Ep804: Jeff Holman – The Franchise Bubble That Burst Too Soon

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Uh, Hello, fellow risk takers, and welcome to my worst investment ever, stories of loss. To keep you winning in our community, we know that to win an investing you must take risks, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives, and I want to thank all my listeners in Utah for listening today, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz from 80 Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Jeff Holman. Jeff, are you ready to join the mission? I am. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. Well, let me introduce you to the audience. Jeff Holman, founder of intellectual strategies, is revolutionizing legal support for startups and scaling businesses. His fractional legal team model provides expert legal guidance without the cost of a full time team with expertise in Engineering, Law and Business. Jeff helps companies navigate complex challenges, ensuring they can grow with confidence. Jeff, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Jeff Holman 01:10
Yeah, I'd love to, but I might have to make a request of, can you do that voice for me, like on, I don't know, one of our videos or something.

Andrew Stotz 01:18
I think it's a great intro. I think I can provide you with a great clip of your bio. Jeff Holman, founder of intellectual strategies,

Jeff Holman 01:27
nice. I love it. I love it. Yeah, no. Thank you for having me. I'm super glad to be here. And so a little bit of background about me, just briefly. You know, you mentioned engineering, law, business. I don't know if it's because I love learning or because I couldn't figure out where I wanted to be, but I really do just I love working with innovators. And what I've done is I have kind of traversed through big law, private practice, in house practice with with companies, and really arrived at a point where I think we're we've designed an approach that works extremely well for small and scaling businesses, to get access to a full legal team on a fractional basis. So that's really, really what we're doing from a career standpoint right now. It's interesting

Andrew Stotz 02:16
because, like, I have some business I do which is a fractional you could call it fractional CFO. It's not really that where I go in and basically help them set up things from a CEO CFO perspective, and but when I look at legal, I feel like it legal is more suited to that, because I'm never I'm not going to hire a legal guy to work on my team, and you know that. But whereas I probably do need to hire that finance guy, that accounting guy, and I'm just curious, like, how did you, how did you get started in it, and how are things going? And maybe one other question related to that too, is like, what are the common things that people are using your services for? Yeah,

Jeff Holman 02:58
okay, so how do I get started? How's it going? And common services. Let me see if I can tackle all those so. And I think you're right, you know, there are a lot of people who have gone into the world of fractional in, you know, finance or marketing, and it's very common. It all depends on the stage of business you're at, legal, like, like, a lot of things is maybe a little bit behind, and is adopting this, adopting this model a little bit later than some of these other disciplines, but it's, but it's coming along, and it really is a great way to practice. So how did I get started? I, you know, I kind of grew into it. I would say I went in house at one point. I had this plan. When I went and got my MBA, I said, let's, you know, I want to do more than just work with inventors and patents, because that's what I was doing for over 15 years. And when I went in house, I immediately said to myself, I think I've been practicing the wrong way. And I don't mean I was doing it poorly. I was just doing it the way that attorneys taught me to do it, not the way that the business executives and the clients who I had been working with previously really needed me to operate with them and communicate with them. So there's really a light bulb moment for me 10 years ago or so, when I went in house and I saw there's a better way to do this, when, when, when I transitioned out of that role. I really did it slowly. I offered to help find a replacement for me. I thought this would be a two month endeavor. It ended up being 18 months. And so I was, effectively, without knowing what it was called, operating as fractional general counsel for this company for 18 months beyond my w2 employment. And so it really did just grow out of that, and has evolved a little bit since there into more of a team approach so we can provide more services reduce risk, as you mentioned in your intro, around bottlenecks and things like that. So that's how it began and how it's going now. And it's, it's really going well, I think we're really just building momentum. We're a small business, we're entrepreneurial, just like a lot of the clients we work with, and so we're, we're doing a lot of the same. Things, bringing this fractional legal team to market, it requires validation of the business model. It requires educating the market about what we do. And so we go through a lot of the exact same things, and just a little bit different variant, as a lot of our clients do. But it's going well, we're building a team. We're having success. The clients we work with love the model. It really is the best way to practice law with, with small businesses, startups, founders, scaling companies, just because it feels like you have an entire legal team just down the hall, you can pop your head in and say, Hey, Jeff, I got a quick question for you, as opposed to, you know, what we've all come to know, the dreaded, you know, 15 minute phone call that gets billed. So you don't, you don't want to call your attorney. So it's going well, it's being received. Well, we just need to get the word out. I think I answered two of your questions.

