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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
[0:00] Dave Charest: On today's episode, you'll hear from a small business owner who built a thriving law firm and educational platform by focusing on service first and ended up creating a marketing engine he didn't expect. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
[0:27] Dave Charest: My name is Dave Charest, director of small businesses at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer, and at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
[0:59] Dave Charest: Well, hello friend and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. As always, join me in welcoming my voice of reason and wit, the one and only Kelsi Carter joins me again. Hi, Kelsi. Hi, Dave. Uh, good to see you and I've got a question here for you, but
[01:19] Dave Charest: You know how sometimes things just kind of hit you at the right moment, like you, I don't know, you just come across like either a podcast episode, a quote, maybe it's even like a random LinkedIn post, right? And that just kind of hits you in the right way that kind of shifts your perspective on something. Have you ever had that like happen to you?
[01:38] Kelsi Carter: Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example so I can just be like, exactly. I think honestly, no, like we were talking about this earlier, so that's why I feel like it's cop out.
[01:47] Kelsi Carter: It's not. But on LinkedIn, I saw someone who was posting on TikTok, and that's kind of what sparked like me wanting to kind of do that, which for preface, I'm posting on TikTok every day for a month with my fiance, not expecting anything, just for fun. But I saw it, I think it was on, I think it was on LinkedIn. I think it was on LinkedIn that I saw it. And that's kind of what sparked it. I was just like, I've never posted on LinkedIn. I've never posted on TikTok.
[02:13] Kelsi Carter: I've never made a TikTok, never attempted to. So I was just like, this could be a little different, could be a little fun, and so we did it and we're we're two weeks in.
[02:22] Dave Charest: Well, you know, there's something I'm going to admit too that it was literally just yesterday at the time of this recording that I
[02:29] Dave Charest: Obviously talk a lot about and we've been hearing a lot about from the people that we've talked to have been successful at kind of growing their businesses and doing the marketing thing and how important it is to calendar the work. And of course, we've got time on our calendars to do this podcast and do those types of things, but I'm also doing a lot of content creation for LinkedIn, both for my professional profile and to help Constant Contact, of course. I'm moving into doing some things on Instagram, but I realized as I was looking at some things and putting together some content that I was like,
[03:00] Dave Charest: Oh, you know, wait a minute, I should, I should actually block up some time in my calendar to do this on a regular basis. That might be a smart idea. And I was like, OK, and literally just yesterday I marked an hour every week in my calendar to actually just go through and create some stuff and it's just like a duh, like I should, and I'm talking about it all the time too, right? And it's like, OK, I got to start eating my own dog food in many ways. And so.
[03:26] Dave Charest: You know, sometimes that's, that's what it is, right? It takes one piece of information, or even just one person to just kind of like, open your eyes to like a better way or just a way to do something that you're like, oh yeah. And when that happens, it's kind of like,
[03:40] Dave Charest: It's like hard not to want to share it too, like with other people, and that spirit of sharing and empowering others is really what drives, I, I would say today's conversation. What can you tell us about our guest today, Kelsi?
[03:51] Kelsi Carter: Today's guest is Peter Nieves, the founder of Nieves IP Law Group based in New Hampshire. Peter spent years leading the IP department at a large New England firm before stepping out on his own to create a business that's focused not just on legal service, but also on education and empowerment.
[04:09] Kelsi Carter: So his firm helps small businesses, startups, and creators protect what they build, especially in the age of AI.
[04:16] Dave Charest: Yeah, crazy times with AI and this was a really interesting conversation. I mean, Peter's story really centers around
[04:23] Dave Charest: Giving people the tools and the knowledge that they need to protect themselves legally, whether they can afford a lawyer or not, I think which is really cool. And so his entire business model from legal services to education to marketing is really all about lifting others up through access, clarity and empowerment in many ways. And so,
[04:43] Dave Charest: In our conversation today, you're going to hear how Peter turned his legal expertise into a scalable business model rooted in education and service, why small business owners must understand the risks of using AI generated content and the biggest intellectual property mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid them. So let's go to Peter as he sets the stage for starting his own business.
[05:07] Peter Nieves: I used to run the IP department and the patent law department at a large New England law firm. They hired me to build a patent law department. I was there for 17 years, and it was going incredibly well. We were ranked the #1 IP group for 10 years in a row. I mean, just by the grace of God, it was phenomenal, right? Well, a number of clients started coming to me just saying, hey,
[05:29] Peter Nieves: Why are you here? Why don't you have your own place? And then on top of that, I was trying to do a number of different things in the community, plus build educational systems to train the public on legal information that they just couldn't get access to, cause they can't afford $600 an hour, quite frankly.
[05:44] Peter Nieves: And so people were getting in trouble and they were hiring me to solve their problems. And I said, well, why can't I just train you so you don't have problems in the first place? You don't get that. That's not really how the legal system works, right? The legal system is, can you afford the legal system, then it'll work for you. That's essentially how it works. So what I decided to do after basically speaking with my wife and kind of praying on this.
[06:09] Peter Nieves: It became extremely clear when a number of clients I was at an event in Las Vegas, a number of clients came to me and asked me the exact same question, and they didn't even know each other. And they said, why don't you have your own firm? And I said, Well, this is it. Every everything's to go. So I built my own firm, Neve IP Law Group, loved the place I was with, but it was time to go. And so we built NeMS IP Law Group and tons of clients came over. The community started reaching out, people in the public started reaching out.
[06:38] Peter Nieves: And just sending a lot of work over, which was amazing. But one of the main goals was to educate everyone, to train people, business savvy use of the law, because they just don't have access to this information. I mean, you can watch YouTube videos and get everything wrong if you want or watch influencers will tell you.
[06:58] Peter Nieves: Use AI to create a book and write it, but then you don't actually own the copyright, which gets you in trouble with your publisher, which gets you potentially sued on the contract law, but you don't know any of this. There's no knowledge in this. So I said, let me build an educational institution too. So I built an educational institution and a law firm.
[07:15] Peter Nieves: And the way it works is that I train the public, I teach the public on business savvy usage of intellectual property law, AI law, understand how to use things properly, increase profitability, and at the same time, avoid legal potholes.
[07:32] Peter Nieves: And it is phenomenal. I just love what I'm doing.
[07:35] Dave Charest: So it sounds like starting a business really kind of came as a surprise to you that this wasn't something you always had planned to do, correct?
[07:41] Peter Nieves: I was perfectly positioned as the head of the IP department as the tip within the last 10 years.
