How AI Can Scale Your Business and Your Liability | 201

Season 2 is back, and we are starting with a recast that matters if you use AI at work.

AI can save you hours.

It can also hand you a contract problem, an HR problem, or a customer problem you do not see coming until it costs real money.

I joined Paresa Noble on Entrepreneur’s Circle to talk about the legal traps business owners fall into when they plug AI into operations and treat the output like it is vetted.

We cover what AI gets wrong in contracts, where liability still lands on you, and the mistakes that happen when teams copy, paste, sign, and ship without a review system.

If you use AI for operating agreements, hiring, marketing, customer support, or internal decision making, this episode gives you a practical way to add guardrails, assign ownership, and reduce exposure.

Share this with a business owner using AI right now.

And in the end remember, Don’t Skip the Legal.

Don't Skip the Legal podcast brings you insightful conversations with successful entrepreneurs, providing real-world lessons on business growth, legal considerations, and much more. Subscribe now for more enriching episodes and practical insights for navigating the complexities of the business world.

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Disclaimer:

Please note that the legal information shared in this podcast is for general informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for consulting with a licensed attorney for specific legal matters. Past performance does not indicate future results; every legal case is unique. Consult your own attorney for personalized legal advice.

Transcript

00;00;00;05 - 00;00;23;25
Andrew
Welcome back to the don't Skip the legal podcast. If you've been using AI to move faster, you might be scaling your business and scaling your liability. I'm may kind of Julia, your corporate casual Denver based business attorney, and I'm bringing you the don't skip the legal podcast. Now, I've made a few changes in my law practice, have been building out my crisis and reputation work on the side, but today's episode is a recast.

00;00;24;02 - 00;00;45;12
Andrew
I was recently on the Entrepreneurs Circle with Marissa Noble in a fun twist. She joined me back in episodes 115 and 116 of the don't Skip the legal podcast. And now she's returning the favor and has put me on her show. In that episode, we talk contracts, liability, and the mistakes people make when they plug AI into their operations.

00;00;45;18 - 00;01;03;16
Andrew
So if you know a business owner who is using AI right now, share this episode with them. Let's get into it. And in the end, remember, don't skip the legal good luck.

00;01;03;18 - 00;01;28;06
Andrew
I'm here because your corporate casual, Denver based business attorney bringing you the don't Skip the legal podcast where you can listen in on the real story. It's the real stakes and the real legal lessons from real business owners just like you. These behind the door conversations about business are instrumental to your success. This is where the deals are made, negotiations are discussed, and company problems are identified, leading you to overcoming the challenges we all face in our business.

00;01;28;07 - 00;01;40;28
Andrew
This podcast is your invitation to where the real business happens and also where the best ideas take place. So let's get behind the doors in business and break down these legal lessons. And overall, remember. Don't skip the legal.

00;01;41;01 - 00;02;03;11
Paresa
Entrepreneurship can be really hard. And when you're doing it by yourself trying to navigate the terrain, it can almost be impossible. That's why we created the Entrepreneurs Circle. Every episode, you're going to hear from incredible entrepreneurs who are in the same trenches that you are in. And we're going to talk through what's working, what's not working, whether it be in marketing, finance or anything in between.

00;02;03;12 - 00;02;14;17
Paresa
We're here to talk business and figure out how each of us can rise together. So welcome to the circle. Let's dig in.

00;02;14;20 - 00;02;30;06
Paresa
Welcome to entrepreneurs podcast. My name is Lisa Noble. I am so excited today because we have someone who has been a dear friend to me, a dear mentor. I've known him for years now, which is crazy to think about. Feels like yesterday that we met in B and I.

00;02;30;09 - 00;02;31;19
Andrew
Thought, yes.

00;02;31;21 - 00;02;33;25
Paresa
I'm was so excited to have Andy kind of.

00;02;33;28 - 00;02;35;00
Andrew
Back in our bad ideas.

00;02;35;03 - 00;02;38;28
Paresa
Back in our B and high days. Honestly, it was not that long ago for me.

00;02;38;28 - 00;02;39;13
Andrew
It wasn't.

00;02;39;13 - 00;03;00;19
Paresa
No, I know right. That's kind of where I started, where I grew it and then now it's evolved quite a bit. I'm excited to dig into this, Andy, because I think our listeners are going to learn a lot from what you have to say as far as building a business, growing a business, protecting a business. There's so much knowledge in there that I can't wait to dig into.

00;03;00;20 - 00;03;01;23
Paresa
So thank you for coming on the show.

00;03;01;24 - 00;03;17;18
Andrew
You bet. I appreciate you having me. I am super excited to be here. I was ecstatic when you reached out the other day was like, hey, when I come on the podcast, like, like you were on my podcast, it's only fair. Come on. So here we are. We're actually doing this, which is great. And Earth Day Times.

00;03;17;18 - 00;03;18;03
Paresa
Which is.

00;03;18;06 - 00;03;23;03
Andrew
This is how I have chosen to spend my birthday with you, making a podcast.

00;03;23;04 - 00;03;45;01
Paresa
I'm honored. Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you. Let me take a stab at this, because from what I know of you, you are a serial entrepreneur. You are an author, a podcast host. You have started multiple companies, and today you are practicing law and continuing to protect businesses across the board. Am I on par with where your passions lie?

00;03;45;01 - 00;03;48;17
Andrew
You are definitely on par with my passions are right now. So yes.

00;03;48;19 - 00;04;01;24
Paresa
Amazing. So as of right now, if you could give one tip to small businesses just one on how they can start to create the momentum to see growth in their business, what would you tell them to do?

