You Need Other People

You Need Other People

Brian Adams
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
3/26/2021

Realize your strengths and weaknesses. Understand that the people around you really do have superhuman abilities compared to what you may have. You need other people and identify where people are strong, so you can synergize and make something bigger than what you are on your own together. That's a real thing. You can't do it all alone, so you need to find the right people to help bring something amazing.

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

realize um your strengths and weaknesses um and then definitely understand that the people around you really do have super human abilities compared to what you may have and so um you need you need other people you need to identify where people are strong um and so so you can synergize and and make something bigger than than what you are on your own together that's that's a real thing um you can't do it all alone so you have you need to find the right people um to help um help create something amazing [Music] 

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 a ceo and founder of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents trademarks and everything else related to their business and if you ever need help with your business feel free to go to strategy strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast brian adams and give you a quick intro on brian so brian uh back all the way in high school was a bit more sports focused did wrestling went to state twice after uh after high school went to utah state um here in utah and i think uh went and pursued aerospace degree for a period of time um was looking at how to kind of pay for college when did the military is a means to do that and then oper had an opportunity to to go out and actually fly and so um with that opportunity didn't finish up the college degree when was an officer flew helicopters which just sounds really fun and cool um for a while did that in afghanistan and then after got after out of uh out of the military i'm always wishing he'd finish the degree so i think he went to europe and greece and germany and other places kind of finished a degree graduated right as the recession was coming on in 2009 so spent i think i think over a year sending out over a thousand resumes and uh still gives them chills a little bit or makes them sick to fill out a res or to send out a resume but then uh was a big driving force in starting a company so um and that will play on a little bit later on finally did get a i think a job at uh as a vedas or vestas fetus um vestus all right and uh was uh for wind turbines and went and helped uh build those all over sites all over the country in the world and uh but had to move every two months and so that was kind of had a wife and was uh uprooting and moving all around could only understand that for about four years and then decided hey we want to settle back down not have to move all over the country in the world so then came back and decided to do uh rocky mountain renewable energies and started that kind of expecting to fail and then turn it into a success or at least to where it's at today so with that much is a quick run through an introduction welcome on the podcast brian 

thanks thanks for having me appreciate it 

absolutely so uh so i gave kind of the one minute rundown of your a bit of your journey but now taking us back in time a little bit to high school and then the college tell us a little bit about how your journey got started and let's have a good conversation 

yeah you want me to start back in high school huh 

uh why not that's always a good place to start 

all right um so so yeah i i definitely uh just enjoyed my time i went to uh brighton high school um and it was actually fun we actually just had had a 50-year uh reunion for for the wrestling program down there and uh supposed to be he recognizes one of the on the top uh you know 18 wrestlers through the history of the school which is pretty cool uh very honored to have that that uh honor to to be there for that so that was cool so yeah so then so then then you went to high school loved wrestling and then you started out going to college kind of after uh graduating from high school and you know then that's how you got started in aerospace but then also got started in the military is that right yeah yeah definitely i i yeah i went to utah state university for a bachelor's and uh yeah went into uh aerospace and uh yeah i loved that that was really fun and and then uh to pay pay for that yeah i just uh joined the during the military uh went into the army and got accepted into the war officer program which is definitely the best way to go if you're looking at that versus the commission route but that's a topic for another discussion i guess um but uh yeah that was that was fun but when they give you a slot to go fly they they basically say you're gonna go at the state time and drop everything to do it so um so yeah i went over there to uh to finish out the uh advanced training for the helicopters and uh through the th67 um which is kind of like a news helicopter if you envision that and then uh and then we flew through the apache as well so and then it actually just sounds kind of cool to fly was it is it as exciting as it sounds or was it fun to fly and was it you know or was it uh after you've done so many flights it loses a little bit of his excitement uh no it never loses its excitement um i it was um always always fun um always intense uh i mean even on the times where it wasn't intense uh you know you'd always have a you know partner that was um you know really really always dedicated to training so so even even on flights where it should be boring i these guys are amazing at just creating scenarios uh mid-flight saying hell yeah you know you're just flying along fat dumb and happy and then this happens and then you know they'll take off an inch and then and then you have to auto rotate you know split seconds so those guys are really good at always keeping on your toes um you know coming up with you know ingenious mind games to help uh train you so it's it's awesome yeah great experience so and you did that i think it was for four years is that right or how many years did you were in the military in afghanistan and serving so i i was in the army for eight years okay um and did that i was you know afghanistan for a short time uh i was only working for about uh i'd actually been six months in africa afghanistan so pretty pretty short before i caught the tail end of the deployment right after i finished uh high school so flight school straight into afghanistan you know so yeah 

