Building A Defendable Brand
Every business owner or entrepreneur needs to tune into this episode with US Army Veteran and attorney, Andy Nelson as we discuss how and why to defend your brand. From trademark and copyright to websites and social media there is a lot to consider when building your brand. Find out what you need to focus on first and the best ways to keep yourself out of the courtroom!
Guest Links:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DefendingYourBrand/
Transcript from Episode 30 with Andy Nelson:
Keith McKeever 0:06
Welcome to the battle buddy with Keith McKeever.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the battle buddy podcast. If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, Brand Builder, we're even thinking about those things. I've got the guest for you today, the things that we're going to discuss are probably the things that you're not thinking about right away, when in business or branding and things like that. But first, any Nelson, thank you for joining us, Michelle. Glad to have you here. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about your story, your background, how you ended up in the military what you did?
Andy Nelson 0:41
Boy, I'll try to keep that concise. So I'm a native Washingtonian, I guess, you know, I grew up south of Seattle. And, you know, short story, I live in the same house, you know, my entire youth, my parents still live there today. You know, you fast forward to when I'm getting kind of approaching exiting high school, you get the most calls from recruiters, right. And I always kind of had it, I've always had a fondness for the military, you know, my dad was in the Air Force mom was in the army. You know, so as a kid, like any other, you know, playing guns around the neighborhood, that sort of thing. So I was certainly interested in joining the military, I didn't know what branch, you know, what the army called me first. So, you know, Army wooed me, you know, I got to watch back now was laser discs, you know, at the recruiting office, and all the different branches and all the different things I could do. And I was, you know, I was enamored with that. And frankly, I didn't know what I was going to do after high school at that point. parents didn't go to college, so we didn't have those sorts of discussions. And, you know, great time for, you know, some adventure and detour, figure out what I want to do. And I want to have some adventure in the army. So yeah, I want an airborne contract and an infantry contract. And that's what I got, oh, I was,
Keith McKeever 1:56
you can definitely get some adventure. So sounds like you had kind of similar story, to me just kind of bored in a way just looking for something didn't really know what you're gonna do.
Andy Nelson 2:09
I was, you know, an average student, you know, probably be plus student, you know, wasn't interested in some things was interested in others. But just really, you know, growing up, I didn't have the sorts of forward looking discussion with my parents, you know, and let's prepare you for adult life, you know, and so talk about college and that, you know, it was more of kind of pick your own find your own path for me. So I kind of ran up against that wall, fork in the road. And, well, here's a chance to kind of kick the can down the road and figure it out later.
Keith McKeever 2:40
As you get going, I mean, that's, that's how mine was, I got my associates degree, and I was just kind of like, do I want to continue stocking shelves and unloading trucks for the next 20 years? Or do I want to get in law enforcement like I had my associates degree in? Or what exactly is it doing? I want to do, of course, I was 20. So you're just looking at the whole world, like, Well, I haven't really entered it yet. I've got one foot in. I don't know what the world has to offer in the army actually called me first. But my stepdad was Air Force in Vietnam and, and he's like, No, go talk to the Air Force, you have a little bit better quality of life. And so that's, that's how I ended up there. But the army I was on, I was on the phone for about an hour, hour and a half with that guy. So he'll take me back for my stepdad, I probably would have went army. Because it was just like, he spoke to me at that right time. It was like, Oh, wait, there's there's another option here. You know what? Why not so? So after you got out what? What got you into long? Woods? What made you decide to go that route?
Andy Nelson 3:41
Yeah, well, there's not a direct path. You know, once wasn't the army I really started you find out a lot of time to read. So I was I really figured out, you know, hey, the things that interested me, were history. And for whatever reason, politics, and there was a study, I guess, you know, so, as I got into undergrad, I can start gravitating more towards history courses, political science courses, stuff I really liked. But again, once again, I wasn't thinking down the road, you know, where does this go? How does this turn into a career? And as I'm sitting there, my junior year, I think in college, I don't have answers to that, you know, I can go teach maybe, I think I got a teaching credential. I think at least I took the courses were teaching credential and history. So I was thinking that path potentially, or what else do I become a professor do I do I work in a museum? I didn't know. So you just construct hear from other people that you know, hey, a natural kind of if you're going to continue education, you know, law school might be ready to go. I don't know. Where's the family? Oh, no, I didn't know any lawyers. It just kind of, you know, totality of everything seemed like that was the next step. And so I wish it was more involved in that I wish I had some dream of being a lawyer. It wasn't that it was just let me continue. I love academia. I love learning. So I was interested to continue education to maybe be a career in student but it just that was the next That was just the next step.
Keith McKeever 5:02
There's no doubt about it. There's a lot of learning in law school, I'm sure. Yeah, that's brutal.
Andy Nelson 5:08
But you can imagine, whatever, you know, if you take them to go to undergrad or you know, high school, pick whatever, imagine doing, you know, your three years of college, but, you know, effectively the same general subject, you know, obviously different, you know, different subjects within different cuts and slices, but just, it's la la, la, la, la, la, la, you know, la Hey, I'm singing now, for three years. You know, that's it's involved, but
Keith McKeever 5:34
I really distinction of being the first guest to have you ever sing sang on the show.
Andy Nelson 5:39
complete accident.
