Legal Essentials for Business Success: Protect Your IP and Brand | Expert Tips from Progressive Legal with Ian Aldridge

We’re talking legal essentials for business success. Protect your IP and brand. We get some expert tips from progressive legal ’cause thought leaders. If you are not protecting your intellectual property in today’s AI driven world you are leaving yourself vulnerable. This is truly an essential episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

We are going to look at the legal foundations that every business owner needs to know. Ian Aldridge is the. Founder of Progressive Legal and he shares some critical insights on safeguarding your business ideas, protecting your brand, and avoiding those costly legal mistakes. With over 4,000 businesses served, Ian can reveal why 75% of businesses, and that is a shocking number A leaving themselves exposed to unnecessary risk.

So get ready for some practical, no nonsense advice on protecting your business assets. An intellectual property in an age where ideas can be copied at the click of a button. Stay tuned for this very important episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. And today we are going to explore all things legal. And whilst that may turn a few people off, please don’t shut down. Because it’s a really important thing for small business and I think it’s something that is often neglected.

By many people until it is too late in the piece. So I thought I’d bring Ian along from Progressive Legal to give us a little bit of an insight today. Ian, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Ian, why don’t you go ahead and give us a little bit of an introduction as to who you are and what the firm is about.

Yeah, thanks. I started the firm 10 years ago now. We’ve helped 4,000, over 4,000 businesses now that I can count. We do business law, so all back to front for small business, corporate and structuring intellectual property protection, commercial agreements and advice. I.

Workplace privacy and dispute resolution across all those areas. So basically there’s for small business, we’re growing small businesses, not much we can’t do. And I’ve designed the firm around what small businesses need as opposed to just doing one particular. Siloed area, niche but we’ve got experts in each of those particular areas to, to try and make sure that it’s, as much as we can a one stop shop for businesses.

We don’t do property or tax or criminal law or conveyancing or wills, probate, et cetera. We like to. Across those areas. There’s enough for us to keep on top of. But we’ve we’re amassing a bit of a powerful network of other law firms to refer clients to as well.

So it’s not just a dead end when they come to us for other services. 10 years prior to setting up my own firm, I’ve worked for small, medium, large, mega, firms and in-house and banks. I, I found inevitably the bigger the building, the worse the job and the worse the people.

And while I started out my career in, for small suburban practice I found that even though it wasn’t the most financially rewarding, it was definitely the most rewarding intrinsically happiness wise and helping helping. Moms and dads or small businesses that are helping others and not working for, soulless corporations where you don’t see really the output of the advice and you don’t you don’t get to really interact a lot with, with the people and see how that advice is actually implemented in, into a business and how much that.

Can affect someone’s daily life or live, the lives of the people within the organization. So yeah, I came, I’ve come full circle in that way come back and started helping small business. When I came back from London I had a couple years stint there on the, the, you know what what’s very common for Australians to do the two years in London.

And then yeah, when I came back to Australia, I decided to set up my own my own firm. And it’s a big thing. I think that’s the interesting perspective here and there’s lots to, to delve into, but in essence, you’re a small business yourself, and so you’re actually going through all of those pains that a small business operator fines.

I think you’ve just gone past 10 years now in business, and so you understand all of those pains as a small business operator. Goes through because that’s what you’ve been doing as well as servicing clients. Yeah. We, and as we’ve grown as well too we’ve, noticed our clients growing with us.

So it’s really nice to see, I. Nice to see that we’ve had some clients that have been with us from, from still with us, from year one. And, it’s it’s lovely to see, them grow through, their growth as well as see our growth. And we’re enjoying that, partnership in a way.

It really does make a big difference and, from, as I said, like an intrinsic perspective. It’s really nice to see clients succeed and win awards and get funding or, employ the next, round of staff. Secure their, trademarks both locally and internationally.

Secure, big supply and distribution agreements and yeah, it’s really, it’s, and obviously fend off any challenges that happen along the way and know that they’ve got someone that’s gonna be in their corner to back them and fend off any outside threats, which, it’s just a powerful course for business.

It isn’t it? And I think in this day and age, it’s there’s this battle isn’t there in business at the moment where there’s this battle to be ahead and to be different, but also being aware that with the technology that’s out there, that anything’s being put out there is almost being grabbed and being creating a new.

