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Eggs 456: Intellectual Property - Your Business's Hidden Asset with Sharon Toerek · EGGS! The Podcast

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who are serious about execution. And now, back to the show we ask
1:55
too. Is it just Toric?
1:56
Is that how you say the last name?
1:57
Sharon Toric, Yeah. Sharon Toric.
1:59
OK, I should have asked before I got started.
2:01
Anyway, hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast.
2:03
Today's special guest is Sharon Toric.
2:05
She's a marketing and IP attorney for agencies and
2:08
founder of Toric Law. Welcome to the show, Sharon.
2:09
How are you? I'm well, Ryan, thanks for
2:12
having me. I'm excited to be here.
2:13
Absolutely thrilled to to learn a little bit about this stuff.
2:17
You probably have have encountered this in your career,
2:19
but I think a lot of people don't really think about legal
2:22
until they need something legal. They don't often think about it
2:25
as something that you do in advance or, you know, as a
2:27
precaution to be prepared for, you know, maybe staving off
2:30
those eventualities. So I wonder if you'd, you know,
2:32
maybe talk a little bit here at the beginning just about sort
2:35
of, you know, who you are, what your career looked like and you
2:38
know, sort of what led you to where you are today.
2:40
Right. Yeah.
2:42
Well, I mean, that's a great jumping off point because I do
2:44
think that legal for entrepreneurial companies should
2:49
be regarded as a, a profit making tool, a profit
2:53
preservation tool. And I don't think that a lot of
2:56
entrepreneurs tend to like to think of it that way.
2:59
It, it feels more like a cost or maybe an investment if you're
3:02
being a little bit more generous about it.
3:04
But it really is it, it's intertwined so intimately with
3:08
your ability to make and keep the money that your business is
3:12
set up to earn for you. So my background is one of being
3:18
an intellectual property lawyer. Originally it was an area of
3:22
training that I was lucky to sort of fall into very early in
3:26
my legal career. And so a lot of brand
3:30
protection, a lot of copyright and trademark law, some
3:34
licensing, things like that. And I started to work more with
3:40
marketers generally because there are a lot of legal issues
3:44
that arise adjacent to marketing related to IP protection.
3:49
And then I sort of started getting immersed into the world
3:52
of marketers and then more narrowly after that, independent
3:58
marketing agencies and they can be agencies of any stripe,
4:01
media, creative design, PR and communications, you name it,
4:07
what they all have in common and and who we serve today in my
4:12
current law firm, which is about 12 1/2 years old, it's not my
4:15
first firm, but we founded this one to serve independent
4:19
marketing agencies specifically in the United States.
4:21
And so we helped them with IP contract development and
4:26
negotiation and marketing regulation compliance.
4:30
And you know, before that I was sort of running this practice
4:33
and narrowing it our client base to this vertical in a silo
4:40
within a more entrepreneurially focused law firm, which is my
4:43
last partnership. And I just had a heart for
4:46
serving these agencies. And so founded this firm that I
4:50
will own and run to do that. I love that.
4:53
Well, and I think what's really interesting is I think in
4:56
somebody who's been in marketing basically my whole career, I
4:59
think there are a lot of misnomers around intellectual
5:02
property and stuff like that, where people, you know, operate
5:05
kind of without a net more than they think they are.
5:07
And on the assumption that, oh, well, you know, I drew it first,
5:10
therefore it's copy written or I've done this, you know, so
5:13
therefore I have the trademark. I'll have first dibs on that.
5:15
You know, and I think people have sort of especially, you
5:17
know, creative people like myself who draw or illustrate or
5:20
whatever, we just sort of assume we own our work, you know,
5:23
because we've done it. So do you mind talking a little
5:25
bit about just sort of, I don't know, some, some common
5:27
misconceptions or things that might have come up over the
5:30
course of your career in terms of intellectual property where
5:33
people are maybe a little fast and loose with stuff versus, you
5:36
know, where you should actually be working with an attorney?
5:38
Right, right. Well I think you know
5:42
fundamentally most entrepreneurial companies are
5:46
our client base happens to be entrepreneurial firms that are
5:49
marketing agencies, but you could be a software developer or
5:53
consultancy or they all tend to undervalue the amount of IP that
5:57
they are creating on a day-to-day basis.
5:59
So I think if you if that's your platform of starting point and
6:03
you realize that it's your primary product if you will and
6:08
your most significant asset in many cases, especially for small
6:11
closely held businesses. So where do they, you know where
6:15
do we see the most frequent missteps?
6:18
I think the first place to look for lots of closely held
6:22
businesses is the fact that they are running with a talent base
6:29
that is frequently gig based. And the misunderstanding that
6:34
occurs there or the misimpression, if you will, is
6:37
that, well, if I've paid somebody to create some work
6:40
from my company that they might get integrated into work that I
6:44
sell to our clients or customers I own that I've paid for that.
6:48
I've asked them to do it. I've given them parameters,
6:50
they've created it, I've paid them.
6:53
Which is not the way the United States regards copyright law and
6:57
which actually isn't the legal basis for ownership of any of
7:01
the work that that individual or that other firm has done for
7:04
you. So the first, I think, misstep
7:07
that lots of businesses make is they're not adequately
7:12
documenting the ownership trail of the IP that's being created.
7:16
And it's less of a question when your company pays somebody AW2
7:23
wage to create something within their scope of employment for
7:27
you. The law is pretty clear about
7:29
who owns that in that case. It's not so clear when you work
7:33
with alternative types of talent OR subcontractors, or you enter
7:38
into strategic partnerships with other firms, or you have two
7:42
company owners who might have each brought some of their own
7:44
IP to the table to collaborate. So lack of documentation and
7:48
lack of a clear chain of title regarding the original
7:53
creations, whether they're an invention, a piece of
7:55
technology, an ad campaign, whatever it might be, that I
7:59
think is the 1st place to start. Yeah, no, I think that that's
8:03
really smart. And especially, you know, I
8:04
mean, to your point, a lot of people are using gig workers
8:06
these days and freelancers, contractors, people like this.
8:09
And so, yeah, I guess not having a clear contract in place or
8:12
something like that could really leave you high and dry if the
8:14
assumption is that, you know, just because I paid for it, it's
8:16
mine. So I think that's a really good
8:18
point you mentioned. And there's something about, you
8:20
know, a lot of these small agencies, especially the closely
8:23
held ones are generating maybe more IP than they're thinking
8:25
of. And I wonder if we could just
8:27
talk a little bit about more about IP or intellectual
8:29
property as we, I guess think of it.