Keith McKeever 5:43
Accidents are good, really, what it was accidents or something like that. So, but yeah, you know, law, there's so many different aspects. I think people just don't really think about, you know, you've got real estate law, corporate law, criminal law, if you're in the trademark, patent, copyright type area, right. There. There's a name for that.
Andy Nelson 6:05
But, you know, we typically put under the umbrella of intellectual property law. Okay. I mean, you mentioned about property, real estate, you know, so now intellectual property? No,
Keith McKeever 6:15
I should, I should have known that brained up too early and more. So we're gonna talk about is defending your brand. And you've got a Facebook group on it. But the first question I wanted to ask you is, what is the first step somebody should think about when defending their brand?
Andy Nelson 6:33
Well, the first step is simply, you know, is what I'm going to choose to kind of represent my brand, you know, my symbol, whether it's my name, or a logo, or both, or slogan is Make sure that I can even actually adopt that thing. In order to defend it. You know, oftentimes that simple steps skipped. People glom on to something, they want to symbolize their brand and fall in love with it and just go without thinking, hey, you know, somebody else may have something very similar identical in a similar industry, which may pose a problem for me, I'm getting a cease and desist letter, or I may have adopted something that I love. But I it's it for a number of reasons, it may not be defensible may not be protectable may not be exclusive. And so if it doesn't function that way to kind of let you stand out in a crowded marketplace, what real value does it have? So so that initial step in defending your brand is choosing a defensible brand?
Keith McKeever 7:28
Yeah, sure, there's a lot of people getting cease and desist orders on different things. You know, you can't, I can't my mind, imagine how many possible brands there are across this country? It's got to be an unfathomable number.
Andy Nelson 7:41
Well, yeah, most you probably wouldn't even know because they just may be local businesses and still kind of, you know, the traditional not really visible, you know, local tailor or whatever, probably doesn't have a web may not have a web presence, you know, semana just see them unless you physically drive by. And there's plenty of businesses like that remaining in the US not everyone's online. So yeah, try put a number on it. Good luck.
Keith McKeever 8:01
Yeah, unfortunately, not everybody's online. I wish that one would change. I still can't believe today and 2021, there's businesses with no online presence just blows my mind. It makes no sense. But actually, that leads perfectly into my next question, website protection, what does that actually mean to protect your website,
Andy Nelson 8:24
website can be a challenging one. Because you know, a lot of people, you know what design websites, they love them, and they say, Ah, this is I spend the money doing this, this is my and so when they see another website that has the same kind of general layout and features, you know, people get bent out of shape, that's a tough one to protect website layouts are really hard to protect. Almost, I'd say almost impossible, just because there's only realistically so many ways to do it, that's functional, that's attractive, that sort of thing. And so, you know, there's not a lot of policy to protect, basically give someone a monopoly in that sense, if it's really kind of functional, has some kind of consumerism function in terms of consumer traction, that sort of thing. So trying to get trying to get to technical, other content on a website can be very protectable, that is, websites that are probably going to be featuring brands, trademarks, you know, and that may again, maybe a name, word words might be logos can be really distinct color combinations, maybe jingles, slogans, that sort of thing. So those sorts of things. When people do others websites, sometimes they they do them on, you know, wholesale, and they grab on a lot of that stuff. See, you know, so protecting your trademarks, I mean, those can be protectable as the featured on someone's website. Another thing that is protecting the website is really the layout, the National literary content or the other content, the graphic art, that sort of thing. All that sort of material is protected by copyright law in contrast with trademark law, and that content again, when I say People do other sites, they typically, you know, they're not very clever about it, they typically cut it wholesale. And then they switch up the name of the company. But leave the rest. I've seen that happen plenty of times. But a lot of times, you know, cut and paste is detectable so, so those are the ways that website could be protected. There's still, you know, trademark protection, potentially, and some copyright protection, that maybe some patent protection as well, but I won't that's that's really detailed. We'll get into that. Right now. That's rare. So
Keith McKeever 10:31
yeah. So because a lot of websites like, for instance, about a buddy podcast, my website is through Squarespace, and they only have so many different templates, so many different things you can do that, is that part of the reason why it's really kind of hard to do, because there's only so many different templates once that company has one, company A, B, and C over here, kind of have their own templates, and you can only do so much. There's so many combinations. Well,
Andy Nelson 10:53
yeah, I suppose someone could argue, hey, you know, you can, you can slice this up so many different ways. You can look something a millimeter here and this napkin key, I mean, there's infinite component. And but that's not real. I mean, you're what you're doing by trying to like, slice that up that way is just foster a whole lot of needless cease and desist letters, litigation complaints, and nobody wants that. So the general view on website layout is Inle. You know, there's certainly minor variations, but there's a general overall layout that we see almost always, and you just can't protect that or make it exclusive to any one person, otherwise, we're just gonna have problems. So more problems.
Keith McKeever 11:30
Makes a lot of sense. So another thing you do is like social media can be a real headache for some brands, what would you say the top two to three things most businesses can do to kind of protect their brand or avoid issues on social media.
Andy Nelson 11:47
Social media, well, let me see. Okay, so that can be it can be a challenge. If anyone's had to try and take down content before through a social media platform, it can be a challenge, because you don't know who's reviewing that stuff. So when you're seeing if I'm understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, if you're saying, you know, hey, you know, my, my brand imagery, or even my copyrighted content potentially being used by others on social media platforms?