Andrew Stotz 05:54
Your third question was the third question, what's the most common Yep, what's the most common questions? And

Jeff Holman 06:01
yeah, so, so for me and my team, I have a really extensive background working with inventors, innovation, patents, trademarks and other IP so we get a lot of what I call IP centric companies, or innovators who come to us. Innovators, of course, are building new products. They're building new brands and their business really centers around that product or that brand. And so we tend to work with a lot of E commerce companies bringing new products to market. We also tend to work with a lot of SaaS companies bringing new, you know, software services, to market. And then we work with what I always call deep, deep tech. It's those PhDs that are, you know, working maybe in connection with universities and other places, working on technology that's 20 years out might be used someday, and it might not, but it's, it's research that is often government funded and things like that. So, those are our main categories that we work with a lot of IP is what, you know, people come to us because they want to protect those innovations, that patent patentable inventions, that trademarkable brands. And then, because of my background with the MBA and the way that I've expanded services, we just kind of do 95% of what every company needs, from the moment that that the founder has that idea in their head to the, you know, to the day when they're running a successful business and managing all of the same functions that a fortune 500 does, just at a much smaller scale,

Andrew Stotz 07:37
and just selfishly, I want to explain, and I think this may be represented by some of my listeners, too, that, you know, they probably have similar questions. But many years ago, I started a course called valuation master class, and it's all of my knowledge in how to value a company. And then, very cool, I got a website called valuation masterclass.com and then I basically have been selling it since 2017 out in the market, and so, and I launched the course basically five or six times a year. It's a six week course, and then another six weeks. And for those people that want to go more advanced, and so I've had, let's say, about 1000 students through, you know, they've entered it. Not all have made it to the end, because I'm pretty tough on that. But the point is, what for somebody that's listening or viewing that has created some sort of intellectual property revolving around information, a course, that type of thing. What's your general you know, what general advice do you give? Or how do you help someone in that type of situation?

Jeff Holman 08:42
That's a great question. I always like to dig in a little bit into the strategy behind the course or the revenue model that's being used you're doing. It sounds like maybe not so much of an evergreen strategy, as you know, timed limited, limited releases, stuff like that and so, but ultimately, are you, are, you know, are you or is somebody else? Is the objective to build this course and eventually sell it, or is it to build it and run it for a while? You know, that's I think,

Andrew Stotz 09:15
I think eventually sell it. Because, you know, at some point, I mean, I've been teaching this topic for 32 years, and I'd say I got another 10 years in me, probably, that I'm loved to do it, and I'm improving it all the time. And I believe that, you know, I've named it in such a way that there's plenty of firms out there that, do you know, have courses that would like to add on something that has this level intensity and all that. So definitely, I think, and I think the truth is, whenever you're whenever, for the listeners and viewers out there, when you get the same question, you better be answering this question. I'm going to sell it someday, because if you're not envisioning that, then what are you doing? And when you when you are, the idea of thinking I'm going to sell this really forces you to make sure you're professionalizing it and all that. So yes, that's the. Answer, yeah, I

