Over The Bull

#47 - The Game Is Rigged. Here’s How to Survive It.

Integris Design LLC Season 2 Episode 47

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Here’s the reality most business owners eventually face:

The system favors scale.

Large companies are not built on fairness. They’re built on optimization — for margin, protection, and legal defensibility. And when you enter into agreements with entities that have more capital, more legal infrastructure, and more time than you, you are not operating on equal ground.

In this episode, I break down:
•Why “legal ethics” is not the same as moral ethics
•How vendors lure you in with polish and lock you in with policy
•Why calculated losses are built into big-company models
•And why assuming fairness is one of the most expensive mistakes small businesses make

This is not bitterness.
It’s pattern recognition.

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

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When you're outgunned and feel cheated on this episode of Over the Bull. Okay, we're going to dive into something that I think is going to really resonate with virtually every entrepreneur that's going to listen this week. Quick disclaimer: I'm not an attorney and nothing in this episode should be considered legal advice. I'm sharing personal experiences and business lessons from over 20 years in the field. Contracts and laws vary by jurisdiction, so consult a qualified legal professional before making decisions that affect your business. And uh again, you know, these things come across my desk in my daily operations, and I want to share them with you because you're not alone. You know, after 20 years in business, I've come to a conclusion that most people will not say out loud. If a company across the table is bigger than you, they will win. Not because they're smarter and not because they're more ethical, it's because the system was built that way. Large organizations inherit the incentives of the people who built them. And those incentives are rarely about fairness. Okay, now really soak that in. They're not about fairness. They're about protection. They're about margin and they're about leverage. And once a system is optimized for leverage, it doesn't need to be evil in a cartoon sense. It just needs to be legally insulated. That's the shift most small businesses don't understand. See, you may be thinking you're operating in a moral framework as it's objectively understood. They're operating in a contractual one. You think this isn't right. They think show me where it violates the agreement. The gap is where small companies get trapped. Now, I have seen this with vendors, I've seen it with banks, I've seen it with insurance companies, I've seen it with large clients who knew they could outlast. The system favors scale. So when you hear the word scale, think bigger. And scale protects itself. Now, today on Over the Bull, we're not going to pretend otherwise. The reason being is the otherwise just simply isn't there. This is a reality. This is why you, as the owner of a business, you know, you think maybe you're isolated or you think maybe these situations just happen to you and your industry. No, it's all over the place. It runs rampant. And so what I want to do today is talk to you about maybe some practical ideas where you can save your sanity, look at this realistically, and survive a little bit better as you move forward in your business. Now, my little latest adventure in this situation is because, you know, we're in a hurricane of changes that are going on within the internet. Uh what worked in, you know, a year ago no longer works. The technology is dramatically changing, and these little AI businesses are popping up all over the place who claim they have some great solution. And in reality, they're like a kid with a gun. Uh it's scary what these people are uh trying to present as though they understand it. They simply don't understand it. I mean, if we look at just the fear factor when it comes to artificial intelligence, just look at Wall Street, where the stocks closed down on Friday after traders focused on which companies might lose in an AI reshaped world. Not just benefit, contributing to the uh SP 500, NASDAQ, Dow, uh, this is all over the AP news, as you probably realize. And so to think that artificial intelligence is not going to dramatically cause ripples and that we have to react in our business is really short-sighted. And if I'm reacting to it in my business, you better be reacting to it in your business, which is why we're building a complete infrastructure at Integris where we are trying to address these issues as they come in. And we have a model that uses the best of human technology and artificial intelligence because you simply can't ignore it. And you can't just go through and use Chat GPT to uh create blog articles or things like that. That's just not the way it's going to uh to do. It's it's much more complicated, but it's also a hybrid uh between humans anyway. This is kind of where I got um brought into this. So anyway, uh we were looking at a vendor, a fairly substantial vendor uh out of Canada. And here's what they did. Um they promised scale, they promised uh sales experience that was polished. Uh and then we, you know, we went through about, I don't know, two months of going through their sales processes and sales cycle, and uh everything appeared to be good. Now, of course, you just get to see from the outside in. So, you know, they they promise you that the goods inside the bakery are going to taste great once you get in the door. They let you uh see pictures, they let you do all these things, but you don't really know what you're getting into until you sign the agreement. So after some negotiations, uh they wanted uh a longer term agreement, and uh we negotiated