Keith McKeever 12:13
Yeah, how to protect, protect yourself, avoid issues there.
Andy Nelson 12:16
Sure. Well, luckily, I, you know, started caring about the platforms, but the platforms themselves have Terms of Service Terms of Use that everybody agrees to when they become a member on the platform. And so there's typically an intellectual property section and a mechanism for complaining taking down content, it's usually focused on copyrightable content. So again, graphic art, most likely, or photography, or literary content, that's the kind of stuff that you see copied, you can take advantage of the takedown procedure on these various websites, they don't always work, sometimes the review is very arbitrary. And sometimes the responses you see are really absurd, when somebody does not understand what's going on. So I don't know how they get that function at the company. But it can work. I mean, and that is a, if it works, okay, it's a relatively simple way to get content, remove with the low cost, you know, little effort, and no cost, because you do it yourself. If it's a trademark, you know, problem, as opposed to a copyright issue, as in someone's using your brand imagery, your name, your logos, that sort of thing, that could be a little more difficult, because all these websites are geared toward their intellectual property policies, their takedown mechanisms are really, really geared toward copyrightable content. So they're not always responsive to complaints about trademark infringement, some more than others. But anyway, so. So using those mechanisms can be their own internal mechanisms to get content removed, could be a very low cost way. Otherwise, you know, it's kind of tradition, it's like, you know, how you do in a traditional sense, you know, you may understand you have to make phone call to the offending party, if you if you've made it is you think it can last for because it may not be doing on purpose, you know, it may be a little more innocent than one might think, and sometimes a nice phone call or a nice message may resolve the issue, you know, you don't do you
Keith McKeever 14:07
think, at the lowest level, like that actually works sometimes.
Andy Nelson 14:12
Pardon me?
Keith McKeever 14:12
Did you see that actually working sometimes, or, often? You see, somebody tried that. But,
Andy Nelson 14:20
you know, we, I'm successful with that, you know, at least a couple of times a year. I mean, it really depends on the situation. Some people if they're counterfeiters, I mean, you know, they're intending to do this. So that's not gonna go. But sometimes it's more of a not a misunderstanding, or just not never even looking right thing I talked about moments ago is you got to go clear your brand first. So somebody else doesn't do that. And they start using something, if you can approach them, you know, early enough, and it's innocent and say, hey, you know, great, you're starting to, you know, your own brand, and you probably don't know that we actually exist in this space, and this is likely to cause consumer confusion. You know, we're all trying to create unique identities and big brands out there so that you know, for them Although it's you know, it makes sense that you divert at this point, you know, to something that uniquely identifies you, you know, certainly one, you know, if we turn into a kind of a shoddy brand, at some point, you wouldn't want that reputation rubbing off on you, right? You know, you know, I mean, there's ways you can talk to people, and sometimes they will do it right away, sometimes a little more skeptical, and I don't want to change and you know, and they drag their feet a while, but you can tell they're thinking about it still, they're not being you know, they're not saying, forget it. You know, and then you can push a little bit and eventually they say, Okay, I'll move and some have to go talk to their lawyer. And hopefully, they get a good one loyal, say, Yes, propagation, you want to divert. So it does work. But I, I say, try to get as much information you can about who you're actually targeting, are you coming right into it, whether it's a waste of time or not?
Keith McKeever 15:51
That's good point, do a little do a little bit of background research. Because yeah, you never know who that person is going to be. Scammers aren't going to care. If the person if it's if it's an innocent mistake, they and it's simple changes, I could see them doing it. But you know, some people want to play hardball. Just like a fight, you know. And in that case, you might just have to call your get your attorney that's on speed dial and say, Hey, draft letter, I need to send something because it sounds a lot, lot stronger from you than it does for me. So I've had to, I've had to do that a few times is uh, you know, not not at this particular issue. But you know, sometimes HOA fees and other things, sometimes it's just best to have, have the attorney send a letter, you know, it's a little bit more forced to add a little bit more power seriousness to it,
Andy Nelson 16:37
you know, sometimes, yes. And, you know, you get asked that question a lot, no one kind of inviting somebody in the background to speak that, that's kind of budding, and you don't know where it's gonna go and don't resolve it on advisement in the background? And I say, Well, I want to get you involved. Now, you know, ahead, think about this. Now, you know, you you to negotiate directly, I'm in the background helping you. But it's, you know, it's gonna make sense touching, and certainly at this point, you know, is that going to help clarify things? Which is kind of the problem right now? Or is it just gonna actually push the other party in that direction, they're going to lawyer up, and then this thing starts escalating? Like, you don't want that result? So think about that, you know, maybe let me just advise in the background, maybe take another stab at. So this is, you know, when you think about dispute resolution, you really got to think, you know, a lot of different pathways. Because the king, it can really fly, you know, it's like a you know, like a blooming flower firework like that thing, you know, all over the place once you light it.
Keith McKeever 17:38
Yeah, I never really thought about that, that the times I've been involved in those kinds of things, it was a very clear, we got to send a strong message, but never really thought about it that
Andy Nelson 17:49
some people thrive on
Keith McKeever 17:53
iteration because you know, no offense to me, it's expensive. We had sold an attorney, letter, all those things. If you can handle yourself much cheaper, you can handle it easier without the big fight. Sometimes you need to fight though, depends. Yeah.