Jeff Holman 10:01
love to hear that, because I think you're right. In the end, you do need a final destination, whether that's you selling it or passing it on to family or something. You know that that makes a difference. But when people say, I'm going to sell this, whether it's a an online e learning course, or whether it's a an E commerce company, whatever it is, that automatically triggers for me, the thought that one of the most valuable assets in your business, of course, everything you developed is valuable. It's all your IP it's copyrightable, stuff like that, but one of the most valuable assets in your business at that point of sale is going to be your brand, and that's protected by trademarks. So to the extent that you can have a trademark registered for your business in the locations that you know you and I are in different geographic locations. So wherever your buyers are going to find value in those trademark registrations, to the extent that you can have those, statistically, your business will sell for much more money with a registered trademark than it would without. And so that's just one multiplier that you can use and think about it's relatively easy to do. You're already doing all the branding anyways. You know, why not build the brand in a way that is also protected, in addition to just market it? And so that's my number one piece of advice for most businesses, is look at your branding and look at where that's going to drive value in your enterprise, uh,

Andrew Stotz 11:24
eventually. And just, just because you sparked a question in my head, you know, my students come from 51 different countries around the world. That's amazing. So my question then is, okay, how the heck do you trademark something when you know it really is. You're selling it all around the world.

11:44
Well, business,

Andrew Stotz 11:45
yeah,

Jeff Holman 11:47
so, like a lot of my companies, I think what you're driving at is budget constraints, right? You can go out and patent something or trademark something in every country, if you wanted to, but the costs are astronomical. It doesn't doesn't make sense. When I used to work for doing patent portfolio stuff for IBM, we would file, you know, even their top, their most important patents that we would work on, if they decided to file them outside the United States, they would file in one, two, maybe three other countries. You know, I've had small businesses come to me and they're like, I want to file patents or trademarks in these 25 countries, my response is quickly, no, you don't that's not feasible that you know you'll be spending $250,000 just on filings alone, and and then you've got maintenance fees every year. So it's a great question. What you're going to want to look at is where the centers of revenue for you, or the centers of activity. Now, you have 51 countries that clients, that clients and students are coming from, which is fantastic. That's great reach. I mean, that shows that you've done something pretty cool. But there are probably some central countries, or some main countries, where your students come from, where your eventual acquirers, if you're going to sell this company, where they're located, you know, the US is obviously a big market for these types of things, but for what you're doing, it might be that some of the other financial hot beds would be cool places to get trademark registrations. And that might be Hong Kong, or somewhere in, you know, London, or wherever those places are, that those are the countries I would look at and see and try to balance, of course, the cost with the with the benefit, ultimately, and but go ahead, oh, I was just gonna say but, but in your case, I wouldn't be surprised if you picked, you know, three or four or five countries to get trademarks In. Trademarks are a lot less expensive to obtain than patents are, and so that's probably a realistic reach for something like what you're doing. And

Andrew Stotz 13:48
is there a market that's that that brings more clout to that trademark, or, you know, other countries it's harder for, let's say you can't do every market, but you pick a couple markets, like us or something, and then does that protect you a little bit more globally, or is that just only really just protect you in the US? Well,

Jeff Holman 14:08
I mean, the technical answer is, you can only enforce trademark rights in the country in which they're issued, right? But, you know, like with a lot of our E commerce clients, if you can lock down trademark rights in the US, you've effectively captured most of the market for most products out there. And there's, you know, while somebody might go off and manufacture in Vietnam or Mexico or China or wherever they want, to bring that product and that brand into the US, and if they can't do that, then it's a totally different economic calculation for them. So, so certainly, yeah, you can lock that down. Another point that brings up, though, is some countries, like the US, require that there is actual interstate commerce activity in order to, in order to get that qualify for trademark protection. Other countries don't require. That but, but the US and some countries do require that, so that would be a factor that you'd have to look at in the countries that you're evaluating. So let's now

Andrew Stotz 15:08
go back to your service. And for those listeners and viewers out there, they're thinking, Yeah, I need to, I need to do some trademarks on stuff. Is it your specialty or do you have, you know, you have partners or others that would do other countries? Or tell us more about that? Yeah,