so now you did that now for eight years which is a good amount of time and then you finally were coming out of the military and what made you decide to transition out of the military was it you know afghanistan was winding down or you'd reach the end of your service or you you know you're wanting to do something else or kind of what made you transition from being in the military to going back into private life 

oh you know i i think i think uh it came down to that um that traveling factor again uh just lots lots of traveling um multiple deployments away from family and friends those types of things um so yeah that can that can definitely take a toll um you know a while too so um yeah and then and they're just and just the excitement of wanting to to get in the engineering side um and and you um yeah just fulfill that dream i guess um they're i guess for an entrepreneur that's that's almost kind of our problem is as we we always want to create and do more things and and do things that challenge us i guess um i don't know if you find that with yourself or not too but i i definitely have that problem where i'm always wanting to do more i guess so no i definitely think that makes sense and certainly get where you're coming from so so now you come into the private life and first of all i think you went back did you go back and study and you went around with to europe and greece and germany and other places studying to finish up your degree is that is that what i remember from talking with you so yeah no i finished my bachelor's degree um and but it wasn't an insurance right because it's combination of aerospace engineering and and aviation so i came on that to make a bachelor's degree and then for the for the master's degree that's when i focused on my engineering portion to finish that out so okay so now and so you finish it up you finish you up your degree at the perfect time of 2009 when the world's falling apart and everything's crashing so right now as you're coming out and you know you've you finally finished it all up you know and you talked a little bit about sending out a thousand plus resumes and doing that for over a year kind of how did you buoy up your spirits how did you do because i mean there is a bit of parallels between 2009 and people in unemployment today and finding jobs and having to navigate that and adjust to it so how did you eventually find your you know find where you were gonna land and how did that how did that period of your life go yeah so um yeah i love your parallels between right now and and the great recession um i i think i think there are a lot of similarities especially um the need to be able to create and and to invent and and to start your own business has probably never been more important than right now and and during that great recession period and i i i'm not sure that i see see an end to that i kind of see this um you know if you want to call it council council culture or whatever you want to want to say about it um i think i think that could be a dangerous road for uh for a lot of people for years to come um potentially so um i think the ability to to have kind of a plan b um business setup for for any individual is is probably pretty important at this point in time so i yeah i appreciate your parallels there but um but yeah that during that time is pretty horrible it's pretty pretty frustrating um trying to get a job when companies not only are not hiring but they're actually laying people off saying we've got too many people we got to get rid of these people um you know nearly impossible to find find something at that point especially um you know someone with a master's degree um at that time where people were really hurting they're losing their stock market investments 401ks all those things you know so yeah it's um definitely challenging frustrating um and um yeah i was kind of made out of necessity um a little bit to start creating the business um and and pay off you know my student loans um and and get all that going and figure out how to make a better way forward so now how did you so going through that how did you get into vestas or how did you find that or finally after enough searching how did you get hired on there yeah so just having another searching so um sylvester's with the i got hired on as a resource project technician and and that's uh to give you an idea of what that job entails it's it's basically climbing up 300 feet up to the top of these really high wind turbines um in you know sometimes crazy weather i i work up in canada in alberta in negative 40 degree weather um and and so they have a really high turnaround rate there so the average person that stays there um you know project technician stays there for about two years is you know the normal length of time where they they stay on just because of um the stress it's you know it's fairly um you know there's some risk involved to that job as well um there's a lot of um things that can that can harm you you've got rotating parts you know high high current electricity um high voltage um you've got pneumatics um hydraulics uh all kinds of things that that can be potentially dangerous as well so um uh you know talking about keeping your on your toes again um i gotta gotta watch out for all that stuff so so yeah that's that's about the normal time where people you know have have had enough about two years so i was there for four and uh after that and yeah we we're definitely ready to move on so so you get you know you kind of you you do that and a bit out of necessity and bit out of opportunity saying okay we uh you know one i need employment too you know it's it's something to kind of get back into the state or at least you know kind of get back on your feet after graduate school so you do that and then four years sounds like a grueling job certainly enough that you've you know you've had had your fill of a bit and want to settle down and not have to move around so much which is completely understandable so as you're now looking saying okay i've got you know i've done vestas i've got the experience with the military got the experience with your degrees and whatnot and you're saying okay had enough of moving around and having that you know kind of high stress job how did you then transition away from that into doing your own thing uh at that point i i felt i was definitely ready to take on anything that was thrown at me between uh you know the military train uh you know my career there and and the career with vestas was was really intense as well and just constantly getting all these problems thrown at you and having to figure out how how to do that um it was one of those points where um where you know we were talking about salaries and those things and trying to get uh you know a salary bigger and and uh it was one of those points where where i gave my my uh my supervisor an idea about you know how how he could pay for my whole salary for a year's period of time if you just made a certain switch with um you know by directing um by wiring something different um and rounding the the wires to a different spot um he could sell the electricity for a higher rate for energy they're already producing and that would have paid for my entire salary and and so i told him about it he's like yeah i'm not sure that we want to do it i was like wow that's crazy you know and at that point i was like wow my ideas are actually like that good where i can pay for my salary for entire year just by doing simple things like that it just um that was definitely a motivating factor where i'm like yeah i'm definitely ready you know to come to the point where um you know i i have the confidence to go off on my own but but yeah you're right i mean i've never i've never set up a business and even just starting up the business and you're like oh do i want to use sole proprietorship or llc or c corp and they're just like oh i have no idea about this stuff you know it is frustrating um just uh starting the business and and all the things that you don't know and and all the things that you're you know you know you're short on um but uh if i if i have any advice to people's definitely be to not let that get in the way you need to find ways to um to get through that and overcome those obstacles where wherever your weakness come or find the people that can help you overcome 

