Obsess Over Your Customers

Obsess Over Your Customers

Mark Horoszowski
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/28/2021

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.

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 obsess over your customers um in ways where you like really really understand their like you know job to be done right that which is and here i reference like the clayton christensen model of like what are people actually looking to hire somebody or something for [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devon 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 ipla where he helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast mark and i'm going to slaughter his last name perro swiss cookie horoshovsky i'll jump in there with ya it's a it's a hard one so to give you a quick introduction to mark so mark uh comes from immigrant parents and when they came to the us had a big focus on community and leadership in high school um both parents are also cancer survivors and uh while they're in school um somewhere they were looking for help on to do a overnight walk-a-thon to help raise money organize er helped organize that and next year i think uh mark continued to help and to recruit more you went to college to the university of washington where someone asked him to kind of put on the same event uh while doing that he was also studying accounting ended up graduating with accounting got into the busy season of accounting wanted to do some volunteering but because it was a busy busy season with accounting didn't quite work out so decided to switch a bit uh gears and focus and went to small healthcare marketing company did some accounting uh there and also did some marketing and then spun out did his own company that's in digital marketing after the great recession the owner wanted to sell and so did some stuff there um and uh and then moved on and then spending year traveling working with some organizations started a blog and uh and then moved on to their continued on what the current company is doing now so but that much is an introduction and hopefully it's at least mostly accurate welcome on the podcast mark thanks devin excited to be here so i gave kind of the quick run through and hopefully the mostly accurate run through but with that you know um and take us back in time a little bit to kind of how things got started for you in high school and how you got things set up and and where your journey started there yeah well you know and i i think it's apt that you that you kind of pulled out the you know the parents as immigrants to to the united states that i think in many ways had a profound impact on me right hearing their stories of change and this investment on on family and community and you know you have a choice right you can contribute to your society and to your country uh and to the to the world at large and you can help create a future for yourself um or you can you can just kind of roll with it and uh and so i think from from early on that was kind of bestowed on me and and the way i found uh for me to do that early on was through volunteering so i spent a lot of time in volunteering on community events you mentioned with the american cancer society that that program was called relay for life uh and so i think as i you know as we kind of fast forward through there as i graduated college yes i had a master's in accounting but i also had you know by that time spent uh you know countless hours managing other people right influencing without authority motivating others figuring out how to make things work on super short budgets on super tight time frames but for the sake of a cause bigger than self and quite frankly when i got into the workplace uh that that was missing for me right that i loved doing this volunteer work i didn't have the same energy around you know say busy season and accounting so i really i really went on an exploration to do that and when i when i went into that experience i learned that there are businesses that exist for profit and when times get tough they will do everything in pursuit of that profit but at the same time there's a new type of business entity that was being created the idea of a social business or benefit corporation and that was an entity that said let's actually put things like our workers the community and the environment at equal decision-making priorities to profits and when i learned about that structure i really wanted to get more involved with it so yeah i spent a year traveling and volunteering to support those types of business models and then ultimately launch moving worlds which now helps build those types of business models into more sustainable and scalable businesses by helping them partner with corporations so you jump i'm gonna i'll i'm gonna pull you back a little bit because we jump over most of the journey so we'll go back here one of the things you mentioned was in high school you started to get involved with walk-a-thons with your parents being cancer survivors wanting to help out so maybe take us back a bit in time to kind of because that seemed like it built on a bit of your journey and had an impact later on in some of the organizations and management to kind of when you're doing so how did you get involved with the walk-a-thon as a high schooler and then because i think that also pulled through to when you're in college as well so how did that interfere with your journey yeah you know um uh you know my my parents are are total troopers right you know they they both went through their cancer bouts and and they hit a lot of that from from us us being my my brother who's two years older than me um but still you know we we saw the effects of it right and it was real and it was challenging and um i you know from early on admired the sacrifice i think that they were making to hide their own hardships for us from us us being the kids so that you know we didn't have to kind of live the you know the hell that they were going through and so in high school there was in this event called relay for life which was this 24-hour run walk uh event um to to raise funds for for the american cancer society and someone came to our school and said hey we're we're we're looking for you you know if anybody wants to get involved with this right it's a cool thing you gotta spend the night on the track um of course you're gonna have chaperones but you gotta spend the night on the track um and we went there and uh you know formed a team with my friends uh one of my other friends actually when we heard the the presentation about it he was like hey we should do this and by the way you should be our team captain and i was like well