Tips For Every Entrepreneur Paralyzed By Fear - with Devin Miller

So, hi everyone, and welcome to the virtual entrepreneur, the title of today's episode is "tips forever every entrepreneur paralyzed with fear", an interview with David Miller.

If you're new to this podcast, welcome. I am your host, Herbert innocent, and today I am talking with the protecting business assets, expert David Miller about protecting your business assets mistakes that stop most entrepreneurs dead in their tracks. Really before they ever get started.

Welcome, Devin Miller.

Perfect, thank you.

So David Miller is a well-known expert in the subject area of protecting your business assets and has graciously consented to the interview to share his extensive knowledge and experience to help us avoid the most damaging mistakes in the area. So every entrepreneur can understand how to build value into your business.

Devin Miller.

Thank you again for joining us on this live interview.

Let's jump right in.

So, my first set of questions are going to be about your background and experience in the fields of protecting business assets so the entrepreneurs in our audience can understand who you are, where you're coming from, and how you can relate to where they are right now.

And then you're going to jump right into the specific mistakes when it comes to protecting your business assets so that our audience can understand how to avoid the troubles that stop so many people in this adventure of building an online business.

So my first question is, could you tell us a little bit about yourself in terms of background, education, and experience in protecting business assets.

So I'll try and keep it a bit shorter but educational wise so I got four degrees with my wife, three degrees Committee, which is I got the undergraduate and I got back with electrical engineering as well as Mandarin Chinese, and then after that I went and got a full degree law degree is both an MBA.

I kind of came out with education, having that the four degrees, and then within that, you know and as where I went, Mitch, my wife is by no I am also married for 14 years to call it sweetheart. Father for ages five depends on older than the guy three girls right behind him, so it makes all that makes it exciting. Now, back to a little bit of education so I've done been an attorney for about nine or nine years or so, I'm gonna focus a lot on intellectual property and trademark contracts and other things. I work for some of the top law firms in the nation. And then about three years ago I really decided I wanted to start up small businesses started my own learn Miller IP law, and where we focus on helping small businesses with their intellectual property.

With that, now is a kind of in addition to that, and then I'll take a breather, take a break. You know I've always kind of loved the law side and I've heard from my law firm involved in several startups.

So I started my first startup in when I was an MBA school with some other people bought them out, he said, that's involved. That's now grown into the nine-figure business. And my hope though then from other businesses that are everything off is our family business, ones that are getting ready to launch this year, so it's kind of love the occupational startups I've done several myself to be involved, and I also do a lot of the law firm side of the legal side as well.

So doing that everything seems to be pretty busy.

Oh, that sounds exciting. Well, it's obvious that you're the right expert for us when it comes to protecting business because I can see that you've actually built your own, and you've brought them up to scale which is what a lot of us, and, and a lot of the audience in the entrepreneurs are really aspiring to do.

So that's a really good first start for us so we understand.

You understand the language that's going on in our heads when it comes to you know, taking it there, wherever you want to take our business.

So,, let's dive into the mistakes that are getting so that we can get those cleared up for the people in the audience.

And my first question on the mistake is, what's the number one mistake that entrepreneurs make when in the area of trying to protect their business assets.

That kind of reminder, intellectual property, kind of attitude with your brain vention trademark with your branding and copyrights, and more crazy now across all three of those is probably about the same answer, which is more most of the time they tend to push it off, push it down the road think I'll get there someday or I'll wait till I know wait till we're a little bit bigger.

I definitely understand in the sense that every startup, almost no matter who you are, you always have to spend money on the money.

So with that, you're always trying to figure out where to spend the money.

But the problem is oftentimes lady hold off as an example with a patent or patent, you know they have a fairly short window of a patent application. Once you put it up on the website seminar you do a

presentation, anytime before you start selling it, you have a year from the earliest date you put out in the public. Then what's your file.

If you don't, you just donate it to the public, Anybody can do it. You don't have to report that maybe overpriced. Trademarks are similar, operators are very well. And so, the biggest thing is across the board and probably the biggest one number one mistake is they prepare a start up, get a wait too long to dry, strategize and figure out what they need or when they need to improve them.