so kind of one follow-up question to that so he said okay you know started to see hey you know have these great ideas i think you can save money boss isn't necessarily going to implement them or go for them so you know i can do kind of you know i think that there's a lot of entrepreneurs that you always think you can do something better whether you do it better than your boss you know better you're more efficient you can do it because if you never thought you could do it better you would never actually try you're saying oh somebody else is already doing it better then you would never think to go out on your own so you kind of figure out hey i think i want to try this i think i can do some things different something's improved and so how did you did you just jump right in and start you know your own business you one day you walked in you quit and you said i'm gonna i've had it and i'm gonna go do my own thing did you transition it started out as a side hustle or kind of how did you get your own thing up and going as you at once you made that decision 

so i i had built um a lot of the design concepts spent a lot of time kind of daydreaming about it uh building my own business uh during the great recession um when i was out of work and um but yeah i just didn't during the great recession i just didn't feel like i had um all the tools that i needed at that time so i i was just you know but i i dove into it um and and so what's interesting is i actually started up my first job was in 2010 um right after i i graduated it was for a wind turbine company um well an investor for a wind turbine farm and this wind turbine farm um guy said hey i want you to do uh analysis and tell me what the rate of return would be on this wind farm and so i did this wind farm form and it went really well i had my first customer i was so excited but uh when i got done with the uh with the analysis i had to go to him and i said i have to say you know my analysis is that you shouldn't be the wind farm and i talked myself out of out of the job well talk to him out of the job because it wasn't uh economical uh the wind the wind resource just wasn't good enough in that area um as as he had thought so um so after that you know things kind of tapered down a little bit and that's when i got got the job actually um you know with vestas okay which did which actually did pay off all my debt and uh it paid off all my student loans which is awesome so they were great to work for so and no i think that's definitely a benefit and it's certainly nice to be able to walk away and not have the student loans and other things as you're trying to start your own business so now you decided to do rocky mountain renewable energy how did you transition from vestas over to rocky mountain renewable energy or kind of doing that doing your own thing getting that up and going and making that transition so at that time um i i was really focused on demand uh when i first tried to start out rocky mountain renewable energy and and i i had learned that the wind resource here in utah is just generally speaking it's not where it needs to be as a general statement there are some exceptions and things like that where where it could be better but um but we have not as good as a win resource and and really um you know in in 2000 um 2015 2014 area that that's when i started looking more in solar and i started looking at the numbers and i'm like wow solar really does make sense and so i transition away from wind um after doing that analysis and and i and i really just locked myself into a room for about three days um and and really intensely focused on on how how to actually put this together how to make the numbers work for solar and very impressed that it was the numbers did pan out um it looked great um on paper and and i built up the presentations all the excel sheets everything that i needed to actually um make the ideas a working model and and then i just went out door knocking um and i i just wanted to test out uh my ideas on someone that i never met before and just wanted just straightforward feedback uh from people that probably didn't even want to hear it so uh so yeah i knocked on a couple doors and um and i i knocked on i think four doors and then i ran into uh to a guy that says and this is really important to you when you're starting a business um he said i want your 62-second pitch um you know and he's like if i like it and you can come in if i don't i'll ask you leave so and he said go and so uh if you're starting up in business that's the first thing you