Jeff Holman 15:24
it's great question. We are jurisdiction also we're licensed in the US. We work with country, with clients all across the US, and we also work with a lot of clients outside the US who are coming into the US. So we have both of those covered. A lot of our clients will want to trademark something into other countries eventually. And so when we do that, we have a network of what we call foreign council that we work with. So, you know, we probably worked with, I don't know if it's 51 countries, but we've probably worked, worked with 40 or 50 different with attorneys across 40 or 50 different countries to get patents and trademarks registered in those countries. And so what we do is we operate this, you know, the same type of fractional model that we have. You know, we do the same thing, and it's more of a managerial model. So we'll, while we can't file in Japan, for example, we will often be the hub for that network of decisions and legal strategy, so that the strategy is consistent across filings across countries, to the extent we can do that. So we'll often, we'll often be the general counsel role, or the, you know, the IP Council role, even though we're not the ones filing it in some of the countries. Okay,

Andrew Stotz 16:36
great. And for those people that want to, that want to learn more about what you're doing, including me, right? I think, yeah, you just mentioned for companies that are entering the US. I know my listener base is kind of 5050, half us, half outside of us. So for those people that want to find out more about entering the US or using your services, what's the best place for them to go?

Jeff Holman 17:00
Yeah, I always try to kick off with a call, a strategy call. People go to my website really easily. You can, you can right now, see my calendar, see a calendar of my, one of my partners, and schedule a 30 minute call with us and just, you know, outline kind of what you're doing, what you're working on. We enjoy talking with cool people working on cool projects, and so we usually try to look at, you know, what's going on, and if there are messes that need to be cleaned up already, we'll talk about those too. But otherwise we'll focus on, what are your milestones coming up in your business for the next 12 to 18 months? Because we really want to align and tailor our conversation to the milestones in your business, and so that's what we'll do in a 30 minute call. And you know, see, see where we get to

Andrew Stotz 17:45
great. And I'll have the link to that, that strategy call in the show notes for the listeners and viewers out there, so you can go straight to it. Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be, tell us a bit about the circumstance leading up to it, and then tell us your story.

Jeff Holman 18:04
Yeah, this is a tough question. I initially heard the question. I'm like, I don't, I don't make bad investments. And then as I thought about it further, I'm like, I'm like, Well, I have some, really, I have some great ones. And if I ask my wife, she'd say, I have more than I thought I had, right? So, but not marrying your wife. That was not, no, no, that was not. In fact, my wife is so fantastic that she actually runs the operations for our law firm. When she was kind of, you know, we've got four kids, when she was deciding, hey, I think I want to re enter the workforce and do some things. It took me a bit, four or five or six months to convince her. But I said, Hey, you really gotta come work with us. You would, you would do fantastic. And she really, she really does. So she was not a mistake.

Andrew Stotz 18:48
That's great. That's awesome, yep.

Jeff Holman 18:51
So my worst investment, let me, let me give you just two options here, because they, they both were around the same time, you know, COVID was happening, and I was looking at how to spend some of my time and where to put some some of our money. And I said, Well, it would be really cool to follow this cold plunge and sauna business model. And let's, you know, I've got a building that I rent out some office space in. And I said, Let's convert one of these suites and do a cold plunge and sauna studio. That one might be my worst. It's probably not the one I've I've lost the most money on, but it's, it was one where we took a big swing. It was a lot of fun. What we did was we actually built a studio. And let me back up, because I don't know, maybe, maybe all of your listeners know about this, maybe not with but in the US, there's this. There's this rising tide of people who are saying, you know, they're following Andrew cuberman and other health fanatics, in a way, and saying, You should cold plunge, right? You get your body into temp, into into water that's below 60 degrees. I don't know what that is, in Celsius, but it's, it's cold. Right? It's shockingly cold. And some people will get it down to 32 degrees, or close to 32 degrees, which, of course, is freezing. And you'll spend, you know, you'll try to sit in there for 30 seconds or a minute, or four minutes, or five minutes, you know, whatever, whatever time you can kind of reach a relaxation and meditative state, in a sense. So you'll do that, and then you'll maybe jump in a in a either hot rock or infrared sauna, and be in there for 20 or 30 minutes and and sometimes you'll cycle through and you'll do both. So we built a studio for this, and we said, let's, let's put in a couple saunas. Let's put in a couple cold plunges. I found, in fact, I found a company here locally in Utah that was making cold plunges at the time, and got a couple investor friends with of mine this and I said, Hey, we're doing this fun activity. Let's see what happens. Let's see where did it go wrong? Is that the question? Yeah, well,