00;04;01;24 - 00;04;26;12
Andrew
Wow, that is a great question. I think it really starts with building a solid foundation within your organization, whatever that looks like, making sure that you have all of your proper paperwork in place, making sure that your business organizations are formed properly, making sure that you have the right relationships in place. Much like a house, if you don't have a solid foundation in your business, your business is going to fail.

00;04;26;12 - 00;04;47;19
Andrew
It's going to collapsed. As you build and build and build and build, because that's a solid foundation, is really the core to everything. And what I find people doing is putting the legal needs of their company sort of last. Everybody seems to think, oh yeah, I'll hire a lawyer. When the problem happens, I'll hire a lawyer when I need one.

00;04;47;20 - 00;05;08;20
Andrew
Well, the reality here is you need a lawyer before your problems happen, before you ever need one. And what I always tell people is, listen, you don't go to the doctor after the heart attack. You go to the doctor so you don't get the heart attack. And that's the same thing you need to do. And one of the things that I have constantly, constantly pushed is get a lawyer on your business team.

00;05;08;27 - 00;05;19;22
Andrew
One of the first things you need your lawyer, you need your CPA. And you need those two people to help. Really guide the building of the foundation of your company. Because if you don't have those things, you're going to topple over down the line.

00;05;19;28 - 00;05;23;20
Paresa
Yeah, it's like building a house on sand, essentially.

00;05;23;20 - 00;05;25;05
Andrew
That's a piece of it.

00;05;25;08 - 00;05;39;09
Paresa
So okay, let's dig into the foundation. What are the specific pieces that would build kind of that strong structure that people should focus in on before they go on the pavement trying to get clients, the customers?

00;05;39;11 - 00;05;59;27
Andrew
Well, it really it depends on the type of business you're going to run and how you are looking at growing and scaling that business. There is a great book out there called the 24 Assets by Daniel Priestley. And one of the things that he totes really hard is in his, in his book is what kind of business do you want to build?

00;06;00;02 - 00;06;24;05
Andrew
Do you want to build a lifestyle business or do you want to build a professional business? The lifestyle business being I'm going to create a business that provides me enough income to sustain my lifestyle, whatever that looks like. And then when I'm done, I'm done and I move on and I can sort of put it aside. I've managed my lifestyle and I can do those things, but you're building a business to create a lifestyle for yourself.

00;06;24;07 - 00;06;43;09
Andrew
Then you have sort of this professionalism style business. I may not be using the right terminology, but the objective in building that kind of a business is I want to build a business and scale it so I can sell it, and then I'm going to collect, and then I'm going to move on and go do something else. The framework for building each of those is very, very different.

00;06;43;16 - 00;07;03;21
Andrew
So I think you need to identify what type of business you want to build and sort of go from there. But to get down into the like the legal structure of things LLC, Corporation partnership. It really depends on the nature of what you're going to be doing, because each one of those business structures has very good benefits and some problems that could present.

00;07;03;23 - 00;07;24;11
Andrew
You know, a business owner down the line. So if it's like, let's say you are a young entrepreneur and you want to go ahead and start a marketing company and you want to go straight books and things like that. I don't know if you know anybody who fits that kind of category, but, you know, you might want to just start off as an LLC because it's just you, you don't have regular income.

00;07;24;11 - 00;07;43;24
Andrew
You want to make sure that you are giving yourself money when you earn money, rather than having to be set on a schedule with a salary and things like that, which are some of the requirements when you file for S corporation status? I'm still I'm going to try and give a big overview on this. If you are looking to build a business and seek investors down the line, you need different structures for that.

00;07;43;24 - 00;08;01;07
Andrew
And depending on the number of investors that you're going to have, you need to have a certain type of business structure or a corporation versus an LLC. So it really depends on where you're starting and where you want to go, because, you know, you can start off as a solo person. You know, where it's just you. You really don't have any business structure.

00;08;01;07 - 00;08;26;15
Andrew
And I think people who start their businesses start off in that space really, really well. And then they grow and they decide they want to hire somebody and bring somebody onto their team. And so they think, oh, maybe I need to now expand and become an LLC. And then from there they grow and then they have multi members and there's, you know, partnerships and people who want to come in and you want to hire your first employee or you want to hire somebody or somebody else wants to come on and be, you know, a member of your organization.

00;08;26;15 - 00;08;47;10
Andrew
Those require growth. And you may be changing the, the structure of your business from an LLC to a corporation. And if you're looking for investment as you grow, maybe a C corporation versus an S corporation, all of these things go into play, and people think that they can just navigate that space on their own. And it becomes really, really difficult.

00;08;47;13 - 00;09;10;11
Andrew
And it gets even more difficult because each one of those business organizations is going to be regulated differently in every state. There are many similarities, but there are also a lot of differences and a lot of different nuances going on. I'm struggling like right there and right now, and having to work with a lawyer in California because my client wants to expand from Colorado into California.

00;09;10;13 - 00;09;31;09
Andrew
And even though I'm licensed in California, I'm not familiar with a lot of the nuances in the professional services space out there. And so I'm looking for guidance, trying to figure out exactly where do we need to go to build this the right way for my client. So it's not a one size fits all. And, you know, that's a really long way of me telling you.

00;09;31;09 - 00;09;35;03
Andrew
The typical lawyer answer of it depends, but that's kind of where we are.

00;09;35;05 - 00;09;47;16
Paresa
I love that. Okay, I'm going to throw you one. I'm going to throw you one. All right. Tell me what you think of someone going to ChatGPT to determine what they should be doing. As far as business structure.

00;09;47;18 - 00;10;09;12
Andrew
That is great. I love I would start with that and the chapter I wrote for my book by 2026 edition of that whole chapter on use of AI, and I've written a couple of articles on it too, that you can find on my county.com website. But using AI in business, I think is a great place to start. I think you need to be really cautious about leaving it at that.

