What Every Founder Should Protect Before It’s Too Late | Founder’s Office™ Lunch & Learn

Hi, welcome back to the Founder's Office Lunch and Learn. Thank you for joining us today. We've got Katie Powell Hinnetz back with us. Tom and Candice are traveling, they're on planes, they're off on adventures. So Katie and I are taking care of you today with the headline, What Every Founder Should Protect Before It's Too Late. Too late. And before we dive into the stuff that we had kind of planned for today, we want to tell you, like, case study this week specific. We are getting so many hits for scams. And one of our clients who is really big— I think you met him on a previous Lunch and Learn— Nate Herkman, or Nate Hurk, big YouTube following, big AI channel. He's really big on Twitter. He got hacked. And is fortunately sorting it out. But Katie also, I think if you're comfortable sharing, Katie was also the target. All of this, this week. So with the flurry of what we're all doing online with our data, with AI, with just tech in general, I think it's super timely to have this conversation, especially going back to what every founder should protect before it's too late. Passwords. Passwords. Identity data. Um, yeah, Katie, will you walk us through what happened to you this week?

Absolutely. And you know, it was, it was, it was incredible timing in the sense that it was happening last night. I'm texting you, Jackie, like something's afoot. And then I go, oh, I was almost scammed multiple times doing the thing that is for protection, which I think was just such an interesting thing to wrap my head around. So for context, At the Founder's Office, we are very big on IP. And so trademarking, really protecting that intellectual property and creating tangible value from those intangibles. My husband and I and my father-in-law have a business. And so I have the great fortune of learning all of these IP principles and helping others and learning from Jackie. at the Founder's Office. So I am a good founder and I'm doing all of my IP. I'm on the government website. I am pulling in all of my application materials. And no less than 2 hours after submitting my, um, applications, I start getting very official-looking correspondence from a litany of different— sources, and I'm unfamiliar with the process. It feels scary. It feels official. And the level of sophistication of these individuals who are scamming people was incredible. And so in no short order, I am getting told I'm gonna lose my application fees if I don't do XYZ by 4:00 PM today. There was a level of urgency, officialness. The domains looked very similar to the actual official respondents I had already received. And because of the level of urgency, I start to get a little panicked, like, wow, I just spent several, you know, $100 per trademark. I don't want to lose that because I've dropped the ball.

Mm-hmm.

And the saving grace was that the people got impatient with me. And it was a red flag because I thought, well, our government isn't known to move this quickly on these items. So it's really weird you're giving me less than a 24-hour deadline. Mine. So my red flag was a little up, but then so too, they got impatient with me for not moving forward. And taking a step back allowed me to go, okay, let me do a little bit of research. Sure enough, it is a scam. And it just took that level of pause in the face of that urgency. Um, and we thought, oh my gosh, we have to share this because we, we— actively help our clients go through these processes. And to know that even when you're doing the activities to protect yourself, your business, there are circumstances that you can get into that create that level of exposure.

Well, what's so interesting to me is there's a lot of different sites where you can utilize third-party services to protect your IP. In this case, that's the, the framework we're talking about is protecting IP. It could be banking, it could be whatever. There are third-party vendors and people in the marketplace that can help. You chose to go directly to the government, to a government site to do your application, and the scam back was that quick. And you said that the communications were very sophisticated. Were they? I think they were texting you, emailing, and calling.

And calling. And here's the interesting part, Jackie, that you raise is, yes, I was an A+ student by my standards, right? Went to the government website. But as we teach founders here, right, that level of exposure when you're doing things— in this case, we have the good fortune of having that structure in place such that it's not highly exposed, but they did have my email, they did have my phone, and they did have my attribution to this company. And so regardless of taking these steps, there's always a level deeper with risk mitigation and protection, right? And so Jackie, I think reflecting on this experience, I'm curious your thoughts of— we know internally, risk isn't always like the sexiest topic for clients. There's more urgent and emergent priorities for companies. But given these couple of really recent instances, what would you tell a founder who is doing their best, but needs to look out for this level of, of risk and exposure that's increasing?