Andrew Stotz 20:53
so the first thing is, you know, you're describing, you know, how you went into it. And one of the things I always say about the worst investment ever is that we never go into it thinking it will be, oh

Jeff Holman 21:06
no. The spreadsheet looked great. The numbers on the numbers were fantastic. And it followed another business that I've done that had some more success than this one ended up having. So no, you don't go into it. And if I, you know, I was really candid with my investors. I said, Hey, here's, here's what the numbers might be. But you know, as a good attorney does, I said, here, here are 71 different ways that this could fail and might not get your money back. So you know, you gotta, you gotta be upfront with people when you do that. And I'm, when I'm counseling clients who are out there raising money. I'm, I'm always very, what's the word watchful, to listen to what they're saying, see what they're doing, and be like, Okay, are you, are you being fully candid with your investors? Super important, right? And so it was important for me to be fully candid with my investors, but, yeah, you're right. There's, there's a lot of stuff that can go wrong, and it doesn't look like it up front.

Andrew Stotz 21:58
And I want to talk about that, fully candid in a second with an experience that I have, but before we do that, so at what point did you realize, oops, that didn't go according to plan?

Jeff Holman 22:11
Well, you know, have you had employees? Have you had a retail business, a brick and mortar business with employees in it. It's tough, right? The way you hire, who you hire, availability becomes an issue. And I had a lot of fun designing the studio. I had a lot of fun kicking it off, you know, meeting the members, hearing their stories, the health benefits they were getting being being there. It's only, you know, 10 minutes from my house. So it wasn't that big of a deal to run over and be on site quite a bit, and that was and you kind of have to be, you know, to kick something off, you have to be really involved. I think it's really hard to hand stuff off from day one and say, go build this for me. And so I think what I tried to do was, when we had some employees, I tried to get them more involved in the marketing side of things, because, because a lot of these businesses really are subscription membership businesses that are driven by, you know, the the life, the life cycle of the of the membership really determines how much you need to market, and your and your marketing funnel determines How broadly you need to market to get enough people in the funnel to make up for the churn, or the, you know, the absence of retention in your membership. So it's kind of a numbers game. It fits onto a spreadsheet pretty well, but what doesn't fit on the spreadsheet is the, I'm going to say apathy. Don't think any of my former employees are going to listen to this, but the apathy of employees towards your business objectives, right? And so helping train and incentivize people to do some of those marketing activities was where we ran into the obstacles in this business. Frankly, one of

Andrew Stotz 24:01
the things I always admire about McDonald's is, you know, they like, if you could say apathy, like a 16 year old working in a McDonald's is like the least devoted to McDonald's and his future or her future there, and yet, they do it through all these systems and stuff. But when you start a small business, you just don't have the resources to build out this amazing system for people to follow, and therefore, you know, it kind of, you know, kind of falls apart. The other thing is, I think, and I face this challenge, I know that many of the entrepreneurs that listen and are doing startups face the same challenges that you hire all these people, and you get excited about the operations of the business, and then you realize, holy crap, I gotta do a lot more marketing. All right, everyone. I want everybody here to start marketing. Well, none of them are marketers. None of them are sales. You know, I hired him because he's good at, you know, counting money, you know, or whatever, yeah. And then it's like, ah, then you run into this next wall. It's. Say, oh, there's like, this level of marketing that has to be done, whether you're small or large, it doesn't matter. There is this level of marketing that has to be done, and if you don't do it, eventually you just can't capture the market. And is that what you'd say? You know, did you in as far as the marketing is concerned, or what? How would you say the final blow was,