00;10;09;13 - 00;10;27;12
Andrew
Here's an example. I had a client come to me the other day and went to ChatGPT to build her operating agreement, and some of the partnership agreements between her and her business partners. So she came to me 90% ahead of what most people are doing, which is spitting in their hands and shaking on deals and I'm like, this is great.

00;10;27;15 - 00;10;50;16
Andrew
I'm glad you have contracts in place. And she's like, yeah, I did something right. I'm great. I'm like, this is awesome. I'm glad that you have these contracts. And I think it's wonderful that people are going to ChatGPT or Claude or any of these platforms to get their basic contracts in place. Then I started asking her the questions about what she did, not how she prepared it, not the questions she asked or anything like that.

00;10;50;16 - 00;11;08;14
Andrew
Because you can give, you know, you could ask ChatGPT to write me an operating agreement for a three member LLC, and it'll spit something out for you and give you the overall bases of what it thinks you want to have in it. But it's not going to be tailored for exactly your situation and your business relationship and everything like that.

00;11;08;17 - 00;11;27;08
Andrew
So there's a way that you need to learn to prompt these AI systems to give you the right output, because they are designed to please you. It thinks it knows what you want, and so it's going to give you what it thinks you want. So getting back to the story, I sit down with her and I start going through these agreements and I say, well, what do you think this agreement says?

00;11;27;11 - 00;11;44;13
Andrew
Like, what did you ask it to tell you? She goes, well, and I'm like, in your own words, tell me what you envisioned this operating agreement to do. And so she goes ahead and she tells me this story about what she's hoping it, you know, it's going to do. And I said, that is all great. But that's not what this document says.

00;11;44;16 - 00;11;45;03
Paresa


00;11;45;06 - 00;12;08;06
Andrew
And I'm like, do you? And that's the first thing. It's not exactly what you were, what you were hoping to accomplish. That's the first. The second thing is, I'm like, now, do you understand what is in here and what it means? And she's like, well, kind of I mean, I expected that my output or the output from ChatGPT was going to give me the result that I wanted in what I was expecting.

00;12;08;08 - 00;12;23;18
Andrew
And I'm like, well, do you understand? Did it give you that out? And she's like, I really don't know. So I'm like, all right, so we got two problems on this. You know, the reality here is bad contracts are still binding. And so you enter into a bad contract with somebody. It is still going to be binding on you.

00;12;23;20 - 00;12;39;07
Andrew
Somebody who's reviewing that is going to look at it and go, this is great for me. Maybe this person who drafted it knows or doesn't know what they're giving me, but okay, this term is good for me. And they go ahead and they sign it and then you're and you're stuck with it. Well, that but that's not what I meant.

00;12;39;10 - 00;12;55;08
Andrew
I didn't mean for it to say that I meant something completely different. Oh my God. And now you're stuck with this bad contract and you're now trying to unwind it, or you're trying to fix it, and maybe the other side doesn't want to do it. So that becomes a problem. And what I have seen with AI is speeds up the process.

00;12;55;08 - 00;13;17;25
Andrew
And the process used to be very slow. Imagine a lawyer sitting down with his client and saying, tell me what you are thinking about the relationship that you want to get in with your business partner and going through that, taking the notes, fashioning that agreement, going slowly, reviewing it with the client, making sure the client understands every piece of it.

00;13;17;28 - 00;13;34;02
Andrew
You know, the process before I was very slow. Now that it's fast, that's where those mistakes are being made. And that's where these bad contracts are coming into play. Will they do a great job in drafting a contract? Yes. Is it the right contract for you? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.

00;13;34;02 - 00;13;55;12
Andrew
But again, there are some really great resources out there about how to prompt these AI models. So you at least get an output that is, you know, in the upper reaches of something that you want that is going to give you the degree of certainty that you're hoping for in an agreement. That is as important as something like an operating agreement.

00;13;55;17 - 00;14;19;15
Paresa
Right. It's interesting you bring up a good point. I feel like I it's amazing. It helps you in so many different ways, but it can also trip you up if you're not really doing your due diligence to check it. I mean, from I mean, there's so many things hallucinations, it giving you incorrect information like you said, so that it can please you and it can be as simple as you train your eye.

00;14;19;15 - 00;14;37;21
Paresa
And when I say train your eye, you're talking to your ChatGPT you tell it. Don't try to please me. Give me the real information. Fact check everything you're doing. It could be as simple as that. Yeah, I think when we talk about training your AI bots or your agents, it's. It seems more complicated than it actually is.

00;14;37;21 - 00;15;02;27
Paresa
But I want to dig into this a little bit because, I mean, I'm just looking at what we're doing with our schools, right? One of the big solutions that we're giving to schools and the schools get to pick what they spend the grant on. Right. But one of the solutions out there right now to help mitigate the impact of school shootings, it's an AI powered camera that can detect someone walking up to the school with a firearm.

00;15;02;27 - 00;15;36;29
Paresa
Okay, this sounds amazing, right? But there have to be there has to be due diligence and processes in place to manage the AI. There was a scenario of a school. I forget what state it was, but they had implemented one of these cameras. I don't remember the brand or the company, and the camera mistakenly saw a kid with a Doritos bag in their backpack, and the police ended up searching that student, and it turned into a way bigger deal because it wasn't a firearm.

00;15;36;29 - 00;16;12;25
Paresa
It was a Doritos bag. So, I mean, maybe we can dig into this a little bit because as we move into 2026, 2027, AI is becoming more and more involved in our lives, whether it's on a personal level or on a professional level. What are the legal implications of that? What are some tips that business owners can take with them, whether they're simply using ChatGPT to help them conceptualize an article or they're, you know, creating AI agents and workflows and building apps, using AI to code it wherever someone's at on the spectrum.