a shorter term with an opt-out, but there was still some upfront uh costs just to kind of you know get in the proverbial bakery to see what the reality was. And uh so anyway, we signed the agreement. Uh the onboarding was becoming forced, almost like they were muscling through this really expensive onboarding process, and they were neglecting the fact that early on we saw a lot of glitches with the system. Like, I mean, I'm not exaggerating. We would make one small change to the system and the screen would go completely white for extended periods of time. We would click another button and we would get an error code. And this is supposed to be some pretty nice high-end software, but it was incredibly glitchy. Now, early on, I uh I wrote uh I couldn't write my rep because uh my rep had left by the time I signed up. And and so then what happened was uh I wrote the uh the the people that were my contacts, and I said, hey, uh I think I just need to bow out here as a company. And they pulled me into a uh a Google uh meet and they reassured me that I can opt out, but they wanted me to keep pushing through. They were going to fix all the glitches, and everything was going to be good, and all these other agencies are using them, and they're all really happy, so it's just a one-off. I bet you never heard that one before, have you? Come on. You know, you know as well as I do. I'm not the only one. You're not the only one. It's an isolation technique. So anyway, they they told me they would get it fixed, it didn't get fixed, still problems, and we had made an agreement that we weren't going to mix this really pricey onboarding with troubleshooting as we go. They kept trying to do that, and then ultimately uh I just said Uncle and said, Hey guys, I need to uh you know move on. It's just not good for our company to have uh software that's has this many bugs to it because it would just equal uh an inordinate amount of support and it would hurt our reputation as a company. Now, what was interesting was when I met the first time and wanted to get out really early, they were receptive in uh the Google Meet and said, hey, you know, these things are going on, you know, all those excuses. But then when I finally uh pulled the plug, by the way, we're talking a few weeks here. We're not talking a long period of time. And when I finally decided to uh pull the plug, uh, the story changed. Now they started referring to the contract. Now they started referring to uh the words of the agreement, and they forgot what was going on in uh the meet, and they seemed to have forgotten all the emails regarded regarding the glitches and all the problems we were having with their system. And so there was some conversations pursuant to that. Um they did admit in an email response about the bugs and the glitches in their system, and we also were able to confirm we did not complete. However, um they would not operate on what I would consider uh basically good business practices from my perspective. So anyway, I don't know if you've ever experienced anything like that. Well, actually, I'm being a little bit facetious here. I know you have. I know you've been in situations where you've gone through something maybe a little bit different, maybe with the vendor, uh, maybe with someone else, maybe you're dealing with people you thought were on your team, your bank, uh, your insurance company, people like that. And then you find out that after you've made all your payments diligently and you actually need them to help you out through a situation, they seem to have gone MIA. Situations like this help you realize something truly uncomfortable. When you're smaller, you don't get ethics, you get leverage. Now, luckily I did negotiate early on where we could opt out either party without any any rationale, any anything, so I marginalized my losses. Now, when you look at something like this, you're going to have to come up with a idea of how to function within business because there are two systems at work here. There are moral ethics, which is what most small businesses tend to operate under, and then they're legal ethics. Now, these are not the same thing. Big companies, they're going to operate on legal minimum viability. Small business operate on relational trust. Now, this is where the mismatch is. And if you don't understand it, then you are going to have a lot of frustration in your business life. And so the idea is how do you get out of it? Now, my in our situation, because we deal with so much technology and so much everything, we heavily negotiate the contracts and I'm constantly learning. After 20 years, I'm still figuring out different ways I'm going to navigate the seas. But one thing that I do is I go into it with a certain understanding, and I also uh am prepared for certain contingencies as well. So I kind of want to share those with you. Now, the other thing I want to do is let you know you're not alone. Okay, if you're morally or ethically right in a situation, but you still lose, that's the game. It's not about who's morally right. The system does not care about morals or ethics. Now that's hard because when you're dealing with another small business or you're dealing with someone who is still operating on this idea that there is objective right and wrongs, then those relationships are going to be significantly different than those who do not operate on that scale. Now, of course, there's also situations where, you know, people have very distorted views and they just have certain concepts that just don't exist in the world. So, you know, you got all these things when you're dealing with it. So I've got this idea that I call the Venus fly trap concept. Now, this is kind of how I see it working with these um these situations. Now, there are certain things I don't like. Okay, so as I was going through