Okay, okay. And so what I suppose my, my follow up question would be is that, obviously, it makes sense for them to do those things early from what you're saying that's what I'm taking and what I'm trying to follow up is this is, is their process through which they can fix up this you know keep track of these and fix them. So how, because I think for most entrepreneur, if I'm try to take myself as an example or some of the entrepreneurs that I've seen is that you sometimes don't know exactly how much you need to protect.

Or sometimes you see something like copywriting, and you don't think of it as being that important, if that makes sense. So I'm trying to ask them how they go about fixing it, if you had to give them, maybe something that they could keep in mind or remember,

they have a problem that they've already missed is that if you have what I would say is to anticipate or strategize and plan for it is probably the better approach. And that said, you know, generally when you're doing a startup or you're starting a business, I would step back when one step and say what is the quarter. What is the focus what is different. What gives us our competitive, and that can be everything from, we create the world's best with best products the best sort of adrenal, the best whatever, that's what we sell in that case, okay that's the core of our business that we need to prepare.

And now let's go about or figure out how to take that same thing, let's say, oh well we don't really do any widget, we don't really sell anything, but we provide really good, good customer service, we do sales or marketing or we do you know what you're really doing is building a great brand and so that, let's say you're writing you're writing the next month, you're writing that experience Potter, Tom Clancy or Lord of the Rings or pick whatever look UI.

And so you're gonna say hey you know what we really need to protect this this thing and we spent a whole bunch of time raving and putting all that creative work in.

Before you had to get to the point of waiting to fix something, post it back to what is a quarter of what we would get back, and then make your legislature that get protected first, and then you can build out from that. Now, if you get to the point of, you do need to make something you miss a window, then is really going to be going to the attorney that's what was going to be specific enough. Whatever you missed out what did you not do when you're going to do that. And is there, you know, is there an app we've prepared to fix it.

And so let's explore that avenue, sometimes isn't a good avenue and you have to figure out how to pivot or navigate based on hey we don't have a good avenue to fix it so let's see what we can do.

That makes a lot of sense. I think that's their strategy is always a good way to go, you know you need to have a plan, so that makes sense.

Now, my next question is, what is the one of the most. So, what would be the one mistake that most causes entrepreneurs to completely fail when it comes to wanting to protect their business assets?

is going to be the public this public folder you know here's my new build it meant to say oh I want to show it to the world I want to let everybody know I want to get started telling you want to start getting it out there and want to get revenue, definitely should do all the above. But you don't you know but you miss out one year so you can what I'll have a lot of time happens I'll have somebody come into my office.

I got this great invention, you know, Earth changing which is great itself is going great in the marketplace, a couple of years, we finally have the bandwidth or the time or the money to now fill out, protecting it. And then it's uncomfortable and less than fun conversation and saying the freedom that will lead you out of detail. However, we're not going to be able to protect you because of free value in the marketplace for more than a year it's already been out in public for a year. And so you're not able to get extra. That's probably the biggest mistake on the side is not knowing about that one-year timeframe going or building a business, waiting until you are getting there too far down the road, and then having limited or no recourse.

On the trademark side is kind of the same thing and it's a little bit different in the sense, a lot of times, startup responsibilities. Start with the name or name of the product, start the building and start to, you know, grow and sell you know, right now, pretty small business really worried about the brand and we know about it, and then you build it for a few years and certainly in practice it's hard to build a reputation in the brand, and then three or four years and Logan.

Probably going in come into the hole, why don't we see what else deals great march. Nobody moved three months before. Come to find out somebody that already owns that brand already owns that before you or they filed on it before you did, and now you've got a problem where somebody else owns your brand, and you either have to stop using it rebrand, we're trying to get a licence problem or get a deal or acquire them which are all going to be expensive. So, and Golson really had this you disclose it too early and don't know about it and trademark, you don't do your research to build a brand and then you have to try and figure out how to navigate that with somebody.

Okay, okay, that makes sense.

So I'm going to move on to the next question which is going to try and maybe try and encompass all this together, man.

My next question is, what is expose you protecting business asset mistake that entrepreneurs would think they are doing, you know, They're doing the right thing in their mind, but actually what they're doing is a mistake and they don't really realize that?

