Don't Be Afraid To Go First

Don't Be Afraid To Go First

Jon Taggart
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
3/3/2021

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

don't be afraid to go first right provide value first everything is a relationship there's no b to c or b to b it's all human to human and so if you're able to find a way where you're providing value right out of the gate your close rate and conversion rate and the whole experience is just going to be better throughout because you the more that you invest up front and the more value you provide the the more that you're going to extract out of that hey everyone this is devon miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat with us now today we have another great guest on the podcast john taggart john is a bit of an introduction used to be in a band and he even signed and i think went on tour for a bit of time or you signed to go on tour and then it crumbled or it fell apart a little bit you're going on tour so you were left without a tour but you were left with a lot of debt um and then with that shifted gears a bit still in the music industry but when i i think to the kind of the ringtone industry you started with that to sign independent contractors that could sell it um business didn't go as well as you'd want so that crumbled after a few years but then decided to go into a digital or website development design company and dip it into digital marketing as well so that kind of led you to where your journey to where you're at today and going over that also working on some courses on how to get started and grow a business so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast john thank you for having me i really appreciate it so i gave this a high level brief introduction of the pod or of not the podcast of you and uh went through a little bit of your journey but maybe now take us back in time a bit tell us about what it was like to be in a band sign on tour and start start to stay with your journey yeah i promise you it sounds way cooler than it actually it does sound pretty cool to be i mean to see that hey we're bad we're excited to go on tour it does sound cool so tell us a little bit more about it yeah so i mean i've always had that entrepreneur spirit probably similar to you and so i just lean towards music i love playing drums and playing shows and just got hooked on it so decided to see if i could take it to the next level and really treat it like a business and get goals i've got signed to a small little independent label did a tour did a music video um and unfortunately the band broke up on the first floor but hit some goals and that really was a fun experience and really eye-opening to just how to hustle and if you set your mind to something you really can go grab it so now question so so walk us through a little bit so you're on the you've got you're in a band you've signed on tour and you know that's i would imagine for a lot of bands that's exciting in the sense that you know you get to go tour you got to do something that you know some bands only dream of if they're playing in the dive bar or the you know whatever place they might be that they hey we gotta go tour see our fans and whatnot but uh you know how did that play out it sounded like it didn't it didn't end as well as it started and kind of what happened there they kind of fell apart and caused you to pivot yeah so we had a a great local following but as you know you got to expand so we had booked a tour where we would play with local bands in each city across the nation um and so we booked that it's really we have no fans people are don't know about us they're not coming to see us by any means but we're just trying to get out there and really just crying uh i remember we played a show in atlanta georgia i think it was like a 2000 cap room and every band had canceled and so it was just us and literally the sound guy that played his show because no one told her so that that was the type of tour which is just rough where i think our per diem was like 10 bucks a day maybe so it's you're just trying to do anything to survive and just get to that next level touch uh get enough fans to then go on tour number two but that all fell apart and being on tour is tough especially if you're struggling just getting out there um it's it's hard work but kind of everything is when you're just starting out especially startup business um i don't care what it is but it really is just go and kind of figure it out along the way because i feel like a lot of this is we're all just making it up as we go but you want to make the best decisions of course and mitigate as much pain as possible um so it was a really really great experience it was difficult and then when it ended it was just kind of left with this okay i thought this was i went all in and now it's gone now and so that's what kind of transitioned me let me see if i can apply this to something else so yeah and that was going to be my next question so i mean you you tried the tour you tried to do the band you know it didn't it didn't work out in the sense that you know a little bit when no but none of the bands under the local bands are going to have to draw work out i'm sure it's hard to if people never heard of you aren't you know aren't on you're not on their radar they're not likely to go buy a ton of tickets for the the tour but so you know that kind of started to crumble or fall apart and you're saying okay now what do i do what is my you know what do i do next type of a thing how did you land on the business of doing ringtones and kind of trying that out yeah so this was back i want to say 2005 era where ringtones everyone wanted a ringtone so i decided why not and everything at that time with ringtones was all just major artists of course everyone you know so i thought why not create a platform where independent and unsigned artists could come on upload their mp3 on our website create the ringtone and the platform would create those ringtones and then they could sell it directly on our website um that we would just take a small percentage so we really tried to be like ringtone distribution for independent unsigned artists um and that i think people just saw we met with investors we were trying to raise