[07:48] Peter Nieves: Either the #1 or #2 client originator in the firm continuously. I was perfectly positioned for what you would call the sunset years, going into retirement, sit back, relax, enjoy your life, and just go to the lake house on the weekends, right?
[08:04] Peter Nieves: Yeah, that was, that was not the calling. So, that did not happen. Well,
[08:10] Dave Charest: so you've been doing this since, well, your own thing, I should say you've been doing this for a long time, of course, but when you think about just having your own firm, and you mentioned the institution piece of it, right, where you're you're educating and things like that, you know, has your vision, have you noticed that change or evolved since you started?
[08:26] Dave Charest: In 2022?
[08:27] Peter Nieves: What was really interesting is the main motivation behind the education of the public, people that have startups, mid-sized companies, was just to help them, like just to serve them. That's all it was. It was not money motivated. In fact, I was losing money. I was spending like tens of thousands of dollars.
[08:44] Peter Nieves: for a challenge to run ads, to get people to come in and then breaking even or making, you know, $10,000 making $5000 on an event, something like that. That was the beginning of the motivation. What I didn't realize was that as the people were being trained and taught.
[09:03] Peter Nieves: About these things that were going to directly impact their business, they were gaining a level of trust in me. And as they were gaining a level of trust in me, they were going to hold it.
[09:13] Peter Nieves: If I ever need a lawyer, I want to work with that guy because that guy is teaching me for 5 days for $95 for like 8 hours of training and teaching and answering my questions without giving legal advice. And he's just volunteering it. What could this guy actually do if I hired him? And that was not the plan. Like, the plan was, I got to get this information in their hands.
[09:37] Peter Nieves: And the result has been this massive community of people that are supporting me in my own business. And I was taught about this by an individual, Pedro Adeo, who actually is considered like the challenge king. He's the guy who actually trained me in running challenges, like this kind of business model kind of thing.
[09:56] Peter Nieves: But the initial motivation was, train them on what you know. Cause I, I firmly believe that if you get to the top of the mountain and you're alone, you did something wrong. Somebody should be at the top of the mountain with you to enjoy the view. So go back down and bring others up. So, I decided
[10:12] Peter Nieves: Well, let me train everyone as opposed to selecting who I trained because I want them to be clients. The result was they all wanted to be clients. That was not the plan, but that's what ended up happening. So I really feel like if there's a hot posture to serve others.
[10:29] Peter Nieves: The fruit of it just, it just comes, it's just your motivation, like what exactly are you trying to
[10:34] Peter Nieves: do?
[10:34] Dave Charest: Yeah, you know, I'm a big believer in that, you know, I, I always feel like, you know, the more you can do to focus on the people that you're trying to reach, helping them become successful ends up, right, that comes back to you, right? You do the right things, the right things happen to you. I'm curious, from your perspective perspective, obviously, you wanted that freedom to be able to teach more and mentor more, but why is that so important to you personally?
[10:55] Peter Nieves: A lot of people noticed. I was born in the projects of Brooklyn. My parents kind of got separated. My mom was a single mom trying to raise me up to the age of 8, essentially for a while. I saw a lot of issues, like lots of things. I mean, I had times when I was literally sleeping on a park bench while my mom was dealing with other things and, and people in the community would like feed me or like, you know, watch over me.
[11:18] Peter Nieves: And then obviously my father got involved over time and my mom, you know, my stepmom got involved and things changed. But I've seen both sides. I've seen where you don't have anything, and I've seen where you have a surplus. And there's usually like an event or a specific thing that happens in life that is that shift, right? That one opportunity, that one golden nugget that literally can transform a startup into a multi-million dollar corporation.
[11:47] Peter Nieves: But who's gonna give it to them? Well, if you've gained all this information, all this knowledge, and you have all this access to everything, if you just live your life and die, oh my gosh, what a waste. Like, seriously. So why not find a way to give this to others?
[12:02] Peter Nieves: And so, interestingly, this process of donating back to the public in this kind of forum where you're teaching, where you've overcome what you've learned about, actually, it reaches a lot of people, like very fast and a lot of people can grow very fast. So I just have this passion for lifting a lot of people up. And that's very difficult to do in a law firm environment because law firms have a billable hour requirement.
[12:30] Peter Nieves: And so you're accountable to the billable hours. And so, like you're thinking, OK, in my day, I have 24 hours, and I spend time sleeping, time with my family, you know, time on whatever else, and now I've got a bill 89 hours in that day. Well, where's the time to teach others? Where's the time to train others? Where's the time to just sit down with people and, and just love on them and help them grow, mentor them, like, where is that?
[12:57] Peter Nieves: So I decided to build my own firm and my firm doesn't have all these limits. And the result is just, it's phenomenal. Like I really enjoy doing this. So that's a little bit about my background and why I'm kind of motivated this way.
[13:11] Dave Charest: Well, I love that and I love that that is something that is important for you to do, right? Because like, you know, similarly you start in one place and then
[13:18] Dave Charest: I mean, one, it must feel great to be, oh, you know what, I've actually achieved and got to a certain place and to be able to give back if that I think is really important. Well, I'm curious, now that you get to this place where you started your own business, you've got a little bit more of this freedom and all of that type of thing. Do you mind sharing and you don't have to give me like specific numbers, but I'm thinking more along the lines of just like maybe percentages, but like, how does your business make money today?
[13:40] Peter Nieves: I changed a number of the structures of the firm. So what I did was I actually went to flat fee billing for a number of things. So while before I would sit down and work on a case and bill per hour for a number of, what people don't realize is that CFOs, people that deal with financing in corporations, they don't want to keep getting legal bills over and over and miscellaneous bills. I'm like, why am I getting charged $12,000 here, 5000? What did I ask for? I didn't even ask.
[14:07] Peter Nieves: For any of this. What's going on? So there's gotta be a way to make it cleaner for somebody who's running a business to say, you know what? I need to file 10 trademarks. 10 trademark applications is X minus 10. That's exactly how much it's gonna cost, period. So, building a structure like that is actually very beneficial, not only for others, but for you, cause the thing that will occupy a lot of your time when you run your own business.
[14:34] Peter Nieves: Is the administrative work. The administrative work will take up 3 quarters of your time when you're starting a business. So you're thinking, OK, well, I left this big structure where I had a lot of people supporting me, but I'm gonna make more money now because now it's my business. Yeah, no, because now you're spending 3/4 of your time running that business until things start running well and then.