Now I think you may have covered that but I suppose I'm trying to extract, are they any more that we are not looking at Does that make sense.

One of the other things is often they try and try and do yourself, especially in the days of Google and YouTube and other everything's online, you know, everybody thinks that they're an expert and I'm not knocking that and I get you know that there's a lot of hammer on my blog and do for the problem is often, when you want to get into the legal side of intellectual property, there's a lot more nuance a lot more complex, and so you'll get people that, oh, I can go online, I can figure that out I can get it done and they'll do it themselves, and then they'll, it'll give them, they won't do it right, they won't understand what they don't know kind of a thing. And so then, no, no file that will get us closer to security, they'll think of they're covered only to come to find out that they don't have the protection that they're that they thought they had into a race, a lot of trickle-down effect, where you do not know about it. The years down the road, and then you come to find out, hey I thought we had a tree, no we don't have.

Oh, I thought we had this, or we didn't have protection we thought it's all a lot of times with the DIY culture. There is a time and place for it and definitely do your homework figure out, we need your research, don't just rely on this, or need to tell you everything. But there's also a point where you can only good DIY so far and they engaged someone they can make sure that you don't have that added protection.

Okay, I see. So I think from. And I'm thinking this is a follow-up question but from what I'm getting from you, it's the idea that there are some aspects of fino. Protecting business that the DIY approach is just not the best, and I think for entrepreneurs that really seems like that's the simplest go to place because we are in the intrapreneur business to do it all ourselves.

Way in the sense that, you know, as an entrepreneur you think, oh, you know, I don't think you'd ever believe most entrepreneurs think that as far as people grant you that you wouldn't be, you wouldn't be doing your business, you wouldn't be doing as hard for that because you think that person would be a lot better let them do it because they always kind of think, well you know I sound like new and I'm smart, freedom, definitely, where you would be doing a startup, but it doesn't mean you do everything he doesn't mean you have all the skills and the expertise in every given area, I mean I've yet to be someone that knows everything about everything about hiring and firing knows everything, legal, they know everything about manufacturing product development, sales office space running and building.

So there's areas where you definitely should be the expert, you should know everything you should be the person that's running things.

And then for those areas that you don't know that you don't have the expertise, then don't be afraid as an entrepreneur to reach out and get the job or work with someone or get it, you know, compensation and worker to get help from someone else that is expertise in that area because it's going to make your business a lot better so you do have to step back a bit.

I don't want everything. Where can I add value working at Mosaic repeat, And who can I bring on to fill in the gaps for the periods and, yeah, I think that makes sense, I think. And in one of our previous episodes we had talked a little bit on the idea of you know sometimes you need to know who has what you need, instead of trying to go and learn how to do it.

So what you're saying there really really resonates and makes sense in terms of, yes, sometimes you don't have the expertise, and that is why there are people who have specialized in certain fields so thank you for covering and bring that up in together. And I think one of the things I wanted to ask you here which is a little bit off-script, which is uh, would you tend, let's say, from your perspective,

Would you have an approach let's say like a checklist or a system for checking that everything in your business is protected, or is it something that you're just going to be learning as you go along?

Let's so when you are building your own business. Did you have a checklist or something that you had and what was on it.

Checklist and then every business is different. There's a lot of things that you don't necessarily always have the time or money or whatever resources for you know some more clarity and others.

Generally, we've been on one. I will

live random example, one of them has been a very strong product, but it was actually the one that I mentioned about the nine-figure business without really heavy in picking off variable, or wearable for free at the Apple Watch.

That was what that company started out at, so that was very heavy in the patent.

Because, really, that was horrible. When I went through the tech that was in paper, not really, not at the base for building your brand do not have a favourite, creative, but we believe, time, money and effort, creating something.

On the other hand, I've opened up a business that is really nothing innovative and breakthrough but I think it's a really cool idea and a good brand behind it, it kind of Western companies, and the checklist. Find out with that original product, service, and then built that, and then usually I'd say, you know, most businesses, you're going to always be that you're going to build it, you're going to do anything of any size. They have either 13 product maybe the invention, maybe, you always want to say okay, I want to get a trademark on it I want to get it published in the name of the company or from the name of the product. They wouldn't see if we have anything that's a creative, inventive invention on where to get it.