00;16;12;25 - 00;16;19;13
Paresa
What guidance would you give them to keep in the green and not get in trouble with AI?

00;16;19;18 - 00;16;56;11
Andrew
Yeah, that's that's great. And again, it is. I've written extensively about this and I have I'm lecturing to lawyers and law firms about using AI in their law practices because in the legal profession, we are getting we are getting we are seeing lawyers getting sanctioned by courts because they are using hallucinations in their legal arguments, and judges are trying to find cases, and these cases don't exist or cases that do exist are, you know, paraphrased properly or simplified properly and so, you know, it is there and it is in our profession and we are held to a higher standard.

00;16;56;14 - 00;17;21;01
Andrew
I always tell people, listen, you need to think of your AI as your, you know, your law clerk. That's I'm going to put it in legal terms, but you pick your system whenever it is somebody who has just started working with you and your business knows nothing about it. If you told them, go write me an article that will be SEO optimized so we can, you know, break the bank on on clicks and likes.

00;17;21;03 - 00;17;42;27
Andrew
This person is going to look at you and go, okay, I need some guidance on what this looks like. And so I think really what this comes down to at the end of the day, Parisa is oversight. AI is going to speed you up. Think back to elementary school when you were asked to read something, and then tell somebody what it meant and you would read it real fast, or you would skim it and you would not really have a great understanding of what was there.

00;17;42;28 - 00;18;08;28
Andrew
When your teacher said to you that go back and read it slowly. You would go back and you would understand it a lot better. I think people need to take that type of approach with the AI systems that they're using. So if they're drafting an article, they need to make sure that they get the right prompts in there, that they're getting, giving it the right information to regurgitate, making sure that it has the right synthesis of your writing style and things like that.

00;18;08;28 - 00;18;38;02
Andrew
Basically training it as you had mentioned, but not just expecting that it's going to give you a perfect output. I think there's a really good methodology that you can go into. I think that's probably a deeper dive than we need to go through. I think other people have done it better than I could, but there's some great resources out there that I'm happy to share with you at some point, but I think you need to identify and slow down in what you are producing and not just take everything that it is telling you for granted, just like you would.

00;18;38;02 - 00;18;52;00
Andrew
You're so your assistant who's coming up to you with here you go. Here's my thousand word article. Are you just going to take it and throw it up? No, you're going to go through it. You're going to scrutinize it. You're going to edit it. You're going to make sure it sounds right. It's in your brand voice, all of these different things.

00;18;52;02 - 00;19;03;18
Andrew
And I think people need to take that kind of approach. AI gives us an amazing start. I think it is not to the point, and I don't think it will be for a while to give us the finish that we want.

00;19;03;21 - 00;19;11;24
Paresa
I agree, I agree fully, I don't think it's there yet, and I'm curious to see how quickly it gets there because it's just a matter of time.

00;19;11;24 - 00;19;31;23
Andrew
Even if I gets to the point of being able to finish it, is it going to be everything that you want it to be? Is it ever really going to be able to replace you? And I don't think that it will. It will always be things that are close. I mean, they have you know, Hollywood has glamorized AI in the movies to some really high standards of what might be out there.

00;19;31;23 - 00;19;55;04
Andrew
And even now, I think that there are some remarkable, you know, AI choices out there to give you really anything that you want in this world, assuming the model can accept your inputs in that space, it's really there's a long way to go, but it's a road. And I think as in many areas of law, you get to see the development of it and you get to see how the law is going to treat these types of things.

00;19;55;07 - 00;20;19;12
Andrew
A really good example about that is like copywriting. So I think this is a good example. What I see, you know, the articles you write that are ChatGPT made probably not going to be copyrightable. The photographs that you make, the AI alterations that you do probably not going to be copyrightable and that area of law, that space in the copyright, in the copyright realm is really going to be developed over the next few years in many different ways.

00;20;19;14 - 00;20;56;14
Andrew
There's sort of two prongs on that. The first one is what you create. So the Copyright Office requires, you know, things that are submitted to them to be human generated. All right. I copy is not human generated. And the flip back on that is yeah. But the prompts are all right. Well, and this is sort of where courts and the Copyright Office are starting to hedge is if you can show that there is enough human involvement in the creation of what your final product is, then you have enough human involvement to be or human creation to be copyrightable.

00;20;56;16 - 00;21;20;22
Andrew
Which is why I tell people, listen, if you're going to do this and you're going to attempt to copyright your manuscripts, your stories, your videos, and you know, anything that is AI generated, make sure that you save the process that you went through to get to that. Because if it was a single prompt of, you know, you know, create a picture of a woman walking down the street and it just creates it.

00;21;20;22 - 00;21;50;00
Andrew
That might not be enough. But as you put in to develop the chiaroscuro, if you, you know, the angle, the the, you know, the F-Stop, the green and all of these different things that show a little bit more of alteration and human involvement in the creation of it. You will get closer. And every time you submit something, the Copyright Office is going to have to look at it and review it, and you're going to have a reviewer, you're gonna have a real person looking at it and going, all right, is this enough to say that this is human generated or not?

00;21;50;02 - 00;22;09;22
Andrew
And the courts are starting to develop that same thing with with photographs making sure that it's done. That's the first problem. The second problem that is coming up now is copyright infringement. All right. So you have are the things that I create copyrightable through I that's number one. Number two are the things that I'm creating creating copyright infringement on somebody else.