money uh i think i was 1920 at the time and we met with like guitar centers executive and uh some bigger producers and it just you could kind of see the writing on the wall there was a fad so that kind of fell apart and uh kind of led me to the next venture which was similar but one question on that because i think you said you did it for three years is that right you tried to make it go of it yeah that sounds about right two or three years and so you know if you haven't did you get a product out were you selling did you make we are out and it was uh it was making money obviously nothing life-changing but we just knew just with development costs and marketing and advertising that we just needed an influx of cash that a struggling musician just you know went through a band breakup just i didn't have the resource and so we really needed an influx of cash to get it to that next level to get an acquisition essentially now one one more question just on that that will keep on with your journey you know when you go and try and pitch investors and you're trying you know you're 19 20 years old was it that you were the investors thought you were too young they didn't like the idea that they they didn't have enough market for it they didn't see the potential kind of what was uh what do you think the mo the reason was that they were saying you know they that they passed on or didn't want to invest in i'm sure i'm sure age was definitely a factor um i definitely looked up much younger then no one really ever said that it was more talking about hey what have you built what's the technology what's your plan here's your walking through the business plan so i didn't really get the sense and i would imagine it played a part but it was more of hey we want to see see how ringtones play out and it was really looking back they could tell that hey we think this might be just a fad and it's probably just too risky for us to get involved so ev where it landed with pretty much everyone was like hey we want to wait and see what happens with you guys for a little bit more time and then they ended up being correct um so so now you so you tried that for a while you made a little bit of money but it never really took off in order and i'm still working day job just trying to make ends meet i've got this tour van that i'm driving as my daily driver it was it was interesting what were you just out of curiosity what were you doing as a day job as you were trying to get that up and going just random office corporate stuff nothing just anything really um i could get my hands on that was that would pay the bills so so now you so you do that for a couple years and you know you know two or three years you try and make a go of it you just can't get the investment dollars you can't get it off the ground to where it's going to support you enough and say okay probably time to move on so to speak so then as you're trying to figure out what the next thing is how did you land on because i think that kind of brings you a bit more to where you're at today of web development and design and those type of things how did you kind of transition to there so when that kind of went under when i do okay this is just it's it's time to throw on the towel i was once again uh second time being in this place and i guess like once you go through a breakup once you're it's a little bit easier the second time um and so it's a little bit easier but again i was left with this okay what am i gonna do um and i was fortunate in this next phase where someone knew i had this technology and they wanted to start a ringtone company uh so they essentially brought me on and acquired the technology and we ended up turning their idea into essentially what i wanted to build out um with not only ringtones but having an entire platform like social media um specifically for independent onsite artists since that's what i was on i could relate to this we're really trying to create a platform that would shine light and um on these artists that normally don't get the attention they deserve um so i did that for about three or four more years and then that kind of the investors didn't want to put any more money into it and it would just it felt once again fell apart quickly and during that time we had used agencies to build everything outwards from web design development seo everything we worked with an agency so i got a first-hand look of what this looks like when you're working with an agency so that client agency relationship um and when that fellow party goes yeah i just feel like i could do this better than what our experience was with these guys um and so i literally just decided i'm going to start a web design development agency and so i learned how to like take templates and start one question on that because you decided that but how did you come out of every it was just out of hey we've had other agencies do it you know we've had other people do it it couldn't be that hard and i'll try it out is that kind of the thought process yeah well i've always been involved with tech in some capacity always like i've always been drawn to it so um i started when i when at the last company i was really trying to like get my hands dirty and just like html and like okay if we need a landing page why don't i just try and create it um so it's literally just google open and trying to figure out like what am i what's my problem and slowly but surely i was able to do make something look decent using templates and then from there i was like you know what let's just go beat first and start an agency and see if i can do this myself and it was kind of i didn't really have much of a choice i knew i didn't really want to go back to your typical corporate life so i figured uh this is a great opportunity to just jump feet first in and really you know throw my punches at her so and so now you and then you said you started taking classes you kind of tried a few out of your own websites out got a you know a foundation under you and then you know how did you start to get clients or build a business or reach out to people or kind of how did you grow something so uh fortunate with that again so another um pr agency we were using at the time i was just talking with him we ended up becoming really good friends and i was like