Invest In Yourself
Manish Vakil
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
6/1/2021
Invest In Yourself
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.
Get New Episodes
Get 2 brand-new podcast episodes sent to you every week!
ai generated transcription
you have to invest in yourself you know a lot of people always say go and talk to everybody else but you have to know your weaknesses and you you definitely have to work on those uh you know that's one of the things i've done you know i write down uh still to this day i have a book in front of me right you know and i write down listen uh before every meeting that starts right on top uh because you know as when you're starting off a business you think you know everything uh you know and one thing one thing is you know learn to listen uh you know that's one of the things i have to learn from myself so i would say you have to invest in yourself and you know find your weaknesses uh and then and then work on them that'll definitely go a long way in you being [Music] successful everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast manish vakil you know as close as i can to pronounce name right and uh he came to the us when he was in sixth grade i didn't speak any english they had to actually take him back to fifth grade or because of the english barrier learned i think to speak most of his english by by television and by going to school and then when he got into high school kicked things into gear and said hey i want to be successful i want to get a good uh good education so i got there graduating from high school went to rutgers did finance and econ and then worked with wall street for a period of time did some consulting as well and then was doing that for a period of time i decided to go out to his own business about the about a year before he got married did have his own businesses got into some franchises bought some franchises sold some franchises ran those for a period of time and then decided to start his own franchising company um was actually with one of the previous people he'd worked with on a franchise gym bought that from them turned it around built it up and been doing that along with a few other franchises and growing things ever since so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast i appreciate it devin thank you very much for having me so i gave the quick 30 or 30 second run through to a much longer journey so that'll take us back in time a bit to sixth grade and trying to figure out how to learn english coming to the u.s going to school and how that started there oh wow uh well that's a flashback yeah definitely uh yeah i came here from india when i was 10 years old came as you mentioned in sixth grade and they put me back in fifth because of the fact that i didn't know any english a very different world let's put it that way coming in from india landing in jfk airport uh you know and uh and then suddenly you know you're thrust into uh manhattan and you're driving through and then and then you end up in jersey of all places in the world so uh you know uh it's at least to say it was it was a shock um you know looking at the world up at everybody and thinking oh my god i don't understand what anyone is saying and i'm in a completely different world and now i'm going to be living here uh so uh but you know everything has its challenges but also the positives that are there as well uh so it was the nice part of exploring a new world and that kind of gets me into where i am entrepreneur today which you know allows me to kind of pivot and go into different areas and you know as i said i like to be i'm only comfortable when i'm uncomfortable the minute i become comfortable uh it feels like i'm becoming complacent so you know we started with that uh went into i guess elementary schools and high schools and as you mentioned you know the hard part the best part was i did get to watch a lot of tv you know so because the idea was to tell the parents hey this is the way i'm learning english you know so that was the positive side of it uh so so that worked out uh from your uh you know the one that i didn't mention to you was the tv shows was uh wrestling was one of the things i used to watch when i was 10 years old it was a saturday morning 10 o'clock wrestle you know wrestlemanias and uh and i don't even remember that way back in the day uh you know tito santana to macho man and hulk hogan stuff uh that was that was some of the stuff that i used to watch too uh but you know going going into the business side of it uh it did definitely prepare you for what you are today uh you know in your past you know a lot of people say i wish i didn't do that i wish i didn't do this but all of those things build me to who i am today you know um and that's a key part of it no and i think that definitely you know i and i a little bit later in life i went to or did a religious mission for my church when i was 19 and uh i i went to taiwan so it was chinese and i had absolutely no idea you get like 12 weeks of training and then you get over into taiwan you're like that's not what they taught me and i have no idea what they're saying and you just have to dive in and get going so i feel for you and that's got to be a bit of an even a more interesting uh period of time when you're a little kid and you're saying i have no idea what they're saying i guess we'll we'll start to figure it out so now yeah you know you start to acclimate to the language and the culture and kind of get in the u.s and then went to high school you know kick things into gear got uh or get ready and go to college you went to rutgers and i think you said you did finance and econ is that right yeah you got it yeah yeah so actually i started off it wasn't even that i was supposed to go into dentistry so i started doing the science classes you know and then you go in and you're like hey you took science in high school uh but did you go into college and you know i did bio ap and all this stuff in high school and it was like yeah it was great um and it was nice and it was fun okay great now you get in and you're doing it in college and you're like yeah i'm not really a fan of chemistry i don't