Jeff Holman 25:23
well, so I think there are two things. I think one of it was marketing. And I realized that in order to do this, I needed to be marketing more, and I needed to be putting probably more money into it. Not that throwing money at problems always solves the problems, but it can help a lot more than no money, right? And so it was, it was one. I got to put more money and time into developing SOPs, and frankly, we had some SOPs. It was more about babysitting, if I can say that, you know, making sure things were getting done, having people send reports that they were getting done, and having layers of verification and accountability that things were getting done and that that was a breakdown for us, the maybe the final nail in the coffin for us was we had we had members, right? We had people who are coming and paying and enjoying the studio, and people were sad when it eventually did close. But the final nail in the coffin for this business was when there was a proliferation of other studios, brands, franchises, all popping up, announcing plans to open within a mile, two miles, five miles, of our studio. And I just said, you know, we're not really making it work. We're break even, which is better than a lot of businesses do, but, but break even doesn't, doesn't justify, you know, continuing to operate a business very well, especially when you've got new market entrants coming in that are going to be throwing quite a bit of money at building their own base, which is, let's face it, for a for a cold plunge studio, there's a, there is some somewhat of a limited market segment for that. Not everybody wants to be dipping themselves into torturing themselves. Yeah, as great as the benefits are, not everybody into that. And I totally understand it. So, so as we watch the the market evolve, then we said, you know, this is something that we're just going to have to bow out of, which, which was a little sad, because, frankly, along the way, you know, funny story, a little bit, I think, funny to me looking back, right, I opened, and the first thing that happened, we had kind of this soft opening. We call it right the studios opening, we're inviting some people in. We're hosting some local businesses to bring their teams in for team events, just to get the word out. And a few weeks into our soft opening, somebody came in and, you know, carrying his clipboard, or whatever, and he says, Hello, or, you know, I need to talk to the owner. I'm from the local, the local county health department. I'm like, Oh, great, welcome coming in. Let me, let me share with you what we're doing. And he said, Well, we've gotta, we've gotta shut your studio down because you're we've gotta regulate your swimming pools. Now, mind you, I had, I had bathtubs. Now, they're fancy bathtubs, and had chillers on them and filtration and ozone generation and stuff like that, right? But, but they're bathtub size tubs. And I said, Oh, I think you're mistaken. We don't have swimming pools. We have, we have tubs here. They're individual tubs. And he said, Well, according to the Utah State administrative regulations for swimming pools, these are swimming pools. And if you don't know the rules, which, of course, a lot of us don't, swimming pools like you have to have a lifeguard on duty at all times for a swimming pool, your the edges of your swimming pool have to be between like eight and 19 inches above ground or something like that. And you have to have, you know, automated chlorination in your swimming pools. And you have to have a Virginia Baker drain on your swimming pool. Because at one point, somebody, somebody you know, a US senator or Congressman's granddaughter was, unfortunately, you know, passed away due to unsafe drainages and swimming pools years ago. And so there's a so you have to have all this stuff. It's not a bathtub. Does not qualify for that. So I actually, with my background and some of my connections, we went through and we actually made changes to the Utah State health regulations regarding swimming pools, and met with the county, met with the state regulators. We made those changes, and it took a while, and we had to operate differently in the meantime, which was, which was a hit to us, but, but we were successful, and eventually the those changes also got passed through the legislature, which maybe was an unnecessary level but, but the legislature essentially passed a bill to mandate the the changes that I had drafted for the for the state health departments. So it was a ton of work, right? Like we were, we were changing the end. Street. I think we were helping the industry. Oh, yeah, I'm not sure I should admit it, but if there was another business that had a different model where they weren't using individual tubs, and we did some drafting, you know, intentionally that was around the size of our tubs, and we said, hey, if you're an individual tub, you're not a swimming pool, right? And so we cater to the kind of size constraints and configurations of what would be a normal bathtub. And I did hear from a from a state representative, friend of mine who was involved in the process and helped me along the way, that there might have been a yelling match somewhere around the state capitol, outside of the legislative rooms from one of my competitors at the time, because they were not happy about the language I had selected for what constituted a cold plunge tub. So it's