[14:57] Peter Nieves: You're actually starting to, you know, make good money. In my situation, I already knew this was a problem. I knew this where I was. We started implementing flat fees there. I knew I was going to have flat fee systems where I was going to go. And so as I built, and literally, the majority of my clients just went. Honestly, it was by the grace of God, these people just said, hey, we want to go with Peter.
[15:20] Peter Nieves: And so it was really wonderful the way it played out. But I built structures where there were flat fees. So if you came to me and said, hey, I want to file a trademark application, great, $1300. That includes the USPTO filing fee of 350. It's known, it's automatically known. So there's no mystery. You're not getting charged $1500 2500 dollars. It's
[15:41] Peter Nieves: Flat feet, boom, done. So a lot of people love that structure and they can program, they can schedule and allocate funds appropriately for protecting what they're creating. And what I focus on is protecting creators. So if you, you have ideas that you're creating anything from, let's say you're doing podcasts and you don't want people to steal your podcast, that's copyright law.
[16:02] Peter Nieves: Let's say that you've got a book and you don't want people to steal your book, that's copyright law. Let's say you have a new logo, that's trademark law. You have a new name for your company and you want others to not take that name so that
[16:14] Peter Nieves: It draws others to another person's business instead of your business. That's trademark law. Let's say you have a new cell phone you created or a software app that's protectable under patent law. So there's different branches of intellectual property law that directly pertain to the ingenuity and creativity of you and your team. That's what I focus on. I sit down with individuals and corporations and figure out what out of what you create.
[16:40] Peter Nieves: is protectable, is automatically protected, because there's actually certain legal rights you automatically have. You don't need to file anything. People don't even know this. They don't realize you can just put a copyright notice on your, on your videos and it's automatically protected whether you have a copyright notice or not. The second that it's recorded.
[17:00] Peter Nieves: You own it under copyright law. Now, if you want to enforce your legal rights, at that point, you can file a federal registration or you may want to file it beforehand, but guess how much it costs? $65. People don't even know that thousands of dollars. These things are very inexpensive, but they don't know how to use them. So that's what I focus on is.
[17:19] Peter Nieves: Is training on them how to do that.
[17:21] Dave Charest: Got it. So yeah, I mean, there's there's so many things, of course, as a business owner, I mean, you already mentioned like, yeah, you think you're gonna be doing this thing, but now you've got all these other things that you have to do that was kind of taken care of when you're working for a larger firm, right? So, I guess, what have you found then through this process? What is something that you really love about running your own business?
[17:40] Peter Nieves: The freedom to go wherever I want to meet with whomever I want.
[17:44] Peter Nieves: As an example, I did work from Portugal for 2 weeks while I was with my wife. I'm in a group called the Master's Mind.
[17:51] Peter Nieves: We had a getaway in Portugal for a week. I decided to stay an extra week with my wife. In the master's mind, I probably have 8 clients in that group already, cause when I'm in groups, I tend to want to serve people, whether I'm doing legal work for them or not. I just serve them. Like I see an issue come up, I tell them, be careful with this, do this instead, you'll be fine. I'm not trying to get work, it's just what happens. So, the beauty of running your own business is
[18:17] Peter Nieves: You can go anywhere you want. I was in Cabo a month ago, doing business from Cabo, took my wife with me, 3 days of business, 4 days of fun. I'm going to be in California next week, Monday. I leave. I'm going to be there for a full week, 3 days of business, 4 days of fun. I'm
[18:34] Dave Charest: sensing a pattern developing here with you, Peter.
[18:36] Peter Nieves: It
[18:36] Dave Charest: is.
[18:37] Peter Nieves: You actually enjoy your life a lot more, right? But I will say this, you've got to be really good at scheduling your time.
[18:46] Peter Nieves: And making sure you stick to it. You can't just say I'm gonna run my own business and I'm gonna go where I want and do what I want. It's, you have to make sure, OK, in my day, if I'm waking up at 7, which I don't, I wake up later cause I stay up very late. I'm up to like 34 in the morning.
[19:01] Peter Nieves: I have clients all over the world. So, let's say in my day I'm starting out, let's say 9, right? If I start at 99 to 10 is this, 10 to this is this. Like you have to have a solid schedule. If you don't know how to control your schedule and you try to just run your own business, you get exhausted and burnt down very fast.
[19:23] Peter Nieves: Because you'll just chase things that show up. When you're running your own businesses, there are many potential clients. If you just chase a lot of potential clients, you'll never serve a client. The result is you'll lose a client. So you have to know how to run a business. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people don't spend time trying to figure that out. They just kind of jump in. If you're good at scheduling and sticking to a schedule, you can run your own business.
[19:48] Dave Charest: Yeah. Well, what have you found to be most challenging about it then?
[19:51] Peter Nieves: The administrative work, yeah, I, I would say absolutely is when I started out, it was myself and I hired a paralegal, but I left with, gosh, 95% of the work that I had, and that work included two other lawyers. So I left with work for me and two other lawyers, and I was doing all that work, plus building my own firm and bringing it and working with one paralegal setting up an entire infrastructure to run a firm.
[20:20] Peter Nieves: So that was very challenging right off the bat. I mean, I was working 20 hour days, no breaks, 7 days a week just to get things rolling. And it was really good because the clients, I was very fortunate. The clients loved me, so they gave me a lot of leeway, lots of leeway. Plus, my old firm in Georgia, where I, I practiced before I came to New Hampshire, they had 23 lawyers, and they said, if you ever need support, we'll back you up.
[20:47] Peter Nieves: Just let us know, our whole firm is here to back you because we support what you're doing. So the mentors that I had knew what I was walking into and said, we're going to support you. If you need anything, paralegals, you need assistance, you need lawyers, we're all here to support you. I was very fortunate in that. I really only needed their assistance maybe 5% of the time, but it's great to have that kind of background, that support. Yeah.
[21:12] Dave Charest: So, you know, you mentioned, obviously, you know, as you're starting your own thing, people coming over and
[21:17] Dave Charest: But obviously one of the challenges, of course, with so many businesses getting started is is marketing and writing, getting customers and bringing more clients and and all of that and so,
[21:26] Dave Charest: When you think about just even where you are from like, OK, now you've got to do some of that stuff, right, for your own business. So where would you say most of your business comes from right now?
[21:35] Peter Nieves: People that I've served and served well. I don't market it. I don't run ads. I've been fortunate not to have to do that. The people that I serve, they find this obligation to send others to you, which is amazing. Like I have clients from Israel that I served 20 years ago who are still sending me clients.