I think awareness is so key, and I don't— a lot of these scams work because of like fearmongering, right? Like the, um, they make you scared. They made you feel panicked, like there was an urgent need right now, and if you didn't act now, you'd lose something. The, the scams prey on that type of mindset where you're scared and you kind of buy into the urgency. So I'm not I'm not saying be scared. I am saying be aware. Have this like healthy paranoia. What do we want to call it? Healthy suspicion. Healthy—

Healthy—

A very grounded lens that you're looking through. I think the mistake is that when you're just starting out, it's like, oh, no one's going to target me. What do I have to target, right? I'm just starting. I'm just starting my business. Or for instance, with our client, he's got his loyal following. He's in a very niche space. I don't know that he was probably aware that he'd be a good target, right? You kind of think you're off the radar except for your audience where you're very much kind of entrenched with them within your community. But other than that, it's like, "No one's coming after me." Maybe healthy suspicion. [LAUGHTER] We are, because of AI and because it is getting easier, We are all targets, period. If you compute, if you have a phone, if you bank, if you're on the grid, if you have a password for something, you can be a target. And what's interesting, Katie, not to get long-winded on this, but a lot of the AI scams I think are bot-driven, or more and more they're becoming bot-driven.

Mm-hmm.

Bots are indiscriminate, right? Whereas humans may be like, you use your judgment and discernment to maybe pick targets that you're like, oh, deep pockets there, whatever. Bots are just gonna blast out like shotgun, you know, spray and hit everyone. So we are, we are all targets. Again, healthy, healthy suspicions.

Yeah, I think that that indiscriminate piece is so crucial because it is a level of— I mean, I even fell prey to it this week of like, well, we're new, you know, no big deal. It's, it's fine. And we're still getting our sea legs about you and having the knowledge from being able to learn from you, Jackie, on this risk and protection piece, I think I put my guardrails down a little bit because I knew, okay, I'm taking the right steps in certain areas. Um, but I, I think what this experience highlighted for me is when something is new and it's almost new and within the space of risk, or it has a monetary component to it, right? These were not huge, but not insignificant filing fees.

Mm-hmm.

They completely preyed on my psychology for it. And so kind of taking a broader view of this, because we're talking about kind of the, the known scams out there, but Founders Office, we really focus on kind of like the, the short-term, in the long-term, both risk and protection sides of that coin. What have you seen in your experience, Jackie, are like some of the biggest mistakes mistakes founders may make early that if they did something a little different, the outcome could be widely different?

Great question. Two main things, and then you can build from there. But one, if you are not— not even if you're building something, if you're, if you're breathing, think about whether you want to hold assets in your own name or whether it makes sense to have some sort of structure. To hold assets. I was going to start that sentence by saying, if you're building something, if you're building a company— take that back, like, strike through. For all of us, does it make sense to hold things in your own name, or does it make sense to hold things in an LLC? And then parallel with that, um, some sort of enterprise structure. Do you have more than one LLC? How do they interrelate? How is your constellation of entities, if you have 3 or more, how do they— how are they set up? Are they set up in a strategic way such that they are mitigating risk and providing like a stable launch pad for you to build or not live, you know, accumulate wealth?

I— it kind of straddling back to then our client's case and, and more of like the commonplace scams, I would imagine that that structure of different, um, single-purpose vehicles, you know, for different lines of revenue and things of that nature may actually help fortify some protection inherently from a more traditional scam. Is that true?

I think so. Let's chat through this. Okay. Think about the alternative. Say this client didn't have structures in place, right? He is an online content creator. Big following. Let's imagine a world where he personally is making all this content, getting subscribers, getting viewers, all of his IP is in his name, all of his content is in his name, all of the revenue from what he generates is coming into his bank account. Like, imagine that world where he's siloed, everything's coming to him.

