The Aspirant Podcast
Hello, incredible entrepreneurs, and welcome to 'The Aspirant Podcast!' I’m your host, Natasha Clawson, a Digital Marketing Educator and Strategist, and I’m here to help you build a business that doesn’t just work but thrives—and feels good while doing it.
🌟 Every week, we explore actionable business wisdom designed to help you create a business that aligns with your values, generates the income you desire, and operates like a well-oiled machine with the right systems, processes, and automation in place.
Imagine a business where taking consistent action is purposeful and attracts the clients you actually want to work with. So doing the work you love is more than just a goal—it’s your everyday reality.
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The Aspirant Podcast
Stephanie Pottick - Navigating Business Legalities and Protecting Intellectual Property
Ever wondered how to safeguard your business while staying focused on what you love? This week, I sat down with Stephanie Pottick, a business and trademark attorney with a unique perspective. Before becoming a lawyer, Stephanie spent 14 years in the toy industry, working on iconic products like Wizard of Oz dolls and Sesame Street toys. Now, she combines her business expertise with legal know-how to help entrepreneurs protect their businesses and thrive.
In this episode, Stephanie breaks down intimidating legal topics into simple, actionable steps. We discuss:
- Why protecting your intellectual property is essential (and how it can make you money).
- What business owners should know about trademarks, copyrights, and contracts.
- The pitfalls of skipping insurance or waiting too long to protect your assets.
- How to balance taking smart risks while limiting your liability.
Whether you're a course creator, coach, or small business owner, Stephanie’s advice will help you navigate the legal maze with confidence and clarity. Plus, you'll learn why she actually loves reading contracts (and how her passion translates into better protection for her clients).
Tune in to learn how to build a legally sound business foundation so you can focus on growing with peace of mind!
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Connect with Stephanie:
Pottick Law Services
LinkedIn
Protect For Success Course
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Hello everyone. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Stephanie Podek, a business and trademark attorney. She has a really unique background. Before diving into all the law aspects here, we would love to hear about Stephanie's experience in the toy industry and how that relates to what you're doing now.
Stephanie Pottick :Oh. So thank you for having me on, Natasha, I'm so excited to be here and chat with you. So yeah, I'm not a typical attorney. I actually worked in the toy industry on the business side before becoming an attorney, so I have lots of business experience. So everything from sales and marketing to product creation to logistics manufacturing. I used to go overseas, to China, to our factories. We did products like Wizard of Oz dolls and some Sesame Street toys, so you've probably seen some of our stuff and yeah. And then you know I always wanted to go to law school and you know I just decided after, well, after 14 years in the toy industry, I decided I did want to go back to law school and I did. And that was basically it. I focus on protecting companies, like, like we were, to kind of help them navigate the legal maze and stay out of trouble.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and was there a specific thing that motivated you to make the switch?
Stephanie Pottick :you know, in your experience at at that toy company, so I mean, I always did love reading the legal agreement, so I would read our licensing agreements. As a non-lawyer Can.
Natasha Clawson:I can I pause you. You said, that was fun.
Stephanie Pottick :Oh, yeah, that's you know what? That's probably. That. That's probably. Yes, I'm one of the few people who's going to say that reading contracts is fun. I really try to read every word because every word matters, so, yeah, so before I became an attorney, I would read them, you know, as a business person, and then you really start to understand. But I guess I had a knack for it. I just love doing it. So, so yeah, I always wanted to do that. And then, to be honest with you, it was frustrating sometimes working with our attorneys, because I'd always feel like, why don't you understand our business? And I thought, if I go back to law school, that's something that I'm going to take to my clients, which is understanding their business and identifying issues before they even run into them. So just because my slogan, my legal slogan, is legal advice before you need a lawyer, because I think whatever you can do upfront, proactively, can save you time, money, aggravation and costly lawsuits in the future.