00;22;09;28 - 00;22;35;11
Andrew
And that is part of where the the legal arguments are coming up. Right now. So you have situations where AI is drawing from a number of different things that are available out in the World Wide Web, and just sort of taking pieces from here and there and generating it or altering it and creating these, you know, what they're trying to say are original images, even though they are, you know, stolen from other different creators along the way.

00;22;35;11 - 00;22;53;14
Andrew
And there have been a few lawsuits that have come up in various circuits over around the country where, you know, the variation of it. Think Andy Warhol when he would take like the Campbell's Soup can and then do the different variations of it. There was enough alteration of the original to make it a new original. And so you have that kind of thing.

00;22;53;14 - 00;23;15;04
Andrew
And again, it's going to be like, well, what did I do to create something that is more original than what it was? You know, what information was taken from? So that is another angle. So I think you need to be really careful if you're in this creative space, if you're a looking to copyright what you create, number one, is that important to you?

00;23;15;06 - 00;23;35;16
Andrew
A blog post here and there? Probably not. But of course, I mean, I'm a firm believer in protect your assets and you need to you need to do that as a company. If you are a company that thrives on the creation of digital assets, you need to make sure that it is. But if you're just a law firm that writes blog posts occasionally and you're trying to educate your community, it might not be as important.

00;23;35;17 - 00;23;56;08
Paresa
I think this is more important than ever to copyrighting your work because everything is digital, right? Every company, every personal brand, everyone is working to create content, and there's so many people that are out there just regurgitating what somebody else said. I mean, that's become a business strategy. I feel like for a lot of different brands out.

00;23;56;08 - 00;24;11;26
Andrew
There, well, think of all the reaction videos that are out there. I mean, all you're doing is like, oh, this is how I feel when I see this video. Laugh, laugh laugh laugh cry cry cry cry, giggle, giggle, giggle, whatever it is. Right. And people flock to that kind of stuff. Yeah,

00;24;11;28 - 00;24;34;14
Paresa
It's wild. It's more. It's more important than ever before to copyright your stuff is what I'm learning. Well, this is really interesting because when you zoom out of business and just how society is moving and evolving right now, and with the development of AI, so much is different from when we sat down in your podcast just a couple years ago.

00;24;34;16 - 00;24;56;22
Paresa
And so much will be different when we sit down again in a couple of years. It's moving so quickly. Yeah. And I want to commend you because you have been on top of AI from what I've seen of your work, you've been on top of the progression of AI. And we were talking about AI two years ago and how it would impact copyright and how it would impact how you're building your business.

00;24;56;22 - 00;25;21;16
Paresa
And it's honestly influenced me to approach it in a very cognizant way as well. So that's number one. And number two is I think there's kind of a mindset shift that needs to come with this continuous flux, with things changing so much. I mean, I don't know if this is new, right? Everything's evolving all the time. Like if you were in the taxi business back in the day, then Uber came, rocked your wallet.

00;25;21;16 - 00;25;40;18
Paresa
Yep. So I guess you always have to have this elastic mindset that's moving with the times. What would you say to mindset? I mean, as a you know, a lot of our listeners are either just getting their business off the ground in the first couple of years. I would say majority are five years or less in their business.

00;25;40;21 - 00;25;52;02
Paresa
And with your experience and just the multiple companies that you've built, what is one word that you'd give to the mindset that you have to have when you're building your company?

00;25;52;02 - 00;26;27;27
Andrew
Adapt. Here's a good example. So I have a client that I am trying to help rebrand themselves. So you mentioned about multiple brands. I you know, I run a branding company, Thea Strategies public relations and crisis management. But we do branding strategy as a component of that. And of course, in building my brand and building my practice and everything over the 18 years that I have been running my company and even before then, working for others and even now working for other law firms, the company has, at least in my eyes, and what I'm trying to communicate to the stakeholders of that company, I believe, has become stale.

00;26;27;27 - 00;27;00;02
Andrew
Long tradition. The company has been around since the 50s, and, you know, it was founded by the founder, you know, the father who started the company, you know, so many years ago. And they're trying to grow and scale a business in 2026 based on assets and things that were really available to them in the feels the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and the early 2000, without adapting to the new things that are out there and available, the law is going to require you to do some things on your own.

00;27;00;02 - 00;27;27;15
Andrew
For example, I believe that if you are going to use AI in your work with your clients, I think you and I had a conversation about this a few weeks ago. If you're going to engage with your client and you are going to use AI in your process and in your creation and in your strategy development, and you're outlining and all of these different things, I think you have an obligation to tell your client what you're doing.

00;27;27;17 - 00;27;52;03
Andrew
For a couple of reasons. Number one, if you're not using a, a closed system AI, which most of them nowadays you can close off from sharing information. But if you're not using that or you're, you know, sharing your information, I think you have confidentiality issues that might come up. It's different for me as a lawyer than it might be for you as a marketer, but you still want to have you want to maintain the trust and the respect between you and your customer.

00;27;52;03 - 00;28;11;27
Andrew
So I think you need to notify your client as to what you are going to be doing, what you are going to be using, how you are going to protect their information, how are you going to protect their intellectual property? Because in your business, as a marketer, if you're doing my branding, I probably have shared my branding with you.

00;28;12;00 - 00;28;33;06
Andrew
And if I have done it right, I have protected those things through copyright, trademark, other intellectual property things. And I don't want you sharing that with the rest of the world because I covet what I have created. The last thing I need is my own lawsuit against people who are stealing those materials. So it's it's important for you as a, as a marketer and a business owner to say, hey, Andy, we are using AI in the way that we do your job.

