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Terresa Zimmerman
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/19/2021

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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start do it just do it figure out figure out what your risk tolerances are leave everything else behind give yourself a period of time do it just do it everybody once you put it out there people are going to rally it's amazing hey everyone this is devin 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 just go to strategymeeting.com we are always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast which is teresa zimmerman zimmerman yeah i just want to make sure i pronounce her right and uh teresa was uh founded a business about nine years ago for men's underwear which is an interesting journey in and of itself to how do you get into that but the journey started back in high school when she and then ending the college and uh when she got a degree kind of did that to check the boxes and be able to have that degree as part of that and then moved or moved on and ended up going doing a longer career in consulting that worked with a lot of fortune 100 companies and whatnot worked with some big big agencies but never really owned her own work or did her own thing so decided to make the league from corporate to doing your own thing um talked with a few different people kind of explore things and decided to land on men's underwear and uh did that for a period of time was uh gutting got into selling it figuring out what the market was and how to make even better product and they've been doing it ever since so with that much is a uh uh introduction welcome on the podcast teresa wow thank you no thank you for having me that's uh that's the full story i don't know what i could elaborate on well we can just as the old side field goes we'll just sleep on a hideout we'll just walk out there now but i gave kind of a brief uh 30-second high-level overview but uh why don't you take us back in time a bit kind of the high school college time frame and tell us a little bit about how your journey got going and how what led to where you're at today yeah i mean you know maybe serendipity um uh comes into play you know since i've been trying to get into men's underwear most of my life so uh that's that's my that's my short story it all worked it all worked out yeah no so um i mean as you said for me um you know formal education was it was all check boxes i mean i just i i was i probably rushed through things way too much just because i wanted to get on to you know whatever was going to be real next i don't know why i didn't think that what i was doing at any moment in time wasn't real enough and you know important enough but i was like i just needed something next i had to go so check all the boxes that you know you're expected to check and um and then get on with life um but it was a journey i i mean i couldn't script it uh for sure so um you know went from high school to uh changing i got into all of my colleges early and then at the very last minute decided i wasn't going to do any of that i was going to be a veterinarian and um canceled all of that and kind of started from scratch and i think it was like april before my before i graduated that spring which is like crazy late but uh i decided that college was going to be a check box too and i wasn't going to spend a lot of time um and extra years doing some sort of medical degree which you know is probably better for for everybody but any case same same with college i started in boulder colorado my first year i skied a lot i did not have anybody holding me accountable so to go to school because it's such a big school and so i got away with everything in order to be on the ski slopes it was fabulous but i knew in order to check the box i had to leave so i ended up transferring myself to santa clara university which was like 180 degrees out right i mean you're you're uh it's a small jesuit liberal arts university compared to a big public you know maybe 30 000 students at the time down to 2 500 students maybe maybe fewer that might have included graduate students at the time so um i kind of had to study a little bit more but i played a lot so it was it was a blast after after college i moved myself to tokyo um my japanese teacher in college told me i would she would never recommend me for a job in japan so of course that's where i went um i ended up i mean during the 80s it made a little bit more sense than it does now i mean everything was happening in japan japan had just bought rockefeller center i mean they were buying the world so it made a lot of sense that that's you know if you wanted to be in in the throes of things that that's where you would be so that's where i went and and i ended up spending a couple years there so uh it was always one day at a time um i threw myself into things all the time but with an attitude of you can do anything for a short period of time break it down it's one day you know make it to the next day make it to the next day you know and at some point it becomes a year and um so that was fairly fabulous and um through that whole thing i ended up um you know being jumping into some consulting and marketing and brand strategy and you know that was kind of my my life's love doing brand strategy work with really big companies with really big problems at the time they were trying to solve problems one question because i mean it's hard enough and i know a lot of consultants have done a great job but it's already a hard enough thing to get into consulting here in the us where you know the language know the culture and everything else now you're over in a different culture a different language everything else how did you get into consulting yeah good question well so at the time there i was kind of acting i was acting a little bit as a go-between between the company the company that the japanese company that i worked for was a business services company so they had a whole they had a huge uh range of services that they offered um i they hired me because i was a token blonde californian i mean let's be real right