Natasha Clawson:Yes, that's so important to do things upfront, because I think you know what can happen is you end up in a mess, and that's when you go oh, I wish I had done X, y, z, and you never want to be in that situation. I just want to highlight two things you said, though, which are amazing, because we all have different gifts and for a lot of people, law you know, it's intimidating. We don't even want to think about it. Hopefully, today we're going to make that conversation a lot more fun and change the mindset, but finding someone who really enjoys the work they're doing so I love hearing that about you, and you know it makes such a difference.
Natasha Clawson:Working with someone who's passionate about it and really wanting to understand their business Don't understand how you know you could write contracts well if you don't have that down. So those are really important things, and I love hearing that. So let's chat a little bit about the legal basics and give some people some perspective. So what? So? One reason let's see what drives your mission to help business owners navigate the legal side of things to help business owners navigate the legal side of things.
Stephanie Pottick :So I mean, I, I really I just I just love working with people and helping them identify and protect what they have so they can make money from it. I think, probably because I miss the toy industry and being creative and I do live vicariously through my clients because everyone does something a little bit different and I really it's one of those things where I just feel that anyone in business doing well will help all of us. And it's really one of those things where if someone learns one issue, one risk, one, something to prevent them from getting into trouble, that can be a game changer for anybody's business. I've spoken at a toy fair in New York and licensing expo in Vegas and for different groups and you know, at the end most rewarding thing for me is when someone comes up to me and says, oh my God, I didn't realize about that, whatever you know trademark, you could protect this or do this. And then I just I think, wow, okay, good, I did something good, and then they'll walk away and be able to protect themselves.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and with that in mind, where do you suggest business owners start when they're thinking about protecting their business? What things come to mind for that?
Stephanie Pottick :Wow. So, honestly, it's probably dependent on what you're doing, right? So if you're starting a toy company and you're creating toy products, that's you're going to have different risks. You're going to want to make sure you have product liability insurance you do safety testing versus someone who's really doing an online course, you know then then you're going to want to think about different things, but there are basics, right, the goal is to limit your liability. That's my thought.
Stephanie Pottick :You want to say, okay, I'm starting a business, you know what? What exposure do I have? Should I be forming a separate legal entity? You should definitely talk not only to a lawyer, but an accountant about that, because there are tax ramifications. So, like in California, if you're opening an LLC, you have I think it's $800, whether or not you transact any business, so it's actually financially impacting you too. So there's that. And then think about, maybe insurance. And you know, no matter what you're doing, whether it's a product, a service, a digital product, an online course you kind of want to think of it this way what am I creating, what do I have, how can I protect it, and then how can I make money from it? All kind of with that lens of what do you want to do?
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and I've heard something important too there is insurance. And you know I've been in business for over 10 years, working with a lot of people starting their business or been in business for a few years, and I can't tell you how many people I have met who have no insurance. And you know, like you said, we're trying to limit our liability. You're never going to have zero risk in a business, but you don't want to be caught in a situation where you wish you had insurance or you would wish you'd had legal advice earlier, because the cost I mean it could cost you your whole business and even beyond that right, because there can be things that you can be responsible for if you don't plan and have insurance for those things.
Stephanie Pottick :You're a hundred percent. I'm glad you bring this up. So first of all, in full disclosure everyone I've worked with Natasha. She's amazing.
Natasha Clawson:Okay.
Stephanie Pottick :My logo is some marketing. She is amazing. So I have to say I've loved working with you and you get it. You totally get it In terms of yeah, in terms of insurance, or taking those risks. I completely agree Something you know just one misstep can cost you your business. So I think you bring up really good points.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and one thing is a term we hear a lot is the ip intellectual property and I don't even think that everyone knows what that means. Could we define that and simple terms so our audience understands and see how that fits into the discussion of, you know, protecting our ip or intellectual property?
Stephanie Pottick :sure so. And and, by the way, going back to something you said earlier, it's so true, legal does not have to be overwhelming. There are, just if you know, you can just learn simple things to help guide you. That's going to be super helpful. Okay so, and I totally get it right when I go remember I was a business person. Then, after I became an attorney, I would go to networking meetings and people would be like, oh, what do you do? And I say, oh, I'm an attorney. They couldn't cut and run fast enough, so I started putting like just a big happy face on my badge. So people would know don't you know? Don't worry, don't run, it's okay.