A new staple for other people as well. So it’s an evolving space and one that I think small business at the moment probably doesn’t focus on as much as it should. Yeah, I think generally I was saying to one of my colleagues yesterday, entrepreneurs are risk seekers. We, we are that by definition, we see the blue, the blue ocean and want us to start swimming and see what happens.

But there’s a few, there’s just, I have tried to really encourage clients over the past 10 years to, you can take as many sort of risky activities with your marketing, your campaigns, who you’re gonna tackle and industries, et cetera. And and disrupt, but, there’s just a few things that you just don’t wanna risk when it comes to business.

And that’s, tax and financial and structuring make sure, making sure that’s really sound from a tax perspective so you don’t get, so you don’t get bitten with the right structure that’s gonna, fulfill what you want to achieve in the next five years so that you’re not having to, pull yourselves up by, by your bootstraps or then, having to face a large tax bill because you didn’t realize that there were capital gains tax that attracted to, to a transfer of assets from one type of structure to another.

All these things that, small businesses get caught out on. All the time from a tax perspective, insurance, is obviously a big thing. And for most businesses, I think most owners would probably realize that, that it’s a no brainer to have business. Some form of business insurance, general business insurance and public liability and other and other other insurance.

And I’m encouraging people to think the same about law. Like it’s you, the legal structure of the business, the legal, even just the ABCs of what you need. Where you can push across a lot of legal liability onto others, but you as a business need to actually do that. And the buck stops with you unless you do, and, it falls back on us. We, most business owners forget that when it comes before, when, whenever something comes before a court or a tribunal a court, a judge, a magistrate or a tribunal member kind of looks at business like big, bad business. And it doesn’t really matter how big or small you are, because the, usually the person that’s coming up against is a consumer.

That is a protected species. Like a tenant’s, a protected species, an employee is a, protected species. All, all for good reason. But I think, most small businesses forget, oh when you’re coming before court, I’m not saying they see like Apple, but they do see a business and that’s, it’s your responsibility to make sure that.

Your terms and conditions are clear, unambiguous, nothing contradictory within them. Plain English, very clear. And basically if, it’s almost like the onus of proof just reverses onto you as the business, even though it’s their claim, it almost reverses onto us as a business owner.

To prove why that we should be successful rather than, ordinarily in any other proceedings, plaintiff would bear the onus of proof right? To, beyond, balance of probabilities in a commercial setting. So it flips back on us to prove why this consumer, or why this person, this client, or this customer.

You know why we’re right and they’re wrong. And then only when you’ve ticked those boxes does then the tribunal member or the judge or the magistrate say, okay. What do you say about that? It doesn’t, it’s not the other way. It’s almost, so show me your terms and look, we’ll look at those really carefully first, and they’ll be scrutinized.

Scrutinized very heavily in particular to what they’re actually claiming. And if anything is ambiguous, if anything’s gray, anything, it’s gonna go, it’s gonna fall against us. But there’s some really great. Legal things to push across this legal liability, waivers, disclaimers and terms and limitation of liability.

I won’t bore you with the details. That’s our job. But there’s some really clever stuff you can do to limit the amount of damage and risk management which is pretty much all we do. I’m not. Sugarcoating, really what we do. It was just, it’s really risk management and we are trying to reduce the amount of legal risk for a business as much as we can legally.

And that’s as far as we can go. But yet we saved many clients bacon by having really robust and great legal documents. And the advice that obviously goes with it to educate the clients to make sure that they’ve got, the knowledge around these and be really confident with the, with the documents that they’ve got and the terms that they have.

And it could be with, their terms and conditions, waivers, disclaimers, their supply agreements, manufacturing any commercial agreements and other intellectual property agreements as well to like non-disclosure agreements or deeds of confidentiality. So I guess the main thrust of it really is just as see this as a no brainer, and it’s just a, it’s just a cost of doing business. Speak to your accountant. But, generally speaking the, these costs are tax deductible, for a business. And the knowledge that you get through this process will give you a lot of confidence in your terms and your documents to, to give you that power in a transaction to know what you know.

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I think as well too, clients and customers are becoming pretty savvy. They’re reading some of these documents now. They’re even them, they’re even throwing them into chat GPT to give them summaries. And, there’s all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff going on. People are really concerned with privacy.

They’re starting to read privacy policies and question certain parts of ’em as well too. I know that, that sort of starting to generally happen with obviously, data and privacy concerns generally. People are starting to look at that and say, Hey, where’s where is this stuff going?