i knew nothing um and didn't even have a recommendation from my japanese teacher so um so there was no you know there was there was no pretending i was something i wasn't there but i took advantage of it right and so i got into conversations that i probably should never have gotten involved with but my my consulting there was a little bit more mediation so i worked for a japanese company a lot of us companies and european companies were coming into the country trying to do business there and they needed somebody who could form a bridge um in what they wanted to do and and uh and then the japanese companies they wanted to do it with and so in a really really really small way that's kind of where that's kind of where i started my um my consulting practice um and you know you know turned that into a career for myself because i mean i studied this is going to sound sound funny but i mean i studied political science in santa clara and i really think that set me up well for it because with political science specifically there you know maybe liberal arts colleges generally you know you are forced to consume this much information in a very short period of time and condense it down to a couple of points that then you need to defend or put forth or have a position on hear somebody else's you know opinions and i'm sure you'd do the same thing in you know legal studies and then decide if you have your position changed or not and be able to explain all that so you're doing a lot of translation so to speak in that um and so i think i found i think i found that um kind of natural for me loved it loved it definitely and i think it sounds like a fun part of the journey so now you were in japan for a while working with the big consulting firm what brought or when when did you come back to the us or what brought you back to the us or you're saying hey i've had enough i'd like to go home be my family yeah or miss the culture or kind of what what uh prompted that shift yeah it was time to go home for sure it was time to go home i spent a couple years in boston and then i um and then with with a guy um and then i um jumped over to brussels belgium i lived in brussels for five years i ended up starting with the agency world there and that's really where i kind of started growing into working with really big companies um there and and because again i was you know not native any language there um i i ended up always working at kind of a higher level because i wasn't going to be the one to speak local you know whether it's local culture local issues local whatever so i always ended up in a strategic or planning role which you know served me well and it's you know where my interests lie anyway so um that ended up being um kind of the start of my agency career an agency is where i you know it fed my add so to speak right because with agencies you work with a lot of different clients all at the same time so you know you can be working with a backend technology infrastructure client and and a mining and metals client and um you know financial services client all in the same all at the same time and so you've got to be on your game with all of those things at any one moment in time when you're speaking with them so i just loved it and i'm the same wayne and we were chatting even a little bit before the the podcast when we started about you know i've got i do miller ip law where we do patents and trademarks i've also you know as a background i've done seven and i continued several startups in small businesses um we just recently rebranded relaunched one of the businesses it's in the religious or religious products and then i'm also started and my goal is to have it'll probably i hope it my goal is to have it this summer it may be the following summer but to have an orchard with 100 trees planted on it and some land so i i completely get the 80d of like liking to do lots of products liking to see lots of different things and so it definitely makes sense yeah no love it yeah i mean and you know even when i left consulting in agencies i still do coaching and advising i still do a bunch of other stuff i'm writing some books and you know and then of course nine years ago i started wood underwear which is kind of my um my baby at the moment my nine-year-old baby at the moment so it's uh yeah but it's it i you know this day and time when you can work remote and when you don't aren't tied and i'm not sure that i'm involved in the gig economy necessarily but i love the fact that we all have so much flexibility and freedom in a way that we didn't you know even five years ago no and i i completely agree i completely agree with all that and i think the lens itself so you have a lot more opportunities you know what was interesting is you know i was talking with somebody else and i neglect or i forget the name and so i apologize for whichever listener that you know whichever guest that was we were chatting a bit about how it used to be you know that startups and small businesses had a huge failure rate and you know you made it five or ten years whatever statistic you looked at that was when you made it and that was when you know that now you're likely to going to continue to succeed and it's almost started the paradigm started to shift where startups small businesses are the ones that are being more successful and the older businesses are having a much harder time in struggling and it's just interesting how the paradigm shifts with with all of their as everything continues to evolve now getting back from my rabbit hole which is so now you so you did you know you moved around a bit you did big businesses you went to japan came back to the u.s did some consulting i think you moved back to california i was in i was in europe for five and a half years and then came back to the us and then i ended up in hong kong for a couple of years as well all this is through you know agency consulting and then uh got back came back to the united states um and sort of planted myself in san francisco for a little while so one question that i'll get to my real question but what might because you know moving around doing a lot of things what made you finally decide