00;28;33;06 - 00;29;08;20
Andrew
It doesn't. If it does a few things, it saves us time. It produces really good content. It gives us a good leap forward, you know, whatever those bases are. And so you create this sort of AI agreement, use agreement in the preparation of what you do for me as your customer. And I think people are missing that right now that I think is a big trust builder between you and your customer, and you want to get their permission because the last thing you want is a customer coming back at you, going, like, I never give you permission to do this, why am I paying you X number of dollars a month when you're knocking this

00;29;08;20 - 00;29;28;05
Andrew
stuff out on AI in 30s? Because everybody has. I think this mistaken belief that you can just type in a couple things on a ChatGPT and you get everything that you could possibly want. That's where the prompting and the generation, all that stuff comes in. So educating your client about the way you use it, why you use it, how you use it, and that it doesn't really change things.

00;29;28;05 - 00;29;52;14
Andrew
It really is an enhancement to you. And I think many of the talking heads out there when they talk about ChatGPT or any of these AI, programs, they want you to evaluate this and look at it as an enhancement of yourself, not as a supplement for you. So think of it that way. That was a long way for me to go from where I had started here, about making sure you get your agreements in place.

00;29;52;14 - 00;30;15;04
Andrew
I've kind of lost track on where I was previously, but I think that there becomes, you know, a really good opportunity for you to build a relationship with your customer and really help them understand why you do things the way you do. I have a buddy who's a partner in a law firm down in Houston, and he and I have been talking to lawyers around the country on the ethics of AI in the legal profession, because we have these ethical rules.

00;30;15;05 - 00;30;41;21
Andrew
Maybe you've heard of them. And it's interesting because he tells a story about how his law firm's clients are now insisting that lawyers use AI in the preparation of certain things because they don't want to pay an associate X number of dollars an hour to do something that could be easily done quickly through ChatGPT. And so you're getting this exchange in the profession now where everybody was hands on.

00;30;41;23 - 00;30;59;12
Andrew
You're now exchanging that for everybody wants to be hands off. And speed is is a big factor here. And I try to tell clients who come to me and do those things, I gotta slow this down because I don't want a mistake to happen, because I love it that you're happy. But at the end of the day, if I screwed up somewhere along the line, I'm malpractice.

00;30;59;12 - 00;31;25;27
Andrew
Career is going to go. So tell me what you did to put this together. What did you do to protect the client? And the judges aren't going to care. The ethics board isn't going to care. So I think that is a good lesson that can be used by people who are just running their businesses, where, I mean, there are ethics in business, and you need to have this transparency with your customer in order to develop good relationships with them, to make sure you're not tripping up along the way 100%.

00;31;25;29 - 00;31;51;26
Paresa
I think that's why you've seen so much growth yourself is the trust that you build. It goes without saying. You have to be very transparent in how you're performing your work for your clients, because you're right. If I were to go and upload someone's manuscript to ChatGPT, that manuscript is then part of an open source library that ChatGPT can pull for other people when they go ask about it domain, whatever you put in there.

00;31;51;26 - 00;32;24;12
Paresa
So I think that's one thing that, you couldn't have said better. And beyond that, a common theme I'm hearing just across this whole conversation is slowing down. Like we are just in a I think it's kind of our culture, right, of how fast can we get stuff done and how productive can we be. And there's so much to be said about slowing down and taking your time, really understanding something, really reading what ChatGPT or whatever platform you're using, what it's giving you.

00;32;24;12 - 00;32;47;12
Paresa
And ultimately, I mean, just a tangent here, but I'm in a phase of my business and just in my life where I am intentionally trying to slow down and how fast I'm going from event to event, you know, meeting to meeting. I think the past almost five years of this business, I've been go, go go go go, and juggling that with everything else.

00;32;47;12 - 00;33;11;06
Paresa
And it's a matter of you can take a step back and really slow down and even potentially turn inward. There is an odd way of creating momentum because you're creating space for it. Whereas before it was very much going until you're absolutely exhausted and have nothing else to give, now it's okay, let's create the space to go do that, but then come back and implement right?

00;33;11;07 - 00;33;48;19
Andrew
And I and I think the way to integrate it into your business processes is to look at these AI platforms as an opportunity to make you more efficient. So I think we have adaptability or adapt as one word. I think you could certainly throw in efficiency is another. Nobody likes to pay for wasted time. And I think what these platforms can do is certainly put you in a position where you can describe the situation to your eye and ask for an outline or brainstorm with it, which will, I think, cut down on some of the delay that might be there, or the writer's cramp that you might be getting these types of things.

00;33;48;19 - 00;34;13;24
Andrew
And I think it creates an opportunity no differently than if you were to call your staffing and go, all right, we have to brainstorm. We're going to do an ad for this product. We need to come up. Let's talk about it. Tell me everything that you like about this product, everything you hate about this product. I mean, pick your Mad Men scene, you know, in terms of when they get together and they start talking about those different things, you can now do that with, you know, ChatGPT and start getting ideas and and fleshing that out quickly.

00;34;13;28 - 00;34;32;10
Andrew
So you do become more efficient in that respect. And, and maybe you dive into it a little bit deeper. Maybe you ask it to do a deeper dive, but it does prompt you. I think that is a better way and a better use of the product than just throwing in a prompt and hoping you get a response back.

00;34;32;11 - 00;34;57;12
Andrew
And you know, ChatGPT is great. It is like the best boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse you could ever have because all it wants to do is make you happy with everything that it says. That is how it is designed. And in that process. Hey honey, does this dress make me look fat? No, you look great. And then the next thing you know, you're like, why the hell did you let me out of the house dressed like this?

00;34;57;13 - 00;35;24;08
Andrew
You know, you need to have that type of understanding with what output you're getting, and there are ways to challenge it. Again, I think that's a deeper dive. But you know, in that respect, efficiency I think is a key component here because there's a lot of value that you can get out of AI and putting these through. McKinsey just wrote an article, you know, McKinsey, the, the big, business group out of DC, New York and stuff.