And what, what organizations are you sharing this with? And they’re actually ma they’re, and they’re looking at these documents now and forming a it’s all part of this first impression. And almost you can almost, I’ve encouraged businesses for a little while now because it started to get a bit of, feedback. I started realizing from clients, that they’ve actually received good feedback from the people that they’ve been engaging with. That this is a really, these are really professional, they’re starting to be judged on these documents. And as well as I do if you get a, if you get a, a document, given to you legally and you can drive a bus through.

Through ’em, or it looks terrible or it’s, you can tell it’s like a American document that’s pulled off a template off the web, like you, that’s that you automatically start to form a view of what that business is like. Almost like when you’re dealing with a sole trader.

I know it’s, I know it’s I know it’s, it shouldn’t be this way, but some larger organizations will only deal with corporates. Like if a if you’re a consultant, for instance, and you’re a sole trader, there’s, and they won’t tell, they won’t tell them why they didn’t get the job. But, even just incorporating to a company changes that, those optics and then having really great legal documents that are not they don’t need to be extraordinarily lengthy documents.

They just need to be, they just need to be good and not have any holes in them. And and. Be robust but fit for purpose. And if they are and they don’t need to negotiate various terms then you’re more likely to get, you’re more likely to get the gig. Unless and such, it’s, it is so important for business to be aware of it.

And I think there’s a couple of different levels of this. I think one is the simply that most small business operators probably think. A, is it really necessary? And B, have this idea as well that and which is steeped in some degree of truth is that, everyone’s against small business.

It’s we’ve just been through an election cycle and if there was one criticism that I. Heard about in re in relation to all parties and so I’m not being political at all here. All parties? Not none of them had a policy regarding small business and small, there were close to 400,000 small businesses that went that went, out of business Last to the wall.

Yeah. Record number. And when you look at that and you look at all of the things that are against it, this is the hard part is that, often the legals are things that people avoid until they need it, which is the worst time to get to do it, and then not thinking that they can afford it.

And I think that’s one of the things that you’ve. When you establish your firm and what you’ve come up with is you’ve got a, I think you call it a sh a legal shield that is a subscription based model that people can get some assistance for, which is a great entry point really for business.

Yeah. We. We cut our teeth on startups because we were a startup at the time, and I didn’t want to I could have easily gone and set up the firm and started helping banks with their litigation matters. That would’ve been, that would’ve been the, the most financially and wisest, problem move.

But I did it the hard way. Which I often do and backwards. And that was to help startups, not and I was. I was advised very heavily by a number of mentors and other lawyers and businesses, business owners and coaches, et cetera, not to do this because that, traditionally they don’t have any money.

It’s money’s too tied to mention the bootstrapping that they don’t value the advice. All this stuff that I, all this rhetoric that I was receiving and I was part of a a part of a group. That we’re all helping each other through starting a business. And I guess I just didn’t listen to the noise and saw a real need to help startups and small business like I.

People found out I was a lawyer and started sticking pieces of P paper under my nose and saying, Hey, what do you think of this? And I was just shocked to see what was being produced. Most of it was template driven. Being a litigation lawyer, I could drive a bus through most of the stuff I saw.

I. Sometimes it was the advice was just plain wrong. And the clients when, and the documents were just literally, print, print off a Alexis Nexus precedent and there were just garbage precedents. Not necessarily Lexus Nexus stuff, but, some of these precincts that were provided were just, they weren’t fit for purpose, they weren’t tailored and which is what it’s all about.

You need to. Make sure that they’re tailored for what the business is actually doing. I know it sounds like a lawyer selling his wares, the devil really is in the detail, and I can tell you that’s that. That’s true. I’ve worked on cases where one word and it was a 300 million euro.

Case in London, overpaid versus payable like in a contract drafted by a very large magic circle firm. So like there there’s big, there are con consequences and this is the and the devil really is in the detail. And that’s, but that’s our bag. That’s what we do.

And I’ve seen clients come across, or as well too, just DIYing some of this stuff. I’ve had a number of cases restraint provisions where clients of DIY stuff that have ended up in federal court proceedings. You name it, I’ve seen it. I even see, I even, I saw a document once that was it was it appeared American at the start and then noticed it had French language.

So it was, and it turned out to be a French Canadian document proposed. To us by a Thai entity to an Australian client. And it was just like and it was just garbage. It basically just scrumpled it up and threw it in the bin. Just told the client, this is the most obscure document I’ve ever seen.

