What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Fearless Legal Innovation with Jeff Holman
Ever wonder why legal advice feels so intimidating for founders? Jeff Holman is changing that narrative by merging his unique background as an engineer, MBA, and attorney to help entrepreneurs navigate the complex world of business law with clarity and confidence.
What makes Jeff's approach at Intellectual Strategies different is his fractional legal team model. Rather than providing occasional legal advice or requiring founders to hire a full-time counsel they can't afford, his team becomes an extension of the startup—providing expertise across multiple legal disciplines exactly when needed. This innovative approach means founders get "the right attorney with the right expertise at the right time" without the bottlenecks that come with traditional legal counsel.
Our conversation reveals the stark contrast between first-time and second-time founders. While first-timers focus almost exclusively on product-market fit (often neglecting crucial legal foundations), experienced entrepreneurs understand the importance of addressing legal considerations early. As Jeff explains, it's not just about avoiding problems—it's about creating the freedom to operate boldly in your business. His four-layered approach to intellectual property protection (patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets) offers a comprehensive framework for innovative companies to protect what matters most.
Perhaps most valuable is Jeff's philosophy around overcoming the fear that paralyzes many entrepreneurs. "You're never afraid of the past," he notes, "you only fear the future." His solution? Action. By taking decisive steps toward addressing potential legal issues, founders transform future uncertainties into present realities they can manage with confidence. This approach embodies his company's mantra: "innovate with confidence."
Want to connect with Jeff and his team? Visit intellectualstrategies.com to book a free 30-minute strategy call where he'll help map your business milestones to the legal considerations you should be planning for. Your future self will thank you for taking this proactive step toward building a legally sound business.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you?
Speaker 2:think you are All right. Everybody Another day, another dollar, mba, founder of Intellectual Strategies. But you know what? Jeff isn't just an attorney. He's a business strategist who helps founders eliminate fear around legal risk so they can make bold, confident moves on legal risk. So they can make bold, confident moves. His insights empower entrepreneurs to shift from what if something goes wrong We've all been there as entrepreneurs To what if? This is the best decision I ever made. Now you're helping reinvent startups and growing businesses. So how's it going, jeff? Welcome to the show. What if it did work?
Speaker 3:It's going well. Thanks for having me on here, Omar.
Speaker 2:So talk to me, man. I've watched your video. An entrepreneur I was an entrepreneur for 20 years probably should have had legal counsel. I probably couldn't afford it, like most, most business, no matter what, even even when you make more and more, when it comes to legal, you don't need it until you need it. Oh yeah, and that's how a lot of people operate. I mean, if I had legal counsel, I'd probably still be an entrepreneur. So welcome to the show man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for you know I've been out for a little while. Thanks for rescheduling man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, not a problem at all. I'm just glad to connect. I always love talking about all these concepts, whether it's law or entrepreneurship or, you know, overcoming fear. It's all kind of part of the same package, I think.
Speaker 2:I've got to ask you this what drove you to want to help out entrepreneurs? In that I mean you could have gone many different ways, like I know there was a need, but was there something? Maybe in your family? You know your father's an entrepreneur and he needed sound advice, legal advice, or was it just something that you saw that there was a need and you wanted to fill that need?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. You know I my father, to answer that question he's been in real estate development for 45 years still doing that, still going strong. So he has been an entrepreneur in that sense. He and I, you know, talk about business stuff all the time, but I'm not his attorney. He does some other stuff outside of what I do. But I did grow up with that and I probably saw that for most of my childhood right, growing up with the uncertainties and the chaos and the ins and outs and the big wins and sometimes the occasional losses that come along with both real estate development and with entrepreneurship. So I'm certain that was an influence in what I do.
Speaker 3:I did spend some time out of law school working with. You know, I originally was doing mainly patent law with inventors, people creating things for the first 12 to 15 years and I saw the other side right, I practiced with companies like IBM and Intel and Apple, helping build portfolios, large, large portfolios of patents and and just kind of stack that arsenal up and I think that the contrast between what I you know what I did then versus maybe what I do now is is pretty stark. I, I was. I remember a moment when I maybe, maybe 17 years ago I don't know how long is that, that's 12 years ago. Got to keep my my years straight. I remember a know how long is that, that's 12 years ago. Got to keep my years straight. I remember a time when I was saying to myself I've got clients, I'm helping to get a patent, but they're off, you know, raising money. They're off building a business, getting partners, you know, selling product setting up, relationships, partnerships, supply chain, all that stuff Like.