to settle down in in san francisco is that what family was where well so yeah well so i love san francisco i mean san francisco and paris are probably my two favorite cities at least they were then um you know i know that both of them are in a little bit of a of chaos and disarray in in different ways right now but i've always loved um both of those cities and uh when i came back to the united states i had opportunity and you know wanted to be wanted to be there right so when i went to santa clara university um they uh you know technology was there of course um but when i was graduating all of you know my my you know peers were taking on these tech jobs and you know there were a few of us are going like why would you do that what's technology you know who needs that right so i mean again i didn't have a lot of foresight um uh when i was younger but um but it's such an exciting place to be silicon valley and san francisco specifically um because of a lot of that so now you get no and that definitely makes sense you get back to san francisco and you're saying okay starting to maybe settle down at least a little bit and you know got to still keep it exciting but you start to settle down you know what did you go and start working for big tech companies or continued consulting i was still with my consulting company i was still i still i was still with agency so most of the time i was bouncing around with the same agency just taking on different roles for them around the world so um so there there there was the spot for me um in san francisco was with an agency that i had been in hong kong with um and i was still managing the asia pacific region from san francisco so san francisco is a good base for a lot of reasons so now you do that for a period of time now how did you kind of get to the itch of wanting to do your own thing you know was there how did i get to men's underwear well we'll get some men's underwear just but even before you know and i definitely that's an interesting jump but even before that you've been doing agencies you've been going you know working you know with as a consultant with the agency for quite a period of time in a lot of different locations what first before you got to men's underwear but what even prompted thinking hey i want to do my own thing start down my own path or you know switch up and not do that anymore yeah well you know i think it was just a it was a i was seeking some depth um and what i mean by that is you know i'd gone from you know this very broad um you know broad and very timely mark pr marketing kind of function within agency or you know role or purview um into you know more advertising than into more brand strategies so what that is is you know pr's pr you're already late as soon as you put the press release out you're probably already late it's already happened right when you when you do advertising you want your advertising to last for a little while right you see ads over and over for a period of time and then they go away so it's a little longer lasting when you do somebody's brand or work on their brand strategy that's decades in the making that's that may be longer right so there's some depth to that that i loved but then you know taking it another step further is there was i i wanted to own something right as a consultant you're working on someone else's projects so and i don't i didn't necessarily mean own literally but you know that's certainly part of it but when you're working on someone else's stuff it's their baby you're helping right however however much you're helping it's not your baby so i was looking for something that i could get into and get my hands on i wanted it to be a you know a thing not a service um and you know then i just went through i went through a good you know at least 12 18 month exploration of different areas and it included services too it included you know my exploration included franchises it included starting services companies it included buying companies um it was a it was a pretty broad broad exploration now when you're exploring did you actually try some of those i mean did you do other startups or businesses or is it more exciting i did not see what you thought yeah i did not um although not for lack of trying um because i did make offers on a couple of companies and they did not you know we went pretty far down the path i went pretty down down far down the path with some people you know to get into other businesses um it just didn't end up working out so um so wood was was really you know the first company that i you know launched so now so you know you look into it you do the other companies you get you know try and make some offers didn't work out you know you go through the all the various things they're saying hey i know i want to do my own business kind of have something i own you know both you know physically but also just you know kind of that you can say this is mine type of a thing and so how did you as you're weaving through all those exploring different things making offers and that how did now now i'll ask a question how did you land or land on men's underwear um well i've already used up my joke so um no so um i was doing some brainstorming as part of this exploration with with some other people um what uh underwear came out of it my husband happened to i showed him a prototype and um and then i kind of just set it aside and he um he harassed me for about three months um and just said you have to do this you have to do this you have to do this until i finally said you know how how hard can it be to you know sell a few pair of men's underwear really so and here we are nine years later and i can tell you it's hard it's harder to sell it than it is to buy it well fair enough so now because i think one of the things i think you talked about so you you kind of got that feedback said okay you know got some support from your spouse and did those other things and then you started to i if i remember right and correctly where i'm wrong started kind of taking more off of the shelf for lack of a better word underwear and kind of initially using that but it wasn't to the quality into the standards that you wanted