I'm just like a member of our family. So yeah, it works out
good. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. And so why Why? Why did you get
into law originally?
You know, I have absolutely no professional people in my
family. To be quite honest, like, my dad was in sales, my mom was
a stay home mother of five, I'm the youngest of five girls. So
my sisters became teachers, one became a nurse, one became a
hairdresser, and I was sort of always academic. And when I
graduated college, I always kind of had a lot in the back of my
mind, but I was going to go teach English in South Korea.
And my mother was like, hell no, you're not. I applied to law
school the next day. And that's all she wrote. And I did well
when I got there and started, you know, just exploring
different practice areas and ended up in IP and business. And
I've enjoyed it.
Too fun. Did you know I was raised by my mom and five older
sisters?
No, I didn't. Oh my gosh. estrogen fest. There you go.
That's how I that's how I refer to it all the time.
Absolutely. And I was a little brother than ever expected to
have.
Okay, well, I'm sure you're very good to women.
Yeah, my two ex-wives may disagree with that. But I they
are the mothers of my children. And I honor them. And they, you
know, some people. I like what the Rock said. He said, some
people don't like me. Some people have bad taste. All
right. Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame. I'm
your show host, we'll be doing interviews with you. And we'll
be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and
guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey there and welcome into vision pros live. I may be in
hot water after what I said last, but that's okay. We'll have
some fun with this show. I'm the founder and CEO of first class
business show host here, of course, as well. And I'm so
excited to have Melissa Gray on with us. And Melissa Gray is
the founder of Oh my goodness, the law spot. And what we I'm so
excited about this episode, because our company is looking
for that law firm as well that we can partner with to be able
to provide legal services from within our own brand. And so
this is kind of like an interview, as much as it is the
opportunity to hear what her visions about. And that's, I
mean, that's honestly, it's the big reason why I do these
episodes is so that I can interview all these different
really cool visionaries, extract what is there up to and see why
do they do the things that they do, because I want to work with
people who have really cool wise and really big ideas. So I'll
digress out of that for now. We'll bring Melissa on stage in
just a minute. First off, a few tips for anybody who's listening
in that's trying to grow their business. We use a system called
cold click. If you are watching the screen, you'll get to see a
little bit more about that company. This system is what
what handles our LinkedIn automation and art Hoffman has
become a friend of mine, he runs it, we've used you link, we've
used buzz, we've used all sorts of different systems. And the
systems are helpful. He combines I think buzz, I'm sorry, you
link and octopus and something else, and make sure that we're
playing nicely with the algorithms while our systems are
out there, contacting people on our behalf. Now we create great
messaging for that too. But it allows me to have a whole ton of
people coming through the pipeline, excited about our show
excited to talk to us. And it's nice to have somebody in charge
of making sure that as as LinkedIn makes changes and
adjustments to the algorithms, I don't have to think about it.
I'm not that first layer of support, nor is my tech team, my
tech team can go to them and see what's going on and learn about
those those adjustments, because there are lots of changes
coming, especially with AI. So that's one of my secret tools.