Andrew Stotz 30:54
one of the reasons why we want in the US. You want to try to avoid the tyranny of the administrative state, because you want regulations to go through legislatures as much as possible, because those are the only bodies truly that, you know, we can change the people in there, you know. And so that's an interesting, you know, point about the whole process. So, yep, yeah. So let me ask you this. So let's think about the listener or the viewer that's listening, and they're like, Hold on, wait a minute. I'm just in the process of setting up this similar type of business or something like it, and you've just kind of woken me up, Jeff. I appreciate that. So let me ask you this question based on what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn. What one action would you recommend that person take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Jeff Holman 31:49
I'm going to give you two, two pieces of advice, and they're contradictory, because, because of my legal role for a lot of clients, right? If I'm taking this from a very non legal perspective, and a lot of founders do this, right? You know, if you look at Uber or Airbnb, these are businesses that are huge and valuable, and everybody knows them and uses them now. But when they started, were they compliant with local regulations? No, right. People were operating on the edge. And that's probably, that's probably a euphemism for saying that they were operating illegally or in violation of local regulations quite a bit. And so there's, there's this aspect to starting a business that's new, that is, again, on the edge of regulations. And a lot of these businesses are great ideas, but they don't fit with current regulations. And so to begin them, founders sometimes have to weigh the risks of operating in total compliance versus operating in maybe the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law. I have to be very careful saying that with my clients, because I certainly can't say, Hey, you should break the law, right this? I can tell you what the law is, the limit risks are involved, and certainly nothing, I'm never going to say you should push the limits on something that has criminal, you know, personal criminal liability, or things like that. But there's some administrative things that maybe the risks outweigh, or the benefits outweigh the risks, perhaps. And a lot of businesses are built that way. So my advice for some is, you know, understand the risks, but understand that some businesses just have to be built around the edges, right? That's that from a legal perspective, and thinking of maybe some of the other businesses I've invested in and projects I've done, you really can't ever do too much research. Now. You can. You can get second analysis paralysis, of course, but to understand what you're getting into and get beyond the spreadsheet. If I can say that that's, that's what I think needs to happen for most businesses, is get beyond the spreadsheet, and that might happen by, you know, digging into regulations, or it might happen by going out and validating, you know, your MVP. It might happen by, you know, identifying channels that you're going to use, and the details of how to really use those channels to market or to drive revenue, or whatever it might be. So, so I'll summarize that from a legal, illegally compliant business perspective, is validate well beyond the spreadsheet.

Andrew Stotz 34:31
Great. Yeah, in fact, I was just thinking like, go to another another city or another state and go work in one of those businesses, or I heard some advice from someone that I thought was really interesting, and said, Go to that find a business that does what you want to do in another state, that's not going to be a competitor, and say, I want to do an internship with you. And what I propose is that I write all your SOPs

34:59
for. To be That's fantastic, yeah, and

Andrew Stotz 35:01
then and, and my intent is I'm going to take those SOPs and I'm going to set up a similar business, but in my own jurisdiction. And the benefit you're going to get is you're going to get all the SOPs, and the benefit I'm going to get is I'm going to have also have the rights to those SOPs to implement my business. Yeah,

Jeff Holman 35:21
I love that. I really is. It reminds me of what would be kind of an ideal scenario with a franchise business, right? We, my wife and I own a another business. It's a franchise. It's a fitness boutique type of studio, and, you know, it has some of its own complications, but, but in theory, that's what you should be getting with a franchise. That's why you would probably be willing to pay more. But again, even with a franchise, I would say the same thing, get beyond the spreadsheets and validate and, you know, go and go and visit those franchise locations that maybe are non competing with yours, or a little bit further distance than your customer base would be. It's that's created by Sandra, yeah,