Speaker 3:There's so many more pieces to to being an entrepreneur and building a business than just create a product, create a brand and protect it with IP. And I saw that and I said I want that, right, I want to do that. And and as I've gotten into working with exclusively startups and scaling companies who are at the earlier stages of of building, I have to tell you I just love the chaos of it and I'm pretty upfront about it and I think there is a lot of chaos. And if a founder tells me their business doesn't have chaos in it, I'll just say you're just not telling me the whole story, right? There's chaos. Every entrepreneur knows that. Every founder's been through it and I just really love it. I love the newness of it. I love solving the problems. I love being a part of the strategic conversation and contrasting that with putting a dozen more patents into the portfolio of a large business that has a totally different business model in how they use their intellectual property. This is so much more fulfilling.
Speaker 2:Well, growing a portfolio, an intellectual property of, like an Intel or an IBM. I mean, you know it, you're at ground zero, you're at the ground floor level where you can actually help create a company that does a major game changer, and not only lives of the founder and the company, but you know a product that that can really innovate, you know, change the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. And I've got friends that are helping manage those large portfolios at Intel and Apple and they love what they do, I think. So no knock on them for what they do. It just wasn't aligned with what drives me Because, like you say, when you see an inventor working on something or a founder building something that started here and all of a sudden they bring it out to the world, like it's pretty awesome to see that. You know takes a lot of work to get from here to here, but it's cool to see somebody bring life to something that previously didn't exist.
Speaker 2:Well, a founder or any CEO or any entrepreneur, a lot of times they do need that legal help because really the only thing that they're always just focused on is the money-making activity. They don't realize as a company, there's way more to it than that and it's, I mean, I, you know, I thought being an entrepreneur, you know, first year or so I was just in shock that you know, here I was, I didn't even realize.
Speaker 2:you know that every municipality, everybody wanted to get paid everybody taxes and yeah, you need to have, you have to have insurance and you have to do this and you have to worry about getting sued and you have to. Just just the list goes on and on, and you're sitting there as an entrepreneur and you're like well, I, I, I just want to do what I'm great at, and there's just more more to it than that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure I mean you. You, you're highlighting what I would say is a huge distinction between kind of two frameworks One is the first-time founder framework and the other is the second-time founder framework. Right, first-time founder framework, you just don't know. What you don't know, they're the unknown unknowns, and there's a lot of legal risks there that you're not thinking about because we're told go lean, launch an MVP, get your product market fit. It's all about validating your product or technology and validating your market or your pricing and your distribution channels.
Speaker 3:Nobody in there ever talks about. By the way, there's this whole back end to the business, which I refer to as freedom to operate, if you aren't doing all of the things. There's this whole back end to the business, which I refer to as freedom to operate If you aren't doing all of the things you know getting your business license, paying your taxes, protecting yourself against infringers you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily setting yourself up for freedom to operate that business, despite awesome product market fit, despite technology validation. You know you need all three of those legs to that stool.
Speaker 2:Now your company Intellectual Strategies. I got to ask what does fractional legal team mean? Is it like crowdsourcing for legal or I mean, does that mean it's like I can't afford you full?
Speaker 3:time right.
Speaker 3:I can't pay $250,000 for this experienced CFO or whatever it is right, but I want you dedicated to me and I want to be able to call you as if you were my CFO. And so a lot of people, a lot of experts with great experience across different companies and different stages, they're entering into these fractional executive roles and so in legal, a lot of people are doing what's called fractional general counsel. We used to call it outside general counsel and now it's fractional general counsel, but the whole concept is outside general counsel and now it's fractional general counsel. But the whole concept is companies who need the expertise and recognize that need will often enter into a monthly retainer of some sort. It might be a flat fee, it might be some other arrangement and they'll say, hey, I just want you to be, I want you to fill that role as if you were, say, an employee of the company and you'll be our general counsel in my case, or you'll be our CFO or CMO or whatever, and we want you to be on staff effectively and run that function. We've just taken it a step further with the legal model Because I've done that fractional GC role and all these fractional executive roles. I know what happens If you're good, you get a lot of clients, you build up a practice pretty quickly, and if you're working with great clients, then those clients are going to scale, and as they scale, all of a sudden you get squeezed right.
Speaker 3:You're one guy with a full book, a couple of clients start growing and all of a sudden you become a bottleneck for other clients or for those clients because you quickly outgrow your one-person capacity, and so that's one reason why we took it to a team approach. The other reason is that in law in particular, you don't. In fact, I was talking with a guy today, a potential client. He got referred over from an existing client they're starting up a new fund or sort of type of thing and he said, hey, I work in this co-working space and there's, you know, six or seven other attorneys in that space with me. But man, I don't want to have to go hire six or seven different people just so I get their expertise.
Speaker 3:I said, kevin, you just hit exactly on what we do. Like we're a team, we have the breadth of expertise across our team so that, effectively, a startup or a scaling company can hire us one time. They get all of us. They get us when they need us, because they don't need me every day but they also don't need, you know, a patent attorney every day, or you know they might be doing a lot of contracts but they don't need to fundraise every day.