Mm-hmm.

And now imagine a successful hack, what that— how it could wipe right? How it could take, how it could wipe, how it could cause damage. Now imagine another scenario where we've helped build up these different structures and kind of a strategic flow of different things. Think how his employees, his content, his IP, his banking— think about how all of those different things are now protected in the same situation in which he got hacked.

Mm-hmm.

There's one small problem to solve right now, and he's working on solving it rather than 84 separate problems to solve. Also huge magnitude, right? When you're talking about hits to like IP and company revenues and employees and all these different things, the magnitude of the hit gets way bigger. The complication of solving it gets way bigger.

Yeah, just the level of stress, right? Like say you couldn't make payroll because of it and just the kind of like, there's a solution, but the length and time really depends on the gravity, it sounds like, of the scenario. Ernest put a really wonderful question in the chat. What if people want personal data and guarantees? Should we be setting up ways to separate ourselves from that by having a better setup? So let's talk through this a little bit because this does come up in our work sometimes. Jackie, what do you think?

I think it's a great question, Ernest, because business, life, life is built on personal data, right? And as we're getting more and more into like, AI, the power of human relationships and personal data is still going to matter. Guarantees, that's an interesting one too. We're, we're still gonna see a world in which guarantees are sought and signed. We 100% of the time think about things like NDAs, confidentiality agreements, things that aren't foolproof, but definitely help de-risk. Insurance. There's, you know, cyber insurance, there's data protection services. So I guess it goes to how complicated you're thinking of like setting up your specific situation. I guess I'd love to know more about this question. Like, what do you mean if you want personal guarantees or personal data, how it should be set up? Definitely it deserves thought and some strategy.

Yeah, I love that. It's kind of with everything with our clients too. It's like a case-by-case basis. You can have a general philosophy and architecture, but there's always going to be exceptions, and it's the level of risk you're willing to take on, um, that— What do you— Part of the conversation.

You work with organizations, Katie. You've got your PhD in organizational— is it behavior? Organizational psychology? Organizational—

Industrial organizational psychology. Yes.

So What do you, how do you even broach that conversation with clients or companies or people you've worked with in the past about like, like the mindset to approach this and kind of what strings do you pull at to start sorting through it?

Yeah, I love that question. And it's, you already kind of addressed it, Jackie, so much more eloquently than I will be able to, but I think it comes down to giving the space to think about it before crisis happens. And I think the tricky nature of being a founder, startup, or a growing company, like, like high velocity environments often demand attention for things that are reactive rather than proactive. Risk mitigation is a proactive thought experiment, right? We've done ourselves a disservice if we're being reactive in those spaces. And so the first thing is being able to say, we will count ourselves successful if we don't have bad consequences to this. And that's just kind of a paradigm shift for particularly, I would say, founders, not to overgeneralize, because you're so focused on, on the growth and the tangibles and the, the numbers. But If, if nothing happens, that's the best case scenario. So it's a little bit of a paradigm shift to say, how are we gonna count ourselves successful here? And then I think it, it often comes down to, you know, you, you work on such the legal strategy and architecture side. On the psychology side, for, for me and my experience navigating this with folks, it's really about saying, what is our decisioning criteria? 4 items. When do we know? I do love Jeff Bezos' kind of one-way door, two-way door framework, which—

I don't know this. I'm going to have to look into it.

It's wonderful. I'll give you a very short synopsis, but it's, if it's a, if it's a two-way door decision, meaning I can go in and I can come right back out, go forth with it, right? Try it out. It's a really good enabling tactic for your team. That's— and then a one-way door is the opposite. It's saying, ooh, if we make this decision, it's incredibly hard to back ourselves up. There's, yeah, there's more consequences.

Okay.