that makes sense i i think i should given given the the circumstance with my parents um and i'd said you know we had such blast doing it and we we spoke to the the organizer of it and just said hey next year if we can get more involved we can bring a lot more a lot more youth here uh and we weren't the only event in the nation that was really engaging youth in in the fight against cancer but we were one of the early leaders of it so we caught the attention of the american cancer society because they saw this big movement of youth getting more involved than ever before through this event um and so when i went to university they were trying to start the same event and they said hey you know mark had done the stuff at this other event maybe he could get involved and you know this was early 2000s right we um you know pre pre facebook right like we were we were you know doing this with flyers and and tabling and you know uh hustling people on the street tell them to come you know create teams and fundraise with us and when online did hit we were one of the first movers into online fundraising and in fact we we set some records for the american cancer society about online fundraising for events which kind of again you know right time right place for me but they said hey you know here here's a here's a kid that you know knows how to mobilize people and knows is kind of forward on this trend about using you know the internet to fundraise and mobilize and so i was asked to then start traveling around and actually training other community events on youth engagement on digital fundraising so that kind of led you know i don't know if i can skip ahead but that led to part of my transition right i was better at that than i was at accounting so and and we'll definitely drive or jump to that at the end but so you know i think that kind of sets up the stage well so you did that in high school you did it in college as you're earning the accounting degree so now you come out of college you jump into the accounting degree and you know four years or assume four years or however long it takes to get this degree yeah five five years all right i'll i'll like you know i i was uh i think nine and a half years ago i was gonna say yours was a little harder i did get four degrees in my defense i got a few degrees along the way um but you know so you come out of here you know do that for five years takes a while a lot of time and effort to get all of that come out start to work for accounting and so what would you know maybe walk us through a little bit what was your experience kind of coming out to accounting and how did that play into your journey yeah um you know so i i started at at pwc um as pricewaterhousecoopers at the time and you know the first thing to emphasize is fantastic learning experience right i gotta work with with really smart people who were hard workers who uh not only had you know despite the the connotations that often uh or or stereotypes that associate with accountants right but were effective communicators hard workers great managers great people developers but also very operationally minded and that taught me a lot in fact i think a lot of the success of moving worlds is because of that kind of crash course in operations you know ultimately you know i um you're right i'm i'm privileged right i i um you know financially not right two two immigrant parents that came over with with nothing but i had two parents right i'm i'm a white guy i grew up in seattle and then in the suburb uh you know went to a good public school um and you know so i think i was already at a good foundation to be able to get offers but when i was coming out of school i had all this volunteer experience so every accounting firm that i interviewed at i ended up getting a job and i remember or a job offer and that i remember the conversation was like cool you got the master's accounting tell me about what you do not accounting and i and i could i had all this experience as a volunteer uh and 100 it it's what helped me stand out as as a candidate i believe um and so what when i well so then when i started working there was this funny irony where i went to my manager and i asked for a weekend off to go speak at this american cancer society conference and it was in the middle of busy season and and ultimately they gave me that support which i appreciated but you could tell that it was uh it was a favor that was done to me and it was not something that i should make a habit of if i cared about my career and and there was an element of irony there that here i was performing because of all this experience and yet i could no longer contribute or continue to engage in that in those types of experiences and and and and i struggled with that so that ultimately led me to to pursue other options so tonight you know there is a bit of irony there in the sense that that's probably what helped you to stand out and yet it's also the thing that eventually led to you leaving because there wasn't you know it's kind of one of those where hey it's awesome that you're doing that now we have a whole bunch of work to do we need to get that done and that's and i get it it takes priority that's what makes the money for the business and that's how they support themselves but there is that kind of that you know internal back and forth or struggle as to hey i want you know like accounting want to do it but i also have you know this passion for doing other things so as you're kind of making your ex and say okay this probably isn't the best path for me or you know i want to go do something else or i kind of want to build on that you know as you're doing that then how did you decide what you were going to do next or kind of where was where did you go from there yeah you know um i got a little lucky uh one of um one of my brother's friends actually his dad owned this healthcare marketing company and so he knew i was in accounting so he said hey will you will you send this email to all your accounting friends we're looking for for an accountant for the for that company um and so uh i i forward that request on to my network um and then i emailed back and said hey i know you're really busy i'm not really interested in being an accountant but i'd like to talk to you just as like for some career advice um and uh uh my brother's friend didn't set the conversation up very well uh at least this is my version of the story so we walk in you know uh his his dad great guy but is just like firing questions at me and um and then he's like okay well when can you start and i was like hey sorry i actually don't want this i want this job this is why i'm coming to you and he just looked at me i think he thought i