Natasha Clawson:Um anyway, that's really, really afraid of the, that.
Stephanie Pottick :That's how afraid people are of these things that they're running away from you. It's true, you're honestly working with a lawyer and any other professional. You should feel like that person is helping, moving, moving your needle forward, so anyway. So yes, getting to the the IP. Really, there are four main types of intellectual property or IP, but we really, you know, mostly deal with the first two, which are trademarks and copyrights. And then there are patents and trade secrets. Trademarks protect your brand. So if you think of Nike Coke, the Nike swoosh, you know it's any symbol that really will. Someone sees it or hears it and knows that's your brand. It can be a slogan like I've trademarked legal advice before. You need a lawyer. You know you, really, with trademarks, they can last forever as long as you're using them and continue to renew them.
Stephanie Pottick :That's a whole other story, the trademark process. But you know that's a really great tool to have and, by the way, this is really cool you can trademark some very unusual things like smells. And did you know that the smell of Play-Doh is trademarked?
Natasha Clawson:Oh, that has such a unique smell. I would never have known that. That's really fun. Thank you for sharing that.
Stephanie Pottick :So, yeah, you know, get creative and then there are copyrights which really protect the creative work. So if you've done an illustration or a logo or a book or any kind of content, then that you know that you can copyright Theoretically. Yeah, so actually you know what I want to, just because it'll be helpful. If you want to learn more about trademarks and patents, you can go to usptogov. They have great resources just to get some information, and then copyrightgov is great for copyrights.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and that first one for the trademarks. You can also look up and see active trademarks that other people hold right, Is that the same website?
Stephanie Pottick :Yes, it is, but yeah, so just to put to you know, just to add a little bit to that, searching can be difficult and they actually recently updated their search function. So if you don't find something right away, don't think you're in the clear. It's great to Google if you're, you know, search online and then search the usptogov. But experienced trademark practitioners like I am, we're looking for more than just the mark. We're looking all around it to see if there's anything that looks confusingly similar, because that's the standard.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, that's really good advice. So I work with a lot of service-based businesses like authors, coaches, course creators, speakers. What kind of assets should they be looking at protecting in their business?
Stephanie Pottick :So that's a great question too, right? So you have to think about what your business is. So I have a separate business. I'm running two businesses and one of them is Protect for Success. So I do online courses. So this is definitely up my alley. You know, it's one of those things where you can't protect an idea, but you can protect your expression of that idea. So you know, based on my experience in business and law, I put together legal courses and I'm like okay, what can you protect around that? This is a great question. You can protect the name, right, I've protected protect for success, um, with trademark, and then some of my materials I have copyrighted. So you know, you really want to be able to figure out and identify what you have. And then you know figure out and identify what you have, and then you know look at your options and then just make the best business decision for you as to what you should be protecting. I hope that answers the question.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, it does. And the next step of that is what are the benefits that those protections give you? So we want to protect it, but like what does that mean? What are we protected from when we do that?
Stephanie Pottick :That's a great question. So really, you're you're creating an asset for your company. You're creating something that you can leverage through licensing right, of course, even though you're going to have a user contract, but technically that's a licensed contract, so contract. So essentially, you know, it's like like okay, I've created something, I'm licensing it to you and then I get to explain how I want you to be able to use it, right, so? So there's that. So you're creating an asset that, even if you want to sell one day sell your business that's adding value. The other thing is to prevent people from infringing. So if you have something that's protected, it's going to be harder for them to infringe and get away with it. So you do have to enforce your intellectual property. However, if someone else started the same exact business using the same exact name and copying my materials, I have a really good case against them.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and if you didn't have the, the trademark and copyright yeah, trademark in place, something like that, is it harder than to enforce those things?
Stephanie Pottick :Yes, so even the Supreme Court. There was a recent decision that you need a copyright registration in order to enforce your copyright. So there are definitely. It definitely gives you benefit, is you know, when it comes to enforcement, for sure.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, so it's definitely very important. Do you have any examples of a business that's really benefited from one of these protections that they put in place?