That just doesn’t do anything. And unfortunately this’s just such an asymmetry of information of knowledge between. Between between client and lawyer. And as you, we all know, there’s, there’s just there’s plumbers and accountants.

There’s, it’s the same with lawyers, there really is a very wide left and right of arc with a quality of lawyer that can provide you with. Proper and practical advice. That’s and that’s what we’ve been striving to, to create is practical and straightforward.

No bs. Just like we’re talking now, business owner to business owner and no jargon, no legally, no, no Latin it’s just, for forward thinking and practical advice that, Australian businesses need. They don’t need, they don’t need the faf, they don’t need the gaf, they don’t need anything else.

And that’s and they need it. And they need it promptly. They’re fast moving. They’re very quick decision making. So when you. Operate in this startup environment. How fast it, it moves how quickly the landscape changes, how the turnaround of that advice and documents needs to be fast, needs to be great quality, but it needs to be quick.

It can’t move like the traditional model. They, they all just look like snails and tortoises. Compared to what they need, which is a hair. And really, prac, the practical advice that goes with that, but that you’ve gotta have the experience to be able to provide that advice.

Yeah, I think that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Is you alluded to it at the beginning that the tendency. Is that, with a lot of businesses, they want to go to someone who will do everything, and you are very clear on the things that you do and the things that you don’t do and that you can, you’ve got partners you can refer to in that, but often I think that’s been the hard part for a lot of businesses is they go to someone who just.

Wants to do everything so they do their best, and then ultimately you’re not necessarily getting the best advice possible. And I wanna explore in a moment, the areas of IP and trademarking because I think that’s particularly important to small business. But just on that note, as far as being very clear about what you do and what you handle, there’s to, to my view, there are too many law firms out there that.

Purport to be servicing small business, but don’t really. Yeah. I think yeah, there’s, I think when you do some general Google searches for the, for, for those terms that, for the service that you’re after you can get a gist of who who’s who’s out there and doing.

And you can read their blogs, read their look at their five star, their five star reviews on Google Read, and we are getting a few people that are doing that now and saying, I already like the way you communicate. ’cause I’ve read this, I’ve read that, I’ve looked at this on the website, I’ve looked at your reviews I’ve watched a video on your YouTube about, about this.

And I’m prepared. And I’m, and I’m, I’ve looked at how much you charge on. Fix the basis on your website and I’m ready to proceed. So that, but doing that due diligence, and I encourage everyone to do that first before they choose a provider because yeah, you can, you really can get caught out with some firms that are trying to go after this market.

And I think that first conversation, you should get a really good first impression of whether or not they, they’ve got experience in, in, in assisting small business. And I even ask like the lawyer that you even speak to first, ask ’em those questions, how many small businesses have you helped?

And in my industry how many, have you helped a lot in my industry. ’cause ev every industry is different. And industry experience is a really good it’s a really good measure of how much work they’ve actually done. I. And also too, just asking the, the lawyer that they put you in touch with first, see how much experience they’ve got.

You can look ’em up on LinkedIn and see how many years they’ve had as a lawyer. You don’t even need to ask them the question. You can look ’em up online and see you. There’s so much information that you can find out online now from, on various on various firms and the and the lawyers that are working on, on, on them.

So you get a bit, bit more of a background point. Terms of the startups and businesses and and the use of law firms, the, I think the elephant in the room is that you, over the last 200 years it seems to be that law firms have done traditionally a poor job.

Of helping of servicing businesses, small business in Australia, if it’s the case, and I think like anecdotally, this is what we have, the research has shown for us. As we’ve asked various businesses, I would say three quarters of Australian small business would have an accountant that they go to or can go to for advice.

But I think it’s probably the case that 25% of small business have have gone and saw, seen a lawyer and got some advice about the business and have got a lawyer that they’ve, that they’ve got that, that perhaps understands their business and they can go through for time to time for advice.

But that leaves a very big percentage of businesses out there, like 75%. If 75% of small business in Australia do not have a lawyer that understands their business that they can go to from time to time, or scarily have never received legal advice, then you know, that means that it’s not the client’s fault that they’re doing, that they’re doing this.

It’s, it, there’s two sides to this coin. And if law firms have scared, businesses off from getting those services have been really, challenging to deal with. Too hard, too costly. And, tr we did a survey and we started the firm and it was cost, communication and care.