8:32
And, and the reason I'm asking is because I think for a lot of
8:35
people, they think of their IP as being their logo or maybe,
8:39
you know, some SOP or maybe they have some process or an
8:43
application that they're using. But I, I think most people
8:45
aren't even sophisticated enough to have those things in place,
8:48
right. So if you're just a
8:49
run-of-the-mill marketing agency and you're just creating work
8:52
all day long, like I guess what's the point of protecting
8:55
the IP if it's just my logo or if it's just whatever, you know?
8:58
So like what, what am I missing in terms of the, the kinds of IP
9:01
that marketing agencies are spinning up that they might not
9:03
realize should be protected? Well, I like to you, we use at
9:09
my firm basically a triangle rubric, if you will, for quickly
9:14
thinking about whether you have IP in your business and what
9:18
kinds of IP you might have. Three points of the triangle.
9:22
Top of the triangle, if you will, is brand, and that is how
9:27
you go to market and how you identify yourself as the source
9:30
of whatever it is that you sell or provide in the marketplace.
9:34
And typically brand is going to be protectable by trademark law.
9:37
So it's your company name, it's your product names, it's your
9:42
slogans, your tag lines, it's any of the elements of your, any
9:48
of the physical manifestations of your branding.
9:50
Brand is a very big concept. It goes beyond trademarks, but
9:54
so that's trademarks and that's brand and that's really kind of
9:57
at the top of the triangle. Then you go to the second point
10:00
of the triangle and that's your content.
10:03
And that's probably the broadest.
10:05
It should be the if I had done better in math and high school,
10:09
I could draw a triangle that had a like a really big point.
10:12
So your content is a broad category, right?
10:16
It can mean the actual stuff you're creating, your software
10:20
code, your online learning course, your videos, your
10:26
marketing campaign materials and collateral.
10:30
All that is your content. And that can be predictable
10:35
under a couple different theories of the law.
10:37
Typically it's copyright if you're going to be exposing that
10:40
content to the world and releasing it publicly, But it
10:44
might also be a trade secret. It might be something that you
10:46
have a strategic advantage over your competitors or anyone else
10:50
in the marketplace with because it's proprietary to you.
10:55
It's your secret sauce about how how you create, how you deliver,
10:59
what your standard MO is for doing business.
11:03
So you our legal theories, they are either copyright protection
11:08
or trade secret protection. If it's an original invention,
11:12
it might be patentable, but I'm not a patent lawyer so I'm not
11:15
going to get too deeply into that.
11:18
But that's the first place that people typically think about
11:21
protecting IP is, oh, is it patentable?
11:23
There's so many other theories of protection for your
11:25
intellectual property, especially in a knowledge based
11:27
business. So that's your second very large
11:30
point of the triangle because it actually covers the things you,
11:34
the stuff that you are creating and putting out into the world.
11:39
Then you have the Third Point of the triangle, which is
11:42
transactions. And I mean two things by that,
11:46
transactions in to your company or your firm.
11:51
And we talked about one of those types of transactions a moment
11:54
ago, which is your independent contractor or freelancer or
11:57
strategic partnership relationships.
11:59
Anytime you've got some third party who doesn't work for your
12:04
firm and get an actual paycheck contributing to the content that
12:09
you've created, that's a transaction in to your business
12:13
and that needs to be documented and protected contractually.
12:18
But then there's your cut your transactions out of the
12:20
business. And this is the way you actually
12:22
monetize or make money from your stuff, right?
12:25
It's the license fees or subscription fees that you
12:28
charge for your information banks products.
12:30
It's the purchase price of whatever it is that you're
12:33
selling your thing for whatever your revenue model might be.
12:38
Your, your transactions protect your revenue model, but they
12:43
also protect your intellectual property because your terms and
12:46
conditions are very important for governing how anybody else
12:50
out in the world can use what you're giving them access to,
12:54
particularly in the realm of software or mobile applications
13:00
or any original creative work. So that's your Third Point of
13:04
the triangle and that's the one that closely, most closely
13:08
correlates with your money signs.
13:09
But you have to have the other two points of the triangle
13:11
covered as you go to market to protect those two categories of
13:17
your intellectual property. OK, so, so based on that, I
13:22
mean, like it's, I guess interesting, right?
13:24
Because I think that those things are, are the things that
13:27
even, you know, companies big and small start engaging in,
13:29
right? They start doing these things.
13:30
They've got a little name for their shop or they're creating
13:33
some content, they're blogging their newsletters, they're, you
13:35
know, doing work for clients. And then, you know, obviously, I
13:38
guess if you're in business, you have transactions going in and
13:40
out. So it because my, my next
13:43
question was kind of like how small is too small?
13:45
Like when do we need to begin engaging people, right?
13:47
I mean, for especially for small businesses, I think the notion
13:51
of spending money on legal is like, well, let's see how long I
13:53
can kick this down the road. Or, you know, maybe I'm a new
13:56
business. And so I don't necessarily feel
13:57
like, you know, what if we don't succeed?
13:59
What if we're not going to get it?
14:00
You know, maybe we'll maybe we'll do OK, but we don't know
14:03
where we're going to be in a year, you know, so I'm not going
14:05
to put a bunch of money into legal and that kind of stuff.
14:07
So from your perspective and and obviously, I mean, I'm sure
14:10
it's, you know, from day one, but you know, what's
14:12
realistically where do small businesses, at what point makes
14:15
the most sense for them to start engaging with legal people?
14:17
Like is there a dollar amount or some other stage that makes the
14:20
most sense for them? I can't speak to a specific
14:24
dollar amount, but what I can say is that the extent to which
14:30
you're business is founded on a platform of intellectual
14:36
property and not the actual sale of some physical item can kind
14:44
of dictate how much energy and how early you want to pay
14:48
attention to having your intellectual property protection
14:52
house in order, if you will. And what do I mean by that?
14:55
I think you need as an entrepreneur to ask yourself
14:58
what would be or could be the damage to the company if someone
15:03
else was either using a brand or a trademark that was
15:08
substantially similar to mine. It could cause confusion in the
15:11
marketplace about who sells what.
15:14
We see this happen every week in our business because trademark
15:19
due diligence didn't get done or are sometimes inadvertently.
15:23
It happens and you need to have a plan for what to do and a lot
15:27
of your options are determined based upon how well you've
15:30
protected your IP. So there's a risk calculus that
15:34
happens for every business owner, right?
15:36
It's how damaging would it could it be to our business if we had
15:42
a trademark infringement problem?
15:44
Could we weather that storm? Could we afford to rebrand?