Stephanie Pottick :can't say specifically right, because client confidentiality. But I started working with a company that you know they had, they had underlying assets and brand names and you know characters and similar, and we were able to protect them. And what happened with that is it allowed them to license. So now you know, coming up with like just an idea in their head, and then they created, we created, they created the characters, we protected them through different means, even contracts, and now they're able to. They have a great business manufacturing and licensing products.
Natasha Clawson:Okay, so they're making money off of that. Basically, correct, correct, correct. Yeah, so that's an example of someone benefiting from it. On the flip side, what are some pitfalls of not taking these protective measures early on?
Stephanie Pottick :So I have a really bad story about that one. Someone that I knew in the toy industry actually came up with a children's property and he actually came up with a children's property and he he had this great name and when he he actually wound up copywriting the pitch deck, but he protected the wrong thing, should have thought about the trademark. So he didn't protect the name, wound up not protecting the name, but thought he had for some reason went to an industry trade show and pitched it to different companies and someone overheard must have overheard it was told. Who knows, I don't know, I don't know the details but wound up trademarking the name before he did. And he was offered a deal but the company actually loved the name and then when he found out he didn't own the name, the deal went away. So he lost the whole. He lost, I mean, god knows what kind of potential revenue, but he lost the deal because someone beat him to it.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, we definitely don't want to be that, and one of the things I know about, because my background is design, is licensing when it comes to logos and things like that. And one of the things we've talked about in the past which is really important and some people don't know, is that just because you're working with a designer and you've paid for work does not mean that you own that work and you can do anything with it, right?
Stephanie Pottick :That is correct. So, as you know, the creator of a work is the owner of that work. So if you create a logo, you own it. You own the IP to that logo, unless we assign it or it's made as a work for hire under contract. So yeah, I think that's a big issue too, IP ownership. So when people are creating and hiring third parties, they need to keep that in mind for sure.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and for logos especially so. For my branding, I always assign I charge an amount that I'm comfortable with assigning the rights over to them, because for your branding you definitely want to own it. You don't want to be licensing that from someone, because that's the face of your brand. You don't want anyone else to be able to tell you what you could do with it down the road. There are certain cases where you know, like patterns, things like that where just a licensing, a license for use you know you want to use it on your packaging or something like that you don't own it outright but you can use it for that purpose Makes total sense. But when it comes to your brand, you want to read those contracts. You want to understand that, and I've also found, unfortunately, that not all designers are educated in this, so they don't always know what's in their contract. So that's something you need to make sure that they understand when you're choosing somebody.
Stephanie Pottick :For sure you know what and I appreciate you saying it because you know, coming from a designer, it's important. And there's a great story I just thought of when you said that it's as a business owner, you want to own the assets that should be owned by your company. There's a brewery I don't remember what the name of it was, I think in the Southeast. So this brewery just sold for $900 million, I think it was and during the sale the guy who designed the logo was like hey, I own the logo. You never got rights to it. And the owner said, yeah, but I paid you. I think it was $500. I paid you $500. And that's it. It's part of the asset.
Stephanie Pottick :He goes no, wound up suing and he sued for 300 million. Right, because part of the part of what was was the you know, the logo. It was that look. So yeah, I don't. I'm pretty sure they must have settled. I'll have to look that up. But but that's a great example of if you don't know, that'll have to look that up. But that's a great example of if you don't know, it can come back and bite you years later.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, it's so important to read those design contracts and understand the licensing and, like we said, especially when it comes to your branding, because that's the face of your brand and you don't want someone coming back later and saying, hey, I own that, especially when you've grown a business. That then becomes more valuable and there's assets in play becomes more valuable and there's you know, assets in play. So I know one of the things we mentioned was infringement and you know someone else infringing on you, but what about things we need to watch for on infringing on someone else? What should we be on the lookout for?
Stephanie Pottick :Well, we could have a whole other conversation, but essentially you want to do your due diligence before posting or creating. So if you come up with a name, it's just really helpful. I think I mentioned earlier, search it first, do as much as you can, right. You know, if you're not an experienced trademark attorney, you're not going to find it all Okay, and nobody can find it all. But you want to search online.