Simply fast websites, that's not a tool I use. But if I had to
start over from scratch, and I didn't know where to go, I would
absolutely call Shane Michael, because he's offering websites
starting in 179 bucks. And one thing I've learned about web
presence and building businesses over the many years, is how many
people stay busy with their website ended up kind of broke
because they're not out in the world talking to people about
their brand, they're obsessing over an asset that has to change
and evolve with time anyway. So I recommend starting with
somebody like Shane, and saying, Hey, here's 179 bucks, what do
you need from me? Get that produced and out there and just
be excited to go tell people about your vision and what you
do. Don't get caught up in the mechanics of being a chief
marketing officer or worse, that's not even what a chief
marketing officer should do. A chief marketing officer should
have a web dev web design department in order to make sure
that those mechanics get put into place. So I know I fire hose
some of you a little bit. But the goal on that is to help save
you the years of pain that it took me to launch each of the
companies that I did. And so if some of you were like, man, I
needed that right now. We did our job. The water project. The
water project is near and dear to my heart. I'm so grateful
that I have access to water wherever I go. I never have to
think about it. There's millions of people in the world who do
not. And I feel called and responsible to bring up subjects
like these. Now, if you have another charity that you'd like
to see a support or dive into, don't hesitate to drop that in
the comments, please. I really do like to pay attention like
what's going on in the world? Where can we help people? You
never know who's going to see that and who's going to get
behind it and say, man, I want to do that too. In fact, short
story, when I introduced Monte Maldi into how we nestle of
San Antonio, who has this drive called gotcha covered the event
just passed again this year, they got 60,000 pounds of
materials off as collection drive and one day 60,000 pounds
of materials. Well, when I introduced the two of them, and
we just happened to talk about it, Monte gave how we $1,000 in
the spot for his other organization, Foundation San
Antonio on behalf of first class business. And I was like, what
do I have to do with this? I mean, like I just introduced you
guys. And so it was cool. It was awesome. You never know what's
going to happen when you open your big mouth for good. So I
recommend doing so. With that said, we're gonna bring Melissa
Gray on stage now put her under under the spotlight a little
bit and under a little bit of pressure if I can. She's used to
that as a lawyer. So thank you for being here today. Thank you
for having me. This is gonna be fun. Alright, so we got kids
around the same age as two, I've got a 12, nine, eight and three
year old. You got you got how old again? Seven, five and two.
Yeah. And you're you got this massive dream of helping
entrepreneurs and SMBs by simplifying making the making the
space of law easier. And I've caught no condescension from you.
I've not I've not been disrespected yet. You made space
for me as a as a human being. I'm loving this already. How the
heck did you become you? That's my first question.
Right. It's a good one. I I think I've had a lot of amazing
clients and a lot of life experiences, even though I'm
pretty, pretty young. Although I've been practicing for over a
decade, which is hard to believe. But I think the practice
of law is intimidating enough. So what I try and do is just be
be a more well rounded attorney, if you will, and try and take
the intimidation factor out of the interactions with my
clients, most of them are coming to you with problems. So if you
can make them feel less intimidated by the conversation,
that's a good place to start to build trust and, and a good
rapport with the people that you serve. So
that's awesome. That's Yeah, not not well known in your industry.
So I applaud you for breaking the mold a little bit. We need
it. We need a lot of advice and business for for illegal and
it's very intimidating to know who to go to. So who do you
feel should be listening? And let's let me refine this a
little bit more. Who's at the stage where they benefit the
most from knowing you? For for you know, like, because there's
a lot of business levels. I'm curious, who's gonna who's gonna
who's like, not just desperate, but you know, like I was also in
that position where it makes sense to really have that
conversation with you.
Yeah, I think someone who, first of all, anyone in in college,
that's a business major, otherwise that doesn't have a
focus on the law, should be thinking about that as part of
what goes into a business journey. But for me, the
coolest clients are those that are in transition, and they're
really thinking about creating something new for themselves,
but they have no idea like where to start. And people have these
amazing ideas, and they, they come up with them, but they have
no idea how to actually like implement them into the world.
And once they figure out and start trying things, they
sometimes get bogged down with the details. And then they do it
wrong. And then they spend a bunch of money and they get a
cease and desist letter or some something like that. So it's,
it's just anybody who isn't necessarily in there yet, has
these aspirations to do something more potentially like
either either really good foundational things like the
the things that I talk about on my social media, the things that
I, I talk about on LinkedIn are just reminders to small
business owners or people thinking about starting a
business on the foundational elements that you need in order
to do it properly and protect yourself and your family and
your business, and turn that business into something that's
sustainable and something that can make you money.
Yes, I love that. I'm gonna be your poster child for a minute.