Speaker 3:So they get the team with the expertise that they need across the breadth of the legal disciplines that we have, and then they also avoid the bottlenecks of having, say, a one-man person doing it, and those two benefits are it's huge. It's like having an entire legal team down the hallway from you. So you go and you know we hope our clients will feel like they can pop their head in the door or you know the virtual door and say hey, jeff, I got a question for you. Can I just want to pick your brain for a minute or whatever. So really it's a team approach to this fractional model so that companies have the right attorney with the right expertise at the right time.
Speaker 2:Now OK, with intellectual strategies. Your company now is your bread and butter. Startup tech companies or you just clear across can do multiple industries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we can do quite a bit because of the breadth of skills with our team, but we tend to focus on innovators right. Our companies tend to be from kind of three or four buckets. It's the e-commerce companies, because they're often building new products that they want utility and design patents on and they're building new brands around those products. They want trademarks, and then, of course, putting everything else around that in the business the entity formation and maybe fundraising, so supplier contracts, stuff like that. So e-commerce is pretty popular for us.
Speaker 3:Saas companies are also popular. They're doing a lot of the same things. Their products may or may not have patents on them, depending on you know how, how unique they are. Branding is important for them. Branding is important for every company. And then, of course, building the team, getting the investments coming in and scaling. They tend to run to it because their teams grow faster. They tend to run into employment issues more often. And so there's you know, like every business, you have all the disciplines. You just have fewer people wearing more hats, but you still have all the potential problems of all those disciplines. So e-commerce and SaaS. And then we have another bucket I often call it deep tech, but we have kind of your tech R&D guys the government-funded PhDs solving problems 20 years from now we help do a lot of patent work for them. Phds solving problems 20 years from now we help do a lot of patent work for them. And then we have just tech-centered B2B companies.
Speaker 2:So sometimes we get, you know, that's where maybe the catch-all category for us Now, I mean, this just blows my mind All these companies have all these legal challenges, especially a startup company, when it comes to pretty much all these tech companies.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, the short answer is yes.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I call them all challenges, right, but you think about the stages a company goes through. We help people from the time that they you know our innovators, especially our inventor innovators they come to us before they even start their company, Like I want to get my idea patent pending, so I have protection in place. And then they go off and they find a founder and they say, hey, we got to start a company. How do we set up our company? How do we structure it? So there's, you know, the right equity split, the right vesting in place, so there's legal documentation that goes around. That it's different and it's more than if you just, you know, say, went to your local Department of Commerce in your state and got online and filed a $100 LLC or something like that. You know what I mean, right? Yeah, of course People do that, and sometimes they're able to get away with it until a problem arises. But you know, so we'll help people structure their entities from day one, and sometimes they're able to get away with it until a problem arises. But you know, so we'll help people structure their entities from day one or clean up those entities later when a problem does come up.
Speaker 3:But if you just look at the growth of a company, from idea to founders, to team, to customers, to, you know, product launch to supply chain to distribution, to you know, to product launch to supply chain to distribution, and then as you get big enough, the unfortunate trend we see is that when clients become successful enough, or they appear successful enough, then you start getting the maybe we'll call them the leeches right? The people who come in and they're like I'm going to sue that company. The customers who are like I want a piece of that. You know you didn't process my request the right way, or your website isn't accessible or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:You see a lot of people where successful companies have their. They appear to have more money they don't always have more money, but they appear to and they start to get into bigger deals that go south sometimes. Or they just have people who come out and they say, hey, you know, it's the American way. I want a piece of that success and I'm going to, you know, sue you for whatever I can think of to try to get a small slice that's not large enough for you to really defend yourself, but it's big enough to be worth my time.
Speaker 2:Jeff, you're going to laugh, man, yeah, this is such a litigious society that we live in. But everything that I mean you just spoke Greek to me because I've never thought about and you know, heck, I'm a little older than you Dial up, heck, I'm a little older than you dial up I don't ever recall thinking I need to sue this company because, you know, I think that their website is wonky or, you know, I don't like the product or the product's making too much money. I mean, maybe I'm old school, but I'm the type that if I slipped and fell at Kroger's or Safeway or Alberbertson's, whatever, I wouldn't even sue. I would do the walk of shame because I'd be so embarrassed stand up and look, look around right though, man, in the grand scheme of things, we.
Speaker 2:I mean that. That's why it's insane, because people just want to make a quick buck.
