Creativepreneur Protection 101: Building a Secure Creative Business | MMCB Podcast Episode #7

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[00:00:23] ShySpeaks: And I am your host Speaks. And today we are delving into the topic that's applicable to every single creativepreneur, and that is.

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[00:00:53] So let's get into it. You want to stick around for this?

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[00:01:12] Um, and as a result of that, you know, they have systems and processes as well. So both of us have a system and processes in place, having things in place. Um, we, we weren't able to get it going. But we, we, we, we was like, listen, we don't want to start compromising and we don't want to start whatever we want to stand firm and what we have in place, because this, like she said, this protects us and it also protects the guests.

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[00:01:47] ShySpeaks: Yeah. And it's interesting that you said that because A lot of times people think that they're trying to protect themselves and they forget the fact that well your system may be running up against their system and how they're doing things and it's just kind of you know what I mean and so yeah we're gonna get into that even as well talking about systems and processes a little bit later in protecting yourself from like kind of the external piece but let's let's hop into the Let's hop into the internal.

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[00:02:28] Ronald Lee Jr.: Right. So when we talk about internally, right, we're talking about internally, as far as from your, your internal, your business, right?

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[00:02:55] So I'm, for y'all who don't know IP, it stands for intellectual property. So we talking about trademarks, if you need that. Copyrights. Right? Patents, things like that. So you want to make sure that those things are in place to protect what it is that you're doing. Cause I would hate for you to create something.

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[00:03:33] And now you miss out because you didn't do your due diligence and we see it all the time, right? So these are some of the things that we're talking about internally. So

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[00:03:51] So, Some of those things are things you have to do one time. So when we're talking about protect my creative internally, this is not something like I'm always on the defense and all that kind of stuff. It's like, no, but just take time to get things set up one time. Things that you can get set up one time is really the foundation of the business.

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[00:04:28] So that's the first, that's the first level of protection right there. I just want to make sure we clear these. Right.

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[00:04:45] Yeah. You're just trying to create. So you may not understand what assets that you may have. You're like, I ain't got no assets, but no, listen, you're, if you, if you have, you own a home, your home is an asset. And if you do not have you, if you don't separate yourself right from your business, somebody can sue you for some business work that you did.

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[00:05:27] That's what we, that's what we're talking about. You want to set up that protection. Because I would hate for, once again, you to do something, somebody to sue you, and now they coming for your personal assets, right? Now they have access to your personal bank account. You got money in your personal bank account that you're doing your thing with, but they got access to that because you operating as a sole proprietor.

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[00:05:50] ShySpeaks: Yeah. Yeah. You operate as a sole proprietor. That's the main thing. Sole proprietor. Um, I don't have a separate business account. I don't have a separate entity that this work is being done under. So, uh, with this particular separate entity, uh, Walmart, for example, Sam Walton owns Walmart, but Sam Walton and all his personal endeavors is not the same as Walmart.

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[00:06:32] Some of you are online businesses, but either way, insurance is, uh, another way of making sure that you are protecting yourself, right? So, Yeah, listen, we go, we, we try to make sure you recover all the bases. People don't think that they need to have insurance. And I myself started my creative journey as an artist, as a musician.

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[00:07:18] So if something happens, they don't even, they don't even desire to come for your business. They just want to be able to file it on insurance. Let's be clear. People are not just trying to come for your business. They just want to recoup the expenses of whatever happened during this business transaction.

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[00:07:36] Ronald Lee Jr.: Definitely. No, listen, and having insurance, it, once again, it protects you if something happens, but it also looks good in the eyes of other people that creates opportunities. Like Shy just said, she could have missed out on an opportunity to perform or whatever the case may be.

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[00:08:04] And it was like, okay, let me, let me send you this general liability. Right. And once again, and I, and I, and we get it. Sometimes people look at that as another expense, um, or yeah, another expense, which it is an expense, but. It's one of them things to where people say you don't need it until you need it and you never want to be in a position where you don't have it because that's a different conversation.