really like physics so the first year luckily didn't take me longer than that and i took electives classes was mainly because i took econ because when i talked to the professor they said listen everyone who goes into business if you want to go into dental school you're gonna have you're gonna want something that's different than everyone else everyone who applies is gonna have chemistry biology any one of these majors so he goes go and do a business minor and that'll make you stand out you know well long behold you know i took that as a minor which turned into a major after because i didn't even bother applying for dental school because i couldn't stand the science to be honest um but that's how i ended up in business yeah so now you you come out of school and you graduate in business you know you say okay dentistry is not for me it's not where i want to head i'll go into the business which i'm right there with you business sounds a lot more fun but you go and do that for a period of time and you know you i think you started out going there graduating and went to wall street is that right well yes i was working during the school years i used to work uh throughout the day like you just have the unpaid internships and this is you gotta remember it's internet boom time right this is 97 95 96 97 98 you know you're talking about you know the i graduated in 95 so right after that that's when the the internet is just going absolutely nuts right founding of amazon google all of this stuff is happening uh so i was working on i was working at a couple of these different startups in manhattan uh and we used to work from like you know eight to four come back take the train back to to college and then go to class from six to nine at night uh it was the evening schooling uh so you know three credits a day you know four days a week in a saturday class which was man that was torture uh but uh uh but uh but yeah that was the idea and and then i ended up on wall street afterwards which was i was doing consulting for a company out of boston and it put me in a consulting job at wall street uh for jp morgan so i was working on their project management side um which was a lot of fun that was a lot of fun that's where the technology side comes in you're working together with a lot of different areas i even forgot the pinnacle alliance i think is what it was called it was like a combination of old anderson consulting and jp morgan and comp you i forgot the uh compuserve i think was it i'm not even sure the third company that was there but yeah all these old companies that don't exist anymore uh but it definitely teaches you a lot it was a lot of fun you know you're 20 something years old and you're walking into wall street makes a huge difference than starting and not speaking any english then you know you know you know 12 years 10 years before that no i definitely and that you know kudos to you that hey you kind of come from i didn't speak english now i've gone to university now i'm going to wall street i'm working for some of the biggest firms and you know and and uh having that opportunity that's a that's certainly a great journey to have now you you did wall street for a period of time and then how you know what what caused you to get out of wall street or to change directions or to go in a different direction well so when i was there you know originally i i could never you know that's why i was in consulting i had a hard time and i listened for what it's worth you know my parents probably thought this guy's been i don't know where he's gonna end up or what he's gonna do because it was like i couldn't hold on a job i should say uh because i kept leaving jobs left and right i always thought something was better something was new anytime something became mundane i was like you know i have to move on and it was like nine months to a year year and a half every place um you know that's what it was so i kept moving around from job to job so the consulting job in manhattan they ended and then i ended up at places in new jersey uh i actually took a job which was crazy was uh uh enterprise rent-a-car believe it or not their management training program and i have to give them credit i'll be honest because uh leaving a job that was paying so well and when i ended up here it was working with people and it was literally cleaning cars moving up to writing rental contracts and learning how to run a business that's where i learned a lot you know you're looking at income you know you're working as an assistant manager now i worked my way up to an assistant manager there and i remember you're looking at you know your profit loss statements how much did you make this month you have to go to local marketing go talk to body shops go talk to insurance companies you have to build up local business with local corporate people and go and set meetings with them that's where i actually learned a lot of the hustling i came from and i have to give it i mean it's an amazing training program that i went through real life uh and that's what it was and i didn't mind working you know six days a week and i was working probably like 70 hours a week but it was a lot of fun uh i definitely learned a lot from that job and that's what got me into the business side of things of owning a small business well that that's got to be a pretty good transition between you know working for wall street to go working for you know car rentals and yet i you know it's interesting as many you know some of those they have to have really good programs because it's competitive marketplace you have to learn how to to you know be better than the others you have to know how to pitch yourself you know how to run the business and you know do profit loss and you know look at profit margins and return on investment and on and on and it can make the big difference between whether or not it's profitable in a good business or whether or not it goes under so so now you go do that you you do that you know do car rentals for a period of time and then you know how did you then get into the the franchise aspect they're starting to go into franchises or franchises and do that for the career well i could have stayed with