Andy Nelson 18:13
That's unfortunate, but it is it's true. And, you know, it's, it's a game. There's some psychological aspects. And I suppose some gambling know how that sort of thing risk taking, it's, you really got to have your synapses firing a lot.
Keith McKeever 18:29
I totally get it as a realtor by trade. I think there's a lot of similarities there. And sometimes you have to get the full picture. You have to weigh it all you have to put all this all this stuff out in front of you and say, Okay, what's my game plan? How am I going to attack this? You know, what, what are we going to do here? What's what's step one, step two, and then what's your plan? See what plan B fails? You know, things out? So you got? Yes, sometimes fuzzy. Yeah. So how's the speaking of disputes, when, like, co owners of a business or something, if there's a dispute there? What's the best way to kind of handling those disputes?
Andy Nelson 19:14
The, this is kind of a preemptive measure, once again, the best way to handle those disputes is to have something, you know, almost an idle speed that you can point to for guidance, that's called a contract. So, you know, an operating agreements or, you know, shareholder agreement, or, you know, the title, whatever the title is, there's going to be governing documents for each type of entity. You know, what, it's a partnership, or do you have an LLC or you have Corporation what have you let companies skip that operating agreement. I'm just gonna call that company. I'll call it a company agreement, you know, just generically, they're missing that equipment. And so when something happens a month down the road or a year, you're alone a year, let alone five, whatever, and the CO owners look at each other. And who knows what it was whatever the issue is, we're going to have distributions. I want to leave, you know, the LLC. So what? Why don't we just value my share my membership membership interests? bind me up right now. That has to be $2 billion? How do I resolve those sorts of issues when they have nothing except their memory? And guess what, I guarantee no, one time in the history of the planet, hasn't anyone to people's memories align perfectly, it's not happening. So the that that gets skipped constantly, businesses, you know, they pat themselves on the back, because they're able to go to the Secretary of State and file, you know, articles of incorporation or articles of organization and they go poof, out success and organizing LLC, I incorporated. That's the easy part, the governing document, the thing that says how this thing is going to be governed, when people are going to make decisions, who gets to make decisions, what are the roles? You know, what are people contributing? What are they entitled to? On what grounds? And under what circumstances? Can somebody leave Canada? What, you know, under what circumstances can we add members mean, all these sorts of things need to be in a government documents. So it's a tool to guide behavior to set expectations that way, that when there's a dispute down the road amongst co owners, and there will be I mean, everything, you know, I don't care if it's a two second dispute, I
Keith McKeever 21:21
mean, there's gonna be little disputes, there's gonna be stuff that eventually for sure, we're gonna be some
Andy Nelson 21:25
bigger ones, too. And they're going to be some ones where, you know, but for having the idle to look toward, you know, that operating agreement, probably gonna have a serious dust up. So, you know, you can just say, hey, we don't need to, you know, argue about this, because we've talked about this, and we actually agreed on this, let's just pull up and see what it says about this particular issue. That, so that's what that document does it guys behavior sets, expectations, and I think dramatically reduces the likelihood of significant disputes that could disrupt the operation of the business.
Keith McKeever 21:58
You know, things are pretty well spelled out in a contract. And, you know, it's, it's, it's there, you've signed it, everybody should have a copy. Everybody knows this. You know, obviously, it's, that's something that should be drafted, you know, you should be sitting down and having somebody help Draft Draft all that up. But for an entrepreneur that's out there, that's going to go into some sort of business like that with a partner, before they get to that point. Any advice for somebody on how they sit down and list those things out? Like what's important to them and, and kind of hammer out some of those negotiations before they take it to an attorney and say, here's what we've agreed upon. Can you draft this up? So we can sign it?
Andy Nelson 22:35
Sure. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm kind of doing this on the fly. But I'm pretty
Keith McKeever 22:40
sure this is just just general advice. Yeah. Just, oh, no, I
Andy Nelson 22:43
gotcha. What I'm saying is, I'm going to give out a reference here, and I don't even know if it actually exists.
Keith McKeever 22:52
Okay, if I see your pants around here,
Andy Nelson 22:54
I bet if if listeners here, and, you know, whatever search engine they like to use, right in, you know, top 10 elements for an operating agreement, or a limited liability, operating agreement, something like that, you know, negotiating an LLC agreement, something like that, I bet they're gonna get, you know, a Forbes article or something like that, that has a nice list of the key points to negotiate. Or resolve, you know, with CO owners, when entering into an agreement, no matter what stage you're at, I mean, there's gonna be variation from state to state, but but the large key core components are largely going to be the same across the state, then the core components that go into the agreement, are gonna be largely the same across no matter what state you're in. So just
Keith McKeever 23:42
kind of gives you a little bit of a roadmap, that roadmap that way that you can kind of go off and figure out what you want to do. Because I mean, I can imagine,
Andy Nelson 23:50
yeah, again, like some of the big issues are, you know, what are the percentages ownership, classes of membership interests, or shares, voting rights, management issues, exit issues, you know, adding members or for shareholders, you know, those sorts of issues, you know, those sort of those real key things, you know, those are going to definitely be addressed early on.