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[00:08:39] ShySpeaks: Right. And I, and I put this under the one time setup category, because there are some items that are ongoing, uh, assets that you have to protect and things that Ron mentioned.

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[00:09:08] So this is not, we're not attorneys. This is not legal advice or any of that. I will say, for example. I present a festival, right? So presenting a festival is a creative veneer type of business, and I don't have to have insurance all year round for a festival that I present once a year. I have to have insurance during the season that I'm presenting that festival, whether that's that weekend, that month.

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[00:09:50] And I don't need to have, you may not need ongoing insurance. You may be able to call, get special insurance for that particular thing. Right. Get it set up one time for 30 days straight. You're, you're, you're insured to go in and deal with whatever you're doing inside of that place. You know what I'm saying?

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[00:10:22] Ronald Lee Jr.: So even, so even that, I know you're like, you told me to move on, but even so, but the one time setup.

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[00:10:44] Cause I've, I've seen that as well to where somebody, they set it up initially. And it's been three, four, five years later. They thinking that they stuff was a good setting. Well, I got my, here are my articles of incorporation. I got my stuff, but you didn't renew it. Like you ain't renewed it. You, you never renewed it.

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[00:11:18] Is this something that I need on an ongoing basis and all that? So, okay, cool. Now. Yeah.

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[00:11:40] So that's it. So just be clear. But yeah moving right along to the

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[00:12:02] So we're, we're creating things on a regular basis. So it's things that where we want to collect our, our, our protect, our ip, our intellectual property. Um, so there's things like your, uh. trademark, right? There's things like your copyright. There's things like patents. So, and once again, uh, consult somebody that's going to, can give you legal advice to kind of let you know those things.

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[00:12:40] So that's something that you would get. Copywritten. You wouldn't necessarily trademark a song. You would copyright a song, right? Trademarks normally goes for like logos or your brand name and things like that. That's something that you would trademark. Um, a patent is if you, you, you, you have an invention where, okay, I invented this new microphone that can, I don't know, whatever.

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[00:13:06] ShySpeaks: perfect example because a lot of times creative for new is like, man, this stuff ain't applicable to me. One of my friends. He is a woodworker. He actually creates, uh, whatever people say, Hey, can you come in here and design this, this bunk bed? Or, I want to create the vanity light, right?

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[00:13:42] You just, Hey, I just invented something. This is a whole new thing that never even existed. Let me go patent this idea because I don't desire to be the one to, uh, uh, manually keep making them. I want to send them into production. Other people may want to get these things made. So that's a good example of a patent and you're constantly.

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[00:14:18] And then with the copyright piece, the reason why we put that under ongoing is because he said, if we make a song, right? But then It's like, okay, I did the copyright for that song. Well, if we make another song, that deserves its own new set of copyrights. And then if we make another song, and then I go make a song with somebody else.

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[00:14:47] Ronald Lee Jr.: Definitely. Definitely. Um, so yeah, so that's what we're talking about in regards to like, say there's that, that ongoing thing.

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[00:15:11] And sometimes we don't do them because it's overwhelming, right. It might be meticulous or tedious or whatever the case may be. I don't really know what to do. So I'm just not going to do nothing. A lot of times I'd have people who had a conversation where I'm going to, I'm going to do the poor man's copyright when.

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[00:15:48] Is it an investment, right? I mean, you know what I'm saying? Or what, what's my return on investment? Cause that's how, that's how we always got to think too. It's like, yes, it's going to cost you a couple of dollars, but I'd rather it cost you a couple of dollars on the front end, than it cost you a lot of dollars on the back end.

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[00:16:21] ShySpeaks: that.

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[00:16:45] So I'm being silly when I say that when you go find some random lawyer who you feel like is just this hot shot lawyer, they're very expensive and you have to keep them on a retainer forever and ever and you're not even utilizing them. What we're saying to protect your creative internally is just at least have an attorney.