Stephanie Pottick :If you see something that's the same or confusingly similar, then you know, for similar services or products you may want to change your name or modify it. It's, you know, it's definitely a work in progress, so you want to think of that. You can search, you can reverse, search images if you've come up with a character and see if there's anything similar. If you're online before you hit, you know, click and post something and share a photo and a blog or an article or something. You should check where did it come from? Do I have the permission to use it and it's. It's a huge misunderstanding, even if you give credit, if you post a photo and say, oh, I credit doesn't matter, that does not get you around copyright infringement.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, because you didn't get express permission or licensing to use that Correct.
Stephanie Pottick :Correct and even some of the free um, the free images, your free image site. Thank you. Yeah, um, if you read the terms and conditions, which I recommend, read the terms and conditions. I know not fun for most people, but you should. A lot of them say, hey, you can use this for free, but if there's a person in there we can't indemnify you from that. So if someone gets upset or like Mickey mouse is in there, then you could still get in trouble.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, yeah, for the brand. Uh, what do they call that? Not brand recognition, but if you're using someone else's brand, like Mickey mouse, they can come after you. I forget what that's called, but um, yeah, this is so important because this is actually a topic we can touch on real quick. The stock image sites where you buy a license are a better. You know you have to pay a little bit, but they're better in the long run because they afford you protections. I don't know. Again, you have to read the license agreement. But if they don't have a model release for someone in the photos and someone's mad about it, then you actually have some legal protection. With those free sites, you have zero.
Stephanie Pottick :Yep, it's true, it's absolutely true. And even with the and even with the license sites, you have to be careful because editorial, you know there are certain things you can't use anyway, even if you're licensing it like editorial. If it says for editorial use, that's for newsworthy exception, and you can say, oh, I'm reporting news. But if you're not a news reporter then you know you may not be able to get away with that.
Natasha Clawson:Yep. So all of this boils back down to read the licensing. So you know what you're getting into, no matter which site you're using. Yeah agree, awesome. So we've talked a little bit about trademark and copyright. Many business owners might feel like they're too small for some of these things. What would you say to them about that?
Stephanie Pottick :Well, you know, easy now, hard later. Hard now, easy later. It's one of those things where a lot of people think, ok, I'm just starting up, I'm not going to think about any of the legal stuff, and then, unfortunately, until something happens, and then it's, it costs so much more than it should have in the first place. I really think it's important for business owners to start learning just know, spot issues, learn how to spot issues, figure out what you should be doing, learn what your options are and then make the best business decision for you, because you don't have to do all the things at once. Right, you don't have to be like, oh my God, I have to file a trademark and a copyright and a patent and whatever you know and whatever, and all at once. But you really should understand what's going to protect your business, what the foundations are, and you know what order you should be doing it in.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah. So it sounds like this first step is just getting educated, which might be, you know, reading online. It might be meeting with someone like yourself and just evaluating the business and saying here's where your risks are, and then you can decide, hey, here's what I can do now, here's what I'd like to do maybe next year and have a roadmap for that. And then you know where your risks are, and I know that I, for one, sleep easier when I am comfortable with the risks I'm taking, because I've protected the things you know I need to to sleep at night, cause it's all about peace of mind, right? I don't want something to come on me in the future.
Stephanie Pottick :Yeah, and, by the way, not everyone is like that. A lot of people, you know, I've I've come, I've worked with different types of people. Some people say I don't care until the risk comes. And other people say, you know I am, I'm like you, I care until the risk comes. And other people say, you know I am, I'm like you, I'm like you, I'm like I front load whatever protections I can, I trademark I, you know, do do the things and yeah. So I feel much more comfortable too.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and I definitely will admit, I'm a very risk averse person and I'm always the person asking the questions have we done this? Do we need to do this? And some people do not. They have a higher risk tolerance, and so it's just. It's a gamble, right? You don't know with certain things, but none of us know all the future. Like we said, this is just about limiting our liabilities as much as possible, exactly so, all right, we've talked about the next step is maybe talking with someone. How does someone find someone like this? There's tons of options out there right now, from DIY to the world of chat, gpt now, and then you know legal services, where you can get online and pay for contracts, templates, and then all the way to more custom approach, actually working with someone. How do people weigh those options and what advice do you have?