that company right and then i had an opportunity and a friend couple of friends who were working for uh you know adp and this i had another corporate place and they were like you know now you're thinking about i was going out with my uh now current wife and it was like you know what are you gonna do you can't exactly stay at this job for a long time she'll get a master's degree or something else at that point uh and i was looking at that and i didn't want to pay for it right so the best thing to do is go get a job with a company that's going to allow you to get a master's degree so i ended up with uh adp uh automatic data processing uh obviously one of the biggest payroll companies now uh that's out there and you know i was working for them and doing my master's degree at stevens institute uh on the on the weeknights and weekends um so because they were paying for the classes there so i did it in project management um and i was doing all the major classes i actually never completed it to be honest uh because of the fact that i was like you know afterwards electives were too expensive and i didn't want to pay a thousand dollars a credit great school stevens by the way but that's what it was um and i did all the major classes and and the idea was actually to go and you know open a business or work in a business where i can start my own business that was a thought process now how was i going to get there um i looked up at you know grants and sba loans and did all those things um you know so once we got i talked to the my girlfriend and wife and that's what that was the plan uh to get into that area um and hopefully we figured we'll figure out you know at that point you know 27 26 years old you're like hey conquer the world if something will work out you know that's the i i kind of miss that nowadays being 44. uh that you know now you tend to think a little bit more without before acting uh so but yeah that's how i ended up in business the original idea so and so now how you know so you're you did that and i think you know going through getting the education finding somebody else will pay for it is all the better so you're not having to go into it and then only taking the classes that you know really only are applicable because you know i was used to joking i got the the mba and i did that at the same time i've seen the law degree but i always say you know i'd walk over from the law school and there would be you know analytics and tearing pieces apart and looking at court opinions and then walk over and everything seemed in the nba scene about 50 percent of it seemed fluffy and 50 of it seemed useful and so i was looking you know always felt like i was double paying for what i really needed because i only really found about half a useful so i think that's you know great that you just pay for what you need so to speak or get someone else to pay for what you need so now you do that for a period of time you're getting here coming up getting married soon how did you you know what made you decide to go for franchises and how did you find your first franchise you wanted to get into um you know i think one of the things that you look for originally is you know what is your passion in right uh but i didn't do that uh i i tell everyone to do that now i wish you know i did that i you know it turned out to be what i was good at but um you know originally i looked at and i said you know what is a recession which one is what do people spend money on the most uh what are things that are up and coming uh so you know i looked at you know and i didn't have kids obviously we just got married uh and then we're looking and we're like you know looking at kids businesses because we figured it's a from an overhead perspective how much is it gonna cost by the way half of the stuff that i calculated was wrong uh to be perfectly honest but you know i got very lucky in certain places um but yeah i went and started in the kids area because i figured you know everyone always spends money on kids no matter what uh and you know luckily so far 16 17 years in now uh proven to be true uh which is very good uh so uh so that's how i went about it uh i wouldn't suggest anybody else do that uh but uh uh but uh but that's what i certainly did and um and i had to pivot when i bought the first franchise uh you know what what i heard from the franchisor was you know go and open up this you can have this many kids in it you can make this much money and you know you're kind of you know drinking the kool-aid as they say and you're thinking it's going to look and it's going to look amazing and i realized early on luckily uh that what i built and the place i rented for business was not going to be able to survive if it wasn't you know with the model that i had uh so i went ahead and actually took i had two locations so i saw the back of it off uh and then opened up another business over there which was complimentary it was a it was a tutoring center i found about five months in and that's what i ended up doing uh so i had a stem class business a steam class business and then i had a i had a learning center business a combination so they kind of fed each other so it definitely supplemented the rent and the staffing and that's what helped me to survive and i have to learn very quickly that you know what you see and what you hear is not what you get when you actually start doing it uh you start getting into business itself so everything as you said in like an mba right 50 is theory based 50 is fluff yeah and you know that you find out that fluff is there very quickly so uh so that's how i ended up in that it was a very hard lesson right from the get-go um you know live right from the go i had a full head of hair at that time i still remember and within like nine months ten months you're looking at it you're just like you gotta be kidding me i'm like you don't realize the stress that you take on um so and i'm sure you understand that yeah no definitely there's it's always interesting you know i think everybody has this you know misconceived probably because of movies and television at least that's why i'll blame it on them oh you go and start your own business and it's wonderful