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[00:17:26] Two totally different industries. And so I actually may want the attorney that, that knows about this industry may not know about that industry. So I have to find somebody to consult about these things. Now, when it comes to music, I have somebody who I have a great relationship with and should things happen, she, we have a certain rate that I get to have that she consults me on versus if I didn't have that relationship, I'd just be hit.

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[00:18:08] She can explain it to me. There is a rate for that. I don't necessarily have to retain her all year for that. So just, we just want to encourage you to find somebody that you can consult, at least scan the, scan the perimeter, scan your industry and say, Hey, you'd be somebody great. Let's sit down and talk about that.

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[00:18:30] Ronald Lee Jr.: Yeah. Nah, that's it. That's it right there. Do, do your due diligence. Do your due diligence. Cause they don't, all the lawyers don't do the same. We see lawyer, we see attorney, we think it's a one size fits all. No, you got some that are worse than other things.

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[00:19:04] Um, you know, she called me Uncle Ron. She's like, uh, Uncle Ron, you know, I got this, I had a situation with my artists. They, they posted this song. Um, and it was just a song that they created. They didn't, they didn't copyright it. They didn't register it with a PRO. Like they didn't do all of the things that you do.

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[00:19:38] We heard your song. We want to put your song in a commercial, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, just the conversation that went great. Um, you know, send over the paperwork. Let's, let's, let's, let's make it happen. That wasn't the conversation. They were, they were like, okay, cool. Hold on. Right. And now they're trying to scramble and see, okay.

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[00:20:14] because they didn't, because they didn't have everything in place. The song wasn't copyright. You know what I'm saying? Like all these things that we're talking about that we're encouraging you to do is to protect your stuff, right? And it's a good thing that nobody, that the company didn't just take it and steal it.

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[00:20:44] If you were to sue somebody, you know what I'm saying? They were like, we're taking our words. Right. No grounds. So that's why it's like, yo, it's, it's listen to us. Do, do your due diligence and protect everything that you have. Like you're spending time and energy to build and create this creative penur empire that you're doing.

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[00:21:28] Let me set this up. Let me set this up this way. Let me make sure this is copywritten. Let me make sure this is trademarked

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[00:21:44] And we need to talk about protecting that too, because that's internal. Again, we're going to talk about protecting yourself from other people who may be able to take advantage of you or how not to get taken advantage of. We got a couple of things that we want to listen, real actionable steps that you can take away with today and start implementing as far as protecting your creative externally.

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[00:22:14] Ronald Lee Jr.: Oh, no, definitely. Listen, time management is key. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give y'all this quote. I need y'all to let this sizzle in your spirit.

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[00:22:46] We don't want to, we don't want to be in a shoulda, coulda, wouldas. You know what I'm saying? Cause that's just, that does nobody any good. Now you opening up a door for something else. Like people that live in that shoulda, coulda, woulda, those are the people that battle depression. Right. And we don't want you being depressed because I did not.

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[00:23:26] So you're saying, okay, I want to be this creative entrepreneur. I want to, I want to do these great things. So bet. Be intentional about it. Let me schedule time to do this. Let me schedule time to do the business side of my creativity. Though I dread it, I don't want to do it. It's tedious. Whatever the case may be, whatever you're hemming and hawing about, just schedule the time and do it.

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[00:24:12] And the same thing. I know us creatives, we want to be spontaneous with us creating, but you want to schedule your creative time as well.

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[00:24:31] But guess what? They gotta, they have to create within the timeframes of that job gives them, so, it means it's totally possible. We talk about protecting your time. Some people are like, okay, I, I protect my time. Well do you. Right. So let's just say, you said, I got the whole, I have the whole, uh, Thanksgiving break or winter break, or spring break or the summer, and I'm going to get this done.