I have received a letter of demand. I have been taken to
small claims court. I have received the cease and desists. I
have been sued on accident that was helpful because then I just
got a template for a lawsuit that was pretty well thought
out. I have been sued on purpose. I have had a company
that lost a lawsuit on non compete gone wrong with the my
co founder in a business. Apple has patented one of my
softwares. And we also had a $20,000 trademark battle at one
of my found one of my companies, where my goal, where my
approach would have been just like go to dang name so we
don't have to lose the 20,000. But I wasn't the senior co
founder. And so we have learned some heavy lessons with and
and workers comp, you know, there's all those types of
things to you just you learn as you go through the experience of
life that, oh, there's many legal legal side to this
process. So with that said, tough pointed question, easy to
answer on the surface, but are you a bulldog as well, Melissa,
do you have the ability and capacity to do that? Or is that
not necessary as a as a legal representative for brands? I
will be whatever my client needs me to be in the moment, but I
do pride myself on talking through the entire worst case
scenario. And sometimes the most aggressive approach is not the
approach that's going to get you what you want. So I do think
that level of counseling, if you're, if your attorney is not
going through that with you, that's a miss. Because if you
can creatively get the resolution that you want without
going full on nuclear on the other side, then great. But if
that's the approach that you as the client want to take, then
I'm in your corner, I will zealously advocate for you as as
I'm required to do under the law. But I, we always go through
the exercise of, you know, is that the highest and best use of
your money? Is that going to be a good ROI for you, depending on
what the scenario is? And sometimes it's necessary. But
other times that, you know, do you want to keep that $20,000?
Or do you want to do something different? Right? Yeah, well
said. Well, I will say I think I think many entrepreneurs that
watch my show or follow will resonate with this. I don't have
the heart to be the bulldog. At the end of the day, I don't. I
like and when I find myself having to do that, I find myself
losing my centeredness as a visionary for others. And it's
so hard. I have to learn, right? We all I get the I have the
opportunity to learn how to be a little bit more diplomatic on
one side, but also to be a little bit more dedicated
towards justice on the other. But I think a lot of
entrepreneurs, that's one of the reasons why they struggle with
that attorney relationship is because the dynamic is almost
like one or the other. And so it's like, Whoa, if I'm a
nurturer at heart, how can I build a relationship with
somebody who's only bulldog mode ever? And I love your advice on
that as we as we go into that advice, also drawing in the next
question, which is what's your vision for those that you serve?
Yeah, that's a really great question. And I think it brings
me back to, you know, in addition to private practice, I
was in house for almost five years, and I served as general
counsel to a billion dollar company, but we stood their
legal department up from scratch. So I was interfacing
with the executive team and everybody from the warehouse
workers, all the way to you know, the C suite. And you
really have to have the vision of the company in mind when
you're giving that legal advice. So being a strategic partner on
a general counsel level is you cannot be the Department of No,
and crush the dreams of the business, you have to find
creative solutions, you have to know when to play your card,
that's, you know, nope, this is the legal trump card, you cannot
do this. But you hold that and you do not, you don't take that
out unless you absolutely have to, right. And I think what it
taught me was how to be really collaborative with my clients.
And that's why forming a relationship with an attorney
when you're in sort of those preliminary stages of business
is so important, because you can share in that growth, that
strategic vision, like, Okay, let's, let's see how this is
going to impact your long term goal in what we're doing
legally. And even from, you know, planning for the next
year, how legal is going to integrate in that into that as
you scale, how you're going to, you know, successfully iterate
into more sophisticated types of contracts, relationships, and
then mature over time, as, as you grow with them, they grow
with you. So that's, and how that plays into sort of my
long term vision. I mean, I just want to be available to my
clients that find value in my advice. And those, those people
that take that at the beginning have just reaped the benefits of
it long term. And I can see how, you know, we've navigated
scenarios that they would have otherwise gotten in trouble for
and they have those funds to then use to reinvest in their
business. And it's sort of like marketing in a way like you
have, you can't view marketing as just an expense, right. And
it's an investment. And legal is a little bit, it's a lot like
that, really, it's an investment in you and your business, and
making sure that you're, you're putting up guardrails for
yourself, but also complying with, you know, the other
requirements under the law in other areas, you know, depending
on where your industry is, and it's, you know, it's on-dairy,
but that's where I fit in.