That was, there were the three things that kept coming up. When we were asking our group that were very honest and open with us about it. And initial clients we wanted to get that feedback. Why would they not, engage a lawyer and a law firm?

And it was, scary and costly and, they communicated differently to them. They weren’t speaking the same language and they didn’t feel like the lawyer actually cared about their business. So if you are doing those three things better than the other firms, then. You’re gonna win.

You’re gonna be, you’re gonna win because you’re gonna be at least very competitive because at least clients will be happy, happier with the service and more likely to come back and get other services from you. So that’s really been the driving that force in the first, at least in the first three years, for us to really focus on those three areas, focus on the top three issues.

And go at those really hard and walk the walk. Not just, talk there’s a lot of firms that say that they’re straight talking or Yeah. Relation, relationship driven or care about their clients. But how do they do that? Like that’s, it’s an interesting marketing dilemma.

It’s one of those things that I remember. Hearing this years ago, and I’ve said it to my clients as well over, over the years it’s like, how many people say that they’re really excited? Don’t say that they’re, you’re excited. Demonstrate that you’re excited. Yeah. It’s easy to say things. How many, talk as cheap.

Yeah. How many websites do you see, oh, we’re the leading who nominated you as the leading, like under what premise are you the leading whatever it is that you are saying? They’re mother, they’re mothers. It’s exactly. And I think that’s there’s some basic stuff for businesses to understand that you are doing.

There is saying one hand is to find out what they want. The other hand is to actually talk to those things and deliver on those. Things as you’re going through the process. And I think too often it, it happens in any business where what they’re doing is they think they know what the audience wants.

They’ve never really checked. They thrust things upon the audience that they want to sell and don’t necessarily talk the language that they’re talking. And so there’s a disconnect and I think that they’re important lessons for business regardless of what profession you’re in. Yeah. And, li listening to them and what, finding more, it’s more finding out, than listening.

But listening is obviously very important, but in order, there’s lots of things that clients won’t tell you. And we were shocked when we heard, when we did this survey and found out, cost like bill shock. Don’t know what the WTF you Ali rates this much. Wow. What does that all mean?

How much is that gonna cost? Very, it was very nebulous sometimes. And then, bill shock would occur. And so obviously that was a big deal, communication, not responding to phone calls or not getting back to ’em, even if it was just a quick, text message to say, Hey, it’s, I got your missed call.

I’ll come back to you later. Or. An email came through, Hey, I just, I saw your email today. I’ve just been on an urgent matter. Your, you’re first on my list tomorrow morning, would it, whatever that might be. So at least the client’s not gonna bed going, did they get my email today?

We’re moving in such a fast space environment. If I don’t come back to a client, they’ve emailed them in the morning and if I haven’t come back to them by the afternoon, they think I’ve gone on a holiday. Yeah. Honestly, this is how fast it is. But, the traditional law firm doesn’t get that.

And that means they. They will miss out on all this opportunity ’cause they’re not moving fast enough. And it is such an important thing and I think the pace that we are moving at, I. Also means that ideas that you have today could be stolen tomorrow. Because and not because they necessarily and not necessarily because someone looked over your shoulder and said, oh, that’s a good idea.

I’m gonna run with it. But more because that 24 hours can be enough time for someone new to come up with the same idea and then. It’s it’s so funny as well too. There’s people coming up with very similar ideas around the world at the same time, because the prior art base is moving in that same direction and it’s easy to think, oh my God, this person’s stolen my, my idea.

But it’s just literally the, someone else has had, sure many people have had the same ideas that I’ve had about stuff, but it’s, whether they implement them or not is another thing. And in Australia we’ve got a first to, first to use not necessarily a first to file system, for instance, with trademarks.

But, it’s always better to be first anyway. And that can be a matter of yeah, who, who got into IP Australia first for the filing. And that’s an area I just wanted to explore briefly if I can. Yeah. Because I think it’s really important for small business, particularly in a day and age and where AI is such a big factor.

And the minute you start putting stuff out there and feeding it into an AI tool, it starts becoming free for all. And so there is, there’s people that are jumping on that bandwagon, not being aware of it. Then there’s the other side of things of people being. Too cautious to publish any kind of content anywhere because they think, oh, it’s my intellectual property.

How do you find that balance between what is your intellectual property and what you need to actually what you can put out there? Where is that line? I am gonna give you the most amazing legal answer. It depends. And unfortunately it really does. It depends on what type of intellectual property it is.