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[00:25:16] You're supposed to be doing that during that time frame that you have to protect it with you, with all you have because time is not refundable. The product you create, the service you do, but, but the time you, you, you can't refine that. Like, it's just not, you know, I got my money back yet, but you didn't get your time back.

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[00:26:14] So we want to make sure 360 on the internal, you are protected from IP, from trademarks, the copyrights, the patents, the time, your creative energy, get it all there. And then we can talk about protecting yourself externally.

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[00:26:35] ShySpeaks: What's the irony? It's because it's us in different color clothing. I mean, listen, we've been doing a lot of talking and we want to make sure that you have an opportunity to make a statement as well, because

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[00:26:59] So what we have done is we have given you an opportunity to make a statement as a creative entrepreneur.

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[00:27:16] Ronald Lee Jr.: You can go get that gear from whatstheirony. com.

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[00:27:28] ShySpeaks: pay the bills, but we back. We are back.

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[00:27:54] ShySpeaks: Yeah, these externals. Okay. So I'm happy because I love talking about structure and I love talking about systems and a lot of the external stuff, in my opinion, can be thwarted off by having proper systems and structure in place. Number one. way to protect yourself externally, I would say is have a standard customary contract that you use for whatever services you provide that, that, and people, you know, no, have a, have a contract, right?

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[00:28:43] I would even go even as far as to say, if you're contracting a person, right? So maybe you're not contracting somebody like maybe you're a photographer or you need somebody to shoot with you and all that kind of stuff. So it'd be two of you guys there have a contract in place. So that says what their scope of work is as it relates to.

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[00:29:20] Ronald Lee Jr.: Yeah. And even if it's just, uh, like an, uh, an agreement, right? Uh, that's what a contract is.

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[00:29:44] That's your process. And don't alter or change your process because somebody might feel some kind of way. You may need to then alter who it is that you're marketing to to find those people who don't have a problem with signing said agreement or say a contract. Because once again, it lets them know what they can expect and it protects you.

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[00:30:08] ShySpeaks: Yep. And I like what you said about that language agreement versus contract. And sometimes it, and you think a contract, you think of some long, lengthy thing in agreement could be like a one page or a two page or now, of course, there are some long, lengthy agreements, but you can make it very simple.

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[00:30:41] So going back to protecting yourself. Another way, number two is to collect Deposits or milestone payments.

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[00:30:55] ShySpeaks: I'm just saying, for the people in the back, one of the best ways to protect your creative, from an external point of view, is to collect deposits and milestone payments.

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[00:31:34] Uh, I'm going to get 50 percent up front. And then I'm going to go ahead and on the day of the day, that's due, not, not later on, not tomorrow, it's due today, right, and get that remaining 50%. And so now you've collected your funds. I've heard so many people say, man, especially for me being on the musician side, like, man, I've been out here and I wound up doing all this show and I traveled all this way and I didn't even get paid.

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[00:32:08] Ronald Lee Jr.: No, listen, listen here. Do not block any time off your calendar. If you ain't got a deposit, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you. Add that to your calendar and you ain't receive no deposit.

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[00:32:46] Right? They don't pay the deposit. You didn't block the time off or whatever the case may be. Now they ghost. They MIA. So now you didn't block the time. Can't nobody else book it and they ain't paid you no money. We don't do that. No,

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[00:33:13] I'm a co owner of an event space. And with that event space, we collect a deposit. Going back to what Ron was just talking about, the reason why we collect the deposit, if somebody says, hey, I want to have my quinceanera at your event on said date, and we're saying in order for us to take that date off the calendar for nobody else to book, Go ahead and put a deposit down.

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[00:33:51] We do have another date available for you. Right? So that, man, that's important. And it's kind of sounds like a tough, and it kind of sounds like a stickler, but it's really not. It's really just, I mean, it's just, it's just to secure something and it's okay. They want to secure you and I think it adds protection for them.