Speaker 3:Yeah and it might be partly generational, but what it is is most. Fortunately, most of the world is more like you and me than they are, like these litigants that are out there. Or we might even blame the attorneys, who kind of create the opportunity for these litigants to just be puppets in their hands and they probably make a slice out of what the attorneys are actually making by driving this type of stuff. That's not the way the world, you know, in general works. But again you get big enough. You know I've got clients that are based here in Utah or other places and they get pulled into these disputes that are, you know, coming from other states, just randomly, and a lot of times, you know, sometimes they're legitimate, legally based disputes over things, but other times they're just really opportunistic lawyers pushing for some, you know some path to their own revenue.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, Well, that explains, too, what you talk about, because when it comes to tech I mean, I think I mastered the abacus in the word processor when you start talking about, you know, the first thing that you need to get is all your patents, pretty much right, so somebody doesn't lo and behold, copy and make money off of your hard-earned idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and patents in particular have kind of a quick fuse on them. Right, you've got to. For the US and most countries you have to file for patent protection before you do any type of disclosure or you show it to anybody, you offer it for sale, you actually sell it. You've got to do that first, otherwise you restrict yourself by law from being able to get a patent on that item later. So there are really quick time fuses on that in particular, which is why people need to do that very soon, otherwise you won't be able to.
Speaker 3:We have a lot of companies who come to us after, again, they've been through the first rounder or, excuse me, the first time founder cycle and the second time around they're like, hey, I want to do this right, I didn't do much the first time time of the round. They're like, hey, I want to do this, right, I didn't, I didn't do much the first time. But now that I'm on my second or third product or I'm on my second company, like I know what I didn't know before and I and I know that there's still going to be things I need. I know some more things I need to do and I know there's still gonna be some things that you can help me know to do that I still don't know how to do so the For the second round, or the third company, the fourth company.
Speaker 2:it's like you touch the hot stove. Oh yeah, you know what not to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly right. We see a lot of companies and it just is the way it is right. I wrote a LinkedIn post the other day. I'm like, hey, listen, if you I don't remember exactly what like, sometimes the world's crumbling around you or you've got this closet full of legal skeletons or other non-legal issues and stuff's just wearing you down. You're not alone, right?
Speaker 3:I've seen behind the curtain of a lot of different companies and a lot of it's Wizard of Oz stuff. It's like the great Oz shows up in front of the curtain but you look behind it. It's a mess. Sometimes it's fixable, sometimes it's not. Sometimes really successful companies, popular companies, well-known companies, are much less viable behind the curtain. And that's not to shame anybody into saying, man, these guys are doing it wrong. It's just to say a lot of people have you got to learn it one way or another? You know it's a refiner's fire and if you're, if you're, you're either going through it yourself or you're, or you're learning from good people who've been down that road or good advisors who've seen down that road a lot further than you've been.
Speaker 2:Well, not only good advisors, but the one thing. Just reading everything about you Well, not only good advisors, but the one thing. Just reading everything about you, I mean this is something that most attorneys, or most people, are great at one thing. I mean, here you've got an MBA, you've got your electrical engineering degree as well. You're an attorney, you're an entrepreneur. I mean you have all the facets covered.
Speaker 2:Most people you know are good at one thing and they stick to the one thing and everything else. This way, I mean, like you're an entrepreneur, you're, you're also an attorney. So so you, you have empathy, but you also you have the street smarts of all all this different stuff. Because you know most attorneys, their undergrad is like in poli, sci. You know, here you have an mba and and an entrepreneur. So you know, I know it's Holy Week and you know Catholic guy here, but it's like do I want to go speak to my priest about something important or do I want somebody that has skin in the game, like you. That you know, yes, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, mba, attorney, you know the ins and outs. You've also with all these different companies that you help with, the fractional legal, you'd be like, hey, omar, this is. I mean you can literally not only the legality but you know give proper, sound advice, just with all the experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I didn't have that engineer deep inside of me, you'd be making me blush right now. But no, it's. You know. Some people say what is it, jack of all trades, master of none? You know there's trade-off, right?
Speaker 3:This again goes back to why we built our team the way we did because companies often need somebody in there, somebody acting as what we call a general counsel for that company, somebody who can come in, they can issue spot, they can see broadly. They may not be the specialist in every area, but they know where to look, which corners to look around and which rocks to pick up. And so that's really how my career has evolved from a really niche patent guy for 15 years into a broader general counsel role, but knowing that there are areas that require depth, you know we've brought people onto our team who have that depth and then as a team we can surface both broad and deep. And it's allowed me if I can maybe add a little bit to what you said, it's allowed me to use my background to really become what I call a translator, right? I can help facilitate that communication from the business team, the executives in the company, to the investors, to the innovators in the company, the inventors I mean, let's face it, they speak different languages, right. And then we can take that into the legal context and we can have simplified conversations around most topics, rather than.
Speaker 3:You know I've worked with a lot of attorneys and you give them a contract and the first thing you're going to do is send you you know it's a 12-page contract. They're going to send you 15 pages of red lines back because they've issue spotted all these things to the nth degree. And you know, the question is is that helpful? Is an entrepreneur going to be able to leverage that into something easily or not? And most of the times the answer is no. So depth sometimes results in a little bit more of that complexity, and it's helpful to have somebody on the team who can bring that back and translate and say, hey, this is what we're really going for. Let's keep it at the right level.