yeah yeah so what you're referring to is um the the first product that i had um i had one style and four colors and i had a lot of it and i uh i ended up loading up my car and you know driving around la and walking into stores and asking the buyer owner if they wanted to see my underwear and that i mean that was really my pitch and um i i learned a lot that year i mean that was probably the first six months of that first year and um i i sold some which is is awesome and it kept me going and um i uh some of my best customers are still some of those customers that i did that you know that that was my first experience with um but the back half of that first year um i changed everything i changed the manufacturer the fabric the packaging the i mean the whole thing changed um and i started out that second year january of that second year with really what is the the um beginnings of the line that we have today so you know we've got five different styles of underwear some thongs and jocks we've got undershirts we've got loungewear we've got henley's um you know all all those sort of core basics and you know really trying to build the story around it so our fabrics um are they have wood viscous in the fabric so there's that part of the story we're certainly having fun with the name and it being men's underwear um you know my whole life is a pun fest right now so it's it's it's a blast um but it's uh it's good though because all of those experiences i mean one of those experiences i drove i drove north to uh san francisco i had a couple of trunk shows set up with stores had my list of who i was going to stock uh talk to all the way up to seattle stopped into a store in portland and um he knew i was coming before i even knew i was there because he had somebody call him from san francisco who would see me at a trunk show and when i walked in he knew who i was which was shocking to me i had no idea that men's underwear was so connected um but uh i i left i left his office and i got in my car and i canceled all my other appointments and i cried all the way to seattle because everything that he told me that was wrong with my product was absolutely true and that's why i spent the last six months of that year changing things and improving and i mean i had the good i had good basics the foundations were there i just needed to put more work into it and i did he was totally right so now now i'm going to shift to so we've kind of brought you up to the story of where you're at today yeah now where do you as an under i'm maybe i'm wrong and i could you could tell but but it doesn't seem like there's a a large amount of area to innovate within men's underwear but where do you take the company is it getting into more stores is it innovating new products and you can prove me wrong there's a lot of innovation to be had there or kind of where do you guys kind of see the next six to 12 months going for you uh so six to 12 months is one or two seasons so um in men's menswear has two seasons a year i think women's has like six sometimes eight seasons a year i don't even know how they do that um so uh it it's one to two seasons is a pretty short amount of time where what we focus on we focus on specialty stores um we folk that means boutiques that means independently owned sometimes they own multiple doors you know there are chains that are owned by private individuals and but that's where that's where we live we live there because i love main street i think main street is the foundation of our whole community main street you know is is is is is is the basis of our neighborhoods um it's it's hard to it's hard to think about having a community in a neighborhood without that main street sort of component to it um and those independent store owners and operators are just critical i think um uh to to society so i love to work there and that's that's kind of what drives me and that's that's like completely opposite from where i started in corporate um which is also pretty fabulous um and then so for men's underwear there's innovation maybe in the form in the context of ip maybe not a lot of innovation because um you can prove me wrong on this i don't think that there's a whole lot you can defend but um but there men don't have all of the fabrics women have so there are fabrics out there that men are only just now being exposed to and women women have had them for decades um there's uh and when when you've when you figure out what's been out there for women all this time and you kind of go what i mean how come i how can i how come we didn't have this right how come we didn't have this um and then also there's an education that needs to happen with men that isn't again maybe necessarily innovation but education is important too and that is that um men need to diversify their underwear drawer i mean if you this is going to be a huge generalization and i don't mean to offend people but i know some people will be offended by what i'm going to say right now you look in a man's underwear drawer across the united states open it up you're going to find the style color brand of underwear that his mother put there when he was 15. that's that's probably a fair it's a it's a fair generalization i'm sure there are exceptions but yeah yeah there are exceptions absolutely but um but yeah so as a as a as a general rule um that's going to be fairly true and the worst part of that is is dependent really kind of doesn't matter how old you are you might have some of the same pair in there men's underwear drawers are really dated so now you're so on a mission to change a man's underwear drawers one jordan correct correct correct and there are some kind styles colors of underwear you don't wear for every occasion or under every pair of pants right i mean a bit you know sort of no-brainer your gym underwear is not your date night underwear well hopefully not some people probably that's the same but yeah i don't know i should not be right not me that shouldn't be as a key word so should not be well as we start to wrap up the podcast and there's always so many things i would think it'd be fun to talk about we never have time to but i always ask two questions at the