this and doing research, you know, I saw some stuff that just infuriated me. I don't I don't know any way to other way to put it. But one of those things is like the word asymmetric, like what it means is that you're not on a uh fair playing field or calculated losses. And then they would say, well, the losses are actually a victory because she got out. No, not really. I mean, if you go in, if you go into a situation with 10 bucks and you come out with five bucks because you didn't get what you were supposed to get, that's a loss. It's just a loss. It's not a calculated loss, it's not a strategic loss, it's it's a loss. And unfortunately in business, you're going to have to deal with a loss. Uh it just happens. Um, so anyway, let's talk about the different phases of this Venus fly trap uh situation. So phase one is attraction. Uh companies offer big promises, you know, dedicated reps, fast responses. Uh you'll have full support. You know, they paint a picture of exactly what you need, what you're going to get, and they use things like cartoons and certain branding and humor and friendliness. Uh they'll use what we call FOMO, fear of missing out, scarcity language, act now, you know, those kind of things. And you don't want to miss this opportunity. It's a limited time offer. We're going to give you this and we're going to give you that if you sign up today. And, you know, and so the idea is this is the Venus fly trap. This is where the Venus fly trap is open. This is where you the uh the insect smells the scents, it's where it's attracted to it, and you're the insect, unfortunately, and I'm the insect, you know, sometimes. And so now we have containment. Uh the contract terms get activated, supports routed through tickets, you know, delayed responses. Then you start getting policy language. Then you start hearing according to the agreement. You find out it's not what it's cracked up to be. You want to get out of it. They keep referring back to what you signed, and then all the lofty things that were in phase one are marginalized, and now it becomes an accountability argument and a structure argument rather than uh what you were sold on because the agreement is the king. Now, they also know other things. They know that when you're caught in this and you're trying to escape the Venus flytrap, they know that you're not going to uh you may you may get frustrated and go talk to an attorney or something like that. But what they're going to tell you typically is it's not worth it. I mean, by the time you go through, you spend all your fees, and if you're stuck in the legalese, you're going to lose. And then you're fighting on, if you read the art of war, you're fighting on an unfair terrain. You're fighting on a terrain that is not recognized by the legal system, even though you may be morally and ethically correct, and they're fighting on this legal situation that they've collapsed around you like the jaws of a Venus flytrap, and you are stuck. Now, here's the thing to say here. They're optimized for margin protection. They're not optimized for your success. They don't care about your success. I mean, the reality is these guys, these these businesses and these people who are larger than you, they know how to play the game. They they know uh where you're going to be able to um fight back and where you're not fighting back. And in most cases, you are going to be absolutely outmanned and outgunned, and you're going to lose. And if you're not careful, you're going to have a habit of continual losses, which is going to make you even more frustrated. So what do you do? Well, you have to exist in the business world if you're going to work in business. And even as an individual, you're going to deal with organizations that are going to get you to try to sign up to contracts and agreements. And again, once you do that, you've entered their world. Those agreements are not designed for you and your protection, they're designed for them and their leverage. And of course, to insulate them as legally as much as possible. And of course, you would be outmanned and outgunned in most cases if you were to try to proceed further, which is why good legal counsel in a lot of those cases are going to say, hey, it's not worth the fight. You know, you probably have gotten the speech where, you know, hey, I get you, I hear you, you know, I know what you're saying, but it don't matter. And that's the hard reality of this thing. So I'm going to give you a couple of rules here that I recommend maybe you consider in your business operations. And these rules are based in reality. They're not based in hopium, and they're based on situations that I have seen others go through and me personally gone through through the evolution of business. So the number one rule assume loss is possible. Now, my my thing is possible. I would say that moved into the probable category. Whenever you sign an agreement with someone you don't know, it's like dating someone new. You don't know what you're getting into. And with the way the world is shifting, I think it's gone from possible to probable, maybe even to likely, uh, and maybe even most likely. Okay, so here's what you do. You don't assume fairness. Assume you may lose and price that risk in emotionally. In other words, if you're signing an agreement for X number of dollars, assume you're going to lose X number of dollars if that relationship does not end well. Period. Bank on it, count on it, and if you come out ahead, it's going to save your sanity. And if you come out on the back end and you lose, then you understand that you've lost that um that uh that money, that that resource that you were counting on being uh accessible to you. And so when I negotiated that contract, I put in uh certain things that I wanted to be um added. And when they added it, they added it