Keith McKeever 24:12
I've never been through that personally. But I can only imagine that that process, well, you should obviously know and trust your business partner, but let's just face it, whoever you're doing business with, to have these kinds of discussions is probably going to be stressful at a minimum. And especially when you start talking, compensation and ownership, all these different things. It could be
Andy Nelson 24:37
somebody later with, you know, your RV, you know, you're already choosing metaphor, you're already embedded together. Once Once you've organized that entity. We're underway. So you got to do this all at the same time. It's just yeah, you
Keith McKeever 24:52
just got to sit down and hammered out is is no matter how uncomfortable that process is of doing it. You get through it, you set everything up, you sign everything. And that's when you roll up your sleeves and get to work. You know what your business does provide your service. And you
Andy Nelson 25:08
gotta have a map on some level, you know? Yes, you're gonna, you're gonna be in charge of, you know it day to day operations, you know, yes, I'm gonna be in charge of marketing and sales, you know, tell you when that stuff's not in there. Next thing, you know, you got this oral agreement, and three months down the road, you're going to do sales is like sitting around,
Keith McKeever 25:27
or God forbid, that's the one position you forget his sales, and everybody has everything figured out. And you're like, why aren't we selling anything? Because nobody was in charge of sales?
Andy Nelson 25:36
This is exact stuff. I see. I mean, I see these sorts of things. You know, it's that's a common one, which is, you know, to Barkers in our, you know, complaint about third because there's not going his or her way. They are that kind of complaint. So, but they're, you know, nothing in agreement says that what anyone's going to do? So that person isn't mentioned, bitches, they can just sit there. Oops, spell that out.
Keith McKeever 26:00
Wow, yeah, that'd be that'd be an interesting situation. I'm sure you got a ton of stories, it'd be awesome to hear a bunch of them. I know, some of you probably can't tell. But, you know, that's one of these questions with your website, research. You know, seeing exactly. Feeding the water council together, I had a really, really good idea of what you know what you do, but I wanted to see those other little things. And that's why I kind of asked on some of the the social media and things like that. So yeah, no, definitely, definitely some good things.
Andy Nelson 26:25
We have weird thing. I mean, you know, I like to certainly talk about, you know, a few different categories things I do a lot. But you know, as you can imagine that, you know, just kind of a by nature, you're kind of a problem solver. That's, that's what you do. You get some weird questions. You know, I mean, I've had over the years, you know, I've had, geez, I think when I went to one from years ago, the very first calling from existing client firm, they're a big apparel company. And the issue was pay one of our sales guys and we he traveled down to Texas and rent a car. Well, he got destroyed in a hailstorm and company wants him to pay for it. I mean, that was yes, the issue that got presented to me, like, Okay, well, let's think about this. How do we resolve this? Well, let's see. Number one on the car, whether it was in his possession or not in his possession would have been destroyed by the hail. So it's not really his fault. No causation. Isn't that like, analyzing this stuff? You just get weird things? Or, you know, believe it or not, believe it or not, there's a there's a law in California, maybe in a lot of other states as well, that, that prohibit quite rightly prohibits differential pricing based on gender other classes. In other words, for example, if you're a dry cleaner, you can't charge you know, women $8 For tops, and then guys $4 That's, that's the kind of the laws. That's what was written for. Yeah, that's literally I think what it was written for originally, you know, decades ago, but it's written in general terms that apply in different places. But I had so I you know, this how got us I had a client who owned a restaurant down the beach. And he had Ladies Night, right? So you know, trying to get more ladies into the restaurant, the bar on Thursday night. And so it's cheaper prices for women, and more expensive prices for guys. Well, so guess what? Guys through the restaurant? And we had to deal with that. And guess what, it's a very harsh, strict lies and you have no excuse basically, if you do it, you're liable. You're paying it off. So
Keith McKeever 28:23
yes, yeah. I'm not surprised that guy sued on that.
Andy Nelson 28:26
One, of course, I got you know, it's kind of comes across my desk. I'm gonna this is a rule. So, I mean, by nature research is not like every lawyer is a walking encyclopedia of lots not there's probably a couple other special people out there that can do that. But very few were researchers, you know, we've know how to think you know, you apply critical legal thinking or legal analysis but you know, we're just great researchers. We don't can't know it all. You just we know how to get to it.
Keith McKeever 28:55
Do you find a lot of people just because of ignorance, maybe just love all attorneys into just one category, just attorneys like that. They just automatically think that you're going to know about criminal law, just like I was in the Air Force, right. And civilians thought No, I said the pickup truck behind it. Garden it. Yeah. All these misconceptions? Uh,
Andy Nelson 29:21
well, yeah. And I know, it's ignorance in the, you know, in the nicest sense of the word. Yeah. It's not as if people are willfully avoiding learning, you know, what kind of categories of lawyers there are something like that.