That decisioning criteria requires a lot of deliberation up front to be able to enable your team. Risk is the foundation of that, of how do we even define what a one-way door versus two-way door system is. Risk is the first and primary component of those door systems. And so, once you can enable people to say, okay, this is the level of risk I'm willing my— willing to let my team go forth with is, and this is the level of risk that immediately escalates to me and we deliberate as a team. That's, that's more of like kind of the behavior route, I would say, is trying to get really clear on, on definitions at first and then practicing those definitions. Over time, and when things go wrong, which they do, you can't plan for every scenario, nor should you. You know, we've got other things to do as well. Being able to reflect back and say, how do we refine some of that decisioning criteria and get everybody else on the same page?

What you said was really striking about creating the space to think about these things. I think it's natural human nature and with our particular audience, these are, you know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs, founders, business leaders, busy people building something. And when you are on this trajectory where it's like, go, go, go, go, it's really difficult to slow down and exhale and say, this deserves some slowness, deserves some space, it deserves some thought.

Oh yeah.

And also, As a lawyer, it's very natural. Like, when do people come to me?

Mm-hmm.

When there's been a problem, right? There's no one, I don't think anyone, if you're out there, just please, like for data, I would love to know, who's like going to sleep at night like, "God, life is good. But you know what? I'm not gonna like read a chapter in this book or watch some interesting TV. I'm gonna think about calling my lawyer and being like, what are some risk areas we haven't thought about yet? And can we be proactive?" Like, no, no one's doing that. But imagine all of the headache and pain and stress that could be avoided. I'm not suggesting anyone like who's having a good day just be like, let's just call the lawyer. No. But with your team, it deserves some thought. It's also really interesting too, Katie, with going back to AI and like how sophisticated the communications were. We've seen colleagues make AI videos and use AI voice. Delphi is a good example, right? Where like, that person's mom doesn't know they're not hearing his or her baby, like, yeah, on the phone. So when you pick up the phone, fortunately this guy started kind of losing it a little bit, getting impatient. But can you imagine a good AI bot?

Oh yeah, no, it was, it was with that level of urgency, I mean, it really was something that I— and I know those psychological tactics and I fell so prey to them. I would say something that helped anchor me to be like, something's not right, was when I did text you. And so I was— it was the, something's going wrong, I'm going to reach out to an attorney.

I want to know what I said. I think I said, no, this is—

Yeah, you were like, something's not right.

Yeah. Did I say that?

Right. Yes. And I then responded and going, you know what? Yes, something is not right. But it required them to have their own downfall. Truly, if the gentleman had been, like you said, had a very familiar sounding voice.

Official.

Yes. And been patient. He was impatient. And that's when I was like, you— that's not— that doesn't comport with my understanding of even going through this system. Previously. That's how sophisticated this was. And so this actually, I think this comes back to, we have a question in the chat that I think really goes well with the AI. So it's, what precautions should I take or implement for a terminated party with a tech background skill set I don't possess who appears to be monitoring my emails and text chats without my knowledge? I, Jackie, I will defer to you if you have an answer on here. My, Honest answer is, I don't know. Get help from a very seasoned tech, tech expert, and then proactively start mitigating this with existing and future employees and contractors. But I think this becomes ever more present the more AI you use. And so Jackie, I, I'm curious your thoughts on how to best support one of our listeners here today, but also What are some of those things they can get in place to prevent such a scenario?

Yeah, no, and your, your answer is awesome, Katie. And first of all, this person wrote in anonymously. I'm sorry that you're going through this. This is scary. And this, like what Katie, Katie read the question, um, it appears they've been monitoring your email. So something, you have some sort of evidence. Um, I, I don't like it and I'm sorry you're going through that. I would say there's— if it's already done, if this person didn't sign anything on their way out the door when they were terminated, there's not much to do with that person on the back end now. But going forward, make sure you've got people turning in devices, software, hardware, removing access. Make sure you've got a strong data team so that terminated employees, you know, you've gotten everything back from them, they have no access. In this case, to kind of mitigate risk, change passwords. If this person installed something on your server or on your device, yes, like Katie said, I don't know the answer, but get help. There are, there are plenty of people out there that you can trust that can come in and do a scan on your system and say, we've got malware here, whether it's installed locally on your driver or whether it's, coming in from some outside source, I would say definitely get info, see if you can find out what's, what's there and what it's doing. And then hopefully you can mitigate the damage or prevent anything further from happening. That's a curious case. And I think again, to Katie's point with AI, it's going to be happening more and more. So going forward, yeah, strong language, making sure that your confidential information, that your, your systems, your data is is all protected. Make sure you've got those documents in place.