Speaker 2:Now with the fractional legal team that you provide. Now, I'm assuming, with these startups, these founders, venture capitalists, all that, there's a lot of handholding at the very beginning, right, it's like If they'll let me, if they'll let me.
Speaker 3:I'm like that kid trying to grab some stranger's hand and the stranger's pulling it back like who is this guy? But I'm there trying to handhold, yes.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm sure it's like sometimes it's a tug of war because as entrepreneurs we're all narcissists, we all think we have all the answers. You know, okay, jeff, sure, sure, sure I, you know, even though they've got, you know they're green when it comes to all this and you know you have all this expert advice and they're like no, no, jeff. But I'm sure, when it comes to patents, when it comes to just getting everything off the ground, it, you, you, provide a lot more. And then you know, once things are settled in, it's more just hey, I need something, jeff, correct, just a phone call or whatnot. Compared to it's like climbing up a hill or going down. At first it's like a lot of you and a lot of your company, and then more it's probably it's more advisory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the way I would explain it and the point that I love to get at is when we have a client who emails us you know we've been working with them on a project or several projects over the course of time and they finally say they say something like this. They're like hey, jeff, or hey, you know, team, we're so glad, we're so glad to have you on the team, it's great that you're on our team with us. And so as soon as a client says to me, hey, we're glad you're on our team, I'm like yes, that is, that is the like, the first major milestone I want to hit with our relationship. You think of us as your team, because that's, that's how we want to operate. We don't want to be hey, I don't, I don't want to call the attorney if I don't have to. That's, that's not a team member mentality, right? So if they can treat us and think of us as just an extension of their team, I think we're winning.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because it's like, the person that's like has that pays for the insurance health insurance or whatnot. I don't want to run up a bill. I have a high deductible. Let's not go Arms bleeding out or you know they're having a stroke. I think I'm okay. You know, maybe I'll.
Speaker 3:Oh, it sounds like you've got kids too.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, two of them with a lot of travel, a lot of injuries there. Yeah, so definitely. And I got to say I love the website so we're going to promote it. Intellectualstrategiescom A guy like me who, like I said, when it comes to I just know how to turn on, turn off the computer. But you break it down literally on what you can offer. Literally on what you can offer, and the best part is you even talk about how you know. Yeah, we all have brilliant ideas, disruptive solutions to meaningful problems, but hey, you need an answer because we'll turn the engineering and legal speak into practical business advice. And right there, that's like you know, being a former journalist. Right there just says it all.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. Yeah, I probably have to. That's probably a phrase that my marketing buddy, who did that website, came up with himself, because you know, working with him, I'm always trying to improve what I do, but so when he said something like that, I'm like that sounds Well, you're in the background dude. It would have never had something like that. No, I would have been like let me tell you the chronological order of everything that happens.
Speaker 2:You would have been that step to step. You know it would have been like office space, that's that. You know that we don't need. You know the engineers can't sell.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take that as a compliment, can't?
Speaker 2:sell. I'm going to take that as a compliment. No, it's funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've, I've, I've been in. You know, I've been in some pitch meetings before and I remember one in particular. I flew to Denver for a client and we were, we were. He wanted me to be there to help pitch an investment. I ended up actually doing the pitch for him and and and I said, hey, we're really excited about this product, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the whole room just sits there kind of quiet and I know that my personality is a little flat sometimes, so I look around the room. I said I'm an engineer, so let me say that again with a little more emphasis. So you know, I'm actually excited about this and I told it again more animated, and I think everybody was more amused with the engineer joke than they were maybe with the, with the idea itself.
Speaker 2:But Well, cause you know it's from either off office space or a lot of my fraternity brothers were engineers and you know their, their personality is not exactly type A personality. When you think of an engineer you're like that's not going to be the guy with the lampshade on his head.
Speaker 3:Not on purpose. Yeah, engineering journalism, that was probably quite the mix.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, no, we had a different mindset, myself, we had a different mindset myself. So that's where you learned to carry 90% of the conversation, I imagine. Oh well, no man, I'm like. When it comes to my personality, I'm more like an engineer man. I was an only child, so super introvert. This is like me pushing way past my comfort zone. Yeah, when people meet me, they're like taken aback because they're expecting the very talkative. And I'm like no, yeah, yeah no. Well maybe being with the sales guy.
Speaker 3:Maybe being with a bunch of engineers helped draw the journalists out then.