you work two hours a day and then you go and you have lunches and vacations and everything works out perfect and you're rich and it's just you know just go do it and there's a lot of rewarding things about doing your own business don't get me wrong but it's not the same it's not this life where you work a couple hours no stress everything's perfect now it's a lot of hard work a lot of sleepless nights a lot of stress and it definitely you know you have to have the the grit in order to stick with it to ever make a success or go of it and even then it's still far from certain that it's ever going to be successful so i'm definitely agreeing with you on that on that front so now as you go do it you know so you you got into you got into the the kids business and because you're having a kid and looks like it may be you know at least recession resistant i don't know if there's anything recession proof but at least resistance yeah resisted correct yeah now you get that you know you get into that for a period of time now i think at some point you decided to sell the franchise or get out of the franchise or ship to go somewhere else help me understand that remind me that yeah so what i did is i opened the first one and i had the learning center as well but i was running it on a daily basis so you know i'm cleaning the bathrooms i'm you know i'm the one sweeping the floors and then i'm also the director i'm on the sales you know as you say your ceo but your chief everything officer you know there's no such thing as just sitting in a corner office it doesn't work that way you know so you know i'm the accountant i'm you're the marketing person you're everything um and that's what it was so i did that and then um you know uh i opened the businesses in 2006 seven uh and then i had i opened the gym in in seven middle uh so it was literally within a year i had three of these businesses running and and lucky enough you know obviously wife is doing her a degree and she's getting she's finishing her degree become a nurse practitioner while simultaneously working as a registered nurse uh and then i'm running the businesses at the side and you know going into it afterwards what i realized was my life was changing right so you know now you're married now if you're having kids and whatnot your time commitment's gonna shift you need to be able to say that hey uh you know you you're not going to be able to come to work every single day anymore so are you able to hire somebody to run it but is the business that you bought it's a franchise do they allow you to do that forget about the fact if they allow you or not is this is it you know does it generate enough capital for you to hire someone and still take money out because at the end of the day you're working there you're not paying anyone else so you're taking the salary at least right so now if you're not working there where's that salary going to go you have to give it to someone else and are they going to do the same job you do so all these questions come up so i had the gym that was running and i set the gym up to be kind of in uh you know a semi uh uh kind of you know i just over oversaw the operations and i had a director already running it and everything else like that so decide to sell the the learning center and the uh and the uh both the learning center and the stem program in 2009 and my uh so i was gonna also have twins in 2010 so about six seven months before uh the twins were born in february i sold the business uh so then wife was still you know obviously working she couldn't tell her to quit her job uh she just became a nurse practitioner um you know a year before so that's that's how i actually got into it and and kept the gym business uh because the other two didn't have enough income in order to uh you know kind of hire a full-time director uh in order to run it so uh that was that was an interesting time frame so you learn different things as you go along and and the gym definitely survived that part of it and we kept it and the little boys loved the gym uh you know uh they took their first steps you know you're walking in take them to the office with me uh some of the days and the staff would sit there and play with them all day long music classes you know started walking at seven months and nine months because i had so much exercise in the gym which was insane but uh but it was a lot more fun it was definitely a lot of fun no it sounds like a kid's uh a great kid's playground for growing up that's got to be a fun place for them to to grow up and learn a bit so that sounds fun now you did that you know i think he's ran up for three or four years or so and then he decided okay it's i've done enough franchises for other people i want to do my own thing or start my own franchise and kind of take that bulls by the horn is that about right or kind of what and follow under kind of what caused that transition what made you shift from kind of doing somebody else's franchise to want to do your own well you know i ran into a lot of issues so i had the learning center i had the the tutoring franchise and when i had the tutoring franchise i opened i owned about six seven of them myself in different states in partnership together by myself and i was also an area developer for them so i opened locations i helped them open locations in multiple different states or through people that i knew uh through the other franchise system so i had a lot of experience in going and assisting them which was you know field operations going and talking to them how are you running the business what are you doing for marketing how do you find a location what are you doing for build out architects all of these things so it was you know it was you know working mba essentially for enfranchising here's what i was getting or opening and starting small businesses so when i was doing that for a long time and i had the tumbles uh jw tumbles location was called at the time and jw tumbles was bought out by another company uh out of new york and they wanted to and they they acquired it for acquis for uh essentially they were acquiring the hiring and the pipeline for sales it was a great company out of new york that was