15:47
Could we afford to? Will we have the actual legal
15:52
foundation to be able to stop somebody from encroaching onto
15:56
our brand? So that's the first thing.
15:59
I think the second thing is it's not an all or nothing situation.
16:04
And I, you know, every business is different in terms of their
16:08
triage of which of these they should be tackling and when.
16:14
But they haven't sat down and actually made the assessment.
16:17
You should be sitting down and making the assessment, the doing
16:20
the audit of your IP on a regular basis so that you can
16:23
think calmly and strategically about what your protection plan
16:28
should be. Perhaps the protection that
16:31
would be optimal for a particular piece of intellectual
16:34
property isn't worth to you the risk of, of a potential
16:40
encroachment or infringement. You've made that, you know,
16:43
analysis and you're OK with waiting.
16:45
There's nothing wrong with making that It's but it should
16:47
be an intentional business decision.
16:50
And so I think to answer the question, you have to actually
16:54
understand the foundation of the IP that's in your business.
16:57
You need to be doing that analysis.
16:58
And I just gave you sort of a cheat code for that, right?
17:01
Look at the three points of the triangle.
17:03
Sit down, do some thinking, make a list, and figure out which of
17:08
those could be most disruptive to your business if you hadn't
17:13
adequately taken the steps to protect them.
17:17
Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I wonder too, I mean, if
17:20
some of it isn't, I don't know, maybe it's lack of education,
17:22
right? Maybe people don't realize how
17:24
much risk they're actually opening themselves up to.
17:27
I've seen this a lot with like, especially with small agencies,
17:29
more on the design side, which is where I lived more of these
17:33
companies. You know, I mean, you got a lot
17:35
of people that are kind of doing creative work that might be a
17:37
little derivative of something else.
17:39
Or you've got, you know, a lot of agency names that are sort of
17:42
similar or all kind of look the same, you know, but maybe it's a
17:46
bunch of people just like you and nobody's going to be, you
17:49
know, litigious and you're just going to be able to float.
17:51
But I think sometimes, you know, you might run into something or,
17:54
you know, maybe if you're charging enough for a product,
17:57
you know, maybe you're doing, let's say like a web designs
17:59
project or something that's really costly, not having those
18:03
legal protections could kind of sneak up and bite you.
18:04
I think like, you know, and maybe this is more contractual
18:07
than it is IP. But but it seems like it's one
18:11
of those areas where especially freelancers are sort of small,
18:14
you know, single operator kind of businesses might not have
18:17
protection in place, whether that was, you know, they didn't
18:20
bother to get a contract or whatever, you know.
18:23
So is there, I guess, you know, any kind of gotchas or things
18:27
like that that you should be aware of when it comes to that
18:29
sort of thing? So I'm trying to think of a
18:31
better example or like a more concrete example here.
18:33
But I'm just thinking of the idea where you know you feel
18:36
loose and comfortable to just proceed without thinking about
18:38
the legal ramifications. But the downside of getting
18:42
caught sleeping could be much bigger, maybe, than you think it
18:45
would. Right.
18:46
Well, so I mean, if again, if we, if we run it through the
18:51
three points of the triangle, what are your risks in terms of
18:54
branding or trademark conflict, right.
19:00
That calculus looks like what, what would it mean to our
19:04
business to have to rebrand, to have to abandon our brand and
19:09
start from scratch again? What will we lose in our
19:14
reputation equity? What would we, what would it
19:17
mean like for our client communications?
19:21
So that's a place to start when it comes to trademark and brand.
19:27
And when you compare that to the cost of being proactive about,
19:31
for example, having a trademark search performed, A legitimate
19:35
full trademark search, not poking around on, you know, on
19:39
chat or Claude or Perplexity or Google to see do I see any
19:46
other, you know, conflicting. I mean, obviously start at all
19:49
the places that are available to you without investment.
19:52
You can do a lot of this knockout work yourself, by the
19:55
way. So that's, I mean, in the brand
19:57
family, I'm first and foremost a trademark lawyer and that's how
20:03
I got my start as an attorney. I have seen over the years that
20:08
I've practiced for businesses in all industries what the economic
20:13
value of a brand is to a company, no matter how small
20:17
it's starting out, and how expensive it can be to have to
20:22
abandon ship or. Or beat back down someone else
20:26
who's trying to steal or conflict with my brand or, or
20:30
palm off on my reputation and our brand reputation.
20:34
So I, I think that, I guess I would disagree that the question
20:39
is how much can you afford to get away with not doing?
20:42
I think the question should be what are the steps we need to
20:46
take today? What are the need, the steps we
20:49
need to take down the road and then way down the road to make
20:53
sure we're making, you know, progress, not perfection, right?
20:56
That's what I always like to say to move in the right direction
21:00
to have a consistent IP protection strategy and a well
21:06
protected IP portfolio. Then remember you ideally you
21:10
want to be avoiding all it's this block and tackle work while
21:13
you're growing the business. But what we haven't talked about
21:17
yet is how much it can mean to your business to have a fully
21:22
protected portfolio of intellectual property when you
21:24
go to sell it, what it can mean for the value of your company on
21:29
the market. And so This is why I say, you
21:32
know, I have a very distinct point of view about this that
21:36
legal should be a profit preservation or a money making
21:39
tool. And IP is one of the areas where
21:41
that is most true, where that is most resonant, because the more
21:45
you do along the way to build the legal fortress around your
21:50
intellectual property as a business, the more it's going to
21:53
be worth in dollars and cents when you go to get an investor
21:57
in your company, sell your company, you know, bring a
22:01
partner into your business, whatever it might be.
22:03
Yeah, it's a really great point and it's actually kind of the
22:05
next thing I wanted to get into. So it's perfect timing or a
22:08
great Segway. It's like like you're sharing
22:10
notes here with me, but. We're not everybody.
22:13
We're not. Yeah, no, no, there's no like,
22:14
weird I. And I are just freestyle in it.
22:17
Yeah, so, but so, but this is actually one of the things that
22:20
sort of occurred to me. And you know, so I ran
22:22
basically, you know, a little marketing design agency, but it
22:25
was basically an extension of my freelance career, we'll say.
22:29
So like I was sort of the designer at the center and I was
22:31
the center hub. And then, you know, we'd bring
22:33
on resources or stuff like that to expand and take on bigger
22:36
jobs or whatever. But but at the end of the day,
22:38
it was still just sort of me. And so in that business, I never
22:42
put a lot of it like stock in the IP at all.
22:46
You know, I mean, and I did that business for 20 years, you know,
22:48
but I was like, but it wasn't ever going to be sold.