[21:54] Peter Nieves: They'll just email me and introduce me to another person who's running a company and said, hey, this is the guy you need to go to on anything on IP. You have to talk to this guy. And then I served them well as an obligation to the person who referred them to me, right? The other thing I do is, I'm really a strong believer in kind of cross pollination. So if someone refers something to me, I'm trying to refer something back to them.
[22:17] Peter Nieves: I don't just say, well, thanks, bye. Like I keep track of this stuff, and I actually have Excel sheets that show me such and such and send me 7 cases, such and such has sent me this referral, and I'm trying to find a way to thank them without just an email, thank you.
[22:33] Peter Nieves: And the result is you get this reciprocal relationship where I'm sending work to agents in Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Mexico, Australia, and these people are sending stuff back, saying we have to file in the US so we want to use you for this, this and this, or
[22:51] Peter Nieves: Even in business, I have a person, Ana, who was the head, she was the chief technology officer of a company that I worked with, that I actually did patent work with about 20 years ago. She still to this day sends me other people who are heads of other corporations to do their IP work. So, I don't have to really advertise. But the one thing I would add is that by running these challenges and training the public.
[23:17] Peter Nieves: In this open forum and doing these networking things with them. So, as an example, let's say I'm doing the law for AI masterclass.
[23:25] Peter Nieves: It's 3 days, 1 hour a day online, on Zoom, and I do a training and there's a VIP option. And the VIP option, you can ask me questions. In the general training, it's like $95. You come in, you listen, you can type in the chat, interact in the chat, but I won't answer your questions directly. And VIP, I'm going to answer your questions directly without giving you legal advice. Then off of that, there's an offer.
[23:49] Peter Nieves: And the offer may be to come into my private network called the protection portal where once a month I go live and answer your questions and train you on a new topic that's gonna directly impact you. So that's what I do, like every single month I'm doing that. So I'm nurturing my own group of individuals who I'm serving. Those individuals have issues, and they know people. So they refer work. And so the result is
[24:15] Peter Nieves: If I'm low on work, which I'm very fortunate in that, that hasn't happened, but if that ever happens, I can email my own list and say, hey guys.
[24:24] Peter Nieves: You know what? I'm going to do a, a discount on trademark application filing in instead of it being 1300, we're gonna make it 1000 for those people who are going to file within the next 30 days. Boom, this whole influx of work just comes in like a wave. Why? Cause you've been serving these people over a period of time, you've gained their trust. You're not trying to take advantage of them. You have a relationship with them.
[24:48] Peter Nieves: And so now, as opposed to sending ads out to the public, which is random, and 90% of the calls you're gonna get are people that you don't want to work with, they're just gonna be asking you questions over and over and you're never gonna be clients. What happens is you've got a known group who knows you, who cares about you, who you care about, and they have a certain level of knowledge already. So when they come to you, it's not a cold call.
[25:15] Peter Nieves: It's a warm audience and sometimes a hot audience. So now you've got to have everything in place to serve them well, because if you go out there with an ad that said to your own people and say, hey, I've got 7000 people in my email list. Hey guys, $1000 to file a trademark application, and 200 people reply, you better be able to
[25:36] Dave Charest: to be able to do that.
[25:39] Dave Charest: Well, I was gonna ask, you know, you kind of mentioned somewhat two things, right? So you mentioned kind of, uh, I'm wondering if do you have like a system to kind of keep that word of mouth going, like you mentioned like you have your spreadsheet and you know who sends you what. Do you have a process for that? When do you go through that list? What do you do to follow up with those people and then secondarily,
[25:57] Dave Charest: To your point when you're having the challenges and those types of things like how do you get the word out about those? I feel like they're two different tracks, right? So, yeah,
[26:05] Peter Nieves: so I do this multiple ways. One is that I have an email list obviously of all these people who have been through my challenges. I have a drip campaign that I utilize to give free ebooks. So I have as an example, one of the ebooks is the top 3 IP issues for AI bot users.
[26:20] Peter Nieves: So if you're using AI, Generative AI in any way, shape, or form, if you don't know these three things, you've got problems, big problems. And so I have this ebook, that it's only 7 pages long, and it's free. And so I have a drip campaign where an ads being run for like $10 a day, something like that.
[26:38] Peter Nieves: Using Facebook ads, people see this thing and if they're interested in the ebook, they just click on it. When they click on it, they come to the funnel. Once they come to the funnel, they have to put their name and email address in there and then boom, they're given the ebook, right? So now, what's happening is that I now have their name and I have their email address. So it's automatically they're within my network. So now, I
[27:03] Peter Nieves: also give them the opportunity to join a Facebook group that I have, which is called IP Networks, right? So these people now go into this Facebook group and once a week or once every 2 weeks, I just go in there and talk to people, just jump on in and say, hey guys, I don't know if you realize this, but the New York Times just sued. I'll give you, give you an example. OpenAI and Microsoft because of the scraping of their content that actually went into.
[27:27] Peter Nieves: To Chad GPT, right? So how is this actually going to bother you and your company? Like, what are you going to do about this? Why should you care about this? And this is something that literally just came out in the news a day or two prior, and then boom, I'm out there telling them and keeping them up to speed on things. Now these are not things that lawyers typically do, right? These are things that influencers do. Well,
[27:50] Dave Charest: I
[27:50] Dave Charest: was gonna ask you, did you know this?
[27:52] Dave Charest: in or did you learn this like as you were doing, like, how did you get to this? I mean, for lack of a better term, maybe but it really is in many ways a system to kind of build this out for yourself, right? So how did you
[28:02] Dave Charest: learn that?
[28:03] Peter Nieves: Sure. So about 4 years ago, I was working like very long hours, right? I'm the head of the IP department. I'm working from morning to night, right? And I'm not spending a lot of time with the family. I started praying about this. I was I got.
[28:17] Peter Nieves: I've got a lot of skills here that I'm very grateful for. This cannot be the way I'm supposed to live my life. It doesn't seem right. Like there's got to be a different way of doing this. Then I get this ad on Facebook by this guy, and I think this guy is a nut. I'm saying this guy is a nut. He's highly enthusiastic and he's talking about challenges, right? It's like, hey.
[28:40] Peter Nieves: If you've got the skill set, you can use this and train others and teach others, blah blah blah, and it can turn into this, that, that. I'm saying, whatever. So I must have watched the ad a little bit too long because the ad popped up again
[28:53] Dave Charest: and you got, you got sucked into, yeah,
[28:55] Peter Nieves: I was in so I popped up again and again and I'm going, oh gosh.