was crazy and he said i'll make you a deal we're growing uh you come you come handle accounting for us you get the systems in place and if projects start hitting our plate that i think you'd be good for and you're done with your accounting work then i'll give you then i'll start giving you exposure to that and i was currently i was also planning a trip for myself i was like i'm going to go go international just go kind of do some things and and explore a little bit more you know maybe engage in some more volunteer work and he was like but you got to start right away so it was tough but i put that trip on hold uh and and started working there and just every day right i was like i was motivated to get through my accounting work and then i'd asked a question like hey you got anything for me today you got anything for me today um slowly people started like asking me for help if they're really really busy maybe with like yeah i remember like proofreading emails um but then because we were a healthcare company oftentimes we would look at big data sets and help clients think about how to use these data sets to better market things like blood glucose meters or patient satisfaction rates for non-profit hospitals and um and i was really good at excel and so people were like hey can you help me like manipulate this data or like and so i got to work on some data projects and then this really big account hit our plate it was um a big move into uh digital apps to help manage health data and help patients have access to their health data is very new and this whole time i was blabbing about all the different ways digital could help the business how we could help our own marketing uh and so he said okay cool we we don't have enough bandwidth will you help with this project uh and so jumped in on it um and it turned into a huge huge account for us uh and ultimately rick was requiring more and more of our time and then we had that conversation and i had the choice to stay in accounting or go into marketing um client management more towards the strategy side of things with that emphasis on digital and so i i took that opportunity so now you so and i i it sounds like it was a great opportunity and it was you know kind of probably going in the direction that you would kind of be more passionate about enjoying that so you know you kind of switch over from the accounting side and doing those projects to more of the marketing and doing that side now i think after a while again you kind of you know correct me or i'm wrong but they sold the company or they did something and so then it kind of pushed you in a direction more social enterprise is that right or wrong yeah so so what happened is is we learned that the the unit economic model for like a traditional healthcare marketing agency was different than digital so we spun out so the same owner actually created a new company that specifically did digital marketing right so it was faster deals lower lower contract size um more strategy data app development different team um and so i had the opportunity to co-manage that and you know we we again i kind of got lucky here in a way we hired some people that were more experienced to be like the actual leaders of that um but for for any number of reasons those those just weren't the right culture fit um and so i kind of kept finding myself in like the kind of managing director role of that organization and ultimately that kind of got solidified and then the great recession hit um and that sucked marketing is is is fast to go but we we made it through and i remember skipping paychecks uh but um the majority of the time our our digital strategy group we're actually able to to retain our full staff during it and on the back end of that you know i was i was depleted and um the the owner was also depleted he said hey look i'd really i want to productize the things that you've been doing in marketing and i want you to sell and like do you think we can do that in the next two years and i was like i have a different idea i was thinking we could really try and serve the nonprofit sector right we talked about it he said ultimately that's not what i'm interested in supporting um and you know he he was a majority owner and he had worked hard to to build up that that organization enterprise and so left on good terms but hired my replacement and i wanted to go immerse in this social enterprise in this type of business model where all people's values were being values is the wrong word all people's priorities were being cared for uh um and and prioritized by the by the organization and that ultimately was a different legal structure yeah and i think that it makes sense that you're saying hey that's that's a great you know great project great endeavor it's not that direction i want to take my business with that's not where i want to head and it's probably not where his passion is so he's saying holly doesn't line up and so i think that you know probably to his offense understanding that and recognizing it probably is beneficial because otherwise it was probably putting him in here put taking the business in the direction of unified and exciting would have been great for for you know for your endeavors but probably him so it sounds like kind of that presents an opportunity okay here's kind of where i found what my passion is what i want to do kind of direction i want to have not going to fit in with this company so then where did you go from there yeah so spent a year traveling and volunteering with other social businesses uh around the world and social impact projects so um nepal indonesia malaysia uh new zealand and argentina and you know that's where you know i really saw firsthand that the power of this idea of the of the social uh business right oftentimes often called the the social enterprise and in the us the the legal designation for this actually varies state by state but it's often called the benefit corporation and um yeah and so got to work on on a number of these organizations and was also really intrigued by the the community that develops in cities to support that type of movement and yeah when i came back i i was i was sold right i thought that this was the future not only of of startups right but potentially actually right you know if you go back to 2010 um obviously the the economic inequalities that were magnified during during the great recession uh further magnified now uh but at the time right it was it was really headlined uh and still the climate crisis right it was not as pronounced as it is today but it was it was well known uh right this is after an inconvenient truth right we knew this was a priority and so i was really curious of how business could