22:51
It was just me. It totally hinged on me at the
22:53
middle. And and, you know, there wasn't
22:54
going to be a version of this that I could just package up and
22:57
sell to somebody. It was just, you know, basically
22:59
I built myself a job, right. And so with our latest iteration
23:03
of our company, though, I've been much more purposeful on
23:06
trying to build proprietary tools, trying to build
23:09
intellectual property that I think we actually could own at
23:12
some point. And for the purpose of this
23:14
might be my retirement plan, right?
23:15
Like, you know, I, I'm just getting old enough now that I'm
23:18
going well, OK, I spent a life as a freelancer with NO4O1K and
23:22
like, I might have to out earn myself out of my
23:24
irresponsibility. And so a big part of that is,
23:27
OK, well, maybe we can develop tools and resources that are
23:29
actually, you know, worth something.
23:31
And, and for purposes that you just described too, like if we
23:34
were to go, go and sell, you know, if we've got some
23:36
protections around the things that we've created, we'd
23:39
definitely be in a better situation for the sale.
23:41
But it's interesting just because I, it never really
23:43
occurred to me or, or like I, you know, certainly I'm guilty
23:46
of playing fast and loose with a lot of this kind of stuff, you
23:48
know, and just working from kind of the artist's perspective,
23:51
which is, oh, well, I drew it. So it's mine.
23:53
You know that kind. Of well, and one of my favorite
23:55
soapbox. I mean, this is I, I, I talk
24:00
about this a lot on my show and actually when I get a chance to
24:04
speak to audiences of again, our audience happens to be marketing
24:08
agency owners. But this is true for any
24:11
consulting firm owner or any any entrepreneur who has a
24:16
professional service based business, for example, like
24:20
consulting, education, whatever it might be, marketing agency,
24:26
the potential for creating a a revenue stream that stands up
24:34
along next to your fee for service revenue.
24:37
And the example that you just gave painted such a vivid
24:40
picture of this. Ryan, for the owner of a
24:43
professional services firm who wants to think about what could
24:48
my succession or my ex's strategy be?
24:50
One of these days, thinking about your intellectual property
24:53
strategically is one of the top things you should be doing to
24:58
figure out how to squeeze the most money out of your business
25:05
that you can when you're ready to move on to other things.
25:09
And what do I mean by that? Think about the additional
25:13
revenue streams that your intellectual property could
25:15
enable you to establish alongside of your customized fee
25:21
for service work that you do day-to-day for the benefit of a
25:25
client of your firm. If you're a consulting firm or
25:28
you're a marketing agency, you are, you know, you are charging
25:33
by the project. Hopefully you're not planning on
25:36
billing hourly for much longer because that is not that's going
25:39
to be a race to the bottom in my, in my opinion, for any
25:43
professional service firm. But you're what you know what,
25:46
regardless of your business model, you're charging for
25:49
custom created work for the benefit of your client.
25:53
But doing that over and over and over, over the course of months,
25:57
weeks, years means you're developing your own intellectual
26:00
property. Great examples of that are
26:03
you've created a great system for product design or branding
26:09
or how to do something well, turning that into a, an online
26:17
learning opportunity, an on demand course, a keynote
26:21
presentation that helps you, you know, get the message out to the
26:26
to the world about what your what your company is about.
26:30
These are all pieces of intellectual property that not
26:33
only can enhance the business of the value of your company
26:37
overall, which I mentioned earlier, but maybe you want to
26:41
close the agency or the consultancy one day and maybe
26:44
you want to simply provide for an ongoing stream of revenue
26:49
because of your information products.
26:51
Maybe you want to continue to be a creator, but you don't want to
26:58
do fee for service custom work anymore.
27:01
Maybe somebody else wants that part of the business and you
27:04
want to do what? Or maybe you want to sell the
27:06
information part of the business and cash in on that and close
27:13
the fee for service side of the company because it's not what
27:16
you want. Or sell that part of it.
27:18
It creates divisible pieces of the business that not only earn
27:23
you separate revenue streams that can be as passive as you
27:27
want them to be alongside the other things you do to make
27:30
money in your company, but can be separately sold or retained
27:35
or broken apart from your main business.
27:39
And so when you think of this strategically, it's you are
27:42
building an asset base that has its own money earning ability.
27:47
That's what the that's the beauty of intellectual property,
27:50
and that's its proper place in your thinking about how it fits
27:55
into your overall money making strategy.
27:57
Yeah, I love that. And I'll just say that you know,
27:59
you in my own experience and and maybe this will be the case for
28:02
people who are listening, but like I have definitely with age
28:06
started to think more about this stuff.
28:08
And, and for me as somebody who started a business as a designer
28:11
himself and was doing the lion's share of the work at the
28:14
beginning, you know, in the early days, like I grew quickly
28:18
from 25 year old guy that could work 18 hour days in front of
28:21
the computer and just plug away all day into 46 year old guy.
28:24
That's like, man, I'd really love to just work about 5 hours
28:28
today. All good.
28:29
You know, like, I mean, I've definitely evolved in my, in my
28:32
old age. And I think part of that
28:34
evolution has changed the way that I think into more systems
28:38
based thinking where I am thinking about building out, you
28:41
know, different things. And like, I have kind of a, a
28:44
setup going where, you know, we do the podcast and then I, I
28:47
consult on podcasting and then we also do, you know, I'm
28:50
building out the course on podcasting now.
28:52
And you know, we've got, I do my weekly newsletter, but my weekly
28:56
newsletter is based on the transcript from the
28:58
conversations we have on the podcast.
29:00
And you know, like it's kind of this whole ecosystem, right?
29:02
So everything works together that way.
29:04
And but so to your point about IP, there's IP around each of
29:07
those little buckets, you know, and I don't know if any one of
29:09
them will be profitable or make money or whatever, like who
29:12
knows? But but the, the point is that
29:15
to your, to your notion of taking something and making it
29:17
super divisible. I think for people like me who
29:21
started the business at the middle, you know, you're the
29:22
plumber who started to plumber, you're the artist who decided to
29:25
do art for a living, like where you took your passion and made
29:28
it your job basically, instead of building a business, IP might
29:32
be the way to make your company divisible beyond you as that
29:36
core freelancer, right? And so I think for people who
29:39
are like me, and there's a lot of people who just have started
29:42
a business because it was the thing they liked to do, you
29:44
know, they, they like to do woodwork.