So you have this incredibly big vision for the company side, the
business side, and all of that. It reminds me, like the only
now, the best analogy I can think of is like that the giant
dome thing that Apple, you know, now has, like, that's a big
one, right. Then, then Tim Cook and the executives, they have
their own personal visions as well, things that they do
outside of that. What's your personal vision?
Gosh, I want the law spot to really serve as a hub for
resources for small business owners that can give a
customized legal experience without, you know, the
intimidation factor of a big firm. I have grand plans, you
know, I've just opened less than a year ago, myself, I've been
practicing for 12 years now, but I intend to use the legal
market, use tech, AI, all the things that are going to really
streamline legal services and take the crusty old white man
vision of a law firm and just, you know, turn it on its head.
That's really my vision. I want, I want it to be a new age
version. I want it to have value and just, there's so many
amazing tools that are on the legal market that firms have not
used. And that that's part of my model. That's part of what
savings I want to pass on to my clients. And the improvement in
how we deliver service to clients is all going to be, you
know, part of that vision.
Nice. Awesome. All right. Ready for this? Ready for this? Suits.
I don't know that.
You don't know the show Suits?
I've like seen like two episodes. It's hard for lawyers
to watch lawyer shows because they are not realistic in any
way.
Yeah, I would say, well, okay, so if we're going on plot, I would
say no. If we're going on actors, then like, you know, my
ability to watch it, I would say,
Yeah, that's right. Okay. That's fair. All right, moving into a
very heavy subjects. What's the worst leadership experience
you've ever had?
Oh, gosh.
I would say being given a leadership role and then not
having any actual control over a situation like a fake leadership
role, that is a really difficult position to be in. I feel like I
was, I had a situation where I was a partner in a firm, and I
had this title and this objective, but then I was kind
of, it was empty. People were not, it wasn't really my
vision. So having that title of leadership without having the
ability to execute is actually one of the reasons I chose to do
it myself. You know, I wanted the ability to make like
formative change and be impactful. And when you're not
empowered to do that, it makes it impossible. So yeah, yeah.
Well said. I agree. I think any small business owner who's
listening in, take note of this, your employees are likely in
that scenario. See it all the time, where people are given
titles that mean very little, or the title itself means
something, yet the tasks and the responsibilities and the
accountability is nowhere to be found. And that's often more on
the entrepreneur than we want to admit. But we have opportunities
there to avoid that with you also helping us just take a look
at it. What about the best leadership experience? What does
that look like? This could be yours, this could be somebody
you follow as well. It could be a TV show.
Well, I just, I think the opportunity to serve as the
general counsel was really impactful for me. Like that was
having, that was a position of authority where people actually
did take my advice, they respected my opinion. I had
built relationships over years with the people that I
eventually led. So the ability to sort of put those
relationships to the test in a leadership role where I had the
authority to do something was really meaningful. And I was a
small team in the legal department, but I felt like I was
a part of something much bigger. And having others that, you
know, were all aligned on the vision and really respected your
opinion, and seeing some of those objectives come to
fruition throughout the year was really cool.
That's awesome. All right. This question, I'll let you think
about it for a minute. If this was your last opportunity to
share a powerful lesson with other visionaries, what can they
learn from your experience? Oh, my, so the hardest thing about
my journey so far has actually been deciding to take the
journey. Like to me, it was the safety of corporate, the safety
of working for a firm, the benefit, like, and then I
struggled so much with, can I do this? Should I do this? Is this
the right time to do this? I mean, I'm a mother of three, my
husband's a lawyer, we have a mortgage and, and cars and a dog
and a cat and all these things, right. And it's like, if you
just make the decision, and you fall through on the decision,
like you are, you burn the boats, right? Like that, that
was the lesson I learned, I had to burn the boat, and just bank
on myself. And then every other decision is much easier at that
point. Hmm. Make the decision and follow through. I think that
recipe is extremely important to get right. Right, those
ingredients matter a lot if you're going to burn the boats,
make sure you make the decision and make sure that you follow
through. And that's that's good. I like that combination too.