be used as a tool to to be made aware that its actions were creating these problems um and so that less harm could be be created um but that also more could be created in in ways that really would be uh you know in win-win relationships so now question on that because you know there's a difference between social enterprises and i think there's there's great business out there figured out models and there's you know plenty of business out there that they have a great idea they're passionate about it but you can never figure out how to make it into a business yeah and so you know then it basically itself will become a donation you know and then it's trying to support it via all donations which is yeah sometimes work but most of the time you know at least what i've seen is going to be difficult in the sense that a lot of times you know to get that continual donations going forever how did you take from you know kind of this you figure out your passion kind of where you want to focus on what you want to do and actually turn into something where you can sustain it or you can build it or it can actually you know kind of stand on its own two legs yeah you know i think um for us it really started with like like what is the job to be done right like like what what is the need out there that's currently being being unmet and was there a place that needed a solve and for us to solve was a lot of these you know social businesses right were were growing but it was it was really hard to grow right they often didn't have the the professional expertise around operationalizing uh around marketing around selling and they didn't have the financial power to be able to hire the talent they needed right so we saw this opportunity to say you know and this was very influenced by my own experience right but people had been following my blog and so i knew that they were working professionals interested in volunteering their skills to also support this kind of growing movement and so we said okay there is something here right we could be a non-profit right we could try and raise foundation or philanthropic capital to to support this model um or we can right we believe in this social enterprise movement let's find if there's a way to to monetize so um you know i'll be honest we tried to raise money uh as as a as a philanthropic venture before going through the expensive legal process of creating a non-profit we validated it first and we found that we probably didn't have an easy road to funding so we said okay is there a market-driven way to do this and what we found is ultimately there was but it wasn't where we expected it was actually through the volunteers it was professionals saying look i'm thinking about getting a master's degree in an mba a master's in social enterprise a master's in in in public administration in public health uh and but i need experience right either in place of or in addition to that degree and so we had people 10 to 20 years in their career the average is actually seven years but yeah let's say five to 15 years in their career coming to us and saying i want to do this but i also want to learn and so we decided to create a community around these professionals giving their skills give them learning opportunities give them networking opportunities and that actually turned into a viable business model for us to launch a prototype um a kind of start a v1 business and then we we got the attention of some great companies like microsoft who said this is a really really cool experience and we'd actually like to create a program in partnership with you where our employees can engage in skills-based volunteering but also in some of this community and learning activities that you've developed so they can learn in the process and so for us that that became you know an even better business opportunity and as we just continued to listen to our customers what we learned was businesses started to invest in this not only for like employee engagement leadership development outcomes but also because and we see it like every week right now there's some new companies saying hey we're going to be you know carbon negative by 2025 or 2030 right or we're going to be equitable or we're going to work with diverse suppliers and they're coming to us now and saying hey we need connections to these to these social enterprises because they can actually help us create green supply chains uh that take better care of their workers and we go to them and we say hey great if you can support if you can get financial capital these social enterprises and human capital then we can help them get to a place of operational efficiency to connect into your business models and and that's kind of fueling our next wave of growth no i think that's not any kind of answer the question i'm going to ask which is kind of where do you see things heading and what's kind of the next steps and which it sounds like you're already well down that road and kind of have that uh roadmap planned out so now we'll kind of with that and always a lot more things than we ever have time to chat with questions at the end of each podcast we'll jump to those now and just as a reminder everybody else we also will have the bonus question we'll talk a little bit about intellectual property after the normal episode ends but as we jump through those two for our questions the first question i always ask is along your journey that we just discussed what was the worst business decision you ever made what did you learn from him we made a lot uh i think we all do i you know maybe i'm i'm going a little too like heady here but i'm just like i'm reminded by this quote time and time again right and it's that humans do not learn from the lessons of history that is the most important lesson of history and i i as i was like chalking up all the failures i was like there's a common theme in all my biggest mistakes which is that somebody told me not to make those mistakes right that like somebody was like literally you won't scale as fast as you think you can literally you will need more customer service budget literally there are better ways to screen talent right and we made all those mistakes and and so i i kind of pull it up to say like i think my biggest lesson is as an entrepreneur you get you get a lot of advice and you have to filter through it right our we are growing fastest right now on this kind of evolved business model that i was talking about that a year ago somebody told me was a really bad idea right so people also give you bad advice and you have to filter through it i think what what i've really learned from not heeding advice and then tripping into the same pitfalls that other entrepreneurs have made