Yeah, it all goes back to, right, like we really don't love, and this is true both in experiences like I've shared here, like, oh my gosh, I'm in a pickle, but as my own founder, but it's so normal, Jackie, and it sounds like that is your tried and true experience of something's happened. I never want that to happen again. I need to resolve the current problem. But how do we fortify a structure such that that isn't something that happens in the future? And I think that's when, you know, we see people see the value in going slow and getting that architecture in place and ensuring that that language is really tight and standardized. What are a couple of things that, you know, somebody may not know about risk mitigation or asset protection, basically kind of in, in the field that we work in, both from the protection side but also the value accentuation side? Um, where, where are people kind of missing, um, missing some key nuggets of wisdom that we—

Okay, I'm gonna do this through a story time. Okay, and it's gonna be a hypothetical story, but okay, pick, pick an industry, pick a fun company. What would be I always use the bakery because it's easy.

I like a bakery. I feel like that sounds good.

It's like— I like pastries. Okay, so pretend we've got a bakery and they make these like delicious cakes. Let's say they're doing bang-up revenue, like they're a bakery for, I don't know, a Beverly Hills like wedding venue, right? This is a gangbusters bakery. They are doing— I love easy numbers— they're doing $3 million in revenue a year. Okay, so they're making great money, but the before slide, or the before view, is they've had some partners, they've verbally given equity in their business, they don't have an operating agreement, they've got some personal guarantees in place with the bank. That's how they got those ovens, and you know, that's how they got the fridges, the cooler, the Sub-Zero, like all the fancy stuff. They've got no— maybe they've got a great brand, but they haven't trademarked it. They've got— let's, let's keep going down there before. Basically, they don't have a good, like, QuickBooks system. They don't have good accounting. Their books aren't solid, right? Their financials aren't clean. They don't really know their numbers. The story is kind of inconsistent. If you talk to their head baker and you talk to their chief ops person or their CFO, the numbers are a little different. The contracts on what they're going to do for this next year's revenue, one of them tells you they've got 13 contracts for huge high-profile Hollywood weddings locked down and someone else says, yeah, 2 of them are signed, whatever you're getting, you're getting the picture of the before, right?

Yeah.

Okay. So remember they're getting, they're doing $3 million in revenue, right?

Yep.

If they wanted to sell that business and retire, if the Head Baker and their spouse wanted to retire and sell the business, the, the value they get for their business, their exit price is priced by like private equity and what multiple on revenue that private equity would give them. And it's usually a range, right? But let's, for sake of our example, let's say they can get a 5 multiple. They're doing $3 million in revenue on a 5 multiple, their business would be worth $15 million, right?

Yeah.

But say that buyer comes in and starts diligencing, the potential buyer comes in and starts diligencing and is like, I'm not seeing any signed contracts here. Your story is inconsistent. You haven't protected your brand. You haven't trademarked. Like, I don't know that I want to give you a 5 multiple. I'll maybe give you a 2. Now it's a $6 million business rather than a $15. Or the alternative can be true. Say we work with them and say it takes a couple years, but we can get all of the documents in place. We can get everything trademarked and protected. We can make sure the founder is ready for an exit and has a plan going forward. We can get all of their equity agreements lined up, clean data room, like ticked and tied, right?

Right.

This is a bakery that is like, any shark on Shark Tank would be like, please let me in. Okay. Now, now the multiple without them having to do more revenue, they can hold their revenue at 3 or they can grow it, but say they hold it.