there and it was called kidville um public information so it's in our franchise document anyway so i'll name it uh you know and uh and when you bought the company and they're great people there but you know they had two different brands they had a kidville brand coming out of new york really high flying doing amazingly well a lot bigger you know a lot more expensive obviously to build uh they were way bigger uh in size um but tumbles was a nice quaint little small business just running great and i had it running for about you know three years at that time when they took over uh two years actually by the time they took over and they asked us to switch the brand to kidville if we wanted to it was an option and i said no because i already paid for this franchise i already built it i didn't want to put more money into changing everything um but you know when a new company comes on you know you have two different companies you're operating under the same umbrella you know it it you're going to take a back seat in certain areas obviously right because they're going to focus on the main business and rightfully so nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that so you know they did that and then i ran the business for about three four years and i said you know it's about time now to move on to a certain area where we ran at absentee for about five years and it was doing it was doing well so we could and i moved it to a new location because our first lease was up uh because i ran the first one for uh for five years and then i moved into a new location um for the next three and when i moved it obviously our expenses dropped quite a bit so our revenue went up you know our profit went up a little bit because of the fact of our overhead went down uh so i said it was a good time to sell and when i sold it i didn't know what i was gonna do so you know i in the terms of saying i don't know what type of business i was gonna start or franchise business or anything else so i said you know we'll look and see what happens so i went to thank actually the ceo of the the company kidville and the president at the time and just to tell them thank you and they told me hey they were you know trying to figure out what to do with tumbles uh jw tumbles at the time and i said oh well you interested in selling it and that's how it actually came about because i figured it would save a lot of time and i don't have to tell you how much legal fees can be to start a new uh and do all the work from trademarks to you know systems to the documents for the federal trade commission and the fdds uh and whatnot so that's how i got into it it was about pure luck i mean it was a chance meeting and a chance email no and that you know hey it's interesting how sometimes as much as as much as anything starting a business and and you know going in a different direction is by chance or just happens to be hey this is what i came into stumble across the opportunity came across and looked too good to pass up type of a thing and you know and i definitely get you know by the time you have to figure out the franchise name you have to figure out the franchisees you have to do the legal documents you have to get it up and going even if it's not ideal it can short circuit or shortcut a bit of time that you'd otherwise have to put in if you were to start something from scratch so it definitely makes sense so now you purchased that and i think as we chatted a bit before the podcast you know you purchased the franchise went that direction you kind of then went to went back to basics so to speak rebuilt it from the ground up and kind of look and said okay this has a lot of you know a lot of potential needs a lot of work and we're going to go in this direction is that about right yeah yeah you know so i was a franchisee for so long right so you know you look at it and you go you know there's some good obviously that come from all these brands and learned a lot but i always looked at and said as a franchisee what else do i need you know what do i need to be successful so all those things that were missing i wanted to make sure i ran a company and i started my own company i wanted to do it from that aspect of what do the franchisees need where can we provide the best support what systems do they need what makes it easiest for them uh that's the that's the approach we've taken you know the biggest one i did was you know revenue wise you know you pay for rent you know obviously 24 hours a day seven days a week right 365. but you know if you have a business when i was running a learning center you know you're operating it or you know tutoring center you're operating it three or four days a week for three hours a day but the rest of the day what are you doing with it nothing you know on the weekends you're not doing parties you're not doing anything else it's empty so you know i said how does this make any sense you're not getting the most out of utilization out of the space that you're renting so when i when i started with tumbles you know we only had the gym program so we added the steam curriculum but we did it from a bodily kinesthetic standpoint where it's applied mechanics right you actually go and learn something in the classroom and then it's not just theory based you actually go and practice it in the gym so we added this curriculum in so you're running it now after school for older kids as well so you already have the market from the younger kids coming to the gym so i figured you know as a franchise owner the one thing you don't want to go and ask your franchisor is hey i have all this debt time what do i do with it you know so we added a mo we have a mobile program we have the steam program we have the gym program uh you know you have birthday parties so you when you do all this stuff you're gonna have enough revenue to be sustainable so if one part goes down the other one is still there so you're not gonna be completely underwater when things do go wrong uh like you know right now during copenhagen a lot of our franchisees went ahead and did you know virtual classes outdoor classes outdoor birthday parties to go classes all these different things and because you couldn't