know one of the first things that you need is you need that 60 second pitch where you don't want to tie people uh up with their time too much but enough to and treat people that they want to hear more um so i gave him that pitch and he's like that well he's like that was pretty good yeah come on in and um and i think that experience um and that that gentleman his name is royce kruger um that let me in and he just happened to be the one of the uh co-founders of seven habits of highly effective people and he was incredible uh incredible mentor to me um through that experience of just knocking on round doors which is amazing so call it fade or whatever you will but that that definitely that day changed my life 

so now so you make the pitch and you and you know he sits in he becomes or brings you in becomes a bit of a mentor and starts to kind of go down that route and so as janelle you said okay we've made the we've made we've got the pitch in hand we've got some you know positive feedback we've got some ideas of where the business is going now how did you go about kind of actually building the business or getting customers or getting sales or actually getting income and how did that go was it from day one just tons of sales and massive you know spike to the top was it ups and downs is it still ups and downs or kind of how has that been going 

as you said okay one i made the commitment two i've done my homework three i know where i'm headed but now you actually have to build a business route all right so how's that gone for you oh so yeah sales has always been uh my most difficult part i'm definitely not a salesman and i think i think it's it's pretty important to to be a salesman um when you have a business you definitely have to sell yourself sell your abilities all those things but that was definitely my weakness for sure was on the sell side um technically um you know on the technical side i had everything down that i needed to have down um and so i yeah i worked on design we worked on design and engineering building out the cad for that so we have like all the cad files made so we can do all the engineering and submit those permits to the cities um so uh you know the installation and the engineering and all those things came first so we are by heart an installation company rather than a sales company cells were very slow to start out um that was pulling teeth but once we got you know a cell here and a cell there we just did all of the groundwork to make that happen so we're definitely weak on the on the sell side and strong on the actual installation and and service side of things so now so now acknowledging that you know the installation the actual product side and you know going out and doing the installs is your strong side you know either what is what's the current plan or kind of what's the plan in the future how do you go about because you know part of the part of the difficulty is acknowledging where you're weak but then once you acknowledge where you're weak or where you need to have additional skill sets it's now filling that place and filling that skill set so kind of how do you envision kind of going forward or if you already have kind of feeling that that need of the company so that you have it kind of strong on all friends yeah so royce is really the one uh that that helped build up the cell side because he really understood cells so well um he just understands understands the human nature so well um and all the little tips and and the way that he develops people uh you naturally gravitate to to him uh because he just really sincerely cares about people um and wants to help and better them and and he sees opportunity uh for himself in helping others succeed as well which is really cool to you it's it's that seven habits of win-win you know if if you can help someone else win then i can win at the same time and that's that's one of the principles and he was amazing at it so um he he helped us build up the sell side so that so yeah we became a full-service epc company um and and we've we've definitely picked up our sales site quite a bit um but we we haven't really advertised at all um haven't done much of or don't really door knock uh really all of our work comes in from rep referrals and reputation based which is really great place to be 

so so now that kind of almost brings us up to to where you're at today so now if you're to look kind of into the future the next six to 12 months where do you see things heading what's the plan and and where and how are things going to play out 