Yeah.

Now what if they can get a 7 multiple, right? Now it's a $21 million business. So in this example, you can see the swing on the low side, $6 million, high side $21 million with, with some just really intentional care, de-risking, structuring, being strategic. Yeah, long, long example. Sorry, Kate.

No, I love that, Jackie, because there's, there's a couple of things that ring true. And, and I think that story is so powerful because I hope people can see themselves through it. First thing is that without doing more, you can get more. And I think when people come to us, it's like, Oh my gosh, if you had only known this earlier, you could— the sky was your limit, right? Like, it's— and so it is something where we are always so grateful to be able to work with people early or to have known that people knew these things early. And I think that's— it's always so exciting.

You said that so cleanly. Without doing more, you can get more. Meaning without doing more in revenue, right? Like just hold steady. But by amplifying these different dimensions of your business, you can exponentially add value. You can get more.

I think that's just like something people, at least in my experience, I'm hoping everyone here will walk away with that today. If you had one thing to walk away with, um, and then we have some, we have some good questions in the chat, but there is something about oftentimes my perception is when we talk about risk. Risk protection. It feels a little colonoscopy adjacent. Like people certainly like, uh, not yet, maybe later. It feels really uncomfortable. I don't wanna think about the bad things, but it, but it's not all bad. It's actually some of the most powerful work you can do to grow your business. And, and then you're gonna grow not only exponentially your value, but your ability to retain that value. because it is protected. There aren't any, any holes in the process that could have a— I loved your example in the story of a verbal agreement partner come back and that wasn't in writing. You've exponentially increased your business value, and now there's this, like, hanging ambiguity, right?

And so it's— And it happens all the time.

Exactly. And so I think that it's, it's Such a good example. You did such a wonderful story because it's the stuff that lights us up. And when people— we've seen the magic of like people go, oh, this is actually a powerful way to grow my business, not just something like that's like a must-to-legal-ese thing.

Not to knock on you, Dr. Eve, so boring.

So boring. It lights them up too. And it gets— it's a rising tide that truly lifts all boats.

You mentioned something about, when your story, about the urgency they were pressing and how it costs a couple hundred bucks and you don't wanna lose that, right?

Mm-hmm.

There is, I just wanna flag this or preview it, there is cost associated with this, but when you look, it's not like one-to-one. Like it's not like you're spending a dollar to protect a dollar. You are spending a dollar to protect Can you see I'm outside the frame?

Yes.

Like, you can really, really maximize your value. It's not free. It does cost something.

Yeah.

But—

Yeah, it's an investment.

Not a one-to-one. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's such a good anchor. There's a— Barbara put into the chat here, how do we protect IP that we are developing but not finished with? And this is a question that, I mean, it's kind of something that this work can— is a living, breathing work stream.

Yes.

Jackie, how do we navigate that? And what would you give Barbara as a good next step?

Know that you can protect IP. That's still in process, that's still developing. There are several different ways to protect IP. The important thing is to identify it and then be intentional about putting things in place to start protecting it. And then you can easily tweak it or develop more, add to it down the line. But yeah, the, the first thing to do is just to know that you can protect it and it's worth protecting now, even in early stages.

Mm-hmm. I'll give, I'll give the example of very, very early stage business that my husband and I have. And we, we are as— as a double track with our launch, our product launch. It is part of our roadmap, just because I've had the front row seat for this work and this value, and it honestly feels like a breath of fresh air to be tying up these things with a bow as we're launching. And so it has been a gift, Jackie, for you to have that advice. It looks like Diana has a really interesting question on the AI developer. I want to probably give you the space, Jackie, of like not legal advice, legal strategy, high-level disclaimer there. One thing that raises for me, Diana, in your question, something that we have been bumping up a lot against for folks who are moving fast is ensuring that whatever agreement you have does ensure that the product developed becomes yours, becomes the business's. So Jackie, along with that equity kind of split, what do you kind of generally see as good things to add?

