. But I'm not the guy

who's going to do your employment stuff, you know? I'm

not the guy who's going to do some of your really hyper

technical privacy things. And I realized that early on, right?

So I'm like, Hey, why am I trying to do and manage all

these things. When any real company, when you get to the

right stage, you're going to have a small team of attorneys

with the experts that you need in different places. So that's

one. The other is a lot of fractional people. They're

passing through. And I don't, you know, I don't say that to

say that's wrong, but they're often in between jobs, and

they're like, hey, I'll pick up a few clients. You know, we've

picked up several clients from people who were passing through

momentarily and six months later, after they'd, you know,

really been onboarded into a company. They're like, Oh, I

found a full time job. I'm going to go work there. And that

company is then left, you know, saying, Well, okay, I guess

we'll restart hiring process, you know. So there's no

longevity with single fractional people is harder. Burnout is

higher. And so that's another issue that we try to tackle. And

then the last one, really, is gatekeeping. You know, when you

go to, and this is more related to, you know, a law firm, law

firms, people are like, Hey, Jeff, how come? How come all

these law firms, with all these, you know, hundreds of attorneys,

don't just do this and and wipe you out of business. I'm like,

they should. Like, they literally should. They're not

built for it. Their business model is different. Is different

and doesn't really support the way to do it. But the other

really big thing, and it's tied to their business model, is

they're mostly really siloed, gatekeepers in the business,

right? The rainmakers in those businesses, they they're super

protective of their clients. They don't want. Their

associates talking to the to the to the clients. And so I'm like,

Hey, listen, there's nothing more. Again. I don't want to

block communications between the client and the legal team.

That's counterproductive. I want, I want our clients to feel

like they can go talk to me. They can talk to anybody on the

team, as if we're just down the hall from them. Poke your head

in the door for the Ritzheimer or if you don't know who it is,

any person ask them, you know your question, and let's deal

with it as a team. We'll get the right resources to the right

place at the right time. So it's just, I don't know. As I was

doing this, I kind of fell into that fractional General Counsel

solo role, and it didn't take me too long to realize there's a

better way to do this. And so I started building it into the

team approach, and it's been fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. I love that. I really do. There's

this idea, especially from folks who've not had legal issues in

the past, that kind of attorneys are attorneys. It's kind of like

doctors or doctors, you know, it's like, to some extent, they

all have some basic training, but like, if you broke your

foot, you wouldn't go to a heart doctor. It doesn't really work

that way. And so I love this idea of being able to provide

that kind of combination of care all under one umbrella that is

fantastic and highly needed for most founders at this stage.

Can I build on that just because I've talked to

people? You know, you get it. You get somebody who's like a

real sophisticated patient, right? Or has a lot of, a lot of

needs, you know, cancer patients, and they've got all

these issues you don't have, like you'd mentioned, you don't

have one doctor just treating them, right? They will

conference with each other. They'll get into a room and

they'll say, Okay, what's the issue going on? And what do you

think? And what do you think? What do you think? And they all

have their specialties. I mean, that's, I've used that analogy

before, and that's, that's a great analogy to say, This is

what a team should look like, you know, working for the

client, as opposed to, you know, I, I just canceled my

appointment this morning for tomorrow. I got a cortisone shot

last week because I'm getting older, I guess, blew out a disc,

and it's caused some nerve issues for me. I'm, I'm sure

some of your listeners can relate. And, you know,

everything's good, but, but my they're like, Hey, we got you

scheduled for a follow up. And I'm like, Yeah, that's fine.

Cortisone shot in my back is not what I need, right? I've got a

different issue. Cancel that. I'm going to go schedule with

somebody else who who can tell me about the nerve issue, not

about the disc issue. So, right? You know, just got to move to

the right, move to the right person for the right issue.

Right, and being able to get that through

the expertise of another is extremely helpful, especially

when they have your best interests in mind. So Jeff,

there's this question I ask all my guests, and I'm gonna ask it

of you here as well. I'm interested to see what you have

to say. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish

wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing that you wish

every founder watching or listening today knew?

Can I share two? Yeah, I've got two, because so

the first one might be obvious from my website. If you go to my

website, if you ever get an email from me, it says, innovate

with confidence. I think that helping people to overcome the

fears involved with doing something new, and that's what a

lot of our clients are doing. They're they're disrupting

because they're doing something nothing. They're doing something

nobody has done before. And so doing that new stuff is there's

a lot of fear involved. And I run into a lot of inventors,

specifically, who who are fearful, and you see this great

invention, and then they just, they just freeze up. So the one

thing that I would say to a lot of those people, to summarize a

lot of other things I've said, is, you know, action dispels

fear, right? So you've got to take action to get over the

fear. If any of your if any of your people, are at a stage

where they're saying, I don't know, I just, I just can't do

this, like, think it through, make up an action plan and take

the action that'll dispel the fear, because fear is just fear

of what's going to happen the future. And once you've taken

the action, there's no more future to be afraid of. Yep, the

other thing that I think is really it's something that a lot

of people should be doing more of, and that is strategy. This

whole discussion of strategy, I was kind of a big issue for me.

I got into it thinking about IP strategy in the beginning, and

how that fits into business strategy and all this stuff

going through my MBA program, like a whole journey I've been

on for 10 years. The thing that I think, I wish a lot of

founders knew was that this concept of strategy, strategy is

actually something you can achieve, right? There's, there's

like, really complex, disjointed teachings out there about

strategy, but there are some approaches where you can, you

can really articulate your strategy in a way that's super

helpful. And you know, we don't have time to go into that today.

I've got a thing I call the five factors of business strategy

that I came up with because it didn't exist out there, similar

to the fracture legal teams, I came up with it because it

didn't exist, and I talked to a lot of my clients about it,

because about it, because it makes strategy, you know,

reachable. It makes it something that you can actually talk about

for your business and implement. And so I guess those are the

types of things that I would leave, you know, take action to

dispel fear and really think about how to be strategic in

your business. And. And realize that it's something you can do

if you have the right framework.

Yeah, yeah, Jeff, there's some folks

listening, and it's, you know, it's, it's time. They could use

the help. And they love the idea of a fractional team, but they

don't exactly know what that means just yet, and they'd like

to know more about it. Where can they connect with you? Where can

they find more out about the work that you and your team do.

Yeah, best place is to reach out to me on my

website, intellectualstrategies.com I do

a free 30 minute kickoff call, strategy call with people. We'll

start to talk about your roadmap. We'll figure out, you

know, what are the messes that you've got hiding, maybe under

the bed that you've been putting off starting to lose sleep over

some of the things coming up, and we'll just walk through that

in 30 minutes. Have a call and see if it's a right fit, if it's

the right time for for them to bring somebody on board in some

capacity. So that's a free strategy call at

intellectualstrategies.com.

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Jeff, thanks

for being on the show. Really a privilege and honor. Having you

here with us today. Love the work that you do, and couldn't

encourage folks more to check it out, get some help, and Jeff's a

great place to start. And for those of you watching and

listening, you know that your time and attention mean the

world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as

I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.