And honestly, even before that the stuff that I'm doing is related to intellectual property with more one business reform this, I would do an LLC, that's for workers, and the reason being is when you work in startup. We don't have that.

Anybody that wants to come on. You ever get sued if anybody ever says you infringe any journal, property, you have any customers who are mad at liability or making a refund or you have anything else you don't have a business, LLC and they can come after your home they can come after your life savings, your cars or anything else, so check with one, I would form a business get an LLC and simply one of your startup is small business. If you want to get more unfixing do.

Second thing is, I'd also probably if you're figuring out your business, or getting URL, simple, it's easy to figure out what URL, you're going to want to get because what you don't want to do is build a big brand, somebody else or a young that already has to do our own website. Right after I give the URL and get the URL, then I'd probably look and seeing if the brand, we're going to build is available in itself and you can go about getting a trademark, and then also build on for the past sight if you have those kinds of benefits and the ability imaging the building. So it's a bit different for me, those are the first things that have usually walked through my mind as I'm looking to set up a business.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to ask a question have you ever, you know, made a mistake as an entrepreneur, in terms of protecting your business assets, and how did you fix it or how did you recover from that. If you ever

on the intellectual property side I tend to keep their hand disrupting that pretty. Probably one because that's what I think about and do a lot of day in and day out, so I haven't been on the probably the one that I'm trying to think of, you know, I've had some other clients that again we mentioned them. The biggest one is that you know we've had some clients will come in and they find out somebody else owns your brand and so that's a mistake that I've dealt with the client, that we're getting into their,

their story. And so we had to then go about in a one year able to rebrand and RE and RE engage with evidence for the business.

And another one, they basically went to the person that own that brand, and they made a deal with them but they won't be able to see the same brand in different areas and different avenues and both to do that so I don't know that I can get an apartment perfect but I can't think of any mistakes I made at least as of yet on that front of the intellectual property. That's one word for a few clients I have had they come in, they've made those mistakes but didn't know the brand or the thought they did.

Okay. And I have a question here which is.

So, is that I suppose my question is, what are the things that entrepreneurs are most likely to overpay for, and how do you say they can avoid having their money, you know, saccular the pockets in terms of this area of building and protecting your business assets.

I'll give you a couple one is, you know, the funniest thing is you'll get clients to come in and they'll see this great idea or starting a great business, here's the idea, they'll pitch it sounds really familiar. Have you done. Have you looked it up.

I'm sure nobody would take five minutes to look it up and somebody else is already doing it. And so, so in that sense, sometimes you know, doing your homework is one where that is beneficial, save money, see what you know what else is out there what's already been done, how do we afford you ever engaged in, or before you really get to build the business. See what if somebody else is already doing it.

On the other frame, or on the other side, you know what the other thing to think about is, you know, when you once you've kind of gone through that and seeing that you've done your homework. There's a lot of different dreams out there that are pretty big spectrum. Everything offered by us or our absolute top dollar. Heart rate recovery law firms that really does a great job they're equally as possible. And so a lot of times when you're overworked, underpaid or overpaid, based on you know, you go to the top law firm versus yours your law firm top off and you really don't add that much value you're really paying a lot of staff premium on the, on your, you know, as the attorney to represent you, you're paying for a lot of their reputation, not necessarily quality.

You can also underpay when you, when you go and hire someone who doesn't have that product so when you're underpaid you're overpaying.

My best advices is one, meet with them sit down with them understand what your know what they are is most of times, if you're having a hard time understanding rather than understanding why you're doing what you're doing.

That's a bad time frame you're sitting down with doesn't have the time to hold on, and who's never gonna explain it, you're gonna end up overpaying that you're getting. You don't need, or you're underpaid, that attorneys trying to deal with the boss doesn't want to want to take the time to explain it to you because they don't have that built-in for their very best thing is to avoid underpaying you're overpaying. When you're hiring a premier law firm 815 20 minutes sit down with them, understand what you're doing, understand why we make sure you feel comfortable about it naturally.