in the wrong places, and I wanted it to be added in the correct places so that it would not be superseded by other language. And so you got to be very careful about that. And a lot of times it's just experience over a period of time. And so the idea is to understand that if you can uh just say, hey, okay, I'm willing to bet X number of dollars on this agreement, and I understand that I'm going to lose. And if I lose and this doesn't work out good, then I am willing to risk that. Now think about what that does for you. As the owner of a business, you've just saved your sanity in this thing. You're no longer thinking I'm dealing with an ethical business that's going to operate on a certain level. You're thinking I'm dancing with the proverbial devil here that I don't know. And if it doesn't work out, then great. I understand the risk that I'm taking. And that's also going to make you more cautious about entering and signing agreements because if you realize you may be handing something out and not getting anything in return, or getting a very shoddy job of what you thought you were going to get, and then that is protected by the legal system, then you're going to be much more careful about what you sign. You're not going to make that presumption. All right, number two, ethics and contracts are completely different worlds. If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. Now, the reason I told you about the Google Meet was I knew that would not be applicable. I understand that whatever they said verbally is not going to supersede the language in that agreement. I get it. Now, there are other recourses because I've got a lot of communications that are in writing an email and they didn't fulfill their obligations in a legal sense, uh, to the best of my knowledge. But the idea is if someone promises something, hey, we're going to work with you on this, hey, we're going to make this happen. Don't worry. Whatever language you get, okay, if it's not in writing, it did not happen. So the idea is that when you're dealing with the Venus flytrap open, you're going to get a lot of that language. But again, if it doesn't translate, if you say, Well, send that to me in writing, and they're not willing to do it, then you see the battle lines early, and that can help you out. Now, if you aren't willing to lose the gamble, don't sign. Every contract is a bet. Stop pretending it's not. And again, this is what's going to save your mind. You want to be able to um look at it, not from the standpoint of being cheated, but you want to look at it from the standpoint of I'm gambling. Okay, I'm I'm looking at their best foot forward. I like what they're saying. I think it's worth gambling this money to see if that's true. Now, the next one is the 90-day exit rule. Um, if they don't give you a clean opt-out, that's an early warning. Okay, so um this is a challenge, okay, because sometimes we do have terms with our agreements because we want to know that the business is serious with us. But we also have clean opt-out situations with our business as well. So in this particular case, before I signed up with the company, what I did was I put in a uh I requested that the language say that either party can exit within 90 days for any reason whatsoever without both parties agreeing to it. And so just super clean, super easy way to get out of it. Now you'd want to talk to your attorney. Obviously, I'm not a legal authority and you shouldn't take my legal advice on anything that I tell you, but you want to make sure that you have some kind of opt-out situation. And honestly, you really want to get some situations where you have an attorney look at them depending upon the size of the money, unless you're just willing to uh roll the dice and uh be willing to lose that money. Never ever ever operate on verbal. If it's important, it must be written and acknowledged. Now, this is true with your freelancer, this is true with any group, any organization, any anything. It has to be in writing. And no writing, it doesn't count. Now, number six, charm is a strategy, humor, those little cartoon characters you see on TV who are funny and likable. Friendliness, these are sales tools. They reduce your resistance. They know that. Now, this has been going on, you know, early on uh in marketing as they start to understand how humans work. Disarming someone is part of the equation. And, you know, now the here's the the sinister part of this. There are people that operate on the up and up, and they operate on objective ethics, and they also work within the legal framework, and they they combine the both and they understand both. And objective ethics uh surpass the legal ethics in terms of how they operate their individual business. But here's the thing there are a lot of people who use these res uh these these qualities and attributes because it's natural to them, not because they're trying to get away with something. And so the the really twisted part, just like in the do-it-yourself website builders and things like that, is there's a little bit of truth in it. And that little bit of truth, sometimes what it does is it makes you wonder like who the good guys and who the bad guys are. Uh, but just be aware that these are tools, these are tactical tools. They're not just uh something that happens coincidentally, especially when you're dealing with organizations that are trying to get you sucked into the Venus flytrap. Okay, number seven, don't fall for FOMO, fear of missing out. Urgency is leverage for these guys. So if they're offering you something to make you think that uh if you don't act now, if you don't act quick, they've got limitations, blah, blah, blah. Be careful, that's a tactic. Now, sometimes it's real, but a lot of times it can be a tactic. Um, big clients will have structural leverage over you. That's