All right. So if we were to talk about more specifically what you
do, you know, getting qualified, customize legal services, you
know, what, what are some of the what are some of the things we
should be looking for? And the entity we're turning to, I know
this comes from a bias standpoint, but you know, you're
here now and other people, by the way, if you're listening,
feel free to contact myself or contact companies that are not
associated with your brand, right, go get unbiased feedback,
regarding this as well. But Melissa, from your perspective,
what should we be asking and looking for in a legal team? Or,
you know, for legal advice, if we need a legal team, do we not
those are I'm just gonna let you talk for a little while.
Yeah, I think that that really depends on where you're at in
your business. If you are extremely fresh, right, you need
somebody that's gonna, first of all, educate you. And if you
have the ability to, you know, just pour over some resources
and figure out the basics of business, like my first webinar
that I gave away was the basics of business blueprint. And it
was like, okay, this is these are the types of entities that
exist. These are the foundational contracts that you
will likely use for your business. And then this is the
protections that you can, you know, expect with intellectual
property, because no matter what, you are providing a
business, you're providing a service or product. webinar
still exists. It does, of course, yes. So something we
can access. Yes. And I think I put on my YouTube channel, but
I will verify after this. And then I add on the show notes to
that we have it. That was that was a good one. And then my
second one was diving in deeper to that trademark topic
specifically, because that's where I've spent a lot of my
practice. But if you it depends, the level of strategic legal
advice that you need, and the expertise that you need varies
by your industry. But if you're talking general counsel, right,
you need to know what you have to have the end in mind when
you're talking to your lawyer, what are you looking to build?
What is the end vision that you have? Do you want to take over
the world? Do you want to franchise? Do you want to just
have one store in Dallas, Texas, and that's all you ever want?
Do you want an online retail store? Do you want to ship
internationally? Like you have to have the vision when you talk
to your lawyer, because then they can actually guide you a
lot better. And if you don't have it, it's probably too
early.
And I'll double down on that too. In fact, I'm going to put
the light on the opposite side. If you're talking to a law
entity that does not naturally ask you about your vision, that's
not ask you about the end result. And they're more worried
about the consultation fees being paid. And they're not,
they don't take a sincere interest in what you're doing.
Run, right? Don't try to force that on the entity because
they're not going to get it. They just showed that they don't
get it. You don't learn how to ask great questions overnight.
It takes a sincere process of understanding listening
behaviors. So I would say that that's the other pieces, making
sure that that as you know, you go into that conversation with
a lawyer, ask them what's important to them, you know,
about the situation or how would we work together? What does
that look like? They can't answer that with that type of a
clarity that they care about what you do. I wouldn't I
wouldn't move forward, I would call another lawyer, you got a
thousand that you can call in your city.
Absolutely. And there are, and there's varying approaches. I
like that approach of my client, I like to know where they're at.
From a financial standpoint, I need to know where they're at
from, you know, a maturity standpoint, and then partnering
with them to integrate legal into what they're doing in a way
that meets their needs. And I might not, I might not be the
most, you know, cheapest option. But if you have this as a line
item in your budget, we can work through the highest and best
use of that budget, as you develop, like what you need for
your business, but you're going to need the right legal entity,
you're going to need the right foundational contracts, you're
going to need to consider IP. And those are the building blocks
of a solid foundation, getting those right, making sure that
you're protecting yourself that you're limiting your liability.