29:46
So they started a woodworking company, for example, you know,
29:49
building these different streams, you know, overtime can
29:52
certainly make your company into something that is sellable or is
29:55
more divisible. Like I, I use the example of my
29:57
prior business where I was like, well, I knew I was never going
29:59
to sell it or anything, but in 20 years, I mean, God knows,
30:01
maybe we did something cool, you know, maybe there was something
30:03
we could have sold off. Or, you know, if I was being
30:05
more purposeful about the intellectual property that we
30:08
were developing over the years, you know, maybe we would have
30:11
had some things and maybe, you know, OK, well, I'm going to get
30:13
extracted and this little piece of the business isn't going to
30:15
be part, you know, something we could sell, but we could sell AB
30:18
and C, right? So I think just, you know, to
30:20
your point, I think being more purposeful would have maybe
30:22
changed my perspective a little bit.
30:24
Well, first of all, I don't, I don't think 46 is old, but
30:30
especially the imagination. However, yes, it's a key part of
30:35
thinking about your succession options.
30:37
As you know, we just went through.
30:39
But remember that I'm very accustomed to talking with a lot
30:45
of owners of market M&A in the marketing agency space is very
30:50
heated right now and even amongst the most small of
30:54
marketing services businesses. So agencies that wouldn't have
30:58
considered themselves to be an M&A target, you know a while
31:03
ago, they're they're not looking at the what are their options
31:06
are for making deals. And so yes, the IP creation both
31:10
to enhance the value of your company overall and also to give
31:13
the exiting owner some options, that's one thing.
31:16
That's one part of the puzzle. But don't forget about using
31:20
your business as an ATM while you're still running it and
31:25
leveraging your intellectual property to create standalone
31:29
products, standalone revenue generating offerings while
31:34
you're running it. It's also a great burnout
31:37
strategy, burnout avoidance strategy, right?
31:40
Because you can use the creating and the leveraging of the
31:44
creations. What you should be protecting
31:48
legally, as we talked about earlier, to be earning separate
31:52
revenue streams along the way to give you more options about how
31:57
you want to move through the life cycle of your company.
32:01
So yes, it's a great long game, but it's also something that
32:08
every business owner should be thinking about just as part of
32:14
their growth and scaling of the business on a day-to-day basis
32:17
as well. And so I think I think a short
32:21
term, mid term and long term view of this is something every
32:26
entrepreneur should be doing on a regular basis.
32:30
And like I said, our lens just happens to be in the marketing
32:35
agency industry. But you could take those
32:37
learnings and apply them to lots of other entrepreneurial
32:40
companies who are earning money in very similar ways day-to-day.
32:45
Yeah, now I think that's right. Well, let's pivot a little bit
32:48
and let's talk about AI. Obviously it's the big elephant
32:51
in the room right now and. Of course A and I have to go
32:54
together, yeah. Yeah.
32:55
And there is a ton of discussion out there in the world about,
32:58
you know, intellectual property or copyright rules as they
33:01
pertain to a IS knowledge base and everybody having access to
33:05
the world's knowledge all at once.
33:07
And, you know, being able to generate a Picasso with a prompt
33:10
instead of paying Picasso's estate, you know, these kinds of
33:13
things. And so I wonder if you could
33:14
talk a little bit about, you know, how AI may have kind of
33:17
sort of broken the way the agencies used to use, you know,
33:20
or think about IP ownership in terms of, you know, I don't know
33:24
if the people in their company are using AI for copywriting
33:27
purposes or whatever nowadays. Like what does this do to, you
33:30
know, a company who is trying to create things that should be
33:33
their own IP, but is this breaking their ownership ability
33:38
by by getting into AI tools? So I mean, we're to start, I
33:43
think you know, as we're having this conversation, it's early in
33:46
the year 2026 and there are still a lot undecided at the
33:53
highest levels of our federal courts, which is how we decide
33:59
copyright issues and content ownership issues in the United
34:02
States about what particularly with the big AI platforms are
34:07
doing with copyright protected works and what it might mean for
34:12
our ability to protect our own work moving forward.
34:15
Right. So I would say first of all that
34:20
what we're seeing so far is a willingness by the courts to
34:24
sort of consider training the off of originally original
34:31
copyright protected works to probably be allowable and
34:35
permissible, assuming that the platforms are acquiring their
34:42
copies of these works legally and lawfully, which has been a
34:45
huge part of the dispute. So what does that mean?
34:49
Well, I mean, what does it mean to an average small business
34:51
who's trying to create and use these tools to make deliverables
34:55
for their clients and not get everybody sued for infringing
34:59
somebody else's copyrights? So I think it starts first of
35:03
all with having very well expressed AI policies in writing
35:10
both internally at your business and externally with your
35:15
clients. How do you do that?
35:18
Well, you know, let's not make this harder than it used to be.
35:22
I think it starts as simply as what?
35:25
How does our business use these AI tools?
35:28
Which tools do we use? What are the use cases for our
35:33
our team members being permitted to use them?
35:37
What do our team members need to do if they want to start using
35:40
additional tools? And then I mean, that's the,
35:44
that's the starting point for your own written AI policy in a
35:47
business. And every business, no matter
35:48
how small you are, should have one.
35:51
You should be able to clearly talk to your clients about how
35:55
you're using AI and you should be asking your clients and
35:58
customers questions about how they're using it, what their
36:03
rules are. Because if if you're, you may be
36:07
a small business, but you may be serving an, an enterprise sized
36:10
client, or you may be serving a government agency client and
36:15
they may have policies around AI use that are very much more
36:19
conservative than yours are. So you need to know what their
36:21
guardrails are. You need to know what their
36:23
expectations are. So have the conversations and
36:28
have, have a guided conversation with them.
36:30
Prepare your questions, think about what you need to know from
36:33
them. So there's your policies,
36:35
internal and then external with your clients, with your
36:40
strategic partners, with your freelancers.
36:44
Because the last thing you want to do is be, is be in the
36:47
position of telling your client. These are the tools we use and
36:50
these are the things we use them for.
36:52
And we don't deviate from that unless we have a conversation
36:55
with you about it to then only have your freelancer turn in a
36:59
project to you where they've they've gone completely off
37:02
reservation and use like tools you're not even aware of them
37:06
having, you know, exposed your clients information to.
37:10
So that's the first thing is have your policies in order,
37:14
have contract language that addresses use of AI in your
37:17
professional services agreement. That's the second thing that
37:20
every business should be doing and thinking about.
37:24
What are we? What are we using?
37:29
What are we promising you that we will and will not do with AI?
37:36
How will we handle it if there is an inadvertent infringement
37:41
of somebody else's copyright or other intellectual property that
37:46
accidentally happens because we've used these AI products.