hey this is what i'm doing i'm kind of pivoting he's like hey i might have a client for you so he just heard me a client and i i never put together a proposal i had no idea what i was doing what do i charge for this i think for their first website like e-commerce i was like yeah 1500 bucks i'm like okay and i was like okay and then it was okay i got to figure out what i'm doing now [Music] and so no and that's a great way to launch and hey i got a client i think i got a client for you do you want to do it sure how much are you going to charge well i'll charge 1500. great that's probably a lot cheaper than what they were paying everybody else i couldn't tell you where that number came from it just felt right and so i just i made a decision to go hey there's no looking back let's just figure this out as we go so so then you started you know and i assume then you start to build a client base and start to build it around there and you're still doing that today is that right or at least in part that's what you're doing so it's the same agency as god it's been almost 10 years i want to say so now you so look and then i think it's and that kind of dovetails my last question next question which is looking kind of forward now to the future of kind of what's next or what are you going to do in the next you know next six to 12 months how you going to grow i think you mentioned you're going to start doing some courses and and start to offer that is part of what you do yeah so i obviously have the agency side of things which is great um but i really want to create a course to train people like myself that want to have an agency and to really walk them through from a to z from how do you put together a proposal how do you market yourself how do you uh what agreements do you need um how do you generate business right what's your lead magnet going to be how do you handle clients how do you handle difficult clients how do you make sure you get paid right all the stuff that i've learned over 10 years to really try and fast track people that want to get into it just not sure where to start and how to avoid some of the nonsense i got myself into no i think that's understanding you know it's interesting because we we're doing a bit in a different way and a different approach are doing that with the law side as well in the sense of you know there are a lot of times we get clients that come in and they say okay i've got a prototype we help them with the patent and then it's kind of like now what what next you know kind of what do i do with this and so we started to a little bit kind of a lot of similar lines is uh to you know say here's how you go you know here's some contacts you're ways you start going about product development and prototyping and manufacturing and how do you do all these various things that you really need to get it started on a to start a business and yet there isn't a manual you don't just say oh how do i start a business i go do these things you know so i think that there's a lot of value in helping people to understand here's the steps and here's some guidance along the way that will help them to actually learn from the mistakes of others and and be have an increased likelihood of success yeah exactly and so all these little things like i wish i would have brought on like recurring revenue earlier because i didn't want to host and maintain sites because i just didn't want to deal with it and i thought oh man it's just these small little fifty hundred dollars a month recurring revenue it turns out i wasted years and thousands and thousands of dollars by just not doing you know some of the what seem like hard work that just isn't and so it's really trying to fill those potholes for people before they hop into it and give them a roadmap of here's what works for me and here's why so that and so i think that makes good sense and i you know i think that you know learning from though or figuring out how to continue to grow things in a pivot in the future definitely is a great place to be well as we start to wrap up you know we talked a little bit through your journey and i always ask two questions at the end of the podcast so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is so along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it i'm gonna have to say i can't believe i jumped the gun on this but it really was the recurring revenue piece um where there's this this is this mentality that i have of you think just short term where it's like oh 50 bucks a month that's not going to do anything that's not going to move the needle but when you start to get 50 or 100 of those it just compounds and now uh i'm in a place where i'm able to diversify so with the hosting and maintenance and this recurring revenue that i thought was just peanuts turns out that if i have a down month that kind of protects the nesting and keeps revenue going so that would probably be the dumbest decision i made is just avoiding some of the the diversification of revenue streams no and i think that you know it's interesting it seems like that's where a lot of businesses are going is hey you know it can be especially in the service industry if you're always having the revolving door always having to generate new clients generate new work and if you you know once you kind of cut it off if that's the end of it it makes it for a little bit more for like you're on the hamster wheel or you know a gerbil wheel so to speak and if you can say hey now how can we keep the client for longer and that can be everything from reoccurring revenue it can be offering expanded services offering a service they'll need multiple times but those type of things i think often go overlooked and yet they can be a valuable stream of revenue for the best well yeah and the little secret too for me at least with that like hosting and maintenance side of my business is that it keeps the relationship with the client active and so when they have a good experience with you for like if it's an emergency situation or just anything that you respond with whatever it might be i can't even tell you how many referrals i've got just from hosting a maintenance that we've responded quickly to their emails and so now that trust is developed and now they're referring me to other potential