Andrew Stotz 35:59
and it comes from Cody Sanchez in her book Main Street millionaire, where she's talking about buying out existing businesses. And if your answer to that question about, you know, oh, but Andrew, I don't have time to go and work with that other company, well, then how are you going to have time to do it in your own business? Right? So, well,

Jeff Holman 36:17
you're going to, yeah, that's the first time founder syndrome, right? You you're going to learn that lesson, whether you learn it yourself, or you learn it from people who've been down that path, or, in some cases, hopefully from from some legal and financial advisors that

Andrew Stotz 36:31
are around you. There's a great saying that has so much truth as we get older, is pay me now or pay me later. You're gonna pay a little bit Facebook ads is like that, right? You want to learn how to do Facebook ads on your own? Well, it's $40,000 to do that. Yeah, of experimentation, or you want to, you want to have someone else do it? Well, that's $40,000 to hire them to do. Yes, you're going to pay either way.

Jeff Holman 36:57
Yes, we've done both. Yeah, and I agree with you. So,

Andrew Stotz 37:01
so, um, before I ask you this question, it's about, you know what resource you'd recommend, I'll recommend the research resource of that main street millionaire book, which I listened to as an audio book. And that advice came from that, and I think it was really good. But let me ask you, what's a resource that you'd recommend for the audience?

Jeff Holman 37:18
Well, in addition to holding a strategy call, if your audience wants to do that with us, which, which I'm more than happy to do. There's a book out there by Gino Wickman, right? It's traction and fuel. He's got his two, his two books I can't, you know, I've read a lot of books about strategy. In fact, my transition from being a patent attorney to more of a general counsel attorney working with startups on a broader scale, really was triggered by trying to figure out how to align intellectual property, assets, patents, trademarks, copyrights, with business objectives and strategy. And so I kind of went down that rabbit hole for a long time. I've done a lot of stuff. And the thing I really like about his books, traction and rocket fuel are the simplicity with which they break down and implement strategic principles. He doesn't necessarily call it that, but that's what he's doing for businesses. If you can follow his, you know, his, what is it? His, his rocks and his quarterlies and his, you know, right, bright people, right seat, all of those frameworks. He's really, he's really creating strategic alignment in the business, and every business needs that, regardless of size or stage. They need strategic alignment. And sometimes, you know, in my world, the businesses who are pivoting need to do that incrementally and iteratively, because the business that you're operating today might not be the business that you pivot to tomorrow. Mm, hmm.

Andrew Stotz 38:43
So those that great, great advice. And Gino Wickman, I haven't had him on the show, but I think I gotta do that. He wrote traction, which is called traction, get a grip on your business in 2012 I believe it's got 4.6 out of five on Amazon with almost 9000 reviews. So very, very good. I've read it. It's excellent. And then rocket fuel is his other book, which came out in when was that 2015 and yeah, and that one is rated 4.6 out of five, with about 2000 reviews. So both of those are exceptional books, and I'll have links to those two in the show notes. So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Jeff Holman 39:28
My goal for the next 12 months is to build my law firm. So the fractional legal team stuff we're doing, we're the only law firm I know that's doing it in the way we're doing it. But every law firm who works with startups and small businesses should be doing it. I'm an advocate for that. I've created masterminds around that. I I hope that the market adopts that. It's, you know, well, while it may present competition, there's no end to the number of clients who need what we're doing. And so growing our business is my objective, but also evangelizing the fractional legal team model is the second. Area, and you know, also aligned goal that we're trying to get out there.

Andrew Stotz 40:03
Exciting. Well, listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Jeff, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience? I

Jeff Holman 40:27
just want to say thanks Andrew for having me, and I'll leave you with the slogan that I adopted 15 years ago, innovate with confidence.

Andrew Stotz 40:35
And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our Well, fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that. Today, we added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside. You.