so um before this last you know five six years the solar industry has just been about you know putting solar panels up on your roof and and having a great tide system and what's what's interesting is in the last um in the last month things have changed and and so how they've changed is is right now there's you know the bottom administration is really heavily focused on renewable energy um in all its fronts energy efficiency um it's one of their main platforms of their administration which is great um but with that the utility company has also come in and said you know what we're actually going to get a rebate for batteries and um and that's that's a game changer as well so so there's gonna be a lot of um batteries uh lots of eb cars coming out um you know all those things are gonna be coming on you know pretty hot and heavy here soon and so that's that's the way the market's gonna change um a lot of battery integration off-grid smart smart battery systems that can communicate um by not only providing backup power uh if the grid goes down but also um rocky mountain about power just changed their rates for example so that um if you consume power between one and eight o'clock you're going to get charged more than uh if you use power after that in the nighttime for example so you can use that battery to um to absorb power from the grid at night and then sell it back or not sell it back but but use it for your own house instead of paying for more expensive power from rocky mountain power during that time so you can kind of play the daily stock market of energy now at a home level which is a game changer for the next few years so batteries just became really important 

no and it seems like batteries are always you know as you're looking at whether it's electric cars you're looking at solar or any really source of energy that definitely always tends to play a major role in that because once you collect the energy now how do you store it how long can you store it and kind of what does that all you know how does how does that all play for usability of it once you capture the energy so it definitely makes sense so well as we start to wrap towards the end of the or towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions that i ask so we'll jump to those now so the first question i'll ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it 

really good question um yeah worst worst business decisions uh that i made were definitely on the sell side um and those those came in um i think i think of my worst business decisions are um people that i thought and and you know entrusted to do um a sales job for us and and um some of these guys you know solar's a very competitive market and i think a lot of solar you know ceos can relate to this about the competitive nature of solar and and wanting to attract the best talent and you know got to the point where some of these um some of these positions are pretty competitive and and offering a an upfront bonus to salesmen um before they complete a job and uh i think that's probably one of my biggest mistakes i i definitely encourage companies to avoid that even in competitive markets um to avoid offering you know upfront bonuses um you know before they actually complete work yeah that's that's probably my biggest mistake 

no that's certainly one that's easy to make but one to learn from in the sense you know it's always hard when you're trying to offer incentive programs and trying to get people to work harder and be more efficient everything else you know you're always trying to figure out how to optimize that and how to make it better and sometimes you don't necessarily always see the negative repercussions or the ways that the system will be game so to speak or other ways that you'll have to adjust it so it's one that's a lesson that you know if you're wanting to incentivize people sometimes you just have to learn the hard lessons or the ways that things that don't work in order to get that better better system one of the guests we even had on the podcast i think he was uh talking about how he was now in the um kind of the printing business you know making signs and banners and then they kind of became full service but he talked about how it really took him he went in thinking he was going to be able to just make these great incentive programs and they'd all work and to change the industry and it took him about 20 years to figure out how all the or how he was what the best incentive programs were and how that would work and it was because it was continually iterating figuring out what did work what didn't work what were the mistakes he made so i think it's definitely one to learn from so now as we 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 would be the one piece of advice you'd give them 

um realize um your strengths and weaknesses um and then definitely understand that the people around you really do have super human abilities compared to what you may have and so um you need you need other people you need to identify where people are strong and so so you can synergize and and make something bigger than than what you are on your own together that's that's a real thing um you can't do it all alone so you have you need to find the right people um to help um help create something amazing and it's it's so fun being able to have an idea and and you know say a company name that you that you you've thought about and then to actually have people talk about that thing that you created up in your head as as an actual entity as an almost as an actual person it's amazing that's an incredible feeling 