clients no and i think that there there's a good point in there in the sense that you know that's one of the things that kind of again on that is everybody you know keeping that relationship alive keeping him in yourself front of mind and in touch with them is way that now when they need that next scene when they they'll think of you and if they on the other hand if it's been years since they've done it or there's been a while or months or years of that then you're less on forefront of mind and they may not when they need that service think of you not because you didn't do a good job and they didn't have a good relationship it's just you're not for a friend of mine so i think yeah out of sight out of mind so that would be for sure when i look back i just kept myself with going how much opportunity that i missed but hey what does this say that when's the if when's the best time planning for you 20 years ago or right now right and so that's definitely one of those things where those those little hidden diversifications of revenue can really add up to really big potential so now we'll jump to the second question then it probably dovetails off the first but if you were to if you're talking now to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them profitability um but probably deeper than that is really really thinking about the value that you can provide right so before i a client invest any dollar with me before they invest anything i spend about two hours with them um and we map out we do what we call a customer avatar discovery session so we figure out exactly what their ideal customer looks like and what that customer needs to see and read on the new site and experience in order to have the best chance of success because i don't build websites for my clients i build it for my clients customers so what i mean by all this is don't be afraid to go first right provide value first and everything is a relationship there's no b to c or b to b it's all human to human and so if you're able to find a way when you're providing value right out of the gate your close rate and conversion rate and the whole experience is just going to be better throughout because you the more that you invest up front and the more value you provide the the more that you're going to extract out of that in everybody's money no and i think that you know the one thing you touched on it wasn't necessarily the only or the the main point is you know one of the things i had to learn was you know you can build a really cool looking website that doesn't do anything right in the sense it doesn't convert people it doesn't really give them a call to action it doesn't do it or have any return but it looks great you know and that's now my that's one of my favorite pastimes now that i've gotten into that is going to law firm websites but there are a ton of law firm websites that they look awesome they look really nice and professional and it's like well i don't know how much it's going to cost i don't know how to get a hold of them i don't know what i'm supposed to do if i do want to get going and it's like because they don't provide anything but it looks really cool and it's like no you need to actually provide that value so i think that there's definitely a good point there the look is important just for trust but really people buy what they read and i see so many businesses that want like video backgrounds and they care about all these things that are not necessarily unimportant but really spend the majority of your time crafting their headlines what's the value who are you speaking to and what what are their problems and what is their current situation and how do you get them to their desired situation and the only way you can do that is through copy and so test your copy and make sure that you're designing something for your end user in line yeah i know i think that that that's a great great advice and great feedback well just before we wrap up this is a reminder to people we are going to do the bonus question where we talk a little bit about intellectual property so before people uh stop listening if you want to hear some great uh great insight into intellectual care i'll be a good one it'll be a great one so stay tuned but if if you don't have interest in that we'll uh we'll wrap up the journey and we'll uh with that if people want to now reach out to you they want to find out more about your services they want to be a client they want to be a investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to connect up do you find out more yeah best way is my website taggartmediagroup.com t-a-g-g-a-r-t media group.com all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out to you find out more and if they're in need of a website definitely check out your services i appreciate that well thank you for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and uh for all of you that are listeners if you don't listen the bonus question but make sure to uh if you ever have if you ever want to tell your journey and be a guest on the podcast just go to inventive journal or in inventiveguest.com if i can uh not do that that's right if yes inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast if also make sure if you listen listener to make sure to click subscribe so you get notifications as all their awesome episodes come out and leave us a review so new people can find us last but not least go to if you ever need any uh patents or trademarks or anything with your business feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time to chat with us so with that we'll wrap up we'll transition over the uh the bonus question so now that uh now you the shoe's on a little bit the other foot i always get asked the questions during the normal episode but now i give the microphone to you so to speak so with uh you know what is your top or number one intellectual property question so i wanted to hear your thoughts on what kind of your i guess your your opinion on uh software patents because the way i look at it is man patenting math seems like uh quite a leap and especially the guys that just obviously sue everyone under the sun but in terms of just how software patents are structured we'd love to hear your opinion on them yeah and that's that's a softball question