end of each episode and as a reminder we also have the bonus question that we'll talk a little bit after the normal episode about ip but the normal two questions i ask are um first one is um along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it yeah no i you prepped me for this and i i struggle with the answer not that i don't have an answer but to struggle with one right there's so many there's so many mistakes that you make in business i mean i guess um the the one that comes to mind is i didn't know what i didn't know but i don't think that's a mistake because i think as an entrepreneur founder of a business if you if you knew what you didn't know you wouldn't start right so that's that's just you know it's it's better to go into some things ignorant and figure it out as you go but i think my biggest business mistake was probably not listening to myself about talent i think talent is a really big uh issue for founders and entrepreneurs and business and people who lead businesses and it is having the right talent at the right time and also trying to find that talent when when you can't really when you don't really know that you can afford talent you all you don't really know that you can't afford not to have good talent either so i made some talent errors um brought in people where my gut was like you know i i don't know and um you know you correct those decisions pretty quickly but i probably should have avoided the error all together by just listening to myself a little bit more trusting myself no and i definitely agree and you know talent is one that's a i it's one where i think until you get into it i mean you can always sit back and say oh that was a terrible hire that was a great hire but when you're sitting there trying to figure out who to hire what to hire and what to look for it's a lot harder and sometimes especially as a small business you don't even honestly know all the time the positions aren't fully defined it's not like you're in a big business hey we need a marketing people it can do social social media ads and not only just social media as it has to be facebook ads not only facebook ads you know and you can whittle it down because you have a big enough or you know big enough pool of people that you know specific but when you're a small business or startup yeah it's like i need someone that can do hr hiring and firing marketing and sales productive and you know that you have all these things and you can't hire 20 people all at once correct so it is a hard one to find those and and to find the job so i definitely get that it's one word a terrible error can be a big anchor on the company well and you actually you make a really good point and i'm gonna log the way you put that i think it's easier to hire specialists than it is generalists right people who can wear that you know wear a lot of hats in a you know in a smaller location than somebody who knows how to just do one thing super super well that a small business doesn't usually have luxury to do yeah that's a really good way to put that um yeah so and but my my talent so i i was smart enough to focus on sales talent the challenge was i wasn't smart enough to vet those people properly right sales people can do a sales job on you if they're doing a good job right but um it doesn't necessarily mean they can do the work for you so yeah all right now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them start do it just do it figure out figure out what your risk tolerances are leave everything else behind give yourself a period of time do it just do it everybody once you put it out there people are going to rally it's amazing it's amazing i mean my the guy that um that uh runs my warehouse 3pl services i went to high school with him when i first started my business before i even launched i sent out a note an email to my um to you know my contact list that's all i had and said hey friends and you know and colleagues and family here's what i'm going to do starting three weeks from now i've got this container coming from china and i'm gonna do this and that and i'm gonna you know figure out how to climb the fence and get my product out how to hock at the dock and figure out how to get it to a warehouse and i'm going to be packing orders you know and take him to the post office at night so my friend kevin as soon as i put that word out there you know he called me and he's like teresa you're not doing any of that there there are companies that do this i do this i've got some room to do this no you're not doing that so um in a way i mean he really set the groundwork for for us to be successful today by that one phone call just reaching out and that's what happens when you put it out there if you're going to do something just if you want to do it put a plan together you don't even need a big plan just got to start just start you know and i love that interesting we're coming up on probably this is now you know not aired episodes but over 200 episodes that will be by the time this airs and i'd say probably that's the number one answer across a lot of different entrepreneurs a lot of different journeys is everybody you know it's a variation of basically just go ahead and start like you know everyone can always make excuses you can always figure out reasons why not to do it and yet you'll never or hardly ever regret maybe somebody regrets it but almost never regret getting started trying it out even if you fail you get to try it out you got to live your dream you get to see if it works if you like being an entrepreneur and you leave beside all the what-ifs and could have beens and i should have done that and so i love the idea of just getting started well as we wrap up you know the normal episode again reminder we'll have the bonus question after the normal episode um but as we wrap up this episode if people want to reach out to you they want to find out more they want to be a customer a client they want to be a distributor they want to be an employee they want to be an interesting call me they want to be your next best friend and you're year how do they reach out love it love it well i'm on linkedin of course theresa zimmerman but