37:52
This is where, you know, the indemnification and the
37:54
liability limitation language and a services agreement is
37:57
important. You know, and for some business
38:00
owners who are listening to this thinking, we don't include that
38:03
in any of our agreements. Well, now is the time to start,
38:06
especially if you're using AI tools to help create
38:08
deliverables. So it's your policies, it's
38:11
contract language and and then it's just having a familiar
38:17
working understanding of what the terms and conditions are of
38:21
the platforms that you most frequently use.
38:23
Read them, have somebody on your team read them, understand them.
38:28
You know, I can give you sort of a spoiler about IP infringement.
38:34
Then the spoiler, there is no major AI platform is going to
38:38
help you or indemnify you if there's an infringement that
38:42
occurs on your watch because you use their products.
38:48
That's going to be your client is going to be on the hook and
38:52
you're probably going to be on the hook too leads to be the
38:54
rest of the world. So read the terms and conditions
38:58
of the platforms that you use. So those are three simple steps
39:01
that any business owner listening to this can implement
39:05
in their business to be more AI ready from a risk management
39:09
perspective. So if people are starting to use
39:12
these different tools and obviously it seems like right
39:13
now anyway, there's a new tool every week, but you know, I
39:17
think that the winners are starting to rise to the top.
39:19
So it's starting to become more clear to the companies that or
39:22
the different clients and tools that people are using.
39:24
But who actually owns the AI assisted work?
39:27
Is it the agency itself? Is it, you know, cuz I mean like
39:29
you mentioned before, we talked earlier about like using a
39:32
contractor or a third party human, but if we are using a
39:36
third party robot instead, you know, so who actually owns that
39:40
copyright at the end of the day? So you can only own copyright
39:46
and human created work in the United States.
39:49
So what that means is that if you've used AI to create
39:55
something, nobody can own it. Now the question that I always
40:00
quickly get after I say that is well.
40:03
What if we used AI to get started and then we sort of, you
40:07
know, we use it as inspiration and then we added some human
40:10
creed. There's no metric I can give
40:12
you. There's no percentage I can give
40:14
you because that's the third question I usually get.
40:17
How much does it have to be human created in order to be
40:20
ownable? There is no amount.
40:22
What I can tell you is that as far as the Copyright Office is
40:25
concerned, I remember they're not a court, but they are the
40:28
people who approve copyright applications for registration of
40:33
copyrights. Their position is that if you
40:37
can clearly identify the human created content in any work and
40:41
separate it out from anything that AI generated, you can still
40:44
own the rights to that work. Why does that matter?
40:48
Why? Why should anybody listening to
40:50
this care about that? Your contracts should handle
40:55
ownership of the the IP in a deliverable for an AI assisted
41:02
work just like they would handle it for any other kind of work.
41:06
And that means that anytime you've incorporated some third
41:09
party content into a deliverable, whether that's
41:12
stock photography, whether that's a licensed font or
41:16
whether that's something that was generated out of a
41:19
generative AI platform that's handled separately.
41:24
And so your agency doesn't own anything that's created out of
41:27
AI. Your client can't own anything
41:30
that is generated completely out of AI.
41:34
It's not ownable. Actually, you have to have a
41:37
conversation about that because your client may not be willing
41:41
to see the distinction if it's not pointed out to them with
41:45
enough time for them to think about it and consider it.
41:48
So the short answer is nobody owns anything that is entirely
41:53
AI generated under the copyright laws of of the United States and
41:58
just about every other country. If you have an infringement
42:03
problem because whatever the deliverable is that gets created
42:08
is substantially similar to somebody else's copyright
42:11
protected work, everybody involved in the chain of
42:14
creation or publication of that work is going to have some
42:18
responsibility. What we don't know yet is how
42:20
much responsibility, because there's no court decisions yet
42:25
that are really that are definitive on that point.
42:29
Well, I just kind of want to point it out.
42:30
I think that the maybe creates a good opportunity for small
42:34
companies. You're talking about legal
42:35
protections as a way to be more profitable.
42:39
It seems like that might actually be a selling point,
42:41
right? Like, hey, I can use AI and we
42:43
can get our prices down for you, but you're not going to be able
42:46
to own any of this stuff. So we're going to stick your
42:47
logo in it or whatever. But like, if you as my client,
42:50
this Company B is trying to grow their IP, you know, it might
42:55
become very interesting to them if they understood that the
42:57
tools that they're using to do things more cheaply are actually
43:01
prohibiting them from developing IP materials that they might
43:04
want to be building for a small service provider or something.
43:08
It might actually be the way to raise your rates is to say,
43:10
well, yeah, but we're going to use strictly humans and you'll
43:12
be able to own all this stuff. But like, own ability might
43:15
actually become a factor in, in some of the work you're doing.
43:18
Where I think a lot of times it's just especially with
43:20
designers and I'm just speaking from a design perspective, but a
43:22
lot of times it's very transactional.
43:24
It's like, hey, you know, I need a social media ad, will you just
43:26
make me an ad? You know, And there's not a lot
43:28
of thought to it other just we're passing it, passing
43:30
something wrong. But I don't think people are
43:32
thinking long term about ownership of that ad or
43:35
whatever. You know, we've got their logo
43:36
in it and their product in it and stuff like that.
43:38
But I don't think they're thinking about that in terms of
43:41
a longer form IP strategy, which is we're building these
43:44
campaigns around products or whatever.
43:47
And if AI is being used and it does end up negating any like
43:51
real ownership value of that stuff, maybe social media ads
43:55
aren't the best example, but there could be some version
43:57
where you not being able to own that thing is actually
44:00
detrimental to my client's IP portfolio, right?
44:04
Where, you know, they may not have realized that.
44:07
Before, right? Yeah.
44:09
And I think it comes down to it's funny.
44:13
This comes, this comes out a lot in a, a segment of the work that
44:19
our, our firm does is in the influencer and creator space.
44:23
And there's a lot of back and forth that always happens
44:25
between the influencer or the creator team and the brand team
44:29
about who's going to own the content, who, how long he
44:32
writes, how long you're going to be able to use it.
44:34
And one of the right. And a lot of times these
44:37
conversations can be very academic, quite frankly.
44:39
And I say this as an IP lawyer who's a warrior for IP.
44:44
Sometimes the IP is not that valuable.
44:48
You mentioned a social media campaign.
44:51
What will the shelf life of that content be?
44:54
How long is it going to be valuable, relevant, usable?
44:59
I think that's an important part of the analysis when it comes to
45:02
figuring out how much you want to invest in protecting the
45:06
intellectual property and how you use AI in the equation as
45:14
well. For example, we're creating a
45:16
brand and the visual representation of a brand.