so thank you no so i do i've done a lot of software patents that's why i say it's a it's a softball question in the sense that you know i worked for a long time you know prior to starting my own business i worked for some of the biggest law firms and they had some of the biggest clients so i did intel i did red hat i did amazon.com all which were i had a lot of software and even now with my law firm we don't it's not as much name recognized but we do a ton of software for startups and small businesses and to your point you know it's not necessarily the math if all you're doing is a plus b equals c you know when you go and say okay we've forever people did a plus b equals c on by hand and now i'm going to stick that on a computer that's really not a software patent in the sense and you're not going to be able to get a patent on that where it's going to where a lot of times it come in it comes in more is let's say you know as an example i'll give you an example so one of the businesses i've done on my own so uh is uh that i started on or started was with wearables and that has a lot of software behind it but it's more of as an example the wearables were originally and it's pivoted a bit was for hydration monitoring for athletes and for people that run long distances do wearables that are for hydration and some of the things are how do you do all the analytics so once you go you have a sensor you take some measurements and then once you do those measurements what do you do with the data how do you analyze it how do you make a determination are they hydrated are they not hydrated you know are they going through a dehydration event are they over hydrated and how long can they or before we should or call someone or give a warning and so a lot of that is going to be under software but it's not necessarily the lines of code which are too deep and it's not high enough level to just hey we want to give everybody alert of you know hydration and it's so high level that anybody would do that but it's kind of that how you go about doing it how i make the how i get the data how i do the analytics how i provide the notifications who do i provide the notifications am i communicating between devices so between a server that does the analytics the wearable and the phone and so it's that kind of thing when you get into a lot of software that does you know similar on when i did intel is another example is on these chip level they have a ton of security so that you don't get hacked right so that way somebody doesn't intrude into your computer they don't take it over and they don't sell all your data and so that was one of the things they did with intel but there's a lot that goes into it how do you set up your software so that it it doesn't allow for intrusion how do you get secured or areas that simply can't get into the system and there's a lot that goes into that so that's where the software again is a lot of the implementation and the how the software what if it's like 90 the same but i just tweet some things in the code it's like well yeah it doesn't do like is that violating a patent it depends on how broad and narrow the patent is i know that's an unfair question because of legal stuff but i'm just i'm trying this is the one thing that's always gotten stuck with me is like how do you patent a loading bar right or stuff like where i go at the end of the day yeah let me give you maybe another example is that i worked on there in the previous or previous firm was with google and so you think of you know the little window you know when you're watching you know netflix or amazon or or youtube or anything else you have you can normally watch on the big window some with the some of the newer phones you can swipe out and they'll just have a little window so you can multitask right so you can do it but how do you it's not that you know it's they don't just patent the concept take a big window on a phone and make it a little you know a little window that one's probably if you put but if they're to take now how do you make it so that it determines what you know when you're exiting it out when you're intending to or watch it on little phones or little screens such as you're doing other things how do you move it around what size should it be what aspect ratio should it be should we adjust the volume or should we mute it or not mute it how do you exit out of it and all of those kind of determinations are what they go into now to your question is you know how can you know if i make a small tweak let's say i move the x bar you know if i move the where the i click the x you're probably going to have an issue because they've covered that broad of a thing so they get a fairly conceptually if you're saying what is the unique or novel thing that my software is doing how is it different that's where you focus your patent and then you can usually get fairly broad or reasonable coverage on that it's a hard question to answer because yeah i know i know what do you think happened go ahead what would what would your opinion be if software patents were gone obliterated you can't patent software it's impossible like what what do you think would happen with just kind of the industry as well so let me ask the question i'll flip the question what would you do if you didn't have a cell phone anymore well i mean we kind of died or what would you do if you didn't have the internet anymore but the internet didn't start because of patents and it's certain no no no and i'm not saying but the question would be is the where where and i'll give you the reason for the question is if you a lot of the motivation for people creating the internet for creating phones for creating apps is monetary incentivizing right in the sense that they want to be able to make a compensation for making your iphone 1000 no and i and i'm so then the question is is if you were to take all software patents away and now you can make it was in a world where as soon as i get great it created a great software whatever it is application on the phone you know whatever that is whether it's uber and their how they do theirs whether it's google in their search engine take all that away and say yeah if you can figure out how to copy it you can compete then as they're that same monetary i'm going to go