is to react to it all advice with a lot more curiosity right and to better understand like i really appreciate that advice what assumptions are you are you giving are behind your advice and like exploring that more and also saying like hey be more direct with me what mistakes do you see me making or what am i not hearing in this advice so i think it's turned me it's helped me better listen to the advice not only of like advisors and mentors but also of my team like i have an awesome team and and they will tell me things and i explore that i think in a more generative way now because earlier it used to be just like okay cool that's your opinion um but it's the insight behind that opinion that's so valuable yeah and i like that because i think that to your point you're gonna get there every you know everybody is and prices a lot of times what you pay for it in the sense that there isn't worth a lot of value some of it is great advice and you should absolutely listen to it and you have to filter it but to at least you know understand why they're giving that advice or the thoughts behind it are kind of what's motivating that even if you disagree with it or you say okay i appreciate that you know you can take it into consideration you can incorporate what you're doing and then continue on and continue forward so i think it's kind of that balance of filtering out what is good advice what's that advice what's the advice you should take now which ones you shouldn't consider and then how you also understand the motivation or the the you know experience behind that advice or even if you're not going to eat the advice you can still learn something so i think that that's definitely then that's great to learn or learn along your journey and also it's an easy mistake to make that hey i'm just not going to listen to anybody because there's some truth to that if you listen every all the nay series you would never do anything because you would always get people to tell you why it's not going to work and you would never do anything so there that will hold that balance second question i always ask is um you know if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business would be the one piece of advice you give them yeah um obsess over your customers um in ways where you like really really understand their like you know job to be done right that which is and here i reference like the clayton christensen model of like what are people actually looking to hire somebody or something for right and he gives this great example of of actually like mcdonald's milkshakes right and i use this one a lot where turns out the most popular time that people buy mcdonald's milkshakes is in the morning uh it's it's a commute it's breakfast right and and and he says you know people tried to hire a banana uh for uh for their breakfast right because what they needed was something that would keep them full give them energy make them feel good um and be easy on their drive and they tried hiring a banana for it but they were hungry 30 minutes later right they tried to hire oatmeal for it but they were spilling on their lap so anytime they hired something and it didn't work they then spent time or resources trying to find a new solution and so often i think like new businesses or startups will get too obsessed with the idea right oh let me make a better milkshake not obsessing about the problem that people have right which is i need a quick energetic breakfast that's easy to commute on my drive and i will spend money to do it so people end up commuting like trying to compete with milkshakes as opposed to developing like something that people really want which is and what they're willing to pay for so i i love that model and i just almost every you know advice call i have with an entrepreneur exposes the fact that they actually don't know what their customers are willing to pay money for they'll say hey i did a survey and people said i want a better tasting whatever or i did a survey and people think that this solution is important and then i'll ask like okay when's the last time somebody paid money to hire someone to find a better tasting milkshake right or hired someone to find a better tool right and they're like oh well people don't spend any money to do something like that i'm like great so they're not looking for a new solution so you don't have a business model right so i think it's really understanding what are people willing to spend money on and how can you really stand out as the best solution no i agree that and i you know it kind of almost goes back to one of the books i love is you know simon cynics you know starting with why yeah they don't slaughter the title yeah start with why yep focus is on the why of it not just you know hey why do you go buy it you know this computer versus that computer why do you buy this all of them have a lot of the same features and you're not buying it just for the phone because all of them work just the phone and i think even just that kind of that starting with why and understanding why they're purchasing it why they're buying the product why they need it why they want it to give that benefit and that's one of the things that you know as we've evolved even with my business we've started to focus less on we can tell them a whole bunch of things why we're qualified why we're the best why we're going to have better pricing better quality at the end of the day all those things are telling them what we do but not necessarily why they would go for us or why they want it so i think that that is a great uh you know great somewhere great lesson to learn for everybody out there yeah well as we wrap up and before we get to the bonus question if people want to reach out to you they want to be a client a customer they want to hire you to come do some training or they want to be a employee they want to be an investor they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out to you and find out more sure check us out on on movingworlds.org um you know find me connect with me on linkedin and yeah if anything really resonates here uh i do i do one slot a week just for like kind of mentorship or community support uh so you can shoot me an email at marketmovingworlds.org awesome well i definitely encourage people to check out the website reach out to you and find out more because it's certainly a great cause well thank you again uh for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that your listeners if you want to have your own journey to tell we'd love to have you on the podcast to share it if you did to sign up just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as a listener fun make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you