45:21
If we're naming something, we're creating a visual depiction of
45:26
the brand like a logo or set of logos.
45:29
Those are forever assets, right? They can be, I mean, a trademark
45:33
protection can last forever. As long as you use the mark in
45:36
commerce to sell something, you can own a trademark forever.
45:39
There's no limits as it's the only kind of IP you can own
45:42
forever. Actually, copyrights eventually
45:45
expire, Patents eventually expire.
45:46
Trademarks can live forever if they're.
45:49
I mean, think of Coca-Cola and how many years that brand has
45:52
been protectable. That is something you wouldn't
45:55
want to use AI to help you generate because you couldn't
45:59
be, you know, sure or confident of your position, but you know,
46:04
creating a set of social media visuals that might last for a
46:12
season or a reason. That's something you have to be
46:15
less concerned about probably. And so you have to do a business
46:20
analysis alongside of your legal analysis when you decide how
46:25
much investment that you need or want to make in IP protection.
46:30
And I'm the first to acknowledge that, even though like I said,
46:33
I'm a warrior for protecting IP and making sure that you kind of
46:38
take a pure approach to ownership of it and leveraging
46:41
of it. Sometimes is the business the
46:45
right business decision might be that it's it's not that risky.
46:52
Well, yeah, I suppose the reality for a lot of small
46:54
businesses especially is like, am I going to retail, you know,
46:56
call in my attorney every time I'm going to put something on
46:59
Instagram? Like, yeah, I mean, of course it
47:01
probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but you know, maybe if
47:03
you're a big enough company it makes sense to you.
47:04
But I think it matter. I just, yeah, I think it matters
47:09
less how small you are then it then who will see the work?
47:15
Where will work be published? How where is this creation?
47:20
Whatever it is, whether it's a video course or whether it's a
47:27
marketing campaign or whether it's a piece of software, what's
47:31
the end audience for it? So I think it's less about the
47:34
size of the creator and more about the size or the impact of
47:40
the creation. I think those are the metrics
47:43
you need to be using to think about how much to invest in your
47:47
IP strategy. Yeah, I think.
47:48
That's go ahead. I think that's yeah, I was going
47:50
to say I think that's smart or it's a good delineation, I think
47:53
because like I was just thinking, you know, back to this
47:55
notion of I'm putting together this little podcasting course,
47:58
right? But I don't know, maybe on my
47:59
Instagram, I want to share a little clips from the course,
48:01
you know, so I'm sharing my literal IP in Instagram, you
48:04
know, so even though it's going on Instagram, which I'm being a
48:07
little flippant of, you know, I am actually putting my real IP
48:11
that's supposed to have this value out there, right?
48:14
You know, so, so not having any protections over that particular
48:17
campaign might not be the best decision for me.
48:19
Like if I'm trying to be strategic, right?
48:21
Maybe I need to be a little more protective of the information
48:23
I'm putting out there and not so flippant just by virtue of it
48:26
being social media rather, you know, making a decision that,
48:30
yeah, I'm using this channel, but I am using materials that
48:34
are, you know, maybe should have a little higher degree of, of
48:37
protection or thought around protection.
48:40
Yeah, I think that there's AI think one of the hazards of
48:45
technological advances is that it puts less focus on the
48:53
independent value of innovation, human innovation.
48:56
I think this is one of the big battles that AI usage is
49:01
creating for everybody. What is the true value in
49:05
business, in commerce? What in culture of actually
49:09
creating new originally inspired things and bringing them to
49:16
life? What's the value of that?
49:19
And and that I think is a factor in deciding what your IP
49:26
protection strategy is going to be and what your investment in
49:29
IP protection is going to be. But over time, you know, the
49:33
more shortcuts you take, the less value your innovation has.
49:38
And so I think everybody needs to do their own calculus to
49:42
determine that and needs to figure out what their own, what
49:47
their risk acceptance level is, you know what, what their
49:53
comfort level is with accepting risk of non protection.
49:57
And I don't think you should be basing it like I said on the
49:59
size of your company today. I think you should be basing it
50:03
on the potential value of the innovation and the IP itself.
50:08
Yeah. Well, and I think it's a really
50:09
great point, especially with AI. You mentioned just sort of, you
50:12
know, with new technology, you know, the world changes and
50:14
things move more quickly or whatever.
50:15
And AI has certainly empowered people to punch well above their
50:19
weight in terms of whatever their established set of skills
50:22
are or things like that. And you know, again, just using
50:24
the design perspective, I mean, even, you know, this has been
50:28
going on for a long time. I mean, even like, you know, the
50:30
birth of Photoshop took things to another level.
50:32
And you know, and now with introduction of AI technologies
50:35
into Photoshop or into, you know, Figma and other design
50:39
tools, these people who might not have been able to do a thing
50:43
before now can maybe you're not a strong logo designer, but you
50:46
could go to ChatGPT or something and generate some ideas and get
50:49
some things going. And maybe one of those ideas is
50:51
really good. And so you just apply a color
50:53
palette to it or whatever and move on.
50:56
I don't think people are thinking so long term.
50:59
You know, I think your point about that, you know, the
51:01
trademarkable things like, you know, like your logo, you know,
51:04
it could really last forever. But if you literally can't own
51:07
it because the graphic designer that you wanted to pay 20 bucks
51:10
an hour to do logo work has created a logo out of AI and now
51:15
it's unownable, you know, I mean, yeah, maybe in the short
51:19
term maybe it helped or maybe it worked, but you know, down
51:22
downstream a little bit, it's going to end up being a bigger
51:24
problem. And so I think that with this
51:27
technological advancement, there's a lot of these shortcuts
51:31
that I think are going to start taking place, whether it's
51:33
people using it to write ad copy or people are starting to create
51:38
entire campaigns, video assets, whatever, using these tools.
51:41
I mean, if at the end of the day, you're spinning a lot and
51:44
creating a lot of work, but not actually owning any of it, I
51:46
don't know how useful that actually is in the end.
51:49
And you know, and so to your point, I thought, and I had a
51:52
little note here, you know, talking about, you know, using
51:55
influencers and things like that.
51:57
I mean, obviously this become a big part of marketing.
51:59
And so, but it seems then you know, the story about who owns
52:03
what and when that's like a contractual deal, right?
52:06
So I mean, is that where like sort of contract law starts to
52:09
play into this stuff is just by defining the terms, can we claim
52:13
back some ownership and things like that?
52:15
You can be, I mean, whenever it's a relationship and arm's
52:19
length relationship between two parties, whether that's two
52:22
companies or whether it's a, a creator and a brand or an
52:28
influencer and a brand, you can contractually resolve all of
52:33
this honestly. And, and you have to, because if
52:36
you don't put it in place in writing in the form of an
52:40
agreement between parties, then the copyright law defaults to
52:43
the copyright law, which means that whoever's created it owns
52:46
it, right? That usually doesn't reflect the
52:49
business intention and an influencer partnership or a
52:52
creator partnership. So yes, you absolutely have to
52:55
have relevant contract language. And that's kind of been a thread
52:59
that's run through a couple of the things that we've talked
53:02
about today, right? Freelancer relationships, AI
53:09
tools. Anytime there's a third party,
53:11
whether that party is a human or whether that party is a company
53:16
or a technology platform, pretty much your default assumption
53:20
needs to be. There needs to be some contract
53:22
language to address the ownership of that end work,
53:26
because the way the law defaults is not usually going to be
53:31
reflective of the party's intentions in that situation.
53:34
Well, and I think that circles back to what what we've been
53:36
talking about so much here is the intention part, right?
53:39
Trying to make sure that you're actually being intentional with
53:41
this stuff. And you know, I mean, like
53:43
specifically with an influencer, I mean, things could go really
53:46
good or go really bad, you know, I mean, like, if you, you know,
53:49
hire the right person, that's great.
53:50
If they have some kind of wild scandal that month, you know,
53:53
then it ends up going really poorly.
53:55
And, and if you don't have any kind of protections for
53:56
yourself, contractual or otherwise, that's, you know, you
54:00
could really find yourself in trouble with something like
54:01
that. Yeah.
54:03
You know, key contracts are a key way of assuring a lot of
54:09
things, not only about intellectual property and
54:11
protecting it and the ownership structure of it, but they are
54:15
critical liability management tools or risk management tools
54:20
for every business when it comes to knowledge work.
54:24
And so it's just it is a key part of your toolkit as a
54:28
business. You know, we have, we have our
54:30
points of view at my firm about the essential contracts that
54:34
every marketing agency should have and it's similar for every
54:39
industry. There's, you know, there's some
54:42
non negotiable agreements that everybody should be defaulting
54:45
to in their business just as a risk management strategy and an
54:51
asset protection strategy for your company.
54:54
Well, and so maybe here in the last couple minutes, it's an OK
54:57
thing to talk about would be maybe, you know, what is this
54:59
baseline, you know, for people who have maybe been remiss or
55:01
playing a little fast and loose with the law or maybe just
55:04
didn't even think about it at all.
55:06
And now after hearing this conversation, they're going, oh,
55:08
you know, I didn't even know, you know, So now I'm trying to
55:11
wrap my head around it. What are the kinds of, you know,
55:14
I guess basic documentation, like if you had to advise
55:16
somebody who has nothing and they're just trying to get
55:18
started, maybe they've got a little, you know, some sort of
55:20
knowledge based business because that's your expertise.
55:23
And they, you know, have been in business a few years.
55:25
They've been just operating, you know, minding their own business
55:28
and, and now they hear this podcast and go, oh crap, Sharon,
55:31
I need a contract. What am I supposed to be doing?
55:33
You know, where would you advise somebody to get started?
55:36
Yeah, the, the best places to start are a comprehensive client
55:41
services agreement, you know, and in my world that as a master
55:45
services agreement, but I don't care what you call it honestly.
55:48
I just care that you have one. And that is a written agreement
55:51
between your business and its customers or clients that govern
55:54
your relationship. That if you're relying on e-mail
55:59
terms or you know, just a proposal with a sign off that
56:04
doesn't have any terms and conditions in it, that's a
56:07
that's your starting point. You need a client contract that
56:10
has all the necessary legal terms and conditions in it to
56:14
protect the parties. Secondly, you need a written
56:18
independent contractor agreement with anybody that provides work
56:24
or deliverables to you that isn't on the payroll of your
56:27
company if they're not AW2 employee.
56:31
And also, please don't call them a contract employee because
56:34
there's no such thing. Is there a contractor?
56:37
If they're 1099 in them, You need a written agreement with
56:40
every single one of those people.
56:42
Again, not an e-mail exchange, not a call on the phone saying
56:47
can you help us out with it? An actual written agreement.
56:51
And the goal is not to make this more complicated or more
56:53
difficult than it needs to be. If you have all these as part of
56:58
your regular toolkit in the business, then there's no
57:00
friction to getting one signed by every new contractor that
57:04
come right It is. It's an Evergreen strategy of
57:07
get it, get your contract toolkit together and then deploy
57:12
it in all your situations and revisit it once a year so that
57:15
it's still current and still reflective.
57:17
So that's the second one. And then I would say, you know,
57:21
in the knowledge space, probably legal terms and conditions for
57:27
any of your products that get sort of self served or released
57:32
out into the world, your end user terms if you will.
57:36
Those are important things to have.
57:39
Your privacy policy and your website terms and conditions are
57:42
also very important. We're seeing an increase in data
57:48
privacy law enactment state by state in the United States.
57:54
So you want a privacy policy and terms and conditions for how
57:58
consumers can access your company's website.
58:01
Those I think are are good starting points for any business
58:04
who might be listening to this. Cool.
58:07
Well, thank you so much for all this, Sharon.
58:08
It's been really great talking to you.
58:11
Any like, I guess parting shots, where can people learn a little
58:14
more about your business or learn about you individually if
58:16
they are so inclined? Well, first of all, Ryan, thank
58:18
you for having me. A couple places you can learn
58:22
more about the work that we do with marketing agencies to help
58:25
protect them legally@legalandcreative.com.
58:29
You can come and listen to my show, The Innovative Agency.
58:32
It's not a legal show. We actually talk about
58:35
innovation and protecting innovation and innovation from
58:39
all angles for in the marketing world.
58:43
So check that out and I'm Sharon at legalanchorito.com and you
58:47
can find me on LinkedIn. That's awesome.
58:50
Well, thank you so much, Sharon. I really appreciate your time
58:52
today. Lots of really good information
58:54
in there and obviously we could go on a lot longer than this.
58:56
I've got about another 20 questions, but out of respect
58:59
for your time, we'll let you go. Passover.
59:02
We'll have to do a Part 2 sometime.
59:03
I love it. I'm I'm in so well.
59:06
Thank you. Thanks again so much, Sharon,
59:07
and thanks so much to everybody who tunes into the show this
59:09
week and every week. And we'll see you guys.