Keith McKeever 29:32
What's the good thing? I think that's your most your life without needing an attorney. So
Andy Nelson 29:36
you're I mean, you know, people are generally known as lawyers or attorneys. And, you know, every once in a while, you get the little extra tag on the front of real estate lawyer or estate planning lawyer or something like that. And people know what some of those are. I mean, you're going to run into state planning, you know, you see them in the billboards and things like that, you know, a personal injury lawyer is because you see that on a bus or, you know, or whatever, you know,
Keith McKeever 29:59
an accident you
Andy Nelson 30:00
Yeah, I Yes. I mean, you know, I think people, I would guess people probably have three or four or five kind of categories of lawyers, no criminal defense lawyer, you know, the prosecutor, that's mainly lumped into one, you know, the estate planning attorney, you know, that, you know, just a couple others in a class action lawyer, personal injury lawyer, and then there's just a lawyer. But there's so many different little fingers, you might have somebody who just specializes in ERISA or something like that, you know, somebody antitrust only? I go like this like a small No, it's gargantuan amounts of law. Yeah, it's a small slice of, you know, all the different disciplines.
Keith McKeever 30:38
There's no doubt about it, our lawmakers spent a lot of time making laws that are complicated. And I can only imagine the time and energy to research all that stuff. And that's what I was thinking when you're saying it, talking about your love for academia, and learning and, but that really is just a natural fit. He had to do all that research and look up all these things. And I can see why you why you ended up in law, it was
Andy Nelson 31:02
different than I, you know, I loved undergrad, I love the lecture type, you know, delivery, that's, you know, you're just absorbing information, memorizing it, there's some critical thinking, but I think a lot of it is just regurgitating, right. I mean, that's kind of what it is. I didn't realize it was decades. You know, it took me a while before I figured out it was Socratic teaching, not lecturing. You know, so it's all back and forth with the class, right? I'm constantly asking questions and having students style stuff out. It sounds, you know, somewhat cogent, and logical, and different kinds of learning. And you're just reading cases, that's all you're reading excerpts from cases, that's all you're doing. It's not You're not reading life histories, and, you know, narratives about why it's actual case cases, some statutes, really, but it's really cases, you know, reasoning, kind of picking up the reasoning, just learning how to apply that sort of reasoning, how to understand it, and how to apply it how to write how to speak.
Keith McKeever 32:00
Yeah, I don't think law school would be for me, that's for sure. You'd go through my business degree right now, had a lot of classes where you've got case reviews on certain things. And I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of painful for me to just to read through some of those and write two page paper on my opinions or summaries as well. So my cup of tea?
Andy Nelson 32:21
Yeah, it was another thing I did not realize is that this is gonna require skills out of me that I didn't think I have, and I still don't think I have this day. I am not a natural speaker. I do not enjoy relish the idea of getting up in front of a bunch of people, I just, it's just not me, never has been. And of course, now deciding goes profession, you know, it's kind of meandered into it. And then somehow, we entered into the litigation side of things, which means, hey, court appearances, appearances, were judges, making arguments, making money making arguments, just making quick appearances on hey, here's the status of the case, even that, you know, try not to screw up something simple like that. I've gotten better at you know, and I'm glad I'm glad I did it. Because it's just like I said, it's not a natural fit for me, or I perceive it not to be a natural skill of mine about that.
Keith McKeever 33:12
So that's another good nugget there. Because I'm kind of the same, like, I would not do good in front of 20,000 people or maybe 1000. People speaking, I don't think I would be very comfortable in this situation. But I could get up in front of a group of 100 or 200, and talk, that wouldn't really bother me. But it's still in the back of my mind. If and when I do those things in just kind of just kind of work through your nerves. Any any advice for people who, you know, who are looking to do that, but they're speaking or whatever, they're gonna do? Anything to help you get through that?
Andy Nelson 33:48
Boy? Yeah, I wish I had some kind of trigger tell I don't. But what I will say is what I realized is, is I'm better at this than I thought it would be. And it's because it's the same thing, Minister me everywhere else. It's my career and career law and academia is practice, just practice. And, you know, and the Quick example I'll give is, is, you know, I'm in a networking group I've been in for five years, we meet every single week, and every single week, you know, we get up there and we give a little 32nd, you know, kind of profitable introduction, and you might call it a commercial or something like that, you know, you're always trying to think of something new and, you know, new ways to tell people exactly, you know, 30 seconds exactly what you do kind of what, you know, problem you solve how you make people feel, you know, you know, or so people can say, I know this person who does this or offers this the other service and you really want to try to get other people to remember those sorts of things so they know exactly how to refer people to you. When I started very first time, I was in this group, man for me to do a 32nd little commercial to, you know, an hour of prep the night before thinking about what to say we write it over and over and over again. Practice it freak out because it went 32 To start, practice practice Oh, yeah, I just agonize over, agonize over and you know, of course, too, you know, and I write it out, I save them all. Eventually, it was about, you know, maybe a year you have mentioned, no, I'm not writing a wall. I'm not even when speaking about a lot of my data subject matter, Dan, okay, I know it's gonna fit in the formula, I can start to just, you know, just just spew it out. And so you know, now, I'm not saying they're all brilliant. They're not works of art by any means. But I don't agonize over it, I've got something to talk about. And I can throw it in 30 seconds. It's really automatic. So just, it takes the practice, like anything else, and then it's just going to kick into gear a lot easier. That's, that's, that's my path. That's my advice. I'm sure there's other hacks that are way better than Yeah, I would say,
Keith McKeever 35:51
you know, what, in my opinion, is just putting yourself specifically in incrementally bigger groups, you know, start a group of five or 10 people and teach them something or speak in front of them. And then a 15 or 20, you know, just kind of build it up in there. And then eventually, you might still have the nerves, but it won't be as as bad. They just kind of go there. But then a great point about practice, because our buddy Frank from the entrepreneur, tribe and aware Council, I've been in so many rooms with him on clubhouse over well, pretty much this year. And he's always telling about people about what he does. And I've seen him just get so faster and more fluid. Yeah, just it just comes out naturally. Now, I've just heard it. It's so it's so natural, smooth now.