Speaker 2:True, true, true, definitely. So, looking at the, you can only now you do all across the country or just primarily in the Utah, california.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a great question. I'm licensed personally in Utah and California. We've got attorneys licensed in a couple other states. Law to a very large extent is jurisdictional, so we have to cater to and work with clients that are located in our jurisdictions. However, some of the types of practice that we do are considered federal areas of practice. So patents and trademarks, in particular copyrights, ip, things like that have a federal component to them, and so we have a lot of clients who will call us again. Because we're kind of IP-centric with our clients and technology and branding-centric. We actually get a lot of clients from across the country and even have a pretty large contingency of clients that come from a few other countries. Right now we're working with clients from Australia and New Zealand, I think. I think is it Netherlands or what's the other one Brussels, you know Belgium, I think We've got somebody in the UK. We've got somebody in South America, I think they're in Argentina.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so we have several clients that come to us because they want that federal patent trademark work done or things like that, or they want to come into the US and begin building their business here that they've maybe started to build outside the country. So I will say, yes, a lot of it stems from where we are locally here in Utah and Arizona, but I bet you more than half of our clients have things going on outside of Utah too.
Speaker 2:Okay. Also, though, in the tech aspect, Utah, California, pretty much a lot of the companies.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's a. It's a good sampling. You know Utah. We think of ourselves, maybe with a little hubris, and say we're, we're just like California. There's a, there's a. The slogan here is Silicon slopes Sorry, no, that's the. That's a slogan here is Silicon Slopes Sorry, no, that's the slogan for California. I lived in Silicon Valley for a while, so Silicon Valley in the San Jose area, the Bay Area, and then here we use the term Silicon Slopes, so Silicon Valley, silicon Slopes, because I think a reference to the ski resorts and stuff like that, and I think that's been something you used here for a while. So there is quite a bit of software and e-commerce startup life here in Utah too. It's a good place to be.
Speaker 2:So intellectual property, now again the patent I get federal, but now somebody in another country. It's universal.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a great question. Patent work is all country by country, so if you want to get a patent.
Speaker 3:Most people who want to patent anywhere in the world also want to get a patent here in the US because they're likely going to be selling their product or using their invention here in the US in some way. If you're here in the US, that's an easy choice because you're already here. You're like this is where I live, I'm going to get a patent here. If you're, again, one of our e-commerce clients out of Australia, you may or may not get a patent in Australia, but you're probably definitely going to get a patent here in the US and maybe look to get a patent in, you know, china or somewhere where you're manufacturing your product.
Speaker 3:But for patents you do need to. You need to look country by country and you need to make some, you know, decisions for budget purposes and strategic purposes to say where am I going to sell my product? Where do I make my product? Where you know where's my product, what are the kind of logistical channels that my product goes through, where are my competitors located those types of things to determine which countries you might select for your patent protection and trademark protection can follow that same logic to a large degree, to a large degree.
Speaker 2:So trademark protection, literally like all.
Speaker 3:you pretty much have to get a patent on on everything If you're a as, a as an innovative company, yeah Well, so so patents protect new and useful inventions, and so that's kind of the structural. Well, there's two types that are applicable to most people. There's a utility patent that protects the structure and the functional invention, right, so if I have a new thing, a new product, a new device, a new machine, a new, maybe a software process, if it applies, those things that do things that would be a utility patent protection, do things that would be a utility patent protection. There's also design patents. Designs protect the kind of the ornamental style, the look of a product, and so it's not about how it's made or what's inside of it or how it functions, it's all about what it looks like. You know, and so you may have heard several years ago I forget how many about some battles that involved Apple and the shape of the rounded corners on their phones being protected as ornamental, stylistic designs with design patents. And then design patents can in a sense have some overlap with trademarks.
Speaker 3:Trademarks aren't about invention so much as they're about the brand. So what are the elements that you've either created or adopted to use to identify your brand as the source of products and services? So, for example, for us, intellectual strategies is part of our brand. It's one of our brand assets and I've got a registered trademark on that. I think it's that one there on my shelf, you know. But you can get a. You know you might protect branding elements that are used for your business name. You might protect branding assets that are used for product and service names. This is where you think about, okay, logos and maybe colors, sometimes even sounds. In a few cases you can protect all of those if you meet the criteria to get trademark protection for those.
Speaker 1:So there are different layers and a lot of intellectual property.
Speaker 3:It's maybe useful to think of it as layers, because you have patents for the inventions that you create. You have trademarks for the brand assets that you adopt and use. You have copyrights for the what we call works of authorship the new scripts, books, lyrics, paintings, photos, the new things that you create. That's all copyright. And then you have a fourth level, which is trade secrets, which many people are actually not very good at, but I think that they have in their business and maybe do. But those four layers if you think of any business you can, you can kind of identify that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, these types of businesses are going to maybe emphasize different layers more, but you can usually draw from multiple layers in what you're doing in your business to create this ring of protection around your business. If you want to do that, you just it went way over my head. I got it.
Speaker 3:It's recorded. We can re-listen to it later, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:We can, we can, we can, we listen to it later, exactly, exactly, it sort of reminded me of. It was like when, a first day, first semester, my sophomore junior year, and I was in the wrong class. Like I said, I was a journalist, so I was in an engineering class, but I didn't want to get up because, like I was in the middle and you know everybody's taking, like you know, they're furiously taking all these, these notes.
