#327: How To Know When To Protect Your Intellectual Property w/ Attorney Devin Miller
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
patent business patent troll podcast people trademark sweat equity sides big called ip ingredients idea strategy domain innovation startup enforce process cease
SPEAKERS
Law (47%), Speaker 2 (45%), Speaker 3 (6%)
Law Smith
0:00
We we sweat equity podcasts and streaming show the number one comedy podcast in the universe in the world the universe in the galaxy baby multiverse that that sultry voice you're hearing is Eric I'm law 2020s best small medium enterprise best advisor by guest United States. We already won 2020 one's best podcast and find out any day about 2022 Oh, yeah. Listen to us on iTunes, apple, podcasts, Spotify, all that good stuff. This episode with Devin Miller who may or may not be wearing mascara, I don't know IP attorney. I didn't notice IP attorney to the stars. We talked about patent trolls all that stuff. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN Are you gonna barf dude? Looks like you're gonna bark. I'm trying to read you. You're trying to birth try expressvpn.com forward slash twit. I got gum in my mouth. I'm trying not to jump in. There is it I put it in my ear. Suck my pussy from behind. Yeah, let's try expressvpn.com forward slash sweat gets a three month free. Once a VPN Virtual Private Network don't get tricked by big data. Try expressvpn.com forward slash sweat like kieswetter gets a three months free off an annual plan. Who's doing that? Who's protecting you like us? We want to protect you like big momma bear? Try expressvpn.com or TSA I got the giggles Did you three months free off an annual plan. Let's get this party started. About my sweat equity.
1:46
sweat equity.
Law Smith
1:48
sweat equity. Woody. Woody
Law Smith
2:02
woody How's it going, man? Oh, doing pretty well busy as always. That's why I like it. So Life is good yourselves. Can't complain. We just we just get right into it. If you haven't seen the show. I like the background. Got some branding going on there. Before we get into it. Devin, why don't you give everybody your your plugs where can they find you? How can they hit you up? How can they get more of you?
2
Speaker 2
2:33
Absolutely. Yeah, so I'll give a couple of ways. First ways if they want to grab a one on one session with me got strategy meeting 15 minutes free time with me. They can go to strategy meeting calm easy way to connect right to my calendar grab some time. So strategy meeting calm. And then if they just want to find out more about myself Services website got a ton of content kind of material to learn from that's just that law with Miller calm. So those are the two best ways to connect up me and reach out.
Law Smith
3:02
Wow, strategy meeting.com you've got that domain. Now Joe, you Wow, you
3
Speaker 3
3:07
own that? That's I was like, Oh, is that some kind of service that connects people that like oh, that's you? Oh, that's
2
Speaker 2
3:13
awesome. That's right. It's an easy way to remember how to connect up with me. So it's a good URL to have
Law Smith
3:19
How long ago did you get that one? What we don't get it out on Yeah. I wanna I want to know you know,
2
Speaker 2
3:27
I get asked about that more than I would have ever thought it was about three years ago and I was like, you know, I was originally he was gonna do strategy session calm and I looked it was like super sale for like 20 or 25,000 like well I don't have that much money. And so I'm like, What's another way to say strategy session like no strategy meetings pretty close and so I looked it up it was available this happened and nobody grabbed it yet. And I got it for like 12 bucks and so now three years ago
Law Smith
3:51
well it's like the Cleveland guardians. Yeah, they did not get their.com genius name sir. Did you know that Yeah,
3
Speaker 3
3:58
actually the roller hockey team or something had the Dave already know I just want to learn Derby what was it
Law Smith
4:04
it just went to it went to some pickle thing or something? I don't know. I don't even want
3
Speaker 3
4:08
well I mean in terms of we talking IP there there's the Cleveland guardian. There was some kind of like roller hockey. I don't remember what it was. But some stupid ass like 40s now I believe you put it on again if
Law Smith
4:21
you don't believe but they didn't even Google it. Even google it goes to the paki.com about sports. podcast. I don't know someone jumped on it. Whenever we're out of the game, man. We can't we can't squat on domains like we used to. Yeah. What's what's the best? Any? Are domains sought after? Do you do any domain brokerage kind of stuff when you're doing IP work? What kind of what kind of IP work are we talking?