[29:00] Peter Nieves: Who is this guy? Like, he's just so loud and anti what I would want to be, you know what I mean? And that's something you need to do though on Facebook ads to draw somebody in sometimes, right? So anyways, it was free, so I said, well, let me sign up for this. So I signed up and I watched it, and he talked about the system, what the challenge was, and how you can take your own knowledge and what you're passionate about and train others and teach others.
[29:25] Peter Nieves: And as I started thinking about this, I said, hmm, let me see if I can run a challenge. Like let me, let me just try this out. So I'm working morning, noon and night, and then I add on top of that, running a challenge. And when I ran my first challenge, I think we brought in $50,000 in 7 hours of work.
[29:45] Peter Nieves: Right, not bad. I'm going.
[29:47] Peter Nieves: Hold on, like, hold on, something's wrong here. Like this, this doesn't, how did this work? I don't get it. And what I realized was that there was a lot of people that need knowledge and that in just serving people and, and caring for people and giving them the information they really need, it actually, you don't have to work by a billable system.
[30:08] Peter Nieves: You actually could make exponentially more by serving people well. And so I got to know this person, and then I became his legal counsel, right? But ironically, I actually represent the person now. So, which is funny, it's just hilarious. So I got to know the system a lot better and then I modified certain things myself, because from the legal position, you can't really do everything that they're training because there's a certain ethical things, you can't say certain things. There's things you need to be careful about, right?
[30:38] Peter Nieves: That the rest of the world can do, but in the legal profession, you can't come out and say, I'm gonna give you legal advice because they're not your client. So ethically, you can't do that. And so I had to just modify certain things, and I did, and it just hit like it hit and thousands of people were coming into my network and I was getting to know people and train them, and one of them was a 3 day training and $90,000 came in off of a 3 day training.
[31:07] Peter Nieves: And the offer was, at that time, it was to be part of the protection portal, plus have a one on one with me for two hours to do an an IPR and the package was, I think it was 49.95 for that, which is very reasonable. People sit down with me for an hour sometimes to do an IPR it's like 1000, you know, just to kind of go through their company, analyze it, give them a full strategic plan, which really transforms their entire company.
[31:33] Peter Nieves: And this package, people wanted it. And so I realized, hold it, I can just serve people who use this function or this methodology that I was taught by this individual, by Pedro Rodeo in this in challenges and modify it for.
[31:48] Peter Nieves: What I need to do in the legal profession, and the result was very good. And so, but then I had a problem. Now there's an issue. I'm running a law firm. The law firm's taking a lot of time, and there's administrative issues there and there's legal work to be done. And I've got an educational institution with people that need to learn.
[32:08] Peter Nieves: Certain tool sets so that they'll be highly successful and now be able to compete at the level of larger corporations because they have the knowledge of the larger corporations without spending the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in legal fees.
[32:21] Peter Nieves: And so how do I serve both? And that was the big issue. How do you, are they mutually exclusive? No, they're definitely not, because the training here actually feeds the firm, right? Yeah. Which was amazing. I knew that kind of was going to happen, but I didn't know it happened like this. So now I became, I need people with me. I need the support of others. I need more paralegals, I need more attorneys. I need somebody to handle the administrative stuff at the educational institution.
[32:51] Peter Nieves: So I started employing other people. I just added another person recently and so the intent now is train people, help them understand things that are going to make them highly competitive, much more lucrative, not run into those horrible speed bumps that are legal lawsuits and cease and desist, that can shut down a company and just grow and succeed. Like, that's the objective.
[33:19] Peter Nieves: And those people, as they grow, they have legal problems.
[33:22] Peter Nieves: Well, where can you go? The guy who's trained you in the first place, so now I can just send them over to the people within the firm to serve them. And those who want to actually sit down and have an IP audit instead of charging them 10,000, since they're already in my network, I charge them 5. And so now they're excited because they're learning every month new things. They're getting these IP audits which are truly transforming companies. They've got ridiculous testimonies from people and, and different corporations.
[33:50] Peter Nieves: And the law firms growing. And so it's really wonderful how it's all coming together. But when I started out, like I said, it was very little sleep trying to figure out how do these fit together? Well,
[34:04] Dave Charest: so I think that's the point though, right? Like, I think what's great is that you actually did put in that time, right, like to figure out what you have now is, I mean, essentially, if I'm not mistaken, right, like a repeatable system that whatever your challenge or whatever your course is.
[34:19] Dave Charest: You've got something that a structure that you and a methodology that now you set up and you run there, right, and you know how to do it. And I think that's the big issue a lot of times is that in many, many ways, like, sure, we may know how to do things, but it's actually taking the action to set it up and do it.
[34:35] Dave Charest: Right, that's the thing that that makes it, and I'm sure you've learned something from the first time and you know how to apply that moving forward and everything like
[34:42] Dave Charest: that.
[34:43] Peter Nieves: Well, what's very interesting is, I've as of most recently had lawyers coming to me and asking me, how did you set up this system? Like how did you, because I'm spending tens of thousands of dollars, they're saying from themselves, I'm sending tens of thousands of dollars out for ads and I'm getting almost nothing.
[35:00] Peter Nieves: Back out of this, and you've built a system where you're serving others, you're helping others, you're building relationships, and those people are sending people your way, which becomes lucrative. Like, how did you do this?
[35:16] Peter Nieves: And so I just, I kind of started giving them some guidance on this. So what I'm realizing is there's a whole other area of potential business I could be doing.
[35:25] Dave Charest: I was gonna say that opens up a whole other point, right? Like there's like, uh, yeah, I've always been, uh, I think that's fascinating, right, where you end up, there's the stuff that you do and you build for, right, then there's the education around that that creates its own thing, but then it's the people that also, hey, how are you doing that, right? There's a whole other market for yourself, yeah,
[35:44] Peter Nieves: it truly is.
[35:45] Peter Nieves: That I think is going to be like the high-end stuff, which is gonna be, all right, you can go into my challenge. I'll teach you about this. I'll either do it free, but then there'll be a VIP, it costs X, and if you want to be in the network, that's going to cost like $5000. If you want a 101, that's $2000. The structure is essentially just using the same structure I've used for the other stuff, but now in the legal profession, where lawyers will spend a lot more to understand how to build a book of business.
[36:13] Peter Nieves: And so, but again, the heart has to be of serving. It can't be, how can I make a quick buck, because people will see right through that. So I'm gonna start out at the lower end and just teach them and help them build a book and serve the public. This way everybody grows at the same time.