Andy Nelson 36:40
I think. Yeah, I think a lot of us folks who would debate ourselves as not natural speakers or gifted speakers. Like many of the things, you're impatient, right, so you know, that practice is going to make perfect or gets gets you better anyway. But you want the results right away? You know? And if it's not, then you feel defeated? Can't do this. See, it confirms what I was thinking, I suck at this. I can't Yeah, it's it's breaking through that. And that happens to me at some point. I mean, I still get nervous. Don't get me wrong. It's still not natural to me, but I don't, I don't have the agony that I used to have a real real fear. Or, you know, so, you know, whereas someone's akin to anything, you know, somebody wants to speak at this event. Before? Let me ask the people I don't know if I want to do that or not, you know, where it's now. Yeah, right. When you got it, you know, without even thinking what exactly we're gonna do here. I figured I just just make a quick, immediate, sudden move, you know, the kind of committed, I've committed.
Keith McKeever 37:42
Once you're committed, you're committed, there's no turning back now. So that's, that's some great advice both on the law and for speaking and being in front of people. But I wanted to highlight you've got to you've got a Facebook group for know, for your for your brand called defending your brand. On Facebook, it's just Facebook backslash groups slash backslash defending your brand. You go there you can join ad group and learn all about there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. But you've also got a YouTube channel. I don't have the link up there, but I will put it in the link in the descriptions for you have little was a five, six minute videos or so. You know, just talking about a lot of these topics. A lot of great. Yep, you put a lot of great information out there. And, you know, I know I've subscribed and I watch it. I will self admit I watch too much YouTube
Andy Nelson 38:33
these days, I really do.
Keith McKeever 38:35
Yeah, it's too much to watch. You know, you can always find something on YouTube, you can always find something what is on TV? You know,
Andy Nelson 38:41
I got I get pleasantly surprised with the, you know, the yesteryears stuff that I find when I look in their class in my head for my youth or something. I'm like, what if somebody somehow happened to have this? On loaded? And sure enough?
Keith McKeever 38:55
Yeah. Oh, wow. Yes, it's it's a lot of stuff is on there. It's crazy. And you watch Full Movies with ads. It's yeah, all kinds of stuff on there. But so go check, go check out Andy's group defending your brand. Go check out his YouTube channel, you got a ton of great information. Any any other nuggets of information want to drop before we wrap up? Oh, boy, tell us tell us what you know what you specialize in? How about that?
Andy Nelson 39:19
Okay, sure, why not? So, you know, as a loose business lawyer, you know, to life and things I you know, help people resolve disputes, which I mentioned, or alluded to earlier. What I also do, what I like to focus on is helping people figure out what their intellectual property might be. And you know, once we identify how to go about protecting it now, because for a lot of businesses out there, this kind of intangible, invisible intellectual property just might be the business's most valuable asset may not be that real estate may not be able to inventory and other personal property but the IP fast Apple has to google it they got plenty of physical stuff that they own. But that stuff does not match the value is just as tied to these intangibles like the names, just, you know, the names and their logos
Keith McKeever 40:10
that so absolutely seeing this thing on on Facebook, you know, the the brand quiz or whatever, you know, can you identify these different things like Mickey said, McDonald's, Apple, you know, these, you could describe it. And most of the population would know exactly what it is inside to see, yeah, that's more valuable than $25 million building that their headquarters, whatever the cost is,
Andy Nelson 40:35
is a stupid example of time, a lot of people have heard it. So there's gonna be people rolling their eyes right now. Like, if Apple decided to come out with a, you know, a new line of breakfast cereal tomorrow, a good many of you would buy it. No experience in the food industry, nothing whatsoever. But you, as a consumer attach so much cachet to that brand, that Macintosh logo, it doesn't matter. They can make any kind of product or offer a service and you'd say it's probably good. It's probably quality is probably really good cereal, you buy it? So that's the kind of value? I mean, how do you value that when you can basically put it on any product or any service and sell it and sell it hard? So
Keith McKeever 41:20
yeah, it's all about value of trust, you know, they've, it builds your trust, because you purchase your stuff for so long. And you see it all the time. So you value it, you know, and you know, it would be interesting
Andy Nelson 41:32
business, you know, someone's gonna buy your business, they may say, Oh, great, you've got a customer rod or whatever, you got existing, you know, contract for customers, they're buying stuff. But I bet a lot of them are thinking, what's in? Do I just want that I'm happy with this business? Or am I thinking growth and I don't expand. And when they're talking about that, I'm not just talking about that, you know, that real direct, tangible stuff that you're selling, but think about, you know, what's the brand recognition here, I'm buying that made online, that low that's got, you know, consumer Association in this area, and probably in the surrounding areas. So there's, there's a value on that in those intangibles. And you as a business owner would be wise to know that now, somebody like me, who's you know, my name, and my name is basically my trademark is an attorney. And you know, you know, so I can always know that. It doesn't work for everybody. But, but, like, a lot of businesses, yeah, you got to think about that intangible value as well, goodwill, you've heard that, you know, what's, how much? What's the value put on Goodwill for business? valuation expert at some point,
Keith McKeever 42:35
yeah, that that may mean something if you're going to go buy the rest of the little restaurant, your hometown has been there for 30 years. Well, that's, that's 30 years of brand recognition, and signage and all that stuff, all that debt, goodwill, I mean, there's a reason they've been in business that long, if you're going to buy that, probably gonna pay a premium for it. Yeah. Because they know what it's worth, they know what they build. So, Jen, a really good point there just to come back into a personal brand. Because that is something I have seen over the last few years, a lot of people are talking about, Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about it, and some other people about build your personal brand. Because even if you build a company, and you sell it off, you go build another one because you're an entrepreneur, but you are the brain. So how are you seeing that? in it? How are you seeing that play out? In your practice?