I want to start by saying you get to pick. Diana, you're asking some pretty specific questions. You said, what is the recommended agreement to be done with the AI developer? You get to pick. The important thing is that you have an agreement. To Katie's point, really important to specify who's doing what and who gets what. Meaning if this person is gonna receive some sort of comp, equity or otherwise, are you, is the company, who's getting the work product? Very important to separate, yeah, who's doing what and who gets what. And then you ask, what is the percentage of equity that you can offer? That's up to you. We have discussions with our clients about the importance or relative importance of maintaining control. If you're building something and you want to be the decision maker, that's important to think through when deciding how much equity to give. If you don't want to be a decision maker, if you've taken something so far and you want to bring in other decision makers, then that's a point to consider. So, um, think through— know that you've got flexibility and think through what makes sense for you as the founder. Think through what makes sense for the business and then think through what makes sense for them. Are there any other agreements besides giving equity? An agreement for, I would say, like scope of work, who owns what, who does what, who gets what. That would be my guidance there. Barbara, Angela, oh yeah, Angela's gonna post We're going to post our contact information unless you're a spam scam bot.

Yes.

Then don't connect with us, please. If you are not a bot, we would love for you to connect with us. And we are, we're glad, the Founder's Office is glad to help with these conversations about IP and how to get started and who to talk to or who to connect with. Sometimes, again, we don't give legal advice, but we'll get you as far as we can. Yeah, that's my answer there. Yeah.

One last thing, Katie. I thought that that was so, so perfectly said because I think it's the, it depends. And it's something that I have a cognitive load over that I try and kind of circumvent. I'm, I'm sure you have, and I, I, I'm guessing it's, it's fairly normal for, for founders, which is, can I just do it once and just have my template and then just like send it broadly. And you had said it— you had said it earlier on today, Jackie, and it's just so worth repeating, which is these are the things that are worth going slow on. And slow doesn't mean forever. It doesn't mean dragging your feet. It means being intentional. And you can have a general framework, but that level of intentionality pays dividends later down the line, even just in peace of mind, right? Everything's kind of—

Yeah.

In tip-top shape. There's no loose ends that are growing in size as you grow, because obviously the intention is that you do grow. Um, and so the— these types of, of considerations as you are working with partners, as you are outsourcing, as you're bringing new people in, right, that we've talked about from, from the listeners today, are all worth a little bit of slowness there to make sure that moving forward— well, one, we rectify the issue, but then moving forward, how do we bake in those learnings and get you protected moving forward? Yeah. Wonderful. For our anonymous attendee on your cyber issue, what I would offer is we do have a great kind of person or firm for IT and security that I'd be happy to send over their information to for you to consult, and so would be happy to share that if helpful.

There's, I think, an opportunity, Angela, when you've got a moment, if you would throw on the screen the best way for people to find the Founder's Office or to contact us or to send in additional questions or to get on the list for future Lunch and Learns We've been focusing quite a bit on AI recently because it's kind of the hot, sexy topic. But in general, we try to provide value for founders and entrepreneurs, how to de-risk, how to protect, how to grow and scale and be thoughtful. And Katie, it's— yeah, it's a huge gem just to like almost have permission of someone that knows they're talking about saying, go slow, slow down and just have— Yeah. Give yourself the space to think about these things because they matter right now. They're going to keep mattering. For our audience, you've heard we don't have our main cheerleader here today. Tom normally gives us a rah-rah for the podcast that Candice and I have, the WTF, Women Talk Finance. Katie actually was our most recent guest. And so, our next episode, I think next week coming out, will be Katie. Katie. Katie on the WTF podcast. And she's got amazing, amazing insights as always. She's so eloquent. The way she puts things, I just want to tidy her words up in a little box with a bow on them.

Jackie, you're so sweet. It was such a joy—

Thank you, Angela.