want all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com so now we get it now as we wrap up the normal part of the episode we always get a jump on to the fun or at least for me the fun it's all fun so like it's not like once we're put together but i get to switch to a bit of gears because now i get to talk about something that i'm also passionate about which is intellectual property helping startups and small businesses so it's kind of fun to switch gears so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask your number one intellectual property question yeah so you know i think you know oftentimes in in let's say like the social business space um you know we don't have like a a a tech innovation right it's usually like a process innovation right we figured out some type of last mile or or first mile or or um you know unit economic way of delivering value to to constituents that that wasn't there before and it's usually more governed by say a useful process right and um because of our business model we're very very partnership minded right and so you know it's it's quite transparent it's quite kind of easy to figure out how that is um and and and how that and how we work um and so our value our mode has just been like look it's not something that's protectable and in fact if other people want to borrow from it it's actually kind of a compliment like they should and we will we will keep inventing for our customers and and provide better better value to them and we'll continue to kind of earn our business you know the right way now that said uh attribution is always nice right uh and i guess my my question here is for innovations that are not traditionally you know protectable under under ip law right and i could be totally off on my understanding there but yeah do you have any guidance on saying like hey you know this isn't this isn't rocket science but it is a process innovation or content innovation and what's the best way to let our partners use that and benefit from it even if it's in some ways competitive but in a way that also still kind of brings bing's attribution back yeah way to give me an easy question um no it because it is a it's a hard one to figure out because there isn't a straightforward or an easy answer so that's more opposite of an easy question you know as far as patents you're probably write patents are usually geared towards technology for a product for a you know it's something that's more tangible that can be software it can be a hardware if you do do some innovation then there's still some that are going on in that kind of industry then you can patent it but if you're saying hey what we're doing is more of a cause we're doing training we're doing materials then patents really it doesn't fit into that model it used to be you know several years ago you can kind of get business method patents those are now very incredibly difficult to get if you can get them and so i don't typically recommend those and so then you're saying okay well what else can we do and you know some of it is right as flattering that they copy it hey we're trying to lift all ships we're trying to make it cause the movement it's okay but at the same time if you're putting in a ton of blood sweat and tears a lot of work you're building a brand what all these things and at least you want to get attribution you want to be recognized or those type of things one thing is always going to be on the treatment which is you can get a brand you can build a actual brand around your business and you know that can be everything from hey all we want is an attribution that if you're going to use our information you put our brand there and we have like you know and or if you want to use our material you have to pay us because it's part of our brand so you know getting a trademark there sometimes works well for the name of the company a cash raise the kind of the cause the other thing that sometimes you'll do is also get into more of a almost a certification which is sometimes depending on the industry you're saying hey if they're certified to be a prisoner you know that they've gone through our training and they're going to be or they've you know they've got our staff of approval and those type of things that also tend to fall into trademarks because now you're using that as an indication of your brand that hey we've got you know they are certified they are they are doing the cause that we promote type of a thing and that can oftentimes be a way to get you know attribution to be able to control to make sure that people aren't using your materials in a way that you don't want those type of things and you can always copyright some of your materials if you have great training courses or great videos sometimes you want to control those and if you want to protect those you can do that through copyrights the last thought and then we'll wrap up is you know one of the other things that's a lot of times you can look at is it doesn't necessarily come first of mine it's almost sometimes almost a franchise model in the sense that you're franchising your cause or you're trying to spread your cause and you want to have almost different branches or groups or divisions and so it kind of resonates with the same franchise now you're not opening up a mcdonald's or wendy's or some of those things but you could almost go down the franchise route of hey we're giving them a system a course a way of doing it which is what a mcdonald's right reason you go open up a mcdonald's franchise they figured out location they figured out the recipe they figured out the price they've got the national campaign and so you're buying into that franchise for all those resources behind it and some degree that's the same thing you guys are doing in a much different realm as you're franchising your cause not that it has to be you know the same capitalistic model and those type of things but it still gives you the ability to say here's how you go out you start getting in your you know grassroots doing your cause doing these things here's how you do the outreach here's how you do that and sometimes it would be akin to that type of model so those are a few ideas that's not a question but i throw out a few of the different answers so yeah that we'll go ahead and wrap up and if you or any of the listeners have any other questions always feel free to grab some time with me just go to strategymeeting.com always happy to chat about any questions intellectual property business or anything else um with that we'll wrap up thanks again mark for coming on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last awesome thanks so much devin really appreciate the opportunity [Music]