a nice way to say they're likely to win. They can delay payment, they can renegotiate, they can replace you. Prepare for it, be ready for it. I heard um somebody that a long time ago they said never let one person be over a certain percentage, never let one entity be a certain percentage of your business income. Because once they hit a certain percentage, then they own you. And now they can come back and start manipulating uh the situation if they choose to do so in their own best interest. Uh number nine, subscription is the new lock-in. The business model now is acquire, retain, deliver minimum legal standard. This is not conspiracy, that's optimization. That's how they think. They don't think in terms of uh objective reality. I cannot say that enough. Okay, initial effort is the peak effort. This is really important. Okay, in my case, I saw lawn boarding chaotic. I mean, right out of the gate. I saw a dramatic shift from the day I signed the paperwork. I saw the uh the characters I was involved in changing. I saw the situation changing. I saw the glitches in their system. I saw where I was making a request and not getting a response for seven days. I saw their efforts to try to consume my time without offering me solutions. I saw it. Okay, now I saw this within literally days after signing up with them. Now, if you look at that, we can say, okay, that's the reality after the agreement. You know, after the sunshine, after the dates, and after the infatuation, this is what the real relationship is. Now, their first 30 days are likely going to be their best behavior. Just like, you know, any any relationship. The first parts are going to be as good as it gets, and everything after that's going to get worse. You're not going to change them, they're not going to change you. That relationship is exactly what it is. Now, here's the hard part to this thing. Um, not becoming jaded, not becoming like them. That's the challenge. You don't want to become the monster that you don't like. And this is sometimes hard because when you're dealing with situations like this, you often think, okay, now I've got to get my guard up and I've got to become this and I've got to become that. And then what you can become is a piece of the monster or a clone of the monster that you don't like, and then you become just as um, I don't know the word for it, filling your own blank there. I knew the word I wanted to use, but I'm not going to use it. You become that, and you don't want to become that. And uh so the idea is you do want to operate with uh integrity and you want to operate on a level. And what's great is a lot of businesses do operate on that level. Now, I can also tell you that I have some really big clients, big, big clients, and they operate on an ultra-ethical level. I do want to tell you that I've seen no sign they're not completely ethical and honorable. And so to some extent, it's not necessarily that even the big boys play by those rules. And so, what does that tell you? It tells you that as you grow and as you do things, you can still operate on an ethical basis and still insulate yourself because you have to, because there are some people out there that are just absolutely uh bonkers in how they operate, and you don't want to become susceptible to them, but it doesn't mean that you have to become this beast in which probably has frustrated most of you. Okay, so here's a couple things. Um one more concept. Let's throw this out. Uh I don't like the uh the term of a calculated loss equals a win. I I don't like that. Loss is a loss. I mean, it doesn't matter if you lose by three points or lose by 10 touchdowns. You know, you lost. Um, but here's the thing: these big companies, a lot of them, they they're built for churn and burn. And so what that means is they're built for your coming on and exiting. Um, their budget is built for dissatisfaction. Um, losing a client for them can still be very profitable. That's what's going on right now with me. They're still going to make money because their their hourly rate for their onboarding was absolutely insane. So I thought, well, it's either going to be really good or really overpriced. I think you can guess which one it was. Um, so the calculated loss is still a loss. Um, it's just absorbed. Um, now here's the thing: you don't have the luxury of a lot of calculated losses. Here's what you need to do, in my opinion, is you need to incorporate the 10 steps here and be prepared to lose. Be prepared, have a certain amount of money set aside where you go, I'm going to invest in this, understanding that it may likely not turn out well for me. Now, if you can turn the corner on that, you're going to save your sanity, you're going to be able to operate on a better uh level, and you're going to be able to operate predictably, even though their systems are designed to not deliver what they say they're going to deliver in an ethical fashion as you perceive the word ethical is, because the definitions between objective morality and legal morality are simply, you know, uh just vastly different than uh than the way that you may perceive them. And so that's kind of what we do. So I thought it was interesting, you know, as I was going into it, I realized that I needed to make sure that the language wouldn't lock me in, you know, for a long period of time. Could you imagine? Could you imagine signing up with that company for a year and having to deal with that for a year and then legally be obligated to pay them for a year because the written word was that? I mean, could you imagine the frustration that would have built trying to get out of that? How much time, effort, resources, energy, time away from my family, all of that stuff? Now get your in, get your out, get it in writing, expect the losses, move forward, but don't become those at the same time. I