—to be on. I was listening to it as a fan, longtime listener of WTF. And I will say, it just felt like, uh, Jackie and Candace are two women I would just love to hang out with. And I get the privilege to. So it was a very full circle. But your insights are great. I had such a delightful time. And yeah, we did talk a lot about AI and, and honestly, the, the kind of go, go, go structure, maybe, maybe Jackie, I'm going to put you on the spot, could be a good closing insight from you. Just spent, you just spent some time deep in AI and it sounds like this go a little slower ethos is percolating into even the AI space, which feels a bit antithetical to what we've been experiencing.

You don't even have to like nudge me to go into like the woo energy space. So I'm gonna launch, I'm gonna go deep. Yes, thank you for that softball. To me, AI, the narrative around it, the energy around it is very, very, very masculine. And that's okay, that can be good. But I do think it deserves balance with feminine energy. And what that looks like is when the narrative is just like, go, go, go, produce more, do more, 10x this, 100 times this, you're gonna be left out. This, this fear, this anxiety, this overwhelm— I like the idea of balancing it with some thoughtfulness and some intention and discernment. What we're left with when we've got this, this pressure to use something that we feel overwhelmed by, what we're left with is this feeling of like, I can't. And we don't want that. We want this to be an I can. We want this to be an enabling support tool, something we're excited by, something that we can infuse in our lives in a way that's enriching for us, whatever that looks like. Everyone's going to be different. But going back to like slowing down and thinking, how, how can I use AI in a way— like for Candice, for example, her example, her specific example was, I want to use AI so that I get time in my day back. Mm-hmm. To be off of a screen. I want to use AI to get time back that's not being used for AI. I want to go paddleboarding. Maybe I want to paddleboard at 3 in the afternoon. How can I use AI to set me up for success with that objective? So again, another long-winded answer. But yeah, that's— I think that's worthy of conversation and thought.

Absolutely. I do too. I mean, I could just listen to you all day on that topic. And I think—

Let me go.

With everything, I mean, from like an organizational design perspective, everything you do, everything you choice, start with, well, how would I count myself successful here? Right? And so I feel like we're not asking that question enough with AI. It's an, I don't want to just do more. I want to do, I want to add more value. And what does that look like? Like, it's super, super clear. It's the exact same stuff that we're talking about with risk and IP and asset protection. And, you know, it's saying, how would I count myself successful here? Often in the risk space, it's I can sleep. I can sleep. I'm not worried about the things that I don't even know, right? That's a huge KPI. But you don't know you needed that KPI until oftentimes it's a little too late, right? So, but there's a double side of that coin of it actually can, can exponentially grow the value of your business by doing the exact same action. So Jackie, I just, I love the way you put that. And I think with AI and that go-go energy, we're talking similarly about rushing. It's a, it's a rushed energy and just taking a moment to say, what am I, what's my goal? How would I count myself successful? Is going to get you into a better mind frame.

Maybe even using AI as like a critical thinking partner in that. Like, tell your AI, I want to go slow and be thoughtful about this. Here's what I'm thinking through. Help me think through this critically, or, you know, whatever. Put your adjectives in. I love that.

Yeah. What a good power prompt. I love that. I'm gonna use that today. Like, yeah, like, help be a thought partner with me here. Consider many different angles that I'm not and really push me to get clear on how I'll count myself successful here. So then I know, yes, I want that outcome. Cuz if you don't, you're not sure, you're probably not gonna work toward it. Truly.

That's my one little Katie in my pocket thing is I show up now to things. I'm like, what's the objective?

Yes. What's the objective? Oh, I love that.

That's wonderful. Okay, great conversation. Thanks, Katie. We'll wrap up for our listeners. There's a replay, there's all the QR codes Angela put up, and maybe she'll throw them up one more time. If you want to reach out, we love, we love getting your questions. We love coming on with a plan to kind of talk through what you guys want to hear about or know about. So thank you as always for joining us. And we'll see you next week. Bye!