Stephanie Pottick :That's really a tougher one because, it's true, I think we're on information overload and I think also you don't know if the information you're getting is accurate or not. I think that's a big problem, like AI. Let's just say AI for a second. There was an attorney earlier in the year, an attorney who was creating a brief and asked ChatGPT to find case sites for it. And, oh, chatgpt did find case sites for it. And guess what? The court was like hey, these aren't real. So you know they.
Stephanie Pottick :As you were saying when we were chatting earlier, it hallucinates. So you don't know what you're getting. You know you might get if you verify with different places. You know you Google and you go on different browsers and AIs and you're getting a similar message. Great, okay, then you know you're on the right track, but you don't know and a lot of those online legal services too, right, they're just, they're basically like hey, put in your name, put in your, you know what you're doing, but they're not giving you advice. So you still kind of have to teach yourself if you're not gonna get that guidance from them, and I think that that can be a big risk, especially when it comes to templates.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, yeah, and I know templates are really popular. So definitely talking with someone is important because the templates just can't address all of your unique situations and most businesses are unique.
Stephanie Pottick :It's true, and you know I have seen where people just download something from the internet. If you understand, if you really get what you're looking at, it's going to be a lot better. You may not get all the legal nuances and it still won't be perfect, but at least you can feel more confident. If you're just looking at a template excuse me, and you're, you're going through it and you know you're like, oh OK, I'm just going to put in my name. If it doesn't apply to you, it can actually harm you.
Natasha Clawson:What if it's increasing your liability and your risks and you have no idea? I think that's really important. We had actually talked the other day and you said in some cases it could be better not to have a contract than have one at all, if you have bound yourself to something that you didn't understand or was not good for you.
Stephanie Pottick :Yeah yourself to something that you didn't understand or was not good for you. Yeah, actually. So so you say that and I just thought of an example. There was someone that I, um, I met after she signed a contract. And think about this so she was a designer. Had she not signed a contract, the IP would have stayed with her right, because that's the default rule. But she signed a contract that gave away her intellectual property. She thought it was a licensing agreement because it was called a licensing agreement. And then she had signed it and then came to me after the fact and wanted me to review something for one of the royalty and payment provisions. And when I read through it I said, do you realize you signed away your rights? And she's like no, it's called the licensing contract. And I'm like, well, it doesn't matter what it's called, matters what it says. So, exactly to your point.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, and I think the advice there is never sign something that you don't understand. Yeah.
Natasha Clawson:And I think there are some business owners out there too, especially if you're getting a template or something. If they haven't done a due diligence to learn you know what's in that contract, then you also have a problem. So, know what's in your contracts, make sure you understand it, and if you don't get some help, are there situations where business owners might be okay using a DIY service and you know? Do those exist, or do you always recommend working with someone more directly?
Stephanie Pottick :So again, that's a really good question. So you know, sometimes people will file their own copyrights pretty straightforward. There's certain things that, if you feel comfortable doing it and that you're doing it properly, yeah, I mean, when I was in business I would review our licensing agreements. But I had enough knowledge and experience and on the business side excuse me with the deals, to know what to look out for. So I mean, it's tough because I know a lot of people do the DIY and I understand why people think that be you know, working with an attorney or professional is going to be so expensive.
Stephanie Pottick :But I would say ask first, try to find someone first to work through it. You know, through this with and give you guidance. So at least if you're going to do it yourself, you have a good background. Or let's say, you know you want to file your trademark, which that's a huge process, excuse me, that's a huge process and if you get something wrong you can lose your trademark because you have to keep it alive, you have to renew it, you have to answer office actions. But if you understand that, maybe you'll feel more comfortable. If not, then you're just going to lose it immediately.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, so definitely know your stuff if you're going to be doing it, because you might not protect it correctly. So if someone's looking to work with someone, where are some of the places they can go to find someone that they trust? Because I think that can be a barrier sometimes too.