2
Speaker 2
4:51
Yeah. So short answer is not not necessarily domains but the we do both the LLC formations or business formations and trademarks, which is tend to go hand in hand and about the same time you're trying to get a business name that you registered the state. You're trying to get a domain that is for URL, and then you're trying to get a trademark that you can use with your business and so we do two of the three but we never really got into the domain or domain brokerage yet.
Law Smith
5:16
So quick update. I think I still guardians wrong because I'm, I think I'm dyslexic in my older Yeah, no.
5:22
I'm looking right at it. Record. I was right. It's a roller derby team men's roller derby, which I didn't know make real good. Yeah, thank you. Oh, good. Man, man in the show right now if we need to. Eric is
Law Smith
5:35
right. Done. I want to schedule a free strategy session at strategy meeting calm, which is taking me to Miller IP. l.com. Okay, I was like, if I butchered that. I'm real. I gotta really fix something. Um, so we have. Eric did a great job getting our podcast.
3
Speaker 3
5:56
My favorite podcast ever so far. Reggie, I got to be right. And that's
Law Smith
6:00
Yeah. And he's got a bit he's got a big hog on him. So yeah, and that. So what? What, what can we do with that? We there's about seven other Yeah, podcast. Yeah, exactly. We knew that going into it. But my theory is to let it breathe on a strategy wise, right. We know we could do a cease and desist. Well, there's one Canadian one, which I'm curious about. So
3
Speaker 3
6:27
we do not have international protection, which will I'll ask you about in a minute.
Law Smith
6:32
But I think from a marketers, I would I would probably prefer us to let it breathe. Let it go a little bit. Is there anything I'm not thinking about in that direction? So my theory is if someone else is looking for the other sweat equity podcast, they stumble on ours in ours as little or with the circle around it, they listen to gotta be the best one. Yeah, so they listen to ours even though ours pride isn't on brand with the other ones. Are all other workout ones. All workouts they are Yeah, I thought it was real estate, a lot of real estate ones. Because that was like ah HGTV show for a while. You know,
3
Speaker 3
7:10
in the coming weeks, we're going to do an episode where we chop up clips of the other sweat equity, dissect them
Law Smith
7:16
I like that we wrote down on them. So my the marketer brain amigos, you know what? let it drift. Let it go. We're not we don't need to send anything. Maybe we get some, some extra listeners in that direction. Anything. I'm all about unintended consequences of things. I don't know about. What What am I missing here? If we go too long?
2
Speaker 2
7:40
The question that I would say the key is too long. Because the biggest issue when you get into trademarks, which is what you guys have, is if you let it go too long, and you basically never enforce it, people start to use it, then you actually start to reduce the ability if you are able to enforce In other words, if you're saying hey, yeah, we have a trademark when we let everybody do it, and everybody's using it, it's become kind of commonplace, and then you lose the ability to actually enforce your trademark. So yeah, do you have to be careful on if you let it sit for too long that people will actually acquire the rights and you lose the rights? then it kind of along that lines on that kind of question on cease and desist? I mean, that's always kind of a almost as much of a business question, because you're saying Yeah, on the one hand, I could spend attorney time I could go in and you know, have them send a cease and desist letters and ratchet up the enforcement. And if it's a small client or a small podcast that nobody listens to and it doesn't really matter, then you're probably saying the return on sending out the cease and desist letter isn't gonna be worth it. On the other hand, if you got a another sweat equity podcast that has five times Luton listeners and everybody's thinking that that's your podcast and you're losing all your listenership, then you're saying that it makes sense. So you always got to kind of weigh the return on investment as far as whether or not it makes sense to enforce your force your rights or to kind of hold off or to otherwise utilize them other ways.