[36:29] Dave Charest: Yeah, no, I love all that. I'm glad you've figured that out and implemented something and then to your point here, just really opening up, oh, there's another opportunity, right? I love all that. So I want to start to shift us a little bit here about thinking about just IP AI of course, is a big point of discussion in all of this and and what small businesses need to know before we kind of start to move into that area though, I'm curious.
[36:52] Dave Charest: How are you using AI today? Either your day to day work, maybe even even what you're doing with it from a marketing perspective, but how are you using it
[37:01] Dave Charest: personally?
[37:02] Peter Nieves: Sure. So, if I have a meeting with someone where it's not confidential, not confidential content.
[37:08] Peter Nieves: What I can do is I'll do a Zoom meeting. I'll record that Zoom meeting, then I'll upload that video into something like Otter AI, get a transcription of it. Take the transcription, upload that into Chat GPT and say, hey, I just had a meeting about the following. I want to highlight 5 bullet points and create for me an email that's gonna guide them into an offer that we're going to do.
[37:29] Peter Nieves: That covers the following. Literally within 3 seconds. I've got an email drafted based on a meeting that I had with a prospective individual that didn't cover confidential content, and that would have taken me maybe an hour to do separately. It took me 3 seconds. So, I'm implementing AI in areas where it's
[37:51] Peter Nieves: Highly efficient, it can do summarizing certain topics. If I'm doing a, let's say a, a challenge and I need artwork, I'll use things like mid journey, obviously. I use chat GPT to create copy.
[38:03] Peter Nieves: If I'm doing video editing, I can have certain programs that are automatically do video editing. So there's all sorts of really neat things that I can do with AI, but I'm also cognizant of what the pit, basically what the pit holes are, like, you have to be careful of a number of issues. As an example, if AI is
[38:22] Peter Nieves: Been trained with scraped content that includes copyrighted and trademark content. So if I'm using images from something like Midjourney, it may include somebody else's content that's been modified or derivative work, which means when I use it in a commercial environment, I could get sued for trademark infringement or copyright infringement.
[38:41] Peter Nieves: So I have to know how to double check to make sure that the results of AI that I'm using are safe to use. Well,
[38:48] Dave Charest: you know that? I'm curious because I mean, right, like again, there's two sides to this, right? There's the business side and the people that have the things that can be derivative and be used, but then there's the other person who's just trying to use it to help them execute against something. How do you check that? Like, how do I even know that that's a thing?
[38:48] Dave Charest: how do
[39:05] Peter Nieves: Right, right. So I personally know this because I'm an IP attorney of 26 years, so I understand how IP works. The other thing is I'm also a techie, like I love technology and I've been writing patents in the area of AI for about 14 years. AI is not new. It's old, old neural networks or old technology. It's just new graphical user interfaces and new ways of interacting with them, which are a lot of more fun.
[39:29] Peter Nieves: But the technology is actually pretty old. And so now what you're doing is you're seeing people are interacting with the technology that I'm highly familiar with. So I understand that these bots are trained. I understand that it takes data for them to be trained with or images or voice or text to be trained. So I started asking the questions like about 3 years ago, when people started really learning about AI.
[39:54] Peter Nieves: I said, well, what's being used to train this stuff? And nobody would answer. And so I started doing live events and say, hey guys, you need to be asking certain questions. The Gener of AI platform that I'm using, what was used to train the data, the data that was actually used to train the bot, what was used?
[40:11] Peter Nieves: Is it publicly available content? Is it scra content from the internet? Is it licensed or open source content? I start telling people, you need to ask this question. Second, in what's created, who owns what's created under the copyright law? And the Federal district court and also the Copyright Office both came out and said, you can't own under copyright law was created by Jenner of AI because the creator, quote unquote, which is a requirement for copyright law, is AI, which is a machine and you can't own what's created by a machine.
[40:40] Peter Nieves: So I made people aware of that. And then I told people when the results come out, you have to find out whether or not it's safe to use the results, which goes towards your question, which is, if I'm a person in the public, how do I know if I can use what's actually created? There's certain ways you can figure that out. One is, if the gene of AI platform that you're using is only using licensed and open source content that belongs to them, your chances of being sued for using the results of
[41:09] Peter Nieves: A platform that is open source and licensed content is extremely, extremely low, like remarkably low. They're not gonna sue you because they want you to use their platform, and they're the creator or the, the licensee or the owner of the stuff that you're getting derivatives for. So your chances of having a problem are very low. So, number one, I would be looking at whatever platform you're gonna use, find out the content that was used to train the generative AI platform.
[41:36] Peter Nieves: For, is it open source? Is it licensed, or is it scraped content? If it's scrape content, your radar should go up immediately. You should go, OK, that means this is stuff from the internet. That means your Facebook site, your YouTube site, your Instagram, your TikTok. That's what they grabbed.
[41:54] Peter Nieves: To train this model in many cases. That's what OpenAI did with Chad GPT. That's what Mid-journey did. For Sora for OpenAI, they asked the CTO, where did you get the videos that actually come out when I give a statement or I give like a story and a movie comes out by using Sora, where did you get those videos? The CTO goes, uh, well, they're publicly available.
[42:18] Peter Nieves: And then the reporter says, Do you mean Facebook? Do you mean Instagram? Do you mean, and the person said, I don't think I should answer any more questions. It's probably one of the funniest reviews or interviews I've ever seen. So,
[42:31] Dave Charest: so it was like a show, right? You're like, wait, are you really saying what you're
[42:34] Dave Charest: saying?
[42:34] Peter Nieves: Yeah, exactly. Like she just kind of shrunk in her seat and said, answering my questions. It's like, wow, this is a deposition. This is not an interview.
[42:42] Peter Nieves: So as a user of AI, it's your job. If you're using it in a business setting, where you're going to be using the results in the public to bring in work, to sell products, to market or advertise in public, it's your job to make sure it's safe to use those results. So I would be asking the questions of what's been used to train it and is there an indemnification.
[43:06] Peter Nieves: Clause in there, meaning, if I get sued for using the results of your platform, are you gonna cover me legally? Yes or no? Those are business
[43:14] Peter Nieves: questions.
[43:15] Dave Charest: So is this, I mean, am I gonna find all this stuff? This is all the stuff in the, like the terms and conditions, right, of using the platform that you're talking about? Like, is this where I'm gonna find
[43:23] Peter Nieves: this? Some of them you will, and some others you're gonna have to do more research because they're hiding the information. I give you an example. There's a site, Logo AI.