Stephanie Pottick :Yeah, I mean, ask friends, ask connections, you know who they're working with, get referrals. I think that's important. You can go to your local SBA. There are just different industry organizations. You want to find someone, but if you have to search online, then I think it's important to interview more than one professional, whether it's an accountant or an attorney, and you should feel comfortable. I think that's a big thing. People think, okay, I just, you know, have to work with an attorney. No, it's a relationship and you want to feel comfortable with the person that you're working with. So you want to. You know, you want to know they're looking out for you. You want to know they have your best interests at heart and putting you first, not themselves. And in this case I say trust your gut, talk to different people and you, you know if you feel comfortable that's a good sign, yeah, and you should be able to understand what they're saying to you.
Natasha Clawson:It shouldn't be over your head, cause I I've been in situations like that and that's not the right fit.
Stephanie Pottick :No, for sure. The one thing that I do get when I work with people is you know, they're like, wow, thank you for making it easy to understand, and I'm like, yeah, it should be, you don't have to know everything, but it should not be so complicated.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, totally. So another big objection or worry is the cost. So when people think of working with attorney you know thinking expensive bills $300 an hour. But you know, is that the reality is working with an attorney like that costly? Is it more affordable? What do you think there?
Stephanie Pottick :So I think it depends on the situation, right, if you're doing so, if I'm doing a trademark, I'm able to do a flat fee because I've done so many of them. You know, with contract work sometimes it is, you don't know how long it's going to take. But I think in general people should look at it this way they have to value building that foundation, they have to value the legal, because anything they spend up front let's say it's a couple thousand dollars on a trademark that can prevent tens of thousands, if not more, down, you know, down the road for infringement to hire an attorney. Lawsuits average are about 50 to 100,000. There are big companies. They spend millions on legal fees, which is, you know, which is crazy.
Stephanie Pottick :I mean again, I don't, I don't work on litigation, so I you know I'm not making that money, but it's. It's one of those things where if you just spend a little bit upfront and value it like, well, you know we'll find for things that we want to buy our smartphones, you know. So you kind of have to look at it that way and then, depending on what you're doing, you can maybe work out a package with the attorney. But why not ask? It's probably less than people think.
Natasha Clawson:Yeah, that's good advice Ask, get the information. You can always decide to do it later. But also, I think what you said is important because this is a mindset of you know where you're placing your value and if you're not placing value on it because you think your business is too small, that might not be the right option, because in years you could have a really huge, thriving business that wasn't protected properly. So, planning for the future, planning to be successful, and some of us might be playing small, but then, once we've built something, that's when it's going to be crunch time and we're going to go oh no, we haven't done the things.
Stephanie Pottick :Exactly, exactly, that's perfect.
Natasha Clawson:Well, I know this is a huge topic and we could unpack so many different things, but I hope this is giving people an introduction. I would love to have you back. We talked a little bit about AI. I think there's tons of fun things to pack there. As we're going through all these changes and it's such a new territory. There's going to be so much, especially for me as a designer on the image side, and people are using all sorts of images on social media.
Stephanie Pottick :That would be really interesting to have a little chat about yeah, that's a whole that you know what that's worth. That's worth it right there to have that conversation Super important.
Natasha Clawson:So I would love to have you back for that. Before we close, though, I would love to ask you. Would love to have you back for that. Before we close, though, I would love to ask you what is one?
Stephanie Pottick :piece of advice that you would give your younger self. So I would tell my younger self to be more confident, to make sure that I do something that I love, which I do, and don't be afraid to take risks. I think I think you know, sometimes we're afraid to jump in, but that's where you know, that's where you learn and that's where you can get your success.
Natasha Clawson:And that from a business attorney. We can take risks, but we have to just limit our liability and be smart about the risks that we're taking and make sure we're protected Well thank you so much for joining me today.
Stephanie Pottick :Thank you so much for having me and I really anyone listening. I wish you much success, keep going, don't give up and don't let the legal don't sweat the legal stuff. It does not have to be overcomplicated.