do believe that there's a space where you can merge those two concepts together and still protect yourself from those people who are not operating on an ethical and they're looking for some way to uh take advantage. And so those are the challenges as a business. And I think where I want to leave this is you're not alone. Um, a lot of people think that it's just happening uh to them. You're not alone. This happens every day, all the time, and it doesn't matter if you're the individual consumer or you're the small business dealing with big business things. If you um if you've gone through this, you know, the the idea of this uh divide and conquer concept, it's kind of there. I mean, you know, you look at this company that I'm talking about, um, supposedly they have countless agencies that they work with. And you go into it and you go, okay, I have this glitch, this bug, this don't work, that don't work, this don't work. And then logically you go, well, how come it works for all these other people? Same thing with the do-it-yourself website builders. Well, if it doesn't work, why does it work for all these other people? It just don't work for me. You're probably just more observant and you're probably dealing more in reality. And the idea is that the tolerance for some people who get so tangled up in the spider web of some of these products, they simply can't get out. I mean, uh, once you get so involved with the company, moving from one place to the next uh is just very difficult. And so sometimes their tolerance for pain uh actually takes higher uh uh precedence over their their frustration and their their just the uh what they're not getting on a regular basis. So I think that if you can use this premise or a principle, not premise, if you can use this uh this principle and these concepts in order to navigate in business, I think your sanity is going to be better. But more importantly, if you work from this and you go in with that understanding, I think you're gonna be much more careful about those agreements that you sign, knowing that you may literally be giving away your money for nothing, or even worse, giving away your money, and then after that, giving away your resources, uh, time, and energy on top of giving the money for nothing, in order to even try to get out of it reasonably or having to send information or do all these other things. So, anyway, guys, I hope this does help you out. Um, and I do hope that uh this helps guide your business as you move forward. I know this isn't about marketing, but this was high on my radar this week. And I think this message is for some of you out there because okay, so so no joke. Let me let me finish with this. As I was building this and creating this outline, I was using uh uh you know AI to kind of help you know construct it. And one thing I said was I said, hey, I really think this is a big deal. And it came back and it said, hold on a minute. What you're teaching is fatalism, meaning that you're going to lose no matter what. And it says you're going to enrage or really bring up the emotions in a lot of entrepreneurs, but at the same time, you may hurt your credibility because when you bring it up like that without solutions, then it becomes where you're like going to a wine fest or you know, you're just crying about something or just complaining about something rather than offering solutions. And I thought that is so interesting that AI knows that a lot of small entrepreneurs go through this and have this frustration and that you know you have this and you're you're going through it, but yet at the same time, it doesn't, it almost act like it didn't want me to acknowledge it. And uh I thought that was really interesting. That means that there's a lot of people out there who are going through this. And so I was even more compelled after seeing some of the data points that this needs to get out. You need to understand that you're not alone, that this battle is real and this war is real, and your potential for losses are very, very real. And you should look at that extremely soberly uh as you move forward in business, because it is going to save your sanity, it's gonna save your skepticism, it's gonna save so many things over and beyond money. Uh, because, you know, I think as humans, I think we expect a certain thing. And, you know, when I was looking at this a little bit deeper, when I talk about objective morals versus what is legal, what I found interesting was that the words may be used, but those words are under different definitions. So, you know, if you look at it very fundamentally, like for example, if every time that I saw uh I said the word the color black, but you but I was really meaning the color red, you would see how confusing the conversations would be, and then how uh unstable the conversations would be in that case. Well, the definitions appear to shift um within certain contexts, which even makes the whole thing more confusing. Now, again, I'm not a legal um professional. I don't offer legal advice. This is not intended in any way for legal advice. This is intended to show you how I navigate uh the landscape and having a good um attorney to review contracts, to offer suggestions, to um recommend what you do and don't do would be absolutely beneficial. I know sometimes that's not practical, and uh they know that. Unfortunately, dude, they do know that's the case. Uh so uh, you know, that's why I'm saying just be prepared for uh worst case scenario as you navigate these seas. Until next time, this is Over the Bull. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I am not providing legal, financial, or professional advice. Any business decisions you make should be done in consultation with licensed professionals appropriate to your situation.

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