out and compete in the marketplace or you're going to say i'm going to if i'm the first one i'm going to put a ton of time money and effort behind it i'm going to be the first one to figure out how to do it how to program it but then somebody's going to copy me and then i'm out of business does that make sense yeah but let me ask you this then right so sure and maybe it's a horrible analogy but i'm very curious so you got kfc right there are 11 herbs and spices that i'm sure is patented it's actually a trade secret but go ahead yeah but i have every right to try and figure out what it is and open up my own chicken seasoning right sure if i can look at code and go oh let me try and make my own like how is that violating a patent and how is that bad for you because so how first of all you have to have code to look at right if kfc said if i if everybody could go and let's give it a different because kfc is really a brand right and so that's a lot of the reason because there are other places that sell good chicken you go to kfc because you like the brand so i think the more analog or better analogy would be is if you go to kfc and now everybody could start their own kfc they could take the exact logo same name in the company and go start their own kfc's everywhere would kfc have the same incentive to build a business a franchise would they be able to franchise have as many locations and it's hard when you're if your brand or let's say you're pepsi or coke and somebody started selling pepsi and they just started making the exact same label you can't no there would be no financial incentive to build a business and so that's where i think that now that the question is just when it gets the code and math i go uh i don't this holding back industry or is this where it's going yeah where it's going to take that is the question is is you're saying ones if i can look at their code and how to tweak it you have to that assumes that the code is already there right they've already figured it out and you're building on top of it as opposed to if you go and code something yourself and you figure out a new and something different that hasn't been done no no barrier to entry to you it's only if you're saying i've i'm taking what somebody else has done building on top of it then the person that originated yeah yeah sorry that's not i didn't mean like actually take the record but no no but but the same kind of concept right if google has now proven the concept that search engine on optimization is a great market and they figured out how to make good search results then everybody is going to say how do they do it their their competitive advantage is that they're the best search engine in the world right and if now if everybody can just simply say i can i'm going to copy what they did i'm going to look and see what they did i'm going to tweak it slightly you can still patent the tweak so maybe that's one differentiation in the sense that if you build on top of it and where i always give the example and we'll we'll wrap it up for because i'm sure it really helps but it's like for hours i love discussing it but let's say as in your example one that i think is a little bit easier to grasp is black and white television right in the d back in the day 50 or 100 years ago whenever it came out 75 years ago i'll guess they had black and white television right and they got a patent on it and if you wanted to do a black and white television you had to get there or you had to go through their patent or get a license from them you had somebody that came along and figured out how to do color television how to make that better so they now have a patent that's really good on color television that everybody wants but it builds on top of the original black and white television so in that sense the people that have the black and white they can continue to have the monopoly on black and white for 20 years and then after but the people with color television also have the patent and you the people can with the black and white can't make color television so it creates a hey if you build if you build something you provide it as a public to the public we'll give you a monopoly for a period of time but it allows people to know what you're doing and how to do it so part of the trade-off with patents is that you have to disclose how it works what what you're doing how you're making the decision making and so since you're disclosing that the public you're giving away your secrets now we'll give you a 20-year period where you have that monopoly but people can start to build on top of that during that 20 years they can either sell to you they can license it they can make products that go on top of it and they own those things that they're building on top of so it's kind of that trade-off whether or not it's perfect or not is that you're trying to incentivize people whether it's software hardware mechanical stuff i think it's kind of the same thing as you're trying to incentivize to people to build those platforms that do make a better and giving them a reward of hey you you will have some way to keep this proprietary for a period of time such all of that time money and effort because most of the time especially software once you see how somebody's done it it makes sense you know and that's a lot of vengeance the magic's gone from it yeah the magic is out oh yeah i know you know it's kind of like the magic you know you refer to magic once you know how the magic trick is done you oh i could do that that's really easy but it's that first person that figures it out that takes all the time and effort to figure it out and there's and if you remove that incentive to say once you figure it out everybody's gonna copy you then they're gonna say well i'm not gonna invest millions of dollars or you know time time years of my time only to have somebody easily copy me so that is a long grab a whole really fun conversation for hours and we'd have a great debate but there's a little bit of your request answer to your top intellectual co-op or property question i hope all the viewers enjoyed it i went on a bit of a rant but i enjoy it in this fun area to talk so about well thank you again for john for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much for having me appreciate it