Speaker 3:I'm like writing down equations and writing down equations and I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2:Like you know, everybody's like looking at me like man, this guy's either doogie hauser or it's insane, and it was really. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I just, you know, I didn't want to make a scene, so I just stayed there for 45, 50 minutes, but yeah, no, I Well.
Speaker 3:If it makes you feel any better, it's. It's quite possible that I and other people that I was in engineering with also went into those first days of classes and sat there stunned like you did. So it's a lot of information to take in and sometimes difficult to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. No, I got the concept of copyrights and trademarks, but when? You went, you did the deep dive.
Speaker 3:Well, we'll stay at just a couple of the layers then we don't need to deep dive all of them. But you'll have audience members who are probably familiar with that, or maybe haven't thought oh yeah, definitely definitely.
Speaker 3:They probably haven't thought necessarily, in the past, like you know, they created a new product, they went to China and manufactured something of their own or they, you know, do it here in the States and they probably haven't thought, oh, should I actually? You know, I didn't know I should patent this type of thing, and so that's what we're really trying to do is help people see around those corners that they haven't been down before.
Speaker 2:Well, they should literally consult with intellectual strategies before someone snipes, steals their ideas, steals their hard work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're happy to chat with people, for sure.
Speaker 2:Now, ultimately. Well, here's just a question out of the blue, because you're talking about commerce, You're talking about a lot of moving parts. Are you getting a lot of clients that are fearful of all these new tariffs or talks of tariffs?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yes for sure. I'm actually headed to China for part of the Canton Fair next week with some clients. I'm going out there partly for business, partly because I've enjoyed being in China in the past and I've never been to the Canton Fair, so I want to go see it. But yeah, I mean, when 245% increase in tariffs you know, potential tariffs from China are announced, I think it stuns everybody. I was just reading some group posts about that. China are announced, I think it stuns everybody. I was just reading some group posts about that and it is.
Speaker 3:It's like, you know, it's the Wild West in a way, like what's actually going to happen. And you know, I believe that, without getting political, I believe that Trump thinks that what he's doing is acting as a strong negotiator here. Whether or not it'll work or backfire, I don't think any of us know, and we might have our beliefs in one direction or another oh, it's definitely going to work, or it's definitely not going to work. The engineering in me says, hey, we can hope and believe one way or the other, all we want, but in the end I'm hopeful that it will resolve itself. I just don't know which direction it'll be, but there's a lot of that going around, and I would say inventors, especially just because I've worked with probably a thousand inventors.
Speaker 3:Inventors operate in this really strange balance between extreme optimism, like I have created something new that nobody else has and I want to like this is my baby. I want to, I want to grow this baby into something that doesn't exist. That's extreme optimism, and at the same time, there's this deep layer of fear. I think for a lot of them like hey, you know, someone's going to steal my baby. I've got a baby, but someone's going to take them or someone's going to do something, and so that's sometimes a driving factor for inventors.
Speaker 3:And it led me probably 12 or 15 years ago, as I was thinking about how I interact with people. I'm like, if there's something I could do for my inventor clients, or maybe even all my clients, what I would love to do for them is what I eventually adopted as my slogan for my law firm, and that is innovate with confidence. You know how do I help my clients, and the same thing would apply how do I help my kids? How do I help my family? Right? How do I help myself? How do I help my clients? Maybe recognize the different types of fear that are out there, or what is driving the types of fear that's driving them, and how do I help them gain the knowledge and take the actions to become more confident towards the direction that they want to go? So innovate with confidence is really a driving, not just a slogan, but kind of a driving philosophy for me.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not only that philosophy, but just I mean we had to take emotions out of it, out of any decision, because I mean everybody just a knee-jerk reaction when the stock market's going through a major correction because of the uncertainty of what's going to happen. Are we going to have the tariffs? Aren't we going to? Maybe yes or no? So, in general, you can't come from a place of fear, and that's in personal development, business development, that's business decision, that's being married, whatever. A lot of times it's easier to say, but it's the right thing to do is try to keep all emotion, especially fear, because when you fear and you panic, that's when we do unsound decisions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we often do, and, you know, I like to think of it as, maybe, from a practical approach, you know, how do we overcome fear? Fear is, at least from my perspective, fear is all about. It's about kind of futurizing things that might happen, and so we're always afraid of the future. You're never afraid of the past. You might have some remorse or you might have some regret or, you know, remember things with pleasure, but you don't ever fear the past, right? You only fear the future, and the only thing that I know how to do to turn the future into the present is take action. So, you know, I think, despite the fact that we all deal with different types and levels of fears and I'm not really getting into the psychological side of it because that's not my expertise but I think we all have some layer of fear in us and I think that action brings the future into the present and resolves those fears to help us build confidence.
Speaker 2:I like that answer. So how often do you go to China? Or is this just a one-off, just because of oh?