so no no and i like to kind of finding the right and identifying the right team members the right people on the team and everything else in the sense that you know one of the things that you always especially if you were to a lot of times talk with venture capitalists or even angel investors they're gonna say one of the things that they're always looking for and they're investing in is the team right the team that you're building around the people you have around you the people that are part of it because a lot of times when it's a startup or small business you don't know if it's going to be successful you don't know if you're going to make it and a lot of times the difference between success and failure isn't necessarily the product or the you know the business plan but it's the people you have error that's involved with the business so i like that as a as a point of advice yeah there's there's i yeah i could do a whole new podcast on just just advice and you know the the wisdom of um of royce and you know all the things that he's mentioned about you know sharpening your saw taking the time to actually find better ways to do things um you know making making sure that you treat your customers amazingly so that they they can refer you and the amount of business that that brings by just treating customers you know incredibly so that they they they can refer people to you and what that can do for your business is incredible so um yeah it's um yeah really good tips there for sure yeah so so now as we start to wrap up and just as a reminder for people um if we do have the bonus question where we turn the tables a bit and i i talk a little bit about intellectual property and patents and trademarks and whatnot so that is coming up so if you want to stay tuned and hear a little bit more about intellectual property definitely stay tuned to the end of the episode but otherwise for as we wrap up if people are wanting to use your services or wanting to get into solar they're wanting it into renewable energy they want to be a customer they want to be a client they want to be a wholesaler they want to be your 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 with you and reach out and find out more 

yeah so um i'm really willing to help on any level um even if somebody is starting up a business i'm actually willing to give back and help people um in in lots of different ways so yeah feel free to contact me um my business number is 801.980.0700 and then i'll even give you out my cell number uh just because it's the miller ip log or it's uh 801 860-3120 it's my personal sell you're a welcome call 

all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out if you're looking if you're in the market for solar or you're looking in the market to learn more or you just want to be having your next best friend any of the all the above reach out to brian and find out more well thank you again for brian for coming on it's been a pleasure and for all of you listeners one if you have your own journey to tell feel free to reach out to us by going to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast and tell your journey also if you're a listener make sure to one click subscribe on your podcast listeners to get notifications as all our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about the awesome podcast last but not least if you ever need help with your patents or trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller ip law by just going to strategymeeting.com and grabbing some time to chat well as we wrap now as we've wrapped up and we jump over to the bonus question it's always as fun it's a little bit turning the table so i get it throughout the normal podcast get asked the questions get a follow-up and dive in a bit on your journey and sort of flip the tables a bit with uh now you get asked what is your uh what is your number one intellectual property or property law question that i can answer for you 

so yeah you mentioned uh you know what's up coming in the future and i talked a little bit about batteries the other thing that's uh that's going to be a really big game changer which uh kind of relates to the patent uh you know side of things is uh is the solar sync the solar single side of things uh solar shingles are definitely up and coming um thing um i think i think a lot of people um and companies right now that are doing them aren't necessarily doing them in the optimum way so i think that's um there's a lot of room for improvement there and that's going to be an interesting field that i'm definitely interested to look for partnerships and uh people that are interested in to uh to making an incredible solar single product um that's that's where i'm at um and i i'm definitely wanna be surrounded by those people that have that goal in mind um to produce the best solar shingles and we've definitely got some incredible ways to to make that happen so um 

so now what is it now maybe i missed it so what's the question in there what can i or what can we discuss on intellectual property as related to the kind of the the solar power solar shingles and everything else 

yeah so so the question is uh more along the lines of uh you know when we go through uh our patents um and and we get that patents um what what do i need as far as like a war chest to protect that patents um do i need a war chest um how is it how easy is it for someone to go around that patent for example um if we do get one um i'm definitely interested to hear your thoughts on that front 

yeah so there's a couple questions in here and definitely you know within the confines i'll just give you some general advice and every it's always specific to each business but you know on a war chest when you look at patents first of all i'd back it up just a little bit in the sense that it depends on what you're going to do with the patent in the sense that everybody you know you say okay i've got an invention i've got a great idea i got to run out and get a patent on it it's kind of the the knee jerk a lot of people have on it without really thinking about what you're going to do with the patent so there's a few different uses of a patent and then we'll dive into a little bit of your question so one can be you just want to box everybody out of the market you want to have exclusivity on what you're manufacturing what you produce what you've invented for the period of 20 years of the patent you want to be able to box everybody out and you know that's where if you were an apple or samsung or anybody you created something new and great and you just want to be able to com or have that exclusivity that's one way another way is to say okay we're also we want to go in here and we want to make ourselves a better target for acquisition or for merger or for something of that nature or somebody's going to come by your business or invest in it then you're going to look and say what we're really doing is capturing some of the assets a lot of what you do when you invent something is once you invented it you can you know it's simple to people after the fact you know it's always easier to figure out 