do a lot of classes in person uh so that that does help uh so that was the idea that was the idea to do things where from a franchisees being in their shoes living it for so many years and then knowing what's hopefully missing and hopefully i'm doing it right uh that that and that's that and that's the hope no and i i'm right there with you interesting you know that's kind of you know i always liked uh i love listening to the you know kind of we took it and whatever what are franchises doing wrong or we don't like or what otherwise would we change and what can we make better and improve and that's a lot of you know when i take now the legal industry different industry but kind of the same thing of there are a lot of things i think you know intellectual property patents and trademarks so you can do better you can do more fishing you can update and you know sometimes you fall into the trap of you just you know you do things because that's the way it's always been done and not necessarily because what makes sense and to take that and actually say no i'm not going to do it just because that's the way that it's always been done i'm going to do it make sense gives you a lot of opportunities to grow and to expand the business so definitely kind of fun to hear you know that journey along the the franchise route as well so that kind of brings us up into where you're at today now kind of you know as we transitioners we kind of now are up to today i always have two questions as we kind of get towards the end of the podcast and this is a reminder for the listeners well we are going to hit on the the one bonus question talk a little bit on intellectual property so make sure make sure to stay tuned for that but for the normal two questions we'll jump to those now the first question is along the journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh trusting when someone tells you from a company without writing anything down so from it comes into the legal side so right up your alley there my friend um was you know a company told me and i terminated a franchise and i was done they didn't sign the actual one back to me and said oh we'll just get back to you tomorrow uh and we closed the location they came back afterwards and tried to sue me for a lot of different things which had nothing to do with me you know um in all different areas so you know what happens in the mistakes is and this happened when i saw the first franchise uh that was what i'm talking about in 2009 i sold it to someone and i signed it over and then uh i had to end up suing that person because of the fact that they didn't live up to their end of the bargain you know uh that was issue and that was in 2000 and uh 2009 the first one i sold because i took a note on the business i didn't take the money off i didn't take the money up front because i knew the business was doing well so i figured they could pay me back so i shouldn't have done that uh but uh you know you live and learn and you go from there um so uh so that was a pretty bad mistake no and it's one it's one that you know some of the worst mistakes you make are the ones you learn the most from and hey hire the experts that know what they're doing and i'll get the mentorship or the guidance for the things that i should there shouldn't be thinking i can do on my own definitely is one to learn from so now as we jump to the second question which is if you're talking now 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 yeah and there's definitely a lot right the first thing i would say is that you have to invest in yourself you know a lot of people always say go and talk to everybody else but you have to know your weaknesses and you you definitely have to work on those uh you know that's one of the things i've done you know i write down uh still to this day i have a book in front of me right you know and i write down listen uh before every meeting that starts right on top uh because you know as when you're starting off a business you think you know everything uh you know and one thing one thing is you know learn to listen uh you know that's one of the things i have to learn from myself so i would say you have to invest in yourself and you know find your weaknesses uh and then and then work on them that'll definitely go a long way in you being successful no it definitely makes sense so i like that i like that and investing in yourself definitely pays some of the best dividend so makes makes perfect sense and so well now as we wrap up and again we'll jump into the bonus question just a minute but for all the the normal listeners that don't want to listen to ip and i don't blame them sometimes you just want to get on with your day but for the as we wrap up you know if people want to reach out they want to find out more about you know your franchises the things you're building they want to be a franchisee they want to be a client they want to be a customer want to be an 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 reach out find out more well uh www tumbles t-u-m-b-l-e-s dot n-e-t uh or and manish at tumbles.net either one of those uh you'll be able to reach me from there so you go onto the website you'll have our sales team contact me and let me know or you can reach me directly so either one of those will work all right well i definitely encourage people to reach out and find out more and get more information and go check out tumble so well as we wrap up thank you again for 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 like to be a guest on the podcast love to have you just go to inventiveguest.com and apply beyond the show two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe and your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two make sure to leave us a review so new people can find out about our awesome episodes as well last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat so now is now we as we wrap up the normal episode it's always fun to do the bonus question switch gears a bit talk a little bit about intellectual property because you know it's one thing that i definitely passionate about and definitely have a fun time talking about so with that i'll switch gears a