And then you can get into the fun stuff and and make sure that
you're you're going on that journey with them as they grow
and take on new projects. Yes, absolutely. One of the one of the
challenges we face as entrepreneurs or business owners
is that those we fit ourselves into those giant boxes. And we
assume that it's kind of the same for everybody. I mean, I
did this years in the business I set out to create the ultimate
org chart, you know, organization board, like I'm
going to create a universal one. Everybody's going to be able to
fit into this because that will simplify the whole business
process for the world. And I was just a concept was an idea that
I had was a really crappy idea. You know, and I didn't realize
it until I started to dive into it. And then I started that was
like, wait a second. A restaurant owner has completely
different titles than a laundromat than a legal crap. This
doesn't wonder why it's so confusing. You know, and you
can't find great templates online. There's there's not,
there's not necessarily a one size fits all template, even
for a niche, you know, of an entity. So those those
realizations to what I'm getting at is when you're hiring a legal
team. That's again why it's so important to, to, to have that
conversation and time to talk with a legal entity so that they
understand how your business is totally different than all the
other business businesses that are even within your own niche.
You want to speak to that a little bit?
I do. That's, that's a really great point. And I am, you know,
I'm a small business owner myself, I understand that you
can find a good jillion different templates on the
internet. And, you know, you might, the problem is, if you
don't know what those provisions mean, or how they are actually
going to interplay in what you're doing, that it could be
really damaging. So you want to make sure that it's whatever
you're using is tailored. And it doesn't mean that you have to
you know, start from scratch necessarily, but you need to
make sure that that certain things are in place that are
going to protect you. So yes, I understand that there's
templates, but that is why even just the consult with an
attorney to go over it, and make sure that they understand your
business as it relates to the contract that you're using is
so important. Those two need to be married, they need to speak
to each other. And you every single word that's in an
agreement is there for a reason. It's there as a tool for you to
protect yourself or to get paid. I mean, and those are things
that you, you really want to be able to fall back on, hopefully
you won't have to. But having the document is much better
than not having it. Because if you don't, the state that you're
in has default rules that are not necessarily going to be in
your favor. So just if you don't have a contract, the state has
written one for you.
All right. And that's, that's another aspect about working
with attorneys versus being trying to self represent, as
I've seen. I've seen companies that have phenomenal legal
paperwork and processes on the surface, lose in court to
somebody who had a template, but then went and hired the right
attorney to save them from this terrible little agreement that
they had. And so the attorney plays in this as well. I found
the paperwork often helps make sure that the expectations are
settled on so that the mediation process is just, you know, you
never have to actually get into the court process. You mentioned,
you mentioned, I think you mentioned physical products.
There was something that triggered my memory of, of, or
maybe it was doing business. You know what, I saw an article
that you have on your page and talks about doing business in
America as a Latin American organization. And so you did
this interview with somebody about that. I'll pull that up in
a minute. But I have a company that we're 44% equity owners in.
They're based in Canada, and they have supplements that will
be shipped to the United States. And we very much have that
relationship on cinch to the hose. Like it's on pause right
now. Because we have international tax challenges, we
have FDA regulation realities that we'll have to face. We need
quite the healthy budget in order to make sure we have the
right accountants and the right legal entities supporting us. So
we don't end up, I don't have a prison for one. And two, I don't
want to cause a bunch of problems that we could avoid if
we just have the right people around us to guide us. Does that
make sense?
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's where, you know, sometimes the
different types of lawyers, like if you, if you go someone that's
specific for two marketing products, international
products, right, they're going to have a lot of different
products. And so we're going to have resources related to
labeling, compliance, custom import, export. And I dealt with
a lot of that on the surface in house, because we imported a lot
from Asia. And we dealt with the Trump had implemented his import
tax on steel, and we imported nails. And so we had all these
different customs issues. So that was, that was a whole mess.
But it's, it's important to pause if you're not sure, and
then, you know, form a plan, okay. And sometimes it's
collaborating with the, the tax professional as well as legal.
Like, not every lawyer is going to have expertise. But that is
where, okay, my general counsel hat comes on. I'm like, okay, I
can advise you on X, but I'm going to get you to Susie Q,
attorney at law who does that. And we're going to vet that
issue out because, you know, there's no, it's very unlikely
to find a lawyer that is going to be an expert in every single
thing, but they should be able to issue.
It's easy to find a lawyer who thinks they are.
Well, an issue spotting, issue spotting is the only thing that
you know, I'm obligated to do if I don't feel comfortable
doing something, I'm going to get you to the expert that can.
But that is a lot of the value that I provide my clients to.
It's not necessarily finding the answer. It's saying, nope, this
is a red flag. We need to vet that. I'm going to get you to my
contact here that can really vet that and make sure that you're
not going to get in trouble in that area.
Awesome. Again, for the visionaries who are more
entrepreneurial than business owner, I think this conversation
is going to be much more helpful. When I say the
difference between the two, for me, one of the big differences
is a business owner usually has a local business or one type of
business. An entrepreneur usually has several businesses
and is a little bit more intricate, dynamic, complex, and
how they do things. So for the entrepreneurs out there, having
somebody like Melissa to kind of bat these questions off of,
you know, even just, you know, kind of you're throwing, I'm
throwing spaghetti against the wall in some respects, but
there's this conference called VidCon. VidCon is one of the
number one, it's probably the number one platform for YouTube
influencers and creators to go to VidCon in California, mix and
mingle. There's thousands and thousands of people go. It's a
really cool event. And I got really lucky one day as I was
studying through the speakers that were there. And there's a
lawyer that helps YouTube influencers with their mergers
and acquisition negotiations. And I was like, Whoa, that's
brilliant. Like you're going on my vendors list immediately. So
I reached out to her, she reached back out to me. It's
okay. I'm not a, I got like three subscribers on YouTube. So
I can understand why she didn't. But that's also one of those
areas where having legal support when you're in your contract
negotiations matters. Do you also assist with that? Or do you
refer that out?
I do. No, I and I support mostly if a deal gets big enough,
obviously, I do not have a huge team at the moment. But I have
resources for that. And that's where actually on the M&A side,
I think AI and tech can really improve those document reviews
and diligence processes long term. But yes, I have done M&A
work, mostly on the IP diligence, but also contract
reviews, and the purchase agreements. But typically, you
know, I would say the deals are below 20 million. So, you know,
above that, you probably need more.
Well, that was interesting that she also proposed just like
she's a negotiator. She's the kind of the sales engine behind
it. And I was like, that's really, really helpful. You
know, to have both of those aspects. Naturally, you still
need everybody in the dialogue. It's a pretty complex sales
process when you're in that environment. That's one of the
things we've dreamed about one of our visions for first class
business is as people come in and work with us on more of a
freemium business model, where they can come in and get
support at like unnaturally amazing levels of support, we
want to create an incubation process to where they get, you
know, they can't afford us, I know they can't afford us for
the things that we do. So how do we orchestrate a rev share
model, an equity model, where we've also got the legal support,
not necessarily in house possibly, and I would hope within
the next four or five, six months, we've got that legal
entity in house or when we're working with so closely that
the K one partnership agreements or any other type of agreement
we come up with, everybody's protected in the process, we're
protected, they're protected, they can still get a third
party to review it. But we have to we have to find the entity
who understands that that type of vision as well. You know, or
like go find some young lawyer who is super malleable, that
wants to prove themselves and come out of the gate, you know,
super well and sees the vision of of doing just that. Is that a
do you feel that's a very dangerous vision? Or do you feel
like that's something that would be helpful to businesses? Feel
free to speculate and shoot that down.
I mean, if you're creating a one stop shop for entrepreneurs,
to have their legal, legal needs and business support needs met.
I mean, I think that that aligns a lot with what I'm trying to
do, in terms of the the foundational elements for
businesses, giving them support, not just not just any support,
though the customized, really valuable partnership type
support that's going to take them to the next level of
whatever their vision is. And it doesn't have to be this grand
vision necessarily, it just has to be theirs. And they have to
know what it is. So that that's, I mean,
for me, sustainability has to be well rounded, right? You know,
and when I say well rounded, people love to oversimplify
business, I always say it's business is a recipe book of 300
simple recipes. The complex nature of that is you have to
cook the right recipes at the right time for the right people
and deliver it the right way. Like the complexities continue
to compound as you combine those realities together and have to
deliver upon it. So if I build a sustainable business model that
had no legal infrastructure, I mean, I might as well put a
house, you know, on top of the earth with no foundation. When
the storm comes, you know, that that house is insusceptible to
not having having all the sustainability built into it
swept away. So yeah, it's there's it's a huge part of what
we want to build. But I am not I am I should not be near the
legal department.
Well, that's okay. As long as you are aware that those things
need to be addressed, and that is in your playbook. And that is
step one, the people that get in the most trouble are the ones
that run without without thinking about this thing. And
they get their, you know, the wind taken out of their sails
when they get that season assist or whatever it is, and they were
you know, so passionate or far along. And I mean, I've had
people that happened to seven years later, and they've when
they've escalated to a point of like, being a player in the
market. And that's when somebody wants to knock you down because
you're actually making waves. Right. But if you haven't done
those things, exactly right. You're not a target when you're
not know. When you're not knowing nobody cares about you
once you're known, then everybody's gonna come after you
and not everybody but the people are going to come after you will
do so. And more importantly, if you think the scams that are
hitting your email box right now are hard to decipher, just wait
till you Tony Robbins level. Right. And when you're Tony
Robbins level, now you got, you know, you don't you have white
collar criminals that are designing systems and things to
take Yeah, no business gets much harder. You get bigger and
start to have success.
Don't threaten that market share. They'll come after you.
Yeah, I'll be a little bit quiet, quieter about the rest of
our discussion these plans. But now yeah, we we it's one thing
to have that lawyer attorney who is there for you, right and is
able to help you on on what you're doing. It's another to
find one that has the type of vision that you have. Which
again, it's so much more in line with what we're building towards
long term. And that's why I'm like, cool. Like, I, I don't
know, I think our automation connected us. I don't even know
how that happened. Did we connect on LinkedIn? Yeah, yeah.
So that was that was that was great. Well served. Thanks,
Art. Art, we're gonna give you a big shout out for that. Good job.
So Melissa, we got a couple minutes left. Is there anything
else you'd like to dive into and share talk about for SMBs or
entrepreneurs?
Gosh, I think I think really just the planning piece cannot be
underrated. You know, as we go into 2024, I'm like having into
I'm having into my my planning stage. So this is the time to
sort of do your audit. Even if you're an existing business
owner, you can still sort of dust off those contracts, dust
off those operating agreements and make sure that things
haven't necessarily changed. And if they have changed, then you
can do something about it. After the fact, you don't have to just
sit on things that are stale. And whatever that looks like for
you in terms of an audit or what you've got going on, your
business might not be the same as it was five years ago. So take
take some time, do the planning, do the work, maybe dust off your
vision, you know, maybe that end looks different than it did when
you started. But that's, that's the beauty of being an
entrepreneur, you get to change it, you get to evolve and you
get to, to make it whatever it is. But if you find yourself in a
position where you need support or resources, you know,
obviously, first class business is there for you. And, and, you
know, that's how I'm looking to plug in with, with people as I
grow mine.
Nice to see the last spot doing the same. So everybody, thank
you for joining us today on Vision Pros Live. Feel free to
go back in this episode, of course, and take notes on what
you've heard. I think it's important to gather what applies
to you specifically. If you know an entrepreneur and you happen to
just dive in and listen to this, just tag them in this episode.
This is universally applicable to entrepreneurs, SMBs, there's a
lot of principles that were shared today. In addition to
that, if you want to be on the show, if you've got a vision,
whether it's one you're dusting off or not, don't hesitate to
apply to be a guest on our show, because we're here to help make
those visions come to come to reality. Like, that's one of the
big parts of why what we do is so important. But also what I've
often seen is when you ask about their vision, just asking them
about it propels it forward. And so a lot of the people we talk
to know they don't become clients, that's fine. They become
people whose visions we can track long term and see like
where they're headed. And it's just a really rewarding process.
So if you have a vision, come and share it with us. We'd love
to have you. And thanks for joining us on another episode of
Vision Pros Live. Take care. Thank you for having me. Thank
you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to
get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And
thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an
excellent day.