you can um you can email me at teresa t-e-r-r-e-s-a at what underwear dot com you can go to woodunderwear.com and make purchases there we've got a first-time purchase uh discount code uh try wood all one word i think it's caps i don't it may not be cap sensitive or case sensitive but give it a shot there we'd love to have new customers we'd love to have new friends all right so lisa there's some of the above right so yeah exactly so now appreciate you coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to share your journey just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show and a couple more things as listeners one click subscribe so we know when all of our awesome episodes are air and two leave us a review so when you know or other people can find out about us as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com so with that now that we've now that we've talked about through your journey it's always kind of fun i always i'm always the one that gets to ask the questions and gets to direct things and now we get to flip the tables a bit and you get asked me the question so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask me what's your top intellectual property question oh good i'm excited about this so um so we have you go through the process of protecting your property right so we've got trademarks we've got registration marks um in our in my business but what happens when somebody infringes i mean how defensible is it really in the united states and then more complicated outside the united states so it's and at what point do you decide you can't defend it yeah and that those are a few questions in there so way to yeah question into one question no um no question is it defensible yeah with enough time if if you're in the right you know frivolous lawsuit society but let's say you have legitimate claim somebody is knocking off your brand they're knocking off whether it's patents or trademarks or anything else with enough time and effort you can usually defend and be victorious now the i think so you know and that can be everything from and it's not always a lawsuit sometimes as you reach out to them and you send them a cease and desist and they say hey i didn't realize you were a brand i didn't realize you were creating an issue and they resolve it and a lot of times you get two business owners are being reasonable you cannot resolve it outside the courts you know you can also reach out to them and say hey if you're going in down this road if you're interested we provide a license you can take a license from our brand and you can become you know have that as a business arrangement and have that as an income or you can say if they blow you off you can go file a lawsuit and you can generally be you know have some success the bigger question i think is what you kind of hit on towards the last part of your question which is does it make sense or is it worthwhile to always pursue that i mean you can go and you know here to take as an example patent lawsuits if they go all the way through most of them don't most of them settle out but you know patent their patent lawsuit you're up into the million plus you're in seven figures yeah to get all the way through trademarks are usually six or you're probably probably high five figures or six figures so then tens of thousands upwards a hundred thousand and the question is generally is whether or not it's worth it to pursue meaning if it's a small mom-and-pop shop that hey yes they're technically infringing your brand your fringing app but hey they're making they're not cutting into your cells you know the total amount you could get from them before they go bankrupt is a few thousand dollars or tens of thousands of dollars if you're not going to send or set or spend enough or get get enough to make it worthwhile and or you don't want to have that you know sometimes you get a reputation as being an aggressive you know goliath that's trying to hammer people and then it creates an image problem for your business so you have to look and say or is it worth pursuing but other other times you're going to say hey this is the they're eating into ourselves we've seen a drop of 20 or 30 percent in ourselves it's going to be a big deal it's going to hit our bottom line and we have to pursue it then it is worth it because you're saying it's going to be worth it from our sales perspective because now we are having customers that are being confused and they're buying it from someone else and they're piggybacking off of ours and so most of what i say is if you want it to be defensible you can defend them there's several different options depending on how you want aggressive you want to be but you need to look at and see is there going to be enough return i'd look at it the same as with everything else is there enough return on investment is there enough roi to warrant the investment to go out and enforce it if yes then go out and enforce it there's a good return on if no then you have to say okay let's explore other options or just simply let it go and while sometimes it works you that somebody is writing your hotels it may not make sense as a brand or as an investment does that make sense yeah yeah no it does it does yeah it's uh it it'd be nice to wave a magic wand and just have it go away it's true and everybody you know it depends on which side of it in the sense that if you're on the side that you think that they're attacking you and it's frivolous you're saying i don't want them to just be able to i don't want to have to go pay all this and we're just going to here on the other side we're saying hey we've built tens or we spent years building this and tens of thousands of millions of dollars in a brand and now somebody's writing our coattails and saying i want them to stop so it's hard to make everybody happy true true all right well with that we'll go ahead and wrap up appreciate the question that's always fun to talk a little bit about an intellectual property and certainly a topic i love uh with that appreciate it again coming on the the podcast theresa and with the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you devon appreciate it very much