bit and turn it over to you to asking your top intellectual property question you know i'm looking at the different areas i know i hear about this madrid protocol all the time right and then i'm trying to figure out and look at it so the reason i asked the question let me preface actually um we just signed uh we just signed the letter of intent we're going into ghana uh in into africa we're already we already have a signed deal in the middle east and now we're going into asia as well and the asian countries and the african countries uh for that matter i mean the patent law just seems extremely vague i don't know how to i don't know how else to word it uh and i i'm having a hard time at the end of the day and be perfectly honest is just kind of figuring out which is the best approach because everyone keeps telling me you know i'm looking at it and they're like well you can do the madrid protocol on this one then it doesn't apply i don't know if there's another way to do it do you recommend having an attorney here and then having a local attorney there or do you go directly to the company there uh you know in the local country that you're going into but then you don't you don't know them so i feel like there's just i mean i can ask you a hundred questions about this as you can tell so any you know so so this is where i'm at right now that's what's going through my mind um yeah so that's gonna approach this yeah there's a few things and you're probably uh i'll prep it what they'll probably give you advice answer because you know that's i can only give you the answer based on the biases that i have um but i i always send a like and you know when i've done i've done i've been on both sides so i've ran startups small businesses continue to be involved with them i've also done the ip side and it's it's generally nice to have a cohesive or essential place for someone that manager manages all of your iep in the sense that yeah if you go to a us attorney and say hey i need to do madrid protocol you know i need to file a pct application or a eu patent application or i need to file for multiple trademarks via madrid or any of those natures they can generally manage all that for you now what they're going to do is they're going to hire local cancel council in that given area but they're still going to understand the overall picture and so what gets difficult is if you don't have that centralized person most you get so many dispersed people you're working with they don't understand do you have a us one that you can add priority to do you what is the protocol do you already have a us patent that you're doing it or are you you do your pct application you're wanting to go international and kind of having a lot of that cohesive strategy in that centralized location generally gives you a lot better counsel and then they can also have an idea what are you seeing in other countries that may affect the prosecution here so let's say you filed for a patent in china or europe or wherever and you were saying hey here are the grounds for rejection now we can go now when we get that goes grounds for ejections in another country we can already have anticipated see if our arguments work if they're convincing what other art is out there and so kind of having that centralized location where you can have strategy they can see what's going on with their throughout all the portfolio and make better decisions is generally where i would start out with or at least for my biased answer because it gives you a lot more cohesion a lot more leveraging of the knowledge you're getting across the whole portfolio as opposed to breaking it out and then nobody having that centralized knowledge does that make sense yeah it definitely does i like that aspect of it so you have one place where you can go to as opposed to having seven different firms i guess that you're talking to in seven different countries not extremely helpful that definitely does help so i think sticking with the us area is going to be the best course of action on that one and the other one that's nice is you know is counterintuitive it sounds a bit and some people say hey but if i have a u.s firm i'm now having a double pay because i'm having to pay an attorney in the u.s and they're also having to pay in europe but most of the time i find that you get more cost savings because you're now having somebody that already knows a portfolio that's gone through it and can give or you know reduce the cost of having so many back and forth and having to give you know give them direction so hey i just gave direction to the european or pa or european counterpart or foreign associate on this matter china is about the same one i'll give them the similar direction so yes i'm going to have to do both of them i'm the mid intermediary but i'm giving a direction such that we're not they're not having to come up to speed and you reuse the same amount of time to do make them figure out the same thing so it ends up actually reducing the cost and giving you a better overall product because you're not having everybody that's having to figure out and having different or coming up to speed all the time no that's a great point because you know i'm not an expert like i just said beforehand right like you know know your weaknesses right and that's definitely a weakness for me so for me to become an expert in terms of what the best approach is rather than utilizing it that's very helpful i appreciate that thank you absolutely so with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast always fun to talk a little about intellectual property and if if you have any other questions or the listeners or the audience has any questions just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us chat always happy to discuss anything on your mind and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up thank you again manish for coming on the podcast it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next live journey even better than the last so thank you again thank you all right thank you very much devin for having me you
Download This Episode & More on the Following Platforms
JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA
