Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:00
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:03
to the start, scale and succeed podcast. It's the only podcast
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:06
that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:09
a founder, and I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and I've seen
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:12
this happen all the time. There's founders who've
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:14
successfully built a thriving organization. They're leading
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:18
their team, they're setting big goals, they're taking ground.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:21
Maybe they're even writing magazine articles about you,
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:00:23
we'll see. But then suddenly, like, out of nowhere, they're
Scott Ritzheimer:
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blindsided by a legal issue they never saw coming. And in my own
Scott Ritzheimer:
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experience and what I've walked others through the in their
Scott Ritzheimer:
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coaching relationship, I have seen nothing take the wind out
Scott Ritzheimer:
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of your sails faster. It just like, like, literally sucks the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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blood from your head and it just like, all the all the things,
Scott Ritzheimer:
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all the things, I'm feeling it already, I gotta stop all right,
Scott Ritzheimer:
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but the question is, like, what do you do about that? Can you
Scott Ritzheimer:
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avoid all of it? When do you avoid all of it? And what you'll
Scott Ritzheimer:
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realize is, hey, we've been spending a lot of time growing
Scott Ritzheimer:
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the business, but we've not spent a lot of time protecting
Scott Ritzheimer:
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it, and now it's not like those early days when you had nothing
Scott Ritzheimer:
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to lose. We actually have something to lose, and we need
Scott Ritzheimer:
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to learn how to protect it. And so here to help us do exactly
Scott Ritzheimer:
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that is the one and only Jeff Holman, who is founder of
Scott Ritzheimer:
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intellectual strategies and is changing the way that startups
Scott Ritzheimer:
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and scaling businesses access legal support, as the creator of
Scott Ritzheimer:
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the first fractional league legal team at intellectual
Scott Ritzheimer:
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strategies, he's made it possible for companies to tap
Scott Ritzheimer:
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into expert legal advice at key points in their growth without
Scott Ritzheimer:
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needing a full time in house team. This innovative approach
Scott Ritzheimer:
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means businesses get exactly the help that they need when they
Scott Ritzheimer:
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need it, and without all the hefty overhead. His fractional
Scott Ritzheimer:
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legal team model is revolutionizing how companies
Scott Ritzheimer:
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access the legal support they need, empowering them to focus
Scott Ritzheimer:
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on their core business at the same time, he handles the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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complexities in the background. Well, Jeff, welcome to the show.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:01:52
Excited to have you here. You know, we've kind of opened up
Scott Ritzheimer:
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with this, but like it just feels like nothing can stop the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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train, and right at the moment that it does, all of a sudden, a
Scott Ritzheimer:
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wheel falls off. Why does this happen? And what do we need to
Scott Ritzheimer:
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do to think differently about it as founders?
Jeff Holman:
00:01:54
Yeah, no, Scott, thank you for having me. It's a
Jeff Holman:
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pleasure to be here. You're speaking my language. Scaling
Jeff Holman:
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companies is awesome, and it's chaotic and it's fun and it's
Jeff Holman:
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full of surprises. Sometimes the bad surprises, like you talked
Jeff Holman:
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about, there's really two reasons why, why legal issues
Jeff Holman:
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pop up into the business and deflate the leadership a lot of
Jeff Holman:
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times. The first ones may be more obvious, and that is,
Jeff Holman:
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people let these things fester. They know they should have done
Jeff Holman:
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something before, and they didn't do it, and it sits in the
Jeff Holman:
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background, and all of a sudden you start to see success, and
Jeff Holman:
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one of your former employees, or an employee who's on the edge,
Jeff Holman:
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comes and says, Hey, where are my stock stock options? You
Jeff Holman:
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promised me stock options? Well, you knew you hadn't done it.
Jeff Holman:
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It'd been sitting in the background. You were going to
Jeff Holman:
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get to it, and it just didn't happen. So one, you let things
Jeff Holman:
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kind of slide, because you're in growth mode, or you're in, you
Jeff Holman:
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know, just startup mode generally, and those things pop
Jeff Holman:
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back up later. The other is kind of interesting phenomena that
Jeff Holman:
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we've seen, and that is when, when you start to see success,
Jeff Holman:
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people out in the world start to see that you're seeing success,
Jeff Holman:
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and when people out in the world start to see that you're seeing
Jeff Holman:
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success, sometimes they want a piece of your success. And so we
Jeff Holman:
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see a lot of people who get hit early on, after they've, you
Jeff Holman:
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know, they've hit their stride, and then they start, you know,
Jeff Holman:
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they start to say, hey, let's, like, get out there more broadly
Jeff Holman:
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in the world. Let's expand our market share, whatever. And they
Jeff Holman:
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get hit with some of these kind of, what I would call nasty
Jeff Holman:
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lawsuits, these nuisance, nasty people, other attorneys, who
Jeff Holman:
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come out and they say, Hey, I've got somebody who's going to sue
Jeff Holman:
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you for ADA compliance issues with your website, or I'm got
Jeff Holman:
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somebody who's going to sue you for, you know, whatever your
Jeff Holman:
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business is, they're going to find some regulatory issues,
Jeff Holman:
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federal or state, and they're going to say, You owe me some
Jeff Holman:
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money for that. They want 10 or 15 or $25,000 from you and and
Jeff Holman:
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you know that may or may not be, you know, gut wrenching for some
Jeff Holman:
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businesses, but it's like, what? Why does this happen? You know,
Jeff Holman:
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and it's, it's probably too, too naive to say that it's just part
Jeff Holman:
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of the business. But it really does come. You know, success
Jeff Holman:
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brings some of these challenges with them.
Scott Ritzheimer:
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I think one of the things that makes it so hard
Scott Ritzheimer:
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is you sometimes, like, the dollar number can be like, game
Scott Ritzheimer:
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ending, like, that does happen. I don't want to downplay that.
Scott Ritzheimer:
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But even if it doesn't, like, even if it's 10 grand and like,
Scott Ritzheimer:
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that's a rounding error in your strategic planning process, if
Scott Ritzheimer:
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that, there's something about the principle of it that just
Scott Ritzheimer:
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goes to the heart of a founder and so here's where I want to go
Scott Ritzheimer:
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first, actually, is like, how do you deal with that? How do you
Scott Ritzheimer:
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deal with the emotion of, hey, this just hit, and I, if I let
Scott Ritzheimer:
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it, it's going to take all of my thought process. It's going to
Scott Ritzheimer:
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take all of my time. But is it worth it? How do you help folks?
Scott Ritzheimer:
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Through those that that first early window?
Jeff Holman:
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Well, you're absolutely right, because it
Jeff Holman:
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does. We see we see really busy, really successful people who get
Jeff Holman:
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totally sidetracked on this. They're like, Hey, I read
Jeff Holman:
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through this, and I was reading through this, and I did some
Jeff Holman:
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research, and I came back, I think this is what we should do.
Jeff Holman:
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And I'm like, that's totally fine. Let me tell you, we've
Jeff Holman:
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seen this before. We've handled it before it's going to probably
Jeff Holman:
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work out this way. There might be a little bit of posturing
Jeff Holman:
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back and forth. So a lot of is really just working with people
Jeff Holman:
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who've been there and done that, right? Yeah, and having see it's
Jeff Holman:
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just like a coach. It's like coaches seen either themselves
Jeff Holman:
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or working with lots of people they've seen behind lots of
Jeff Holman:
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different curtains. And so you you can help people who haven't
Jeff Holman:
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seen around those same curtains know what to expect when, when
Jeff Holman:
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we pull the curtains back, it's going to be okay and and there
Jeff Holman:
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is a, there is a playbook for this. The other side is
Jeff Holman:
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following their own playbook. It's similar to what we've seen.
Jeff Holman:
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So it's really just knowing that, knowing that there's some
Jeff Holman:
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confidence in going down that road, and that it probably most
Jeff Holman:
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of these things are manageable. They're, you know, not fun, and
Jeff Holman:
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you don't want to pay any money if you don't have to. But
Jeff Holman:
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they're, but they're financially feasible to tackle and overcome.
Jeff Holman:
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And there's, there's a lot more to your business to be focused
Jeff Holman:
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on than some of these hiccups,
Scott Ritzheimer:
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Right, And that brings us to a lot of the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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work that you guys do there is Ritzheimer mentally to save
Scott Ritzheimer:
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folks from that time. There's so much. It's not just the emotion
Scott Ritzheimer:
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of it, but it's the time of it that it can get sucked into the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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endless Googling and now the endless chat, GPT ing. So the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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problem with that, though, is getting the when in because
Scott Ritzheimer:
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there's kind of two equal but opposite extremes. You could
Scott Ritzheimer:
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bring a bunch of people in too early, pay a ton of money and
Scott Ritzheimer:
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not really ever amount to anything. Your business doesn't
Scott Ritzheimer:
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grow, and there's nothing to protect. Be in the extreme. Or
Scott Ritzheimer:
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the other extreme is we wait until you know, not. We've not,
Scott Ritzheimer:
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we've been sued or had the the notice, but like, we've tried to
Scott Ritzheimer:
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fight it nine different ways, and it's like on its very last
Scott Ritzheimer:
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breath, and then we bring somebody else in. There's these
Scott Ritzheimer:
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two kind of wide extremes. Somewhere in the middle is the
Scott Ritzheimer:
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Ritzheimer and the right way to bring in someone to help you
Scott Ritzheimer:
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out. What is that? Right time and right way?
Jeff Holman:
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There's 2.1 it's not the it's not the last one
Jeff Holman:
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that you described. It's not after the fact, after
Jeff Holman:
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everything, everyone's entrenched. The issues become
Jeff Holman:
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bigger than it needs to be. That's that's not the one. The
Jeff Holman:
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two points are this one, get somebody in early to roadmap.
Jeff Holman:
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You know, it's just like, it does not cost a lot, whether, if
Jeff Holman:
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it's 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, $5,000 like, get somebody to
Jeff Holman:
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roadmap, what you're working on in your business for the next 18
Jeff Holman:
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months, and say, Where are my legal issues going to come up?
Jeff Holman:
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What are the critical things? Right? There's because you
Jeff Holman:
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mentioned risk. Like, it doesn't always have to be like
Jeff Holman:
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significant consequences to the risk, and it doesn't always have
Jeff Holman:
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to be a high likelihood that risk is going to happen, but
Jeff Holman:
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some combination of, will it happen and how hefty will those
Jeff Holman:
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consequences be? You've got to kind of balance those out. So if
Jeff Holman:
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you roadmap, like, there, there are, you know, just like you do
Jeff Holman:
00:08:01
stages in the business, there are definite points of, you
Jeff Holman:
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know, like a business objectives, people working
Jeff Holman:
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towards movement, actions that the teams are going to take,
Jeff Holman:
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that you can say, well, you're likely in the next 18 months to
Jeff Holman:
00:08:15
have these five items come up. That's big things you would
Jeff Holman:
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imagine, fundraising, hiring people, firing people, bringing
Jeff Holman:
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on a new strategic partner, you know, new suppliers, launching
Jeff Holman:
00:08:26
new products. You know, reworking your brand, like those
Jeff Holman:
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are, those are major mile points that are likely to have some
Jeff Holman:
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legal impact to them. So road mapping those out in the first
Jeff Holman:
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instance will give you, I think, a lot of clarity and hopefully,
Jeff Holman:
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a lot of comfort in knowing that you have at least a heads up as
Jeff Holman:
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to what's coming down the road. Then when things do pop up, you
Jeff Holman:
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know, getting somebody involved early again, even if it's just a
Jeff Holman:
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quick phone call to say, hey, we had this happen. Should I be
Jeff Holman:
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worried is this? Is this likely to blow up? What, you know, what
Jeff Holman:
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should I be thinking about? You don't necessarily need memos
Jeff Holman:
00:09:01
and, you know, filings and everything for every little
Jeff Holman:
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issue that comes up, but a quick phone call, five minutes, 15
Jeff Holman:
00:09:07
minutes, an hour, depending on the issue, can really save you.
Jeff Holman:
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And that's, I'll admit, that's where the legal profession has
Jeff Holman:
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really failed its clients. To a large extent, we have created
Jeff Holman:
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some of the biggest obstacles, either financially or
Jeff Holman:
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psychologically, even to say, hey, if you've got an issue,
Jeff Holman:
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call me. I want to be accessible for you. And instead, people are
Jeff Holman:
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like, I don't know he's going to bill me 15 minutes for a phone
Jeff Holman:
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call. And I like, we've made it so people don't want to call us
Jeff Holman:
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to get our advice. And that's absolutely the opposite of what
Jeff Holman:
00:09:39
it should be.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:39
Yeah, I want to drill a little further on
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:42
that, because it can feel, especially with the way that a
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:46
lot of founders are wired, that you're kind of damned if you do,
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:48
damned if you don't. Right. Sometimes you're like, Hey, can
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:52
you look at this contract for me? And it's like, you know, as
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:09:56
soon as you send it, they're going to write it back with
Scott Ritzheimer:
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like, 100 things wrong. And. Somehow, like, it's worse than
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:01
never having children or something. There's this kind of
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:04
like, it feels like an overreaction to a lot of
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:06
founders who just like, how hard can it be? Like, let's move on
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:09
past it. So I'm gonna use a different group that we have a
Scott Ritzheimer:
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similar problem with as founders, and that is, never ask
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:16
a development team, can we do this? Okay? Right? Because the
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:21
answer is always yes. It's the real question is, how much is it
Scott Ritzheimer:
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going to cost to do this? Yes? So is, what is the parallel of
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:28
that in the attorney world? How can we get founders and
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:10:31
attorneys communicating more effectively?
Jeff Holman:
00:10:34
That's, that's the key, right there. I think you
Jeff Holman:
00:10:38
know every founder that you got your sales guy or your technical
Jeff Holman:
00:10:41
guy, right in a lot of businesses. And then the other
Jeff Holman:
00:10:43
people that they bring on really readily and easily is some
Jeff Holman:
00:10:46
finance guy. They like, hey, we raise money. Hey, we need to do
Jeff Holman:
00:10:49
our bookkeeping, we need to pay our taxes. And they bring a
Jeff Holman:
00:10:51
finance guy on. I think founders need to start thinking of legal
Jeff Holman:
00:10:56
at least like finance, like it's just a function that you bring
Jeff Holman:
00:10:59
on because they because not only is it a service, but if you've
Jeff Holman:
00:11:03
got the right attorney, you know, just like your CFO is
Jeff Holman:
00:11:06
doing financial projections and helping you anticipate where
Jeff Holman:
00:11:09
some of those cash flow issues might be, your legal guy should
Jeff Holman:
00:11:12
be doing the same thing. It should be, Hey, you guys are, as
Jeff Holman:
00:11:16
I said, road mapping, and you should be anticipating when
Jeff Holman:
00:11:19
those things are coming up, not just reacting to them. You know,
Jeff Holman:
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the key is, how do you get to that point with your legal guy
Jeff Holman:
00:11:25
when you're used to knowing that, you know you don't want to
Jeff Holman:
00:11:29
talk to legal let alone talk to multiple legal people, if you
Jeff Holman:
00:11:32
have multiple issues going on at once?
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:34
Yeah, there's this. There's a thing that
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:37
happens at this stage for founders, when they're kind of
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:39
building out their leadership team. They're looking at who
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:42
they're gonna allow to advise them on their decision making.
Scott Ritzheimer:
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And there's kind of the obvious sales and the obvious
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:48
operations, and then there's just, like this junk drawer of
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:51
everything else, right? Like, we think of administration as
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:11:55
legal, HR, technology, financial, like, all of it kind
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:00
of gets GNA, yeah, sgna, all of it, and and so the question is
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:08
like, well, who in the world can can answer all of these things?
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:11
Because if you get someone who's very technically sound, they
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:13
don't know anything about the legal aspect of it, and vice
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:16
versa. And so what I really like about the way that that the
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:22
industry is developing, especially fractional, is that
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:25
you can, you can kind of address the junk drawer approach with an
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:30
equally kind of dispersed set of help. And so here's, here's
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:36
because there's the I've seen folks who've come through have
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:38
been fractional legal, you know, fill in the blank. What I
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:40
haven't seen is a fractional legal team, and you've really
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:45
stressed that in a lot of your website and the work that you
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:48
do. So tell us a little bit like, this isn't a fractional
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:51
attorney. This is a fractional legal team. What's the
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:12:53
difference?
Jeff Holman:
00:12:54
Yeah, I mean, that is the difference. It's a team
Jeff Holman:
00:12:56
approach. The reason it's a team approach several things. First
Jeff Holman:
00:13:00
of all, you don't have one legal issue in your business. You have
Jeff Holman:
00:13:02
multiple across sales and employees and investors and your
Jeff Holman:
00:13:07
corporate entity, and you name it. Legal is there. It may not
Jeff Holman:
00:13:10
be an active issue, but there's a potential for it to become
Jeff Holman:
00:13:13
active, and not one attorney should be handling all of that.
Jeff Holman:
00:13:16
For you, my background is patents. I'm excellent at
Jeff Holman:
00:13:19
patents. I'm really good with trademarks, and I've become very
Jeff Holman:
00:13:22
proficient as a general counsel, helping to guide small
Jeff Holman:
00:13:25
businesses in all their illegal issues. But I'm not the guy
Jeff Holman:
00:13:28
who's going to do your employment stuff, you know? I'm
Jeff Holman:
00:13:31
not the guy who's going to do some of your really hyper
Jeff Holman:
00:13:34
technical privacy things. And I realized that early on, right?
Jeff Holman:
00:13:37
So I'm like, Hey, why am I trying to do and manage all
Jeff Holman:
00:13:41
these things. When any real company, when you get to the
Jeff Holman:
00:13:44
right stage, you're going to have a small team of attorneys
Jeff Holman:
00:13:47
with the experts that you need in different places. So that's
Jeff Holman:
00:13:50
one. The other is a lot of fractional people. They're
Jeff Holman:
00:13:53
passing through. And I don't, you know, I don't say that to
Jeff Holman:
00:13:56
say that's wrong, but they're often in between jobs, and
Jeff Holman:
00:13:58
they're like, hey, I'll pick up a few clients. You know, we've
Jeff Holman:
00:14:00
picked up several clients from people who were passing through
Jeff Holman:
00:14:03
momentarily and six months later, after they'd, you know,
Jeff Holman:
00:14:06
really been onboarded into a company. They're like, Oh, I
Jeff Holman:
00:14:08
found a full time job. I'm going to go work there. And that
Jeff Holman:
00:14:11
company is then left, you know, saying, Well, okay, I guess
Jeff Holman:
00:14:14
we'll restart hiring process, you know. So there's no
Jeff Holman:
00:14:18
longevity with single fractional people is harder. Burnout is
Jeff Holman:
00:14:22
higher. And so that's another issue that we try to tackle. And
Jeff Holman:
00:14:25
then the last one, really, is gatekeeping. You know, when you
Jeff Holman:
00:14:27
go to, and this is more related to, you know, a law firm, law
Jeff Holman:
00:14:32
firms, people are like, Hey, Jeff, how come? How come all
Jeff Holman:
00:14:34
these law firms, with all these, you know, hundreds of attorneys,
Jeff Holman:
00:14:36
don't just do this and and wipe you out of business. I'm like,
Jeff Holman:
00:14:38
they should. Like, they literally should. They're not
Jeff Holman:
00:14:38
built for it. Their business model is different. Is different
Jeff Holman:
00:14:43
and doesn't really support the way to do it. But the other
Jeff Holman:
00:14:46
really big thing, and it's tied to their business model, is
Jeff Holman:
00:14:48
they're mostly really siloed, gatekeepers in the business,
Jeff Holman:
00:14:55
right? The rainmakers in those businesses, they they're super
Jeff Holman:
00:14:58
protective of their clients. They don't want. Their
Jeff Holman:
00:15:00
associates talking to the to the to the clients. And so I'm like,
Jeff Holman:
00:15:03
Hey, listen, there's nothing more. Again. I don't want to
Jeff Holman:
00:15:07
block communications between the client and the legal team.
Jeff Holman:
00:15:10
That's counterproductive. I want, I want our clients to feel
Jeff Holman:
00:15:13
like they can go talk to me. They can talk to anybody on the
Jeff Holman:
00:15:15
team, as if we're just down the hall from them. Poke your head
Jeff Holman:
00:15:18
in the door for the Ritzheimer or if you don't know who it is,
Jeff Holman:
00:15:21
any person ask them, you know your question, and let's deal
Jeff Holman:
00:15:24
with it as a team. We'll get the right resources to the right
Jeff Holman:
00:15:27
place at the right time. So it's just, I don't know. As I was
Jeff Holman:
00:15:30
doing this, I kind of fell into that fractional General Counsel
Jeff Holman:
00:15:33
solo role, and it didn't take me too long to realize there's a
Jeff Holman:
00:15:37
better way to do this. And so I started building it into the
Jeff Holman:
00:15:41
team approach, and it's been fantastic.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:42
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I really do. There's
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:46
this idea, especially from folks who've not had legal issues in
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:48
the past, that kind of attorneys are attorneys. It's kind of like
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:51
doctors or doctors, you know, it's like, to some extent, they
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:54
all have some basic training, but like, if you broke your
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:15:57
foot, you wouldn't go to a heart doctor. It doesn't really work
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:16:00
that way. And so I love this idea of being able to provide
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:16:03
that kind of combination of care all under one umbrella that is
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:16:08
fantastic and highly needed for most founders at this stage.
Jeff Holman:
00:16:12
Can I build on that just because I've talked to
Jeff Holman:
00:16:15
people? You know, you get it. You get somebody who's like a
Jeff Holman:
00:16:17
real sophisticated patient, right? Or has a lot of, a lot of
Jeff Holman:
00:16:21
needs, you know, cancer patients, and they've got all
Jeff Holman:
00:16:23
these issues you don't have, like you'd mentioned, you don't
Jeff Holman:
00:16:26
have one doctor just treating them, right? They will
Jeff Holman:
00:16:27
conference with each other. They'll get into a room and
Jeff Holman:
00:16:28
they'll say, Okay, what's the issue going on? And what do you
Jeff Holman:
00:16:31
think? And what do you think? What do you think? And they all
Jeff Holman:
00:16:34
have their specialties. I mean, that's, I've used that analogy
Jeff Holman:
00:16:37
before, and that's, that's a great analogy to say, This is
Jeff Holman:
00:16:39
what a team should look like, you know, working for the
Jeff Holman:
00:16:43
client, as opposed to, you know, I, I just canceled my
Jeff Holman:
00:16:47
appointment this morning for tomorrow. I got a cortisone shot
Jeff Holman:
00:16:50
last week because I'm getting older, I guess, blew out a disc,
Jeff Holman:
00:16:53
and it's caused some nerve issues for me. I'm, I'm sure
Jeff Holman:
00:16:56
some of your listeners can relate. And, you know,
Jeff Holman:
00:16:59
everything's good, but, but my they're like, Hey, we got you
Jeff Holman:
00:17:02
scheduled for a follow up. And I'm like, Yeah, that's fine.
Jeff Holman:
00:17:04
Cortisone shot in my back is not what I need, right? I've got a
Jeff Holman:
00:17:07
different issue. Cancel that. I'm going to go schedule with
Jeff Holman:
00:17:10
somebody else who who can tell me about the nerve issue, not
Jeff Holman:
00:17:13
about the disc issue. So, right? You know, just got to move to
Jeff Holman:
00:17:18
the right, move to the right person for the right issue.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:20
Right, and being able to get that through
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:22
the expertise of another is extremely helpful, especially
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:27
when they have your best interests in mind. So Jeff,
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:29
there's this question I ask all my guests, and I'm gonna ask it
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:32
of you here as well. I'm interested to see what you have
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:36
to say. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:38
wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing that you wish
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:17:41
every founder watching or listening today knew?
Jeff Holman:
00:17:44
Can I share two? Yeah, I've got two, because so
Jeff Holman:
00:17:48
the first one might be obvious from my website. If you go to my
Jeff Holman:
00:17:50
website, if you ever get an email from me, it says, innovate
Jeff Holman:
00:17:53
with confidence. I think that helping people to overcome the
Jeff Holman:
00:17:57
fears involved with doing something new, and that's what a
Jeff Holman:
00:18:00
lot of our clients are doing. They're they're disrupting
Jeff Holman:
00:18:03
because they're doing something nothing. They're doing something
Jeff Holman:
00:18:05
nobody has done before. And so doing that new stuff is there's
Jeff Holman:
00:18:10
a lot of fear involved. And I run into a lot of inventors,
Jeff Holman:
00:18:13
specifically, who who are fearful, and you see this great
Jeff Holman:
00:18:15
invention, and then they just, they just freeze up. So the one
Jeff Holman:
00:18:19
thing that I would say to a lot of those people, to summarize a
Jeff Holman:
00:18:23
lot of other things I've said, is, you know, action dispels
Jeff Holman:
00:18:26
fear, right? So you've got to take action to get over the
Jeff Holman:
00:18:28
fear. If any of your if any of your people, are at a stage
Jeff Holman:
00:18:31
where they're saying, I don't know, I just, I just can't do
Jeff Holman:
00:18:33
this, like, think it through, make up an action plan and take
Jeff Holman:
00:18:37
the action that'll dispel the fear, because fear is just fear
Jeff Holman:
00:18:40
of what's going to happen the future. And once you've taken
Jeff Holman:
00:18:45
the action, there's no more future to be afraid of. Yep, the
Jeff Holman:
00:18:46
other thing that I think is really it's something that a lot
Jeff Holman:
00:18:51
of people should be doing more of, and that is strategy. This
Jeff Holman:
00:18:54
whole discussion of strategy, I was kind of a big issue for me.
Jeff Holman:
00:18:58
I got into it thinking about IP strategy in the beginning, and
Jeff Holman:
00:19:02
how that fits into business strategy and all this stuff
Jeff Holman:
00:19:05
going through my MBA program, like a whole journey I've been
Jeff Holman:
00:19:08
on for 10 years. The thing that I think, I wish a lot of
Jeff Holman:
00:19:11
founders knew was that this concept of strategy, strategy is
Jeff Holman:
00:19:15
actually something you can achieve, right? There's, there's
Jeff Holman:
00:19:18
like, really complex, disjointed teachings out there about
Jeff Holman:
00:19:23
strategy, but there are some approaches where you can, you
Jeff Holman:
00:19:26
can really articulate your strategy in a way that's super
Jeff Holman:
00:19:29
helpful. And you know, we don't have time to go into that today.
Jeff Holman:
00:19:32
I've got a thing I call the five factors of business strategy
Jeff Holman:
00:19:32
that I came up with because it didn't exist out there, similar
Jeff Holman:
00:19:32
to the fracture legal teams, I came up with it because it
Jeff Holman:
00:19:37
didn't exist, and I talked to a lot of my clients about it,
Jeff Holman:
00:19:41
because about it, because it makes strategy, you know,
Jeff Holman:
00:19:45
reachable. It makes it something that you can actually talk about
Jeff Holman:
00:19:48
for your business and implement. And so I guess those are the
Jeff Holman:
00:19:52
types of things that I would leave, you know, take action to
Jeff Holman:
00:19:55
dispel fear and really think about how to be strategic in
Jeff Holman:
00:19:59
your business. And. And realize that it's something you can do
Jeff Holman:
00:20:02
if you have the right framework.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:04
Yeah, yeah, Jeff, there's some folks
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:06
listening, and it's, you know, it's, it's time. They could use
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:12
the help. And they love the idea of a fractional team, but they
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:15
don't exactly know what that means just yet, and they'd like
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:18
to know more about it. Where can they connect with you? Where can
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:18
they find more out about the work that you and your team do.
Jeff Holman:
00:20:22
Yeah, best place is to reach out to me on my
Jeff Holman:
00:20:24
website, intellectualstrategies.com I do
Jeff Holman:
00:20:27
a free 30 minute kickoff call, strategy call with people. We'll
Jeff Holman:
00:20:30
start to talk about your roadmap. We'll figure out, you
Jeff Holman:
00:20:33
know, what are the messes that you've got hiding, maybe under
Jeff Holman:
00:20:35
the bed that you've been putting off starting to lose sleep over
Jeff Holman:
00:20:39
some of the things coming up, and we'll just walk through that
Jeff Holman:
00:20:43
in 30 minutes. Have a call and see if it's a right fit, if it's
Jeff Holman:
00:20:46
the right time for for them to bring somebody on board in some
Jeff Holman:
00:20:50
capacity. So that's a free strategy call at
Jeff Holman:
00:20:52
intellectualstrategies.com.
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:55
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Jeff, thanks
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:57
for being on the show. Really a privilege and honor. Having you
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:20:59
here with us today. Love the work that you do, and couldn't
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:21:02
encourage folks more to check it out, get some help, and Jeff's a
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:21:06
great place to start. And for those of you watching and
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:21:08
listening, you know that your time and attention mean the
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:21:10
world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as
Scott Ritzheimer:
00:21:14
I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.