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[00:34:30] So don't think about it as just protecting yourself from them externally, but it's also giving them a sense of assurance as well. Now, like Ron said earlier, When it comes to like contract agreement, maybe we have a softer term. We have milestone payments, right? So milestone payments are a little bit different than just a hard 50 percent deposit up front, 50 percent later, right?

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[00:35:13] They want you to do the living room. They want you to do, uh, their office space. They want you to do You may have about four different rooms that you're doing. So what we can do is, hey, 25 percent is due up front. That's the first milestone. Once we've done the kid's room complete, you pay that one. And then we move on to the next layer of the project.

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[00:35:50] So you don't wind up getting to the end of this project. You spent hours doing all of this creativity. And then you don't wind up collecting anything, even if they stiff you on that last 25%, again, because you guys were going according to milestones, you at least collected the 75. And the cool thing about milestones is it just makes people feel like we're going to be checking in about the scope of work in the project.

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[00:36:28] Ronald Lee Jr.: And, and I hope y'all see how the, the agreement or contract piece goes hand in hand with that deposit piece.

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[00:36:50] So those things go hand in hand. Just wanted to add that to it

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[00:37:31] This person is not having a quinceanera anymore or whatever. At that point, you can say, hey, can we take that date off? And you can come up with your own parameters where you say, hey, we will refund the deposit, but we don't, we're not going to refund the full 50%. We'll give you half of it back, you know, or something like that.

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[00:38:08] I use it to get my materials. I use it to buy, uh, to contract the people who I'm going to need to do this thing, right? So it's a purpose for the deposit besides just protecting yourself. You're using the funds to get some things going. So if you try, somebody tries to come back. and get a refund on a deposit, but I had already bought all the paint, I had already bought all the supplies, I already bought the outfit to present at this and so forth and so on, then it's like now I'm losing money.

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[00:38:43] Ronald Lee Jr.: Yeah. And, and one thing too that, that, that What ends up happening when you put these things in place is you start to wean people out, right? When people see you about your business, that's either going, once again, it's going to attract the people that you want to work with, or it's going to repel the people that you don't want to work with, right?

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[00:39:26] ShySpeaks: Right. And then also, um, like you said, It's filtering out the clients. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more too, because we got to talk about screening clients as a way of protecting yourself externally. But when we talk about milestone payments, those should coincide with like, maybe you present your project in phases as I was talking about.

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[00:39:59] We're going to get the second phase. We're going to work on your logo and the third phase we're going to do that. So you let them know you've set a precedence on a, um, a process that you're going to take them through. It should be no wonder when you say that. What we do is at each phase, there's a milestone payment, so it won't be something hard to talk about, right?

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[00:40:29] Ronald Lee Jr.: Well, no, um, so we talk about like, um, online present management, right? So you want to be able to So once again, we have websites, if you're on social media and things like that, we want to make sure that the reviews and the comments and things like that.

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[00:41:07] Now, if you getting some bad reviews because you doing bad business, then hopefully you're, you're, you're taking that information, right. And you're doing something about it. So I don't know if, if y'all been paying attention to the, to, you know, Keith Lee was in, anybody know who Keith Lee is? He's, he's this online TikTok.

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[00:41:43] So long story short, they've been getting some bad reviews as a result of that. Now. It will behoove those businesses to take that information and adjust and tweak based on the reviews, but you got some people that necessarily do, that necessarily don't. So I'm not saying to try to shield yourself from these bad reviews.

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[00:42:11] ShySpeaks: adjustments, Right. More so if your, uh, people are making comments and that the comments are not applicable, they're not true.

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[00:42:39] Well, those people. Who are that upset, they're gonna go find another area to leave a review on you. So you may have to get to the point where you actually have enough integrity and maturity to actually address the negative feedback so that you can protect your brand. I'll give you a perfect example. If you have been shopping for a house, or specifically maybe even shopping for an apartment, you go on the apartment and you look at the reviews, if there's a lot of negative reviews.