Andy Nelson 43:24
Sure, I mean, I see a number of, you know, I this is my, you know, a small lens, I guess, any number of you know, people that have a lot of these names, name and type of industry, you know, where it actually can be really any industry, right, where someone's really highlighting themself. And yeah, I think that's a large part a, you know, a campaign to kind of campaign for, you know, the next big thing, you know, people, you know, how do I get known? Because, yes, I mean, we're a lot of interchangeable parts, and we kind of bounce around and move around that sort of thing. So, you know, you maybe want to maybe you want to be known as the guy who founded Oakley or whatever, you know, you refer to the guy, nobody knows who you are, or, you know, just sort of, or really having, you know, a long side, you know, a real strong personal brand. Which, you know, yeah, I guess if you're certain types of folks that could lead into other sorts of opportunities, you know, names that are very difficult to protect, but they're not impossible because I mean, how many can we name? Tommy Hilfiger rough, the red? So
Keith McKeever 44:25
yeah, there's more tied up in the actual logo and company name though, too. Right. So that's, you're not really protecting the person's name. You're protecting it as the brand because it's the company name there in those cases?
Andy Nelson 44:37
Well, correct. So yeah, somebody is somebody is able to get such great recognition for the name such that it takes on trademark significance trademark rights is still not going to be for every single thing on the sun. Like you know, Ralph Lauren has very little protection over, you know, automotive parts or something like that. So, I think someone's free to start a Ralph Lauren auto parts. Like, no, I'm not saying that, you know, I don't think that that's No, there's no advice there. But you can see what I mean, it's, you know, it's, that's the thing with any sort of trademark, even if it's not a personal name is ownership really extends to the products or services that you've offered. And really kind of the natural zone of expansion, the adjacent kind of lines, things that relate the things that you know, such that if a consumer sought and came from a different source, they might be confused about the source, you might think, Oh, this I've been seeing in for example. Like, there's a cookie Brown, like Betty Crocker, or something like that I saw, I saw some in the store, they're making, like baking tools, and I think of courses like a cake mixer or whatever. But next thing, you know, you're making the actual tools, like mixing bowls and things like that. And I think I made the screwed up, which you bring on that was, but you know, you think of different that's a different verb. That's a hard good, but okay, it's kind of adjacent. So yeah, like, somebody, I might think it's from that same source, you know? So, so that's kind of
Keith McKeever 46:02
on cereal. But I'll be out of left field.
Andy Nelson 46:07
It would be, but I haven't seen anybody else do it. Or someone else is gonna give it a go? I don't know. I don't know. I'm pretty pretty bullish about protecting their marks.
Keith McKeever 46:21
I'm not the attorney here. So I'll give advice on that one. Don't do it. It's probably not a good idea. I don't know how that's gonna play out for you. But Apple's got some big guns up there. I'm pretty sure. You might not want to try it. It's probably probably not unless you're looking for a fight. You know? Who knows? That's that's the non attorney here in the room talking about that.
Andy Nelson 46:45
Assessment.
Keith McKeever 46:46
There we go. All right. Well, Andy, I appreciate you taking some time on a Saturday to, to be on here to talk about what you do and give some nuggets of information for people to protect their brand. Because I see people just Well, I mentioned earlier, like websites, people, a lot of business still have websites, which blows my mind. And our Facebook page, to me is not a website. A website is just about your brain and a place to be and give you some legitimacy. And it's not that difficult or expensive to do. You can have a simple one. But there's a lot of things that people just start paying attention to on brand. And they need to need to look at those things before you get yourself into sticky messes and trying to make sense out of what's going on when you get this
Andy Nelson 47:29
tweet from ads.
Keith McKeever 47:31
Here Yeah, that's a good one. Good way to put it. Yeah. Got to look for. So once again, I appreciate it, folks. Go check out defending your brand on Facebook or on YouTube. Connect with me. If you're an entrepreneur tribe, you're pressing and tagged all the time in questions. I think you're tagged like twice a day, at least.
Andy Nelson 47:54
That's very thoughtful of everybody.
Keith McKeever 47:55
Yeah, yeah. Well, you are the expert. And you know, we see those things. I think I've tagged you a couple of times to different things to you know, so, but have a great weekend. Andy once again, thanks. Thanks for being here.
Andy Nelson 48:07
Thanks. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Keith McKeever 48:09
Yeah.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