Speaker 3:I went four or five times working with another client in the past before COVID. I have not been back since COVID, but I'll say China and some other trips. At that point in time, going out, you know, we did a kind of a world trip for two and a half weeks with my MBA program. It just it lit something in me that I did not know existed to go out and travel internationally like that and see, you know, see and experience other cultures and places, I it, it's one of the things that I absolutely love in life. And so when a when a client and a friend said, hey, you should come out and join me and my group for a week or two out in China, I said yeah, I'm there, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I don't blame you at all. Now, jeff, how can my audience find you? Not only through your company, which is Intellectual, is intellectual strategies, but you do post on linkedin. You, you do post and you have amazing content that oh thank you, I I would say people need to. I just like that youtube video that your, your publicist, sent. It's you're, you're. You have a lot of when it comes to knowledge. You don't hold back, you don't live in scarcity. You let everybody know, you give out that information. So how can people find you? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Well, you mentioned LinkedIn. I'm on there quite a bit and I love taking connections. Just make sure you don't look like somebody trying to sell me something off the bat and I'll probably connect with you without a problem. Or mention that you saw me on the show, you heard me on the show and I'm happy to connect. I just love being connected with innovators because I want to hear what they're working on too.
Speaker 3:The other thing we do is from our website, intellectualstrategiescom that you mentioned. People can get on there and you can actually see my calendar, and if you're looking for some potential help with legal issues, you can book a call. We do a free 30-minute strategy call. I love hearing what people are working on, what their goals and dreams are that they're trying to bring to life, maybe what messes they might have caused already that require a little legal attention, and also the milestones right, we'll probably talk on that call about the next 12 to 18 months of milestones in your business or what you're working on, and then I can kind of help translate those business milestones into maybe the legal things you should be thinking about as each of those milestones is coming up. So we really try to roadmap out for people from where they are and where they've been to where they're headed in the next. You know, 12 months or so.
Speaker 2:It's a no brainer if literally to jump in on a call with you to see you know how intellectual strategies with you know fractional counsel, I mean, to me that's a no-brainer. I mean if I was an upstart or if I was a founder, because you're going to tell me the good, the bad, the ugly. Oh yeah, yes you will.
Speaker 2:You're not going to hold back and right there you're saving time. You're condensing time Because a lot of right there you're saving time. You're condensing time because a lot of times, entrepreneurs, founders I said earlier, we're narcissists. We believe we have all the answers, but then we touch that stove and sometimes we're slow learners, so we'll touch it again and we're in a world of pain, we're in a world of hurt, and you can prevent that and you can save time, which is the most valuable resource.
Speaker 3:We usually do on those calls have somebody that somebody will usually say at the end of that like well, I meant to call you about this topic, but you mentioned this and this that I hadn't thought about, so now I got to go figure out what I need to do there. So now I got to go figure out what I need to do there. So we're pretty good at bringing in new perspective and insights that maybe people haven't thought about, because, again, we're kind of pointing out the corners where the monsters live ahead of them that they're not necessarily aware of right now.
Speaker 2:Jeff, I got to ask you this, yeah, because I see it on your publicist that sent this. So this will be my last question to you.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And this isn't for a venture capitalist, a founder. Just what advice would you give? Because it says effective business strategies for success? What can we all do right now to implement to get that to, just for any strategy to live a successful life?
Speaker 3:a framework that I've developed and used. We won't go into it here. It's kind of five steps for any business to think about their business strategy. I think there are some parallels to personal life and out of the five components, I think the one that people miss most often, especially in their business, is identifying the business leadership objective that you're going towards right. We all think about competitive advantage and we think about putting a plan in place and those types of things, but I think we forget to say, hey, what is the? Not just where am I going, but what's the business leadership objective?
Speaker 3:What do I want to be known for in the industry or the personal sphere that I'm in? What do I want to be known for as a leader? And I want to work towards that. Right, because I think that just laser focuses us in instead of saying we're going to double the size of the company in the next 12 months or whatever. That's not really a strategy in my mind. But but if you say, hey, I want to, I want to work towards becoming this type of leader in this environment, then you've you've really got focus on where you're headed and you can tailor everything else you do, where you put your energy, the types of IP you might be building, or the you know perhaps where you spend your, where you spend your time in your personal life towards that really specific, concrete objective. So that would be my advice Figure out your business leadership of leadership objective.
Speaker 2:That's sound advice, jeff. Thanks man. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for having empathy and rescheduling. Thank you for the opportunity of speaking with me. I'm completely honored. So Jeff Holman not only is an engineer, he's an attorney MBA. Not only is he an engineer, he's an attorney MBA, founder of intellectual strategies, entrepreneur, all-around great guy. He's the modern-day renaissance man. Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 3:Omar, it's been my pleasure, Omar. Thanks so much. Thank you. What if it did work?