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[00:43:26] Or they can say, Hey, we've tried several times to address this with you. Unfortunately, it's a disagreement on this. According to the contract, we couldn't do that. And we're just sorry that it couldn't work out for you. So now the, this company seems transparent. So I'm like, okay, this person was disgruntled.

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[00:43:59] Don't just ignore everything. Address these things because it protects your brand. Because Statistics show. Somebody say statistics. I knew he was going to do it. I knew he was going to do it. Statistics show that 97 percent of people read reviews on local businesses. 97 percent of people. There's only 3 percent of the population is not reading reviews out here.

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[00:44:49] And they don't even work for your company because they got something negative to say. No, you ain't about to get away with that. Right. Because, listen, I got another statistic. Somebody say statistics! Statistics! Statistics show that 78 percent of people trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends and family.

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[00:45:34] It's really not review management. It's customer, it's cause customer experience is customer service, service those people to the best of your ability. And if you can't explain on that review, reply, why? And people will be like, okay, cool. Got

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[00:45:56] Cause at the end of the day, as the entrepreneurs, I know we're creative and we're creative for newers, right? So we're, we're creating. So we think it's about us, right. To a degree, but no, it's about the people that's partaking in our product or service or whatever it is that we're doing, right. We want to make sure, and once again, I'm not saying, you know, bend over.

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[00:46:34] You know, see to it that my needs were met or that I was serviced properly and things like that. And that goes a long way, like you said, protecting your brand. At the end of the day, you're building a brand, you have a brand, and you want your brand, when people think about your brand, you want them to think of it in a high way, right?

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[00:47:09] ShySpeaks: Yeah. And, um, before we get out of here, I want to give you one more bonus. I need a button or I can push that. It's just like, maybe not that.

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[00:47:40] And that is familiarizing yourself and implementing, protecting not just your brand from a negative perspective, but maybe you're sharing your ideas with people in a positive perspective. Maybe a manager, maybe a publicist. Maybe somebody that's going to come along and kind of represent what you got, what you have going on.

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[00:48:21] You want to tell them what an NDA is?

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[00:48:40] So yes. Get you some NDAs in place and start passing things out like Skittles. Having people sign them, especially if you, uh, if you, uh, loquacious and like to talk. You need your NDAs.

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[00:49:02] I know that over the years, these are things that I have had to learn. or am still learning or taking time to implement. So it's not something that like, Hey, Ron and I are saying we got it all figured out. We, we, we're not saying that. What we're saying is, Hey y'all, while we are here being creative. In our entrepreneurship, let's make sure we're acting like true entrepreneurs and protecting ourselves internally and externally, protecting our time, protecting our creativity, protecting our intellectual property, protecting our assets, taking the time to protect our business from ourselves, ourselves from our business, all of those types of things are important.

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[00:49:54] And then. Man, we mentioned it, but we mentioned it. We didn't talk in deep in depth about it, but screening clients, right? So this is my process. This is my system. This is the structure that I do. And if somebody don't fit within that, that is a good way to protect yourself from a bad experience because they, they can't even get with you from the jump.

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[00:50:42] All of these are valuable ways to protect yourself.

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[00:51:18] So please join a community. We also have a newsletter. If you go to the mmcbpodcast. com, you can be a part of the Creatives Corner newsletter and join the Facebook community. So do that. ASAP. Don't wait. Cause we dropping jewels and gems inside the community and with the newsletter. So on that end, Shy is going to take us home with our

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[00:51:49] And yeah, we want to make sure that we in every podcast, all of our time together by making sure we recite this mantra. I want you to repeat after me. Come on, repeat after me. All it takes. All it takes. Is intention. Intention,

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[00:52:10] ShySpeaks: focus, to mind my creative business, to

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[00:52:15] ShySpeaks: business.

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[00:52:21] Ronald Lee Jr.: And I am Ron “iRonic” Lee. Until next time.

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