[43:32] Peter Nieves: Right? You go to the site and you create live, you create a logo. You pay $59 for the resulting logo. So I did in my content creator's legal boot camp training, which I did like two months ago. I walked them through the process of purchasing a logo.
[43:50] Peter Nieves: Then I took that logo and I did a search on Google and on the United States Patent Trademark Office and found out that that was a federally registered trademark of another company. So not only are you obtaining an image that can walk you into a lawsuit, you paid for the lawsuit. It's so bad. It is so bad, but people just don't know this. And so, how do I, as a consumer, when I'm using AI, how do I
[44:18] Peter Nieves: Make sure I don't get into trouble. You need to know what the tools are available to make sure that you're not committing copyright or trademark infringement. That's one of the things you need to use. And so that's why I do this training. It's like the content creators legal bootcamp. I walk them through the tools. How do you do a search for an image? How do you do a trademark search? I walk them through those kind of things.
[44:39] Dave Charest: So, I wanna just maybe take a step back a little bit here to just talk through. So you mentioned like working with creators, entrepreneurs, those types of things. And so,
[44:46] Dave Charest: When you just talk about from their perspective, like just intellectual property, how do you define
[44:51] Dave Charest: that?
[44:51] Peter Nieves: Intellectual property is a grant by the government to protect.
[44:56] Peter Nieves: A certain aspect of an idea, because you can't protect an idea. An idea in and of itself is something that cannot be grasped. It has to be implemented to become something you can protect. As an example, if you think of an image that you're going to paint, the thought of the image is not protectable, but once you paint it, it's now fixed and therefore it is now protectable under copyright law. If you have an idea for a new car or a new engine.
[45:23] Peter Nieves: The thought of it is not protectable, but once I implemented that mechanical device, namely the engine is protectable under patent law, which allows you to stop others from making, using, selling, or importing that in the United States or in whatever foreign government that you live in or where you want legal rights. So, IP is the protection of the creative works. It could be anything from on the copyright side, it can be music, videos, images, it could be writing.
[45:52] Peter Nieves: On the trademark side, it's word marks, slogans like just do it, it's design marks, images like the Nike swoosh. On the patent side, it's systems, it's methods, it's software processes, it's apparatus devices, those are the things that are protected on the patent side. Each one has a different cost.
[46:14] Peter Nieves: And each one has a different type of protection. So that's where intellectual property comes in.
[46:19] Dave Charest: Are there any big mistakes you see people making, like, even thinking like when it comes to like digital products, I mean, a lot of the things you're creating or just even content in general, like, are there any big mistakes you're seeing people
[46:29] Dave Charest: make?
[46:29] Peter Nieves: Yeah, I would say one of the biggest mistakes people are making is they're using names for things.
[46:35] Peter Nieves: And not doing trademark searches, or they're using names that are very descriptive that are not protectable. So as an example, let's say you have a new line of shoes and they're brown. You can't say this is the brown shoe company because what do you sell? Brown shoes. So it's what's called merely descriptive. So imagine spending tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars behind a brand.
[47:00] Peter Nieves: That includes a name and a logo that you could never own. That's a major problem. Or even worse, using a name where you never did a trademark search and you get sued for that name. Now what you've got to do is you've gotta change the website, change the stencil, change the marketing material, pull packaging from the shelves, plus cut a check for another party who owns the federal registration because you didn't do a free trademark search. That's a major problem.
[47:26] Peter Nieves: Another thing is people build companies doing what are called corporate name searches on the Secretary of State's website. And when they see the name is available, they start using it. That's not a trademark search. That's a corporate name search. A corporate name search is not the same as a trademark search. So a name may be available to be registered as your corporation with your state, but does not mean that you can use the name. Because when you use that name, you may find that as an example, the name.
[47:54] Peter Nieves: is not registered in your state, but that doesn't mean you can use the name Nike for shoes or footwear, because they have a federal registration for that. So you have to be cognizant or of aware of what the legal issues are in intellectual property law to be successful as a business person. That's what the large corporations are. They're very savvy when it comes to IP. That gives them a leg up over the competition. This is why they can squash the startups in second.
[48:21] Peter Nieves: They have IP portfolios. So they say, all right, we build printers, we have 100 patents, 1000 patents. You want to make a printer, we send you a cease and desist letter. Now, you're shut down because you're using technology similar to theirs. So you have to understand how the system works to become highly successful.
[48:39] Dave Charest: Yeah, well, I was gonna ask, I mean, so there's the one element, right, where you're, you're picking things that may already be protected or things that you can't use but you don't know.
[48:47] Dave Charest: But on the other side, how does a small business, for example, who is creating something, how do they protect their brand?
[48:54] Peter Nieves: Absolutely, yeah, that's a great question. So, in a brand, there's different aspects of what a brand is. There's the, the general look and feel. There are things like the logos, the names, the slogans, the stencil that's utilized, the color sequence that's utilized, even sometimes it's the specific font that's used on all that, like all those things have to do with brand, right? General look and feel. When it comes to
[49:17] Peter Nieves: Protecting your brand. First thing you want to do is obviously do any searching, make sure it's available. But then understand you have certain legal rights automatically, meaning there's a thing called common law trademark rights, and there's a thing called common law copyrights. McDonald's, the name McDonald's, there was a small company that actually owned the name. Then McDonald's got a federal registration and sent a cease and desist letter to this small company. This company had been using it for many years before them.
[49:45] Peter Nieves: So they actually were able to say back to McDonald's, hey, we had this name before you. We could shut you down. And that's called common law trademark rights. And what it means is the government said, you know what, mom and pop shops sometimes can't afford.
[50:00] Peter Nieves: To obtain legal rights for things. So we're gonna automatically give them rights the second they start using that name in interstate commerce, meaning across state lines, or even within state lines, we'll give them certain legal rights, OK? That's called common law rights. If you understand where your common law rights are, you can be using the little TM next to your name or next to your design mark, placing the public on notice, even though you don't have a federal registration, you have legal rights in the geographical regions where you've been using it already.
[50:30] Peter Nieves: Somebody else gets a federal registration because they have more money than you, they try to stop you, and you say you can't. Like, I can continue doing what I've been doing because I have common law trademark rights. But you have to understand how the system works. If you don't, then the response is, oh my gosh, I got a cease and desist letter. I can't afford the legal battle. I better stop immediately. And that's many of the people that go into as an example, the trainings that I have.