Law Smith
8:58
The tricky thing about this though, it's not like we have Nielsen ratings right? So we have to guess we have to guess the best indicator I can probably figure out is frequency. Frequency is if they do it, if they do it on a same weekly or monthly or daily basis. That's that's one aspect. I was gonna go if if you had to choose one thing that's a direct correlation I'd get a go ratings. ratings for podcasts. Yeah, if you're on Apple podcasts you got 1000 that's gonna tell me you got a pretty good listenership. You mean reviews? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, reviews. This scenario. It's important to be specific. Yeah, no, for sure. But the other thing we could check is probably their YouTube, you know, Facebook, videos and stuff like that. But I digress. Yeah, from this.
3
Speaker 3
9:47
I've definitely sent the the Instagram direct message to people being like, Hey, you know, it's not good for either one of us. If you know if they Google or they put sweat equity in us. We pop up and then it's not going to be like, I've absolutely contacted people directly. Not one response. Yeah. But what
2
Speaker 2
10:08
he actually can do is a lot of times Instagram, Facebook tick, almost all of them have takedown policy. So even if you don't want to send a cease and desist, you can actually submit a takedown saying, hey, they're infringing our trademark where we want to enforce our rights and almost most of them is automatic once you submit it, it's now on the burden for them to show that they actually have rights to it. Otherwise we'll take down so a lot of times they won't respond directly but you can actually go to take dock with the other platforms and get it taken down.
Law Smith
10:35
Nice note I'm doing so you later well sweated out sweat equity podcast at sweat equity handles ours. Yeah. So what got you into this? What's your Why? What's your purpose? Yeah, that's a long conversation in of itself. But we got
2
Speaker 2
10:53
short answer is is I've always I've always had kind of two passions. So I love startups and small businesses been doing them since or while I was still in school, and I loved engineering. I loved the law side as well. So to back up just that as for the shorter version of the story, I was doing undergraduate I ended up getting four degrees which my wife always jokes is three degrees too many G's. I was doing undergraduate
Law Smith
11:17
Doogie Howser easy. Yeah,
2
Speaker 2
11:20
I don't know that I it's probably more persistence and intelligence. So but I was doing undergraduate electrical engineering got to the end of that. And I said, You know, I like I like legend engineering, but I don't want to be an engineer. So I was kind of at the crowd. I hope I don't get electrocuted no matter what. But I was saying, you know, do I want to be in do I love to entrepreneurship and business or I want to start up small business, or do I want to do the lawn so I'd kind of rather than split the deck and choose one or the other. I ended up choosing, they're choosing both. So I've actually been doing several startups. I've done several everything from small businesses with my family to seven and eight figure businesses as well as they're chasing at the same time that my legal career and being a patent and trademark attorney for a lot of a lot of different businesses. So that's kind of just been when I made or when I was faced with the decision. I chose both paths and I've been chasing it ever since.
Law Smith
12:12
So Robert Frost, you didn't go you just chose what's right down the middle between both paths. I didn't have to choose either. Yogi Berra one when there's a fork in the road to just do straight or something like that? I don't know. So many good Yogi Berra. Yeah. Before he got canceled. What's it called? So What year is it? But he got cancelled dude, Yogi Berra, and he didn't know that. No, okay. Dead for like, 20 years. Yeah, yeah, you still got canceled, like Confederate statues being taken down all that stuff? Is there a trademark on that? Anything? And so was this mic on? Are we what were we doing with PI cat podcast? We're getting sued. Not too long ago for being Tell me about patent trolls. What do you have a fury against patent trolls? What I see on both sides as well. Look, these are guys in South Texas. I believe they they set up shop. We've talked about this. Yeah, they do it in the the drug running counties of Texas where where it's so hard to get a case move through all the time. It's strategic they have they've like shell offices down in South Texas, where it's all about immigration. It's all about it's all about drugged running and stuff. So you can't ever get to the case. While you're just there just hemorrhaging money from people who are making a lot of money. You're Adam Carolla your Mark marrons. I think Rogan roll had his own crusade against with no $200,000. And then they pulled back, they pulled back on it. And he he ended up becoming the the the go to, but all these other guys were under this umbrella. I kept my eye on it, because I think we were just getting this podcast rolling. And I don't know, I find it interesting that you can sue for that. Any thoughts? Comments?
2
Speaker 2
14:15
I probably I can argue both sides, because I can I think it depends on how you define as a patent troll. Because, you know, if you're in the business of just acquiring patents and going in forcing them you're really not creating anything, you're not adding anything, then I think that you're probably on the side of you shouldn't be in that business is probably not the most moral business. But we're I think that they serve a potential purpose and if you're good evil in close, but good patent troll is that if you're a startup and you're a small or a small business and you have you know, you put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears time and development, you went through the patent process, you got a patent and then you go up against a big competitor. They have a lot more money, they have a lot more ability to drag it out in court, then you're left with a few options. One is you can simply not do anything about them right over the top of you You can try and go to their competitor and sell off your patent, and you know, or license and let somebody else in as a bigger dog in the fight doing fighting for you. Or you can go to a patent troll. And so a patent troll could potentially help a startup or small business because they're saying, Hey, this is a valuable patent and is worthwhile. It's been forced. We don't have the money as a small business, but you do as a patent troll, because that's the business you're in. And so in some degrees, they can be helpful to startup or small business to enforce what their their legal rights. And so that would be the one argument I've made, they may be worthwhile or have a place, but I don't think we're a lot of them don't fit into that model. And then just simply going up gobbling up patents, filing frivolous lawsuits, and trying to get as many settlements of people out as possible. So a small portion are good, a lot, a big portion that aren't so get
Law Smith
15:45
you have innovation on your branding, your personal opinion, does that stifle innovation because as as an American, I feel like entrepreneurship is very, very American endeavor. I believe you can kind of you may not it may not all be on you for doing it all your hustle. But I feel like it is something uniquely American that if you have an idea, you can push it through innovation, I think when you have a patent troll, I think it stifles innovation. What say you What's your personal opinion? Not? Not Miller, IP laws opinion. And look, I can tell you a good attorney because you threw out contrary logic, right from the get go, you go, here's both sides of the argument that if anybody's listening these figure out an attorney, you want a guy that can figure out both sides of an argument simultaneously. I feel like I have this in a very dumb guy way. But I can see both. I see both so annoying. I see both sides of a coin. You're just bored. Yeah. Some people I've been called contrary my whole life. I can't help it. I think I think it is a badge of honor now.
2
Speaker 2
16:50
So my opinion would be I think if you could fix the the legal system to get rid of or allow small startups and small businesses to reasonably have their case heard and not be so expensive, then I think you should get rid of patent trolls.
Law Smith
17:05
make that happen? Yeah. I mean, what do we do? First of all, Obama's office, I think you have to call Biden but whoever you're calling up. We know who's big daddy died. He got Brock. Obama's still got some flow, you know, saying, sure. But go ahead. Sorry, cut you off.
2
Speaker 2
17:27
So no, I think that you know, I think that the the bigger question and where I thought you were getting go was, you know, whether or not patents are actually good in or if they stifle innovation, in the sense you'll have some people a Mark Cuban is one that's a vocal, or a vocal downer on patents saying he thinks that they stopped innovation, they should just larger the weight of the system. And I think that you know, in the bigger question of innovation is where patents held. Some places, you can probably make that argument. But most people if you're going to do it, in businesses, where we know there's a lot of our research and development takes years of research, development takes millions of dollars in investment dollars, even get the product out. And the problem is, is if you don't if you don't have a way to protect it, so it's kind of like a magic trick that is always easier once you know how the magic trick is done to do it yourself. And the same thing a bottom innovation is once you create the product, you can reverse engineer and somebody else figured it out. And now you can actually do it yourself and rip it off. And you don't have all that research element time and effort in there. And so I think that innovation should be promoted. I think it patents are done right. They can do it but I think that most of time on the patent troll side, they're not done right. And they stifling stifle more than they help.
3
Speaker 3
18:35
Yeah, that's interesting. I do remember when Tesla didn't Tesla open Utley. They just put out everything that they had done, I guess in their battery technology. They just opened up all their patent information. And I don't bam, I'd like to say, baby, I mean, yeah, I'd like to think it was like a benevolent thing. But who knows? I mean, yeah, no.
2
Speaker 2
18:57
Red Hat if you know computer, it's more obscure. Linux was an operating system. If you don't have a Mac, you don't have Windows and Linux is Linux does the same thing. And they basically, both Tesla and Red Hat both have a ton of patents they have in the you know, 1000s of patents. They both do it is more this is a defensive measure rather than offensive. We'll let you guys use it. But if you ever come and try and sue us, you ever come after us, you otherwise do we have a big war chest and we can fight people off. And so they're saying, Hey, we want you to promote innovation, but we also need to protect our business interests such that we are controlled if you know if somebody were to come after us, or if somebody wants to misuse our patent. They
Law Smith
19:32
open sourced it Yeah, Apache I think used to be big with something parallel to Linux back in the day. A lot of stuff like that. Yeah, one Apache on he didn't even know path yet. That was like the word processor. There's a bunch of stuff that was his own operating system, open source like OBS all that stuff. Sure. You're just naming other open source software, you know, you know, just whatever. I'm just trying to brag now. Well, so what? What does? I guess? If you don't if you have a product, I'm interested in process as a patent as we move into an intangible kind of age, right? You mean patents in a process? You can patent process, right? It's much harder, more expensive, because there is a lot more r&d. Do I understand? Am I correct?
2
Speaker 2
20:26
It depends on what you do. Now, is this editor a lawyer answer, but whether it depends,
Law Smith
20:31
give me the lawyer? Give me your answer. How about that?
2
Speaker 2
20:36
I still got to get by a lawyer answer, because there's no answer. But the real answer, which is it depends on how you define process, if it's a business method, you know, there used to be a Amazon patent out there. That was for basically the one click, and it's actually not enforceable anymore. But they used to have a patent on basically how you do one click, if it's General, and just how you conduct your business is very difficult, near impossible at any more in today's age, to get a business method patent, that's how I conduct my business, generally more of a process, there's a couple ways that you can get a process. One is way that you manufacture things. So let's say you're making a car, and you had to, you know, you're making a rim of a car. And so you had to mill it out to a certain, you know, thickness, you had to do excellent, you had to heat it up, you had to cool it down, you had to do these steps in order to make something, the process of making something a lot of times if it's physical and tangible, you can get a process on that method. The other one you can do is sometimes when you get into the software arena, where a lot of times software is, you know, kind of that tangible, it's kind of you know, he can't see he can't feel it. And so but a lot of times software has, you know, certain ways that they go about, you know, step one, step two, step three, we get the data, we process it, we do analytics on it, and then we provide you a notification on your phone, those type of processes are much more mainstream, and reasonably, he was easy to get. It's more just on if you try and get a business method, I would tell you don't bother, because they've almost completely shut down that area patents.
3
Speaker 3
22:00
Yeah, it seems like trying to do a process. If you go through it, you get to a point where Oh, actually, this machine that is unique to this process is what we should be patenting, rather than the process of what we're doing. You know, it seems like the the software side, I get that, you know, that's basically code, you know, ones and zeros, every one.
2
Speaker 2
22:20
Yeah. And one of the other places that comes up a lot of times with, with medication or with, you know, something of that nature, in the medical industry, it's when you have to, you know, do a certain mixture between you know, this ingredient, this ingredient, this ingredient, you have to make it sterile, you have to do different things where there is a process where it's much more of how you make the medication, and what are the ingredients. And that's another place that sometimes it's applicable, more like a recipe almost. It
Law Smith
22:44
was because I was consulting a beverage company that it wasn't the ingredients, it was the way they put the ingredients together that my buddy bought the patent on. That that was the interesting part. He made a face like it was a bad buy. No, it was great. He just sitting on his birthday. That's all. Yeah. This mikulov Ultra, we're drinking.
3
Speaker 3
23:07
Well, then Coca Cola. I mean, Coca Cola doesn't have a patent. Or they don't like to show that they don't have to put their their formula out. Right? Exactly. So
2
Speaker 2
23:17
they do what's called trade secret, which is great if you can keep it a secret. If you can't keep it secret. It's a terrible way. So Coca Cola and I think Pepsi and both Coca Cola at least the myths are they there's only two people on the planet and given time that actually know the ingredients, either those dreams,
Law Smith
23:31
and they can the same plan at the same time. Right? Exactly. You know, they have to be at different places. Know, he cares about Pepsi.
2
Speaker 2
23:40
And supposedly, if you want to get into more misses, once one of them dies, they actually have a ceremony that same day that they pass that on so that he still had the two people at a given time. Now whether or not is true or not, but what they use is they leave
Law Smith
23:54
some IP. All the other IP lawyers gather around the campfire. Y'all give them the blessing and then they're able to download the secrets to weird things on their face. Go ahead.
2
Speaker 2
24:14
No, you're good. No, they they basically saying if you can keep something a secret, you know, you can keep as long as you keep it a secret is up. It's yours. You own it. It doesn't expire. Where's pattens yet put down the public, you get 20 years. And so Pepsi and Coke are saying we have a business plan where it's going to be the same ingredients for a longer period of time. Here's our formula. So we're going to keep it the same way. They have to put they spend millions of dollars a year to keep it a secret. They've actually gone through court cases where people have tried to take him to court saying that you are you have to disclose your ingredients and how you make it because then you are infringing our intellectual property and Pepsi and Coke will spend millions of dollars to keep it a secret because as soon as it gets out, they no longer have any protection.
Law Smith
24:56
What I'm what I cocaine, was that the secret? The news to be for? What if I'm, if I'm a startup? Why, why should I? Why should I call you up? Because I'm an awesome guy. And I know a lot of things. Now, I'm very, very eloquent with all this for sure. But if I'm if I start my own law firm, if I start a professional services company, what what? Or I've got a product that's in the ideation phase, where should I give you a ring? What? What is the point of when I should call you?
2
Speaker 2
25:34
Yeah, I would. It varies with each company. But if I was in the, you know, somebody's shoes, when should I reach out to attorney, it's usually when you've gotten whether it's branding, whether it's a invention, whether it's ideation, wherever you're at, when you've gotten to the point, you've invested enough that if somebody were to come along, and they're gonna rip it off there to copy and you say, Ouch, that hurts, that's gonna hinder my business. When you're reaching that point, that's when you should consider protecting your brand. So if you're just starting out any brand today, you start the business today. And you know, you're saying, should I get a copyright? Well, have you done any business any work to protect the brand? Or do you have any near term future I get to do a marketing plan? Are you going to go out and sell it? Are you going to do anything near term that's going to create a lot of value in the brand? And if somebody were to copy it, or knock it off, then you're going to say it's worthwhile. So usually, it's kind of if I'd asked a question is if somebody were to copy it, knock it off, otherwise do the same thing I'm doing would it hurt my business? If so, I've reached a point where I need to protect it. On the other hand, I know I'm saying I can pretty easily pivot I could rebrand I could do something different. They need probably don't need to worry about it at that point. Yep.
Law Smith
26:37
Good. No. Um, you know, so I have a I have a weird long term thing. You know, those business models is Porter's five forces and that kind of stuff. I've got a totem pole model that I want to eventually trademark. Here we go. How do I go about this? Do I give you a ring and you go, Okay, this is unique. Tell them It sucks. It may suck. Here's the thing. It may suck.
3
Speaker 3
27:10
But I still but I've drawn it on a whiteboard so many times. Yeah. I already saw it. hos I've taught
Law Smith
27:17
business strategy to so many people using this. Look. We can go into tattoo. We can go. We can go. I don't have any tattoos. You don't have any tattoos, right? Yeah, you do. No. Yeah, we're, we're unique. Well, you should do it. No, I don't want to do that. I don't want to disgrace. But I don't want to. It's not good. I don't wanna be hilarious. I don't want to needle on me. Um, listen, terrowin back in the days 90s. Lower Eastside. That's how I used to roll. Seattle, grunge rock. You know, I'm talking about if I wanted to go get that business model. What? How do I go about that? Like that? Doesn't? That it's unique? Do it on your body? Yeah.
2
Speaker 2
28:02
So if you're to, I mean, cuz where you're going, where I would give us the best analogy is Franklin Covey, right has the seven steps for highly effective individuals. And they, in order to do that, you have to have the, you have to build a brand around each of the steps. So if all you have is, Hey, I think I figured out five steps that are going to be the way to create a new business is going to be awesome. And it's going to be the best way, you have to actually build a brand around it. So just coming up with the stats, anybody can come up with a few stats, they can say, here are the stats, you can do it. But if you build a brand, Franklin Covey, he has each of the steps he's trademarked. He's written books on him, he's built up a following and a brand, then you can do that. So that's kind of where you'd start now perfect. If you're saying I have no idea if I'm at that stage or not at that stage, I would first of all, I would go, I would go Google it. You know, it's shocking. Yeah. Sounds.
28:49
We should have said that in the first 30 seconds. By the way. You got an app idea. Yeah, didn't exist already. And it's better. But it's a
2
Speaker 2
28:57
shocking, I'll have people come in my office all the time and say, I got this great idea. And I've got these prototypes and developments. This really seems like I've seen it before. We'll sit down for five minutes and say, I think this is what you created. Right? They're like dang it. Yeah. So take a few minutes to actually search out but if you can't find it, then I'd probably go talk to an attorney and say sit down say here's what I'm doing. Am I at the right state? Am I not at the right stage and kind of go from there?
Law Smith
29:20
No, mine is so dumb that no one is thought of it that bleeped out boogers I think as I was laughing, looking over to Eric about it, but it's so dumb that the beauty is in its dumbness in its simplicity is that I can teach it to anybody that was the idea. And I it sounds
3
Speaker 3
29:42
like there has to be unique aspects to every aspect of it. Oh, I
Law Smith
29:49
got it. The wings is your marketing strategy, baby. Yeah,
2
Speaker 2
29:53
all right. Well, if you want if you want to do it, we could I could definitely help you out. It's whether or not it's worthwhile to invest. It's something that's so dumb that it's unique.
Law Smith
30:02
Once you can do it, I'm gonna do it. That's gonna be my legacy is this dumb business model? Look, he has a patent on the world's dumbest business, right? I'm 37. Probably, I'm thinking about legacy a little bit, because I'm, you know, I'm a white male, and I'm a cisgendered. Male in the society for now. For now. Yeah, who knows? But All right. Well, before we forget, we have to ask everybody their first time on, and I appreciate it. This one by real quick. If anybody needs any help, obviously, strategy meeting.com is where you go? What advice would you give your 13 year old self?
2
Speaker 2
30:44
I think it my 13 year old self. And it's one that I hear. every startup like almost everybody is one that gave myself is getting going with something. And you know, I think that even as you're getting younger, you know, there are things that I always thought were cool business idea. And I you know, I thought well, I'm 13 I shouldn't you know, I need to wait till I'm older and get a school and get an education. And yet I think that if I were to go back and say try something out, get it going. Even if it fails, you're 13 you can always recover. You're still in school, your parents are there to help you. And that's what I've actually done with my son. My son actually now is started some businesses with me. He's only 11 and we're getting going on some things and it's a it's a blast. So I'd say don't wait doesn't matter your age. If you're only 13 you can still get going if Yeah, if it sounds interesting. You have a passion. Definitely do.
Law Smith
31:24
I have an idea when I was 13 fill in the hole of the bagel called Bogle that was filled with what just got doughnut holes. Why not bagel hole? Oh, sure enough. What was what was the idea? Yeah, do you remember?
2
Speaker 2
31:41
Oh, no, it's been long enough. I mean, I had so many ideas. I started a candy shop when I was a kid. And then I then if that's there, realistic or failed, I tried to invent a vending machine and I'm like, well, this is never gonna work. And so I was one of those. I've always had a whole bunch of ideas. And then I really before I got I never really pursued them until I got into college.
Law Smith
32:00
So you feel like ideas are cheap executions? A lot of it. Yeah. No, I was buying you were fucking the bagels. Oh, well, that's a whole reading talking about high school. That's different story. Appreciate you coming on. Late Bloomer, that's for sure. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. And yeah, we'll have you back on if you got anything on your mind.
2
Speaker 2
32:24
Absolutely. I appreciate having on it was a great conversation. Love to be back on whenever we have more of a chat about sci fi. Thanks.