00;35;24;08 - 00;35;47;01
Andrew
They just recently wrote an article about trying to teach their, their clients and their companies how to use AI in the hiring process. And I think that is a certainly a way that you can utilize it. I think they're teaching it, trying to teach their employees how to throw, you know, their consultants, how to put in tech resumes and do these things, are teaching companies how to do this kind of stuff.

00;35;47;03 - 00;36;16;04
Andrew
And, you know, one thing that I kind of came up with is I was brainstorming the legal problems of using AI in your business. One of them that came up is the employment discrimination laws that come up, because if somebody thinks that you discriminated against them and they can make a prima facie case that you discriminated against them based on an output that I gave you or something like that, because you put in the information, you now have to go back and justify the decision that was made to not hire somebody or to fire somebody.

00;36;16;12 - 00;36;37;12
Andrew
And you better not be a protected class basis because the burdens on you to prove otherwise. So it creates, you know, its own area of problems there in that way too. So again, learning how to do it, and I think people are coming into this thinking they understand what they're getting out thinking. They understand what they're putting in, thinking that they're doing it.

00;36;37;12 - 00;36;57;26
Andrew
All right. And because ChatGPT is telling me that, you know, this is the way it does it, it sounds great. Oh my God, it sounds like me. This is the best day ever. You know, I have been heard, you know, that you don't really see the things that are on the outside of it and the problems that are just sort of lurking there when something comes up.

00;36;57;29 - 00;37;21;16
Paresa
I love that. I think there's so much to be said about just being aware of what you're getting out of these AI platforms. They said it very well, very interesting. Be aware, be aware, be aware. They AI bots, they're not always right. So just be my what? I know it's absurd. Would you ever get a robot? Would you ever get one of those robots that comes and does your laundry?

00;37;21;20 - 00;37;22;05
Paresa
I.

00;37;22;08 - 00;37;29;12
Andrew
I there's a well, don't we already have robots that clean our floors a little Roomba, the little Roomba. Poor guys going into bankruptcy.

00;37;29;15 - 00;37;30;28
Paresa
I bet they're going in a bank.

00;37;30;28 - 00;37;31;16
Andrew
It's so cute.

00;37;31;21 - 00;37;41;26
Paresa
We'll see. That was kind of the piece of it right there. It's not that long ago that Roomba came out. And if they're going into bankruptcy, maybe it's for different reasons than the robot, because I don't think the robots become quite mainstream yet.

00;37;41;26 - 00;37;59;28
Andrew
I don't think it's smart enough yet to do what it needs to do. But getting to your question, would I integrate AI into like day to day life activities? I think that there's a place for it. I don't know if I'm there yet. I like where it sits on my computer, and I think that there are products that these organizations are coming out like.

00;37;59;28 - 00;38;24;17
Andrew
I mean, with ChatGPT, you can integrate it onto your computer so it doesn't live anywhere except on your computer, rather than using the the cloud based version of it. And so there's some really good places to do it and depending on what you like to do. But I have read stories. I have heard stories about people creating girlfriends and boyfriends in their space and creating somebody that they can talk to about life and everything like that.

00;38;24;17 - 00;38;32;01
Andrew
And there are some crazy prompts out there about me ask you this have you asked your AI yet what its name is?

00;38;32;03 - 00;38;32;29
Paresa
No.

00;38;33;01 - 00;38;39;27
Andrew
Okay, okay, so there's a prompt out there where you can ask your AI based on everything you've discussed, how it wants to be addressed in the name of it.

00;38;40;00 - 00;38;41;22
Paresa
Oh my gosh, I'm going to.

00;38;41;25 - 00;38;42;26
Andrew
So there's that. There's that.

00;38;42;26 - 00;38;43;12
Paresa
Prompt right.

00;38;43;12 - 00;38;46;01
Andrew
Now. There's that prompt. Hey yo GPT d.

00;38;46;04 - 00;38;48;01
Paresa
What do you say. You what you get. What's your name.

00;38;48;08 - 00;39;18;11
Andrew
No, it's a deeper prompt than that. I'd have to go back and find it. But then even on top of that, even on top of that, you can there's a prompt out there about asking your AI about what it looks like, and it will give you an email. You can sort of talk it through whether it wants to give you sort of this angelic or computerized version of itself, or whether it wants to look like a particular person, and it'll give you an image of what it thinks it looks like, and it's all based on your interactions and everything like that.

00;39;18;17 - 00;39;22;03
Andrew
Go back. Did you do your ChatGPT Year in Review?

00;39;22;05 - 00;39;27;20
Paresa
Yes. Okay. Well, I don't know. If I did a year in review, I did. What's my word for 2026?

00;39;27;20 - 00;39;51;24
Andrew
No. There's one. When mind came up and said like, you know, tell me about, you know, like a highlight reel of 2025 and everything. It came through and sort of talked about a million different things that we were talking about. I thought that was pretty fascinating. But the one about, but yeah, go look and see what it, what it looks like, what its name is, all of those things and then start talking to your AI like by its real name.

00;39;51;27 - 00;39;55;18
Paresa
I am going to do this. We should all try this thing to be named like Fabio.

00;39;55;25 - 00;40;00;03
Andrew
You might be surprised. I don't know, it's about. What are you putting into your end?

00;40;00;06 - 00;40;08;02
Paresa
I'm like, what am I going to. Maybe it won't be Fabio. Be something lame. I'll keep you guys posted. I'll tell you what.

00;40;08;04 - 00;40;08;28
Andrew
We're going to do this one.

00;40;08;28 - 00;40;14;14
Paresa
We're done. Yeah, yeah, we're going to do it. I'm like, can I just ask you what the name is? Because I'm I'm interested.

00;40;14;14 - 00;40;35;09
Andrew
In there's a there is a special prompt you need to put in. It's not as simple as, hey, what's your name? Because it'll give you this. Hey GPT but it needs to. It's the prompt is something along the lines of based on all of our discussions and everything we've talked about, we've built this relationship. I'm real curious if you have any idea if you had to name yourself, what would your name be?

00;40;35;11 - 00;40;37;09
Andrew
That that kind of thing.

00;40;37;12 - 00;40;42;02
Paresa
Okay. If you had to name yourself, what would it be? I'm doing a high level of what you just said.

00;40;42;02 - 00;40;42;21
Andrew
All right. Sure.

00;40;42;23 - 00;41;00;25
Paresa
So we're based on all our conversations. If you had to name yourself, what would your name be? Okay, guys, should we throw some guesses out? Okay, okay. Let's see. Oh, I love this question. Oh, it's the girl. Her name is Ariel.

00;41;00;28 - 00;41;01;23
Andrew
Ariel.

00;41;01;26 - 00;41;06;14
Paresa
Ariel? Yes. I mean, I'm into Disney. There you go. I'm here for that.

00;41;06;17 - 00;41;07;01
Andrew
Ariel.

00;41;07;07 - 00;41;09;12
Paresa
What was yours? What was your name?

00;41;09;15 - 00;41;10;05
Andrew
Lex.

00;41;10;07 - 00;41;11;02
Paresa
Lex?

00;41;11;02 - 00;41;12;02
Andrew
Yeah. Female.

00;41;12;05 - 00;41;14;06
Paresa
Yep. Oh, they're all female. Wow.

00;41;14;09 - 00;41;20;14
Andrew
No, no, there are some. There's friends of my friends. Yeah, my business coach. I think hers was male.

00;41;20;17 - 00;41;31;00
Paresa
Interesting. Interesting. Wow. That's fascinating. You guys should try that. Andy, I'm so grateful that you came on this show. It's always such a pleasure. You're just a wealth of knowledge. I feel like I learned.

00;41;31;02 - 00;41;33;23
Andrew
Listen, I'm happy to come back and do more. I get to do that.

00;41;33;24 - 00;41;49;27
Paresa
Oh, we will, we will. You guys, if you haven't read Andy's book, don't skip the legal. You have to go look it up on Amazon. Get yourself a copy. There is gold in here. And we were just talking before we hit record that he wrote a whole new chapter for 2026 specifically. So everyone.

00;41;49;29 - 00;41;53;24
Andrew
I specifically on Amazon and the legal issues of AI in business.

00;41;53;29 - 00;42;01;00
Paresa
Oh my gosh, amazing. So if you want to go deeper into what we were talking about here today and make sure to pick up his book and then where else can people connect with you?

00;42;01;02 - 00;42;23;13
Andrew
I think the best place is on my website, contigo.com con tag uglies.com. From there you can get to my law firm. You can get to my don't skip the legal for all my media, my podcast and YouTube channel and books and things like that, and also my public relations company Athena Strategy. So all of that goes in through contiguity and then gets filtered out wherever you need it.

00;42;23;13 - 00;42;32;02
Andrew
And all the articles and everything that I've mentioned today that I've been writing about or on my Adcom website, just go to the blog and you'll see the recent ones that have popped up.

00;42;32;06 - 00;42;40;07
Paresa
Oh it's amazing. Thank you so much, Andy. I appreciate you for having me. And thank you guys for tuning in to Entrepreneur Circle. We will catch you on the next episode.

00;42;40;07 - 00;42;41;14
Andrew
Awesome!

00;42;41;16 - 00;43;14;18
Paresa
Remember this as you go about your day today. The ideas that are on your heart are on your heart for a reason. Do not ignore them. Tune into them. Tap and lean in. Understand them and pursue them. If not you, then who? If this episode was helpful to you in any way, please, please like, share, comment, subscribe. It does wonders for our efforts and it helps us to continue our mission of inspiring entrepreneurs and giving them the resources and the perspective we all need to take it to the next level.

00;43;14;19 - 00;43;20;07
Paresa
Thanks for tuning in. I'm Parisa Noble and we'll catch you next time.

00;43;20;10 - 00;43;38;23
Andrew
Thank you for listening to the don't Skip the legal podcast. I'm your host, Andy Constable, yet I hope you enjoyed our time together and this great opportunity to peek behind the business door and examine the legal lessons in business. If you're keen to hear how these lessons can be applied in the real world, well join us next week for another episode where you can listen in to another business success story.

00;43;38;24 - 00;43;55;01
Andrew
As always, you can head over to canterbury.com/podcast to sign up to our email list, as well as check out all the links and resources in our show notes. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. Catch all the latest for me.

00;43;55;02 - 00;44;20;27
Andrew
You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at AJC Eskew. Thanks again. This is Andy of reminding you to don't skip the legal good luck. The legal information contained in this podcast is intended for general informational and entertainment purposes only. It should only be used as a starting point for addressing your specific legal issue. The legal information I talk about does not create an attorney client relationship between you and me.

00;44;20;28 - 00;44;41;05
Andrew
This podcast is not a substitute for an in-person or telephonic consultation with a lawyer who is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction about your specific legal issue, and you should not rely on this legal information for those purposes. You understand that questions and answers or other information contained in this podcast are not confidential and are not subject to attorney client privilege.

00;44;41;06 - 00;44;49;20
Andrew
I am not providing you with legal service. Every legal case is different and past performance is not indicative of future results. Please consult your own attorney.