So for instance with a patent with any sort of novel or new idea process, how to do something that’s a, novel and inventive step from the prior art base. There’s. A number of things that you should be considering. And I know there’s lots of people with lots of opinions.

We all know what they say about opinions. They lost most of ’em stink. And and unfortunately they’re based on their own either, Bush lawyer their own research or what they’ve been told by another. Lawyer or patent attorney, which may have applied to their particular case, which was right, or it might be wrong advice.

And then they, and they sprinkle it on Facebook and give, advice to these people. I’ve had to like chime in a number of times on a number of times on groups. I’ve almost given up, trying to keep battling that. But yeah, definitely. Taking, getting, I, I’ve found generally in business, getting the right advice from the right people at the right time is super invaluable.

So if you have, this idea about a patent, et cetera, don’t go disclosing it to anyone. Get the advice first. Work out what legal documents you might need to put in place, first and, put out a road, a roadmap of what you need to do at what particular time. And then.

For for when you want to, publish and because the danger is once you put that out online you can be deemed to be, that could then be deemed to be then part of the prior art base. So then you do you undo yourself from your own patent application because you’ve publicized it for advertise it for sale, or.

When they look and they do look back in the way back machine and look at and they’ll, and if they find their stuff then you can come a cropper. As I say it it’s hard because everything that we come up with that’s new is based on something else that we’ve seen or heard in circumstances.

And inadvertently you are you can be copying some other ideas. Sometimes it is very obvious, let’s turn the three whatevers into the. Three something else. Yeah. That’s just a variation on a theme. You see a lot of that stuff being done and people developing other people’s ideas and sometimes they’re, people will openly say it’s based on the principles that I read in this book, or that I heard in from this person.

Yeah. But. Are those adaptations, your own intellectual property or there things that, if they’re based on lots of other people’s that, you haven’t got something fresh there. We do a lot of intellectual property infringement and copyright, which you’re alluding to there, I think copyright infringement as well, which is not pardon the, pardon, black and white sometimes.

And, usually with the copyright infringement work that we do it’s, it’s pretty blatant when you see slabs of text copied. That’s, that that’s more, more clear cut than say, for instance of, a rewording of a an idea or a piece of text.

I’d strongly advise against just publishing text that’s spat out through through I. Through any of the any of the ai producing content platforms you just don’t know where this is being produced from. You don’t know you don’t know as well too what other people may be using as well, and that becomes duplicate content that.

Google doesn’t like, like sometimes the people are putting in the same sort of prompts and it’s spitting out pretty much the same word for word. So if you are publishing that and someone else is publishing that then Google’s gonna penalize you both for having duplicate content.

Yeah, you have to. You not only, you have to make it your own checking. It is huge because if you if you look. And when you ask for a piece of content from yeah, any one of the ais and they often give you reference materials and it looks great. ’cause you see there’s 20 references there, and you think, oh, that, that looks amazing.

And you a quick look and you think, oh, they seem like legitimate websites. Actually click and look at what those things are. ’cause more often than not, they don’t exist. I think people completely made up. Yeah, it’s just the, they’re hallucinating. These and the hallucinating case law references.

There’s been some lawyers that have been busted for producing submissions to the court. Enough for the Supreme Court to put out a. To put out a a directive that, if any lawyer’s caught doing this, like they’re gonna, they’re gonna suffer great consequences, like quoting cases that don’t, that they, at the moment, AI is just not there yet.

And even had clients, giving me wordings for contracts and all sorts of stuff using AI to slightly say to them, nice try. It was good. It was a good try, but it’s, it’s not it’s still not gonna do what it needs to do. So it’s not there yet. I don’t, I suspect it’ll be it’s not gonna be far off producing something that might be 80%, 90% there.

But, still, I think there’s gonna be someone with a legal eye to to check this stuff. But yeah coming back to your point, the substantial reproduction of copyright material, I think, we are living in a day and age now where it appears some people do not have an original thought in their head.

And I generally say if you’re gonna produce content based on other content. Like really make it your own. Like of course if you, we all draw some inspiration from, from what we see out there. But, really make it your own and make us make your content unique to you and, with your own language.

And I. Really get as far away from that red line as you possibly can. Just like with your taxes. Don’t push the envelope with what you can claim and not take the advice from your accountant and stay away from the red line as much as you can. It’s just not worth taking those risks.