[50:57] Peter Nieves: A lot of people have been in that position after day one, they'll come to me and say, are you telling me that I didn't need to change the name of my company when I got a cease and sis letter, saying that's exactly what I'm telling.
[51:09] Dave Charest: Yeah, but you don't know, right? So they prey on that, right? They take advantage of that fact
[51:12] Peter Nieves: where that's it. It's knowledge is power.
[51:15] Peter Nieves: And there's a very powerful scripture in my people perished to a lack of knowledge. Like that's actually in the Bible, and it's accurate in a number of areas including business. So we've got to be aware of this information.
[51:27] Dave Charest: Well, let's wrap up with this then here. So what's your best piece of advice for a small business owner really trying to one,
[51:33] Dave Charest: Protect their work and grow their business, and let's add on in the age of AI. What's your best piece of advice there?
[51:40] Peter Nieves: That's a great question. In the world of AI, AI is a great technology. It will help you advance your company very fast, but you've got to be careful to make sure you're not putting proprietary information into AI that's making your information available to third parties because it's learning from you. So look for platforms that are closed systems.
[52:01] Peter Nieves: As an example, there's Chad GPT Enterprise, where you enter in does not go to the public. It's utilized in a, in a local area. There's other companies that have similar technologies that are out there that you can utilize. When you're building a business, there's certain things that you've got to do right off the bat. Number one, your name, your logo, your slogan. If you're working with third parties, you should have certain agreements in place that say whatever they create you own.
[52:27] Peter Nieves: You should have that. A lot of people are using fiber when they're starting out to hire third parties to do work for them. Those people are creating images or copy or creating software apps or whatever it is, and you don't own what they create. You need to know that, have knowledge in this area. So you want a legal agreement in place, which could be really short, a page to 3 pages that basically says that all rights had our own interest for what they're creating is signed over to you including all intellectual property rights.
[52:56] Peter Nieves: Just having something like that in place is gonna make sure that all the time and effort that you're putting into building, where you're creating, you're gonna actually own. And ownership doesn't just mean, well, now I can pound my fist against my chest and make a ton of money. It means you can control the growth of that technology, what happens with that technology, or those images or that content.
[53:18] Peter Nieves: So it doesn't get used in a corrupt manner. Third parties aren't taking advantage of you, stealing it, stealing your clients, your customers, because you're already competing with a lot of people. When you're starting a business, unless you're really highly niched, meaning
[53:34] Peter Nieves: You're in a fraction of a fraction, and there's nobody doing what you do. Chances are there's a lot of people doing something similar, you just need to stand out. And the way you stand out is making sure that what you're using is unique. So do the trademark searches, make sure that you protect your names, your logos, your slogans, your contents, use your copyright notices, use your trademark notices to make the public aware. I'm not just here to visit and then disappear. I'm here to stay.
[54:04] Peter Nieves: And what I'm creating here is authentic, it's unique, it's important, and I'm willing to protect this. And so if you do that properly, your chances of growth grow exponentially, like very fast.
[54:18] Peter Nieves: The people that don't do that, that don't do the trademark searches, that don't learn about IP in general, don't understand how AI really works. They tend to disappear. I mean, I'm seeing this in the business world right now. There's a lot of competition, especially in the area of content creation, a ton of competition. And as a content creator, you're always looking for something unique.
[54:39] Peter Nieves: If you've got something that's unique, you could just put a notice on it, copyright notice on it, TM whatever. Just make sure that people know that this is yours and they shouldn't be grabbing your content. And when you do that, you decrease the chances of people stealing that, which means you make more money off of that. You maintain the authenticity of what you're creating.
[55:00] Peter Nieves: But especially in the area of AI, I would be following people that understand this. And there's not a lot. There's a lot of people that are talking and it's a lot of smoke, cause I'm watching YouTube videos, Instagram, TikTok, and there's a lot of people who are influencers who are coming out and saying, hey guys, use AI to write your book. Hey, use AI to do this, use that, and they don't understand the legal ramifications of what they're telling you to do.
[55:25] Peter Nieves: And so follow people that understand this. There's a handful of them out there, figure out who they are. Obviously, I do. And then, as you're doing that, get into their trainings, learn what they're doing, and take advantage of that because it, unfortunately, it's kind of like candy, right? Every kid wants candy.
[55:44] Peter Nieves: And candy is phenomenal. When you're eating it, it tastes great. But if you eat too much candy and you don't know what you're doing, you're gonna have a stomach ache, you're gonna have in your worst position, your teeth are rot out, and that's what you're seeing in the AI world is.
[55:57] Peter Nieves: Everybody's excited. AI is candy. Everybody loves this. And the result is everybody's eating it up, but nobody's worrying about, you know, the cavities. They don't care. They don't care about the stomach aches, they don't care. But you're seeing it. Watch the lawsuits. They're being filed every week, literally every week. There's new lawsuits being filed. And now they're starting to be filed against people that don't understand what they're doing. So, learn.
[56:22] Peter Nieves: Implement and you'll be highly successful with a phenomenal technology which will accelerate your growth. AI is phenomenal. I use it every single week. So just know how to use it.
[56:34] Dave Charest: Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, serve first, build trust, and growth follows.
[56:42] Dave Charest: Peter didn't intend to use education as a marketing strategy, but by generously sharing knowledge, he created a loyal community that naturally converted into clients. If you show up with the intention to help, the business often follows. So focus your efforts on educating to attract those that are right for your business. Number 2, build relationships rather than relying on paid ads. Instead of relying on paid marketing,
[57:10] Dave Charest: Peter nurtures his email list, offers value-packed challenges, and uses email to trigger waves of business when needed.
[57:19] Dave Charest: This repeatable system works because it's based on trust and ongoing engagement. How can you continue nurturing those relationships with your customers? Number 3, your name, logo, and content might already be protected, but you need to know how. Peter stressed that many businesses don't realize they already.
[57:40] Dave Charest: have common law trademark rights or that copyright protection can begin the moment something is created. Understanding IP basics and getting the right agreements in place can save a ton of money and headaches later. Be sure to check out some of the resources Peter has created to help you. You'll find links in the show notes. So here's your action item. Before you name your next product, launch a course or create content.
[58:09] Dave Charest: Do a quick trademark search. You can avoid major legal headaches just by knowing what's already protected. And if you're using Constant Contact, consider creating a free downloadable resource like Peter's IP ebook and use it as a starting point for your own automated email drip campaign. That's how you turn education into engagement.
[58:37] Dave Charest: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/BAM. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/BAM.
[59:00] Dave Charest: Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.