oh yeah that makes sense 

how they did it once it's been done as opposed to the r d and the time and effort to actually figure it out and so you know one of the ways you capture a lot of that time money sweat and blood sweat and tears that goes into in or creating something is by a patent so then you have an asset hey we own something we can show that we actually captured that value and then somebody comes in that they want to invest you actually have assets they can invest in so that's kind of another thing that you're looking at is is a purpose to one stop others from doing it is it two more to make yourselves a more desirable investment or otherwise have assets or three is it more of hey we want to really set ourselves up so that we can license it so as other people's doing it we don't want to stop them from doing it we just simply want to get our income or money is distributed to us for the um for all of the time that we put into in different development so kind of with those when you ask about a war chest that you know kind of flavors a bit of your strategy in the sense of hey if i want to go out and i want to have dominancy i just want to have exclusivity and otherwise stop people if you want to go head to head it can be difficult if you're a small business a small startup and you're going against a tesla which you know has a the roof solar cells or other ones then it can be difficult because they can even if you're in the right they can spend you under the table they can outspend you and they can drive your business to where you you're not going to make it through the legal process so the better question or when you're looking at batons a lot of times there's a few strategies if that's what you want to do one is every competitor every big company has a competitor apple has samsung you know coca-cola has pepsi nike has adidas you know you can go through and almost inevitably unless you're a pure monopoly every company has a competitor and so you can a lot of times if you have a patent you're saying we don't have the war chest you can go to that you know that competitor of the person that's not infringing your patent say we got this valuable patent you know we've got this intellectual property portfolio your competitor is infringing on it we don't have the ability to go enforce it but it has a lot of value why don't you either acquire from us licensing or otherwise take over and enforce it and then you let the competitor do the work for you another way you can do it if you're looking at war chests you're saying we don't have a war chest is you can say hey we today we don't have the money to go enforce it but we're still doing well we've still got a good business we're growing in market share we're making a profit we're going to save up until we do have a war chest and then we're going to go and enforce it against them when we have the ability to go do that and so when you're looking at enforcement you're going to be anywhere from on a patent infringement case um six lows or middle six figures so half a million up to a million or two million in order to really get through it and so you have to when you're going down that road you have to really just consider whether or not it's worthwhile to go out or after someone or whether or not you know it makes sense or if you navigate it a different way the other question you kind of had was on you know how broad it is navigating around it designing around it you know is there really a breath can you really get enough value in it to capture that and that one is a difficult one so give you a couple examples if you wanted to if you came to me and said i want to get a patent on a golf club you better have a really good innovation for golf clubs because one of the most crowded areas in all of intellectual property is golf clubs the reason being is you got a whole bunch of rich doctors and rich or attorneys and other people that go play golf and they all have their idea of how they want first of all they want to go tell their friends that they have a patent on a golf club and they want to go and impress and they all have a bit of expendable income and so they all try and go file a patent on it of which it makes for an incredibly crowded fill which means you have to get a very narrow patent if you can even get one such that it greatly reduces the value sometimes you can still get a very valuable pattern but it can be very narrow on the other hand if it's a more open field meaning that there's a lot of innovation being done a lot of different things and you can find capture those nuggets that really give you the value that can be the difference between you know 10x efficiency or it makes it more cost effective or it makes it it cuts the time and have to do installation if you can find some of those nuggets that yes other people could do it other ways they could design around it but it's going to be so cost prohibitive it's going to be so inefficient or otherwise that they'd rather either not do it or come and get a license for you that's where you're trying to look at so it kind of depends on how crowded the field is and how innovative the work you're doing is as to whether or not you can get a good a broader patent that can give you a lot of room to box other people out so with that there's that is a great conversation of which i could dive into and and talk on for a much longer period of time and then everybody would start falling asleep and they would they would tune out of the podcast but there's a a couple answers at least to start to touch on your top intellectual property question now with that we'll wrap up with the podcast again brian appreciate you coming on the podcast it's been fun 

it's been a pleasure 

i appreciate you doing it and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much what are you having to have me on 

thank you you