No. Abs, absolutely. I a hundred percent agree with you and I think there, there’s so many avenues to explore in all of this, particularly around those areas of just IP and trademarking and I think it’s, I. A hundred percent worthwhile for people having a discussion with someone like yourself.

And I should point out, of course, that we’ll include all the details on how to get in contact with you in the show notes. And I know we could talk for many hours about all of these different areas and I appreciate all the insights you’ve given me. I did wanna just wrap things up with a question I like to ask all of my guests.

Yeah, go for it. Which is. What is the aha moment that commonly business owners have when they come to work with you that you wish more people would know about in advance? And I suspect we’ve talked around this a little bit in this discussion already. Yeah, I think there’s a few aha moments, but I think people generally learn from their own experience, right?

And, that and say to clients that there’s some things that you just, you only do once. And not having a, an employment contract with an employee, that’s a mistake you only make once. ’cause you, and the ramifications of it by going through it, not having a shareholder’s agreement.

I’ve got, people that come to me and say, Hey, I, we need a shareholders’ agreement, and this is, and when I get talking to them, I find out yet they’ve, the first thing that they’re doing is that because they’ve had a business bust up previously where there was no shareholders’ agreement and they know that the only avenue to.

To to go and have that fight is the Supreme Court. And unless it’s over, 500,000 to a million dollars and it’s not, then it may not be worth it. So there’s definitely some of these potholes and and learning experiences that clients, have to go and, we all learn through those experiences. And no one’s, no one’s not guilty of it. Like we’re all guilty of it. And and I just, I know that when clients say was, oh, I wish I met you. I wish I’d met you five years ago. That’s the they’re the magic words for us.

’cause we know at least that they’ve they understand the value of this work in as in asset protection and protection of their business, their brand, their livelihood, protecting this stuff, and that stitch in time saves nine or 900, 9,000 or the whole bag, taking these these initial steps, which it’s just not, it’s not, getting at least some protection is is some protection is better than none. And just doing things in order of priority and just making sure that at least the big risk stuff is dealt with. And then, and then at least your eyes are wide open to, okay, these are the areas, these are the things that we’re gonna need to.

To tie up and we’ll do that when we have this funding or this, and just set out a roadmap for it. So I think that that sort of aha moment comes from the clients when they realize, oh, and it’s great that, oh, I don’t need to go to another service provider to explain this or be referred from someone else.

And then I have that getting to know you conversation again. You wanna. Ideally I think that, and that’s the way we’ve tried to create the firm, is have that so that you can, you can have that almost like an in-house council to be able to go to for this.

For what they for what they need for their business from time to time and then, at least triage and work out what to do from there. Fantastic. Thank you.

I was, that’s absolutely the message, and I think that’s such an important aspect of what we’ve talked about today and I think, thought leaders that are out there and are listening or people that are wanting to be thought leaders, you, in order to put yourself out there, you need the protection, but you also need to understand where you stand and where you can go.

And I think having. A firm that is progressive by name and by nature in the way that you go about it and deal with small business, I think is a huge value add. So thank you so much for being a part of the program. I really appreciate all of the insights that you’ve given us. Yeah, hopefully hopefully the audience has got a little bit out of it.

And there’s obviously Yeah. Lots more to talk about. And yeah, next time on the show I will I’ll do all sorts of, potholes and things to avoid. And things that I’ve, things that I’ve noticed over the last, 10 years advising all these businesses, what, what what are the main things that businesses come across with and where they should focus their attention.

Absolutely. And definitely look forward to all of that. And of course, we will include all of the details of how to get in contact with you in the show notes, including a a link to a checklist. For people around intellectual property that we can also give people as a starting point. So I think that’s great.

So thank you for giving us that as well. Yeah, no problem. It’s a comprehensive sort of list that small business can go through and work out all the areas of intellectual property that they have and create effectively an inventory of it. Make sure it’s in the right make sure it’s in the right place.

And if it isn’t already, what needs to be done in terms of transfer and just. Yeah, because it’s all very nebulous and it’s not something that you check every day. And you start to amass a lot of intellectual property very quickly in a business that you don’t realize. So yeah we worked out, there wasn’t a, there wasn’t a checklist out there that existed, so we decided to create our own.

So it’s. It’s been two years in the making. But yeah, it’s all for Australian small business. So yeah, feel free to to download from the link. Fantastic. Thank you again for being a great guest. Appreciate it all advice for thought leaders and to everyone listening in, of course, check out the show notes and don’t forget to subscribe.

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