Avoiding over with any bear with me.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense actually. But I think it's something that, it's like doing your homework and in this case really getting to know the person you're working with, because it's really a relationship isn't it it's a, you know they're protecting your business and it's going to be for the long run unusual because you may end up going back again.

Another thing I wanted to ask you here, is anything that I haven't asked you about protecting business assets mistakes that many entrepreneurs tend to make and that you would like to share with us today.

So maybe in terms of mindsets, preparation, or hidden opportunities?

Knowing your deadlines are, make sure you have your budget set aside. When you're ready and going through.

And then beyond that, you know, once you get all that. Know that strategy and have that plan, and then have an attorney that you can feel like you're comfortable with that, you know, what one of the things we do and I'm not the only one that we have, you know, free, I don't charge.

I call non-human in question. I'm not going to charge for it I just want to make sure they're taken care of. So that's one of the other things is make sure that you're not afraid to ask questions, you're not worried about the budget and how much it costs. Even if you hit on all of those really you're going to avoid most of the mistakes most of the issues that most companies are going to be having, you're going to be so far ahead. Those are really the main things I would get off.

Okay, that is awesome. That is awesome.

Thank you so much, David Miller for the great interview.

I am sure all entrepreneurs in our audiences have had a much clearer understanding of the mistakes with protecting their business assets and how to avoid them. So thank you very much for sharing your experience and expertise so kindly and can you tell us a little bit more about the Miller law IP at Miller law IP l.com It specifically.

I made mistakes that didn't tie.

But, you know, I give, if people want to reach out to us and really kind of two ways. If they want to find out more, just generally about the firm and about, you know, kind of what our prices are what we focus on what we certainly offer how we help, and also we have a tonne of learning resources so they can just come and get familiar with it, they can just go to law.

That's our main website makes it easy. Our firm name is IP law, law with miller.com is an easy way to get there. The other thing that if they know if they have specific questions that they want to say okay I've got your website or, Hey, I got a specific question I want to strategize with your man I want to have a one on one consultation.

We offer an initial 15-minute free strategy meeting where we sit down and kind of go for talk Lobo we have going on, things to consider, you know, timelines deadlines budgets and everything else, they want to invest some time to do that, thinking of a strategy meeting. So that's another way that leads right to my calendar they can grab a date-time away from them.

They're welcome to come in the office, if they're welcome to do it via Zoom meeting or a phone call, whichever way works for them, but it's an easy way to do that so two ways are is go to strategy meeting.com Grab some time to chat, you want to just learn more about the player or law firm in general, along with an order will always come so yeah that actually, thank you for covering that because I had a question there and somewhere a little bit it pronouncing the names of just.

But, and I will leave. And I think I've encouraged entrepreneurs to go there, especially if they want you know to really know how to build the values into their business assets because I understand from the entrepreneurial perspective, the importance that comes with building that value from early on, Especially when you're looking for investors later on, it really makes a huge difference.

So thank you for explaining that.

And so thank you again for sharing that with us, and thank you to the virtual entrepreneurs in the audience for joining us on this amazing presentation about the mistakes surrounding protecting your business assets and the real truth about how to avoid those mistakes and really get better results instead.

So again, I am your host Herbert Innocent and thank you for joining us on this episode of the virtual entrepreneur, and I would like to check out. Miller's websites. I recommend you rewind and listen to them, I think they strategize that Comm, and I think there's Melo with IP law.com Right. Oh, is I'm gonna put them on the mail.

I'm gonna put all these details in the description of your profile so they gotta go check them out at Herbert's marketing help.com, forward slash, guests, you're gonna see Miller's profile down there and you're going to see how to get more information, especially in terms of how to get in touch with him, so that you can access, you can have access to all these great resources so that you can keep your business safe and build those values because they do count on later on. And so I'd like to invite you to check out more details about Miller today at my at Herbert's marketing help.com forward slash guests, and then that way you get more of this information.

Aside from that, what I'm thinking that we're going to be really getting there is just to recap, is that you're going to be learning about how to protect your business assets, how to essentially be able to look at, trademarks, patents, and copyrights, because all those really encompasses the area of protecting your business online and offline.

So, thank you for thank you so much for tuning in, and have a wonderful day.

I'll talk to you on our next episode of the virtual entrepreneur.