In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews San Diego attorney Richard Chapo, who has over 25 years of experience advising online businesses. The conversation begins with Chapo sharing a pivotal personal story: after years defending hospitals in wrongful‑death cases, he burned out and took a year‑long sabbatical teaching at a university in Siberia, which taught him the importance of stepping out of an unhappy niche. He then explains the emerging "Splinternet" – the fragmentation of the global internet into regional zones driven by laws like the EU’s GDPR, which makes it hard for small U.S. businesses to operate internationally without a physical presence. Chapo offers two core pieces of business advice: always have a written partnership agreement with exit provisions to avoid "zombie partners," and stay nimble—avoid excessive meetings and act quickly on opportunities. He reinforces the nimbleness theme with an Uber example, noting that lawyers often over‑analyze risk while successful tech firms move fast. When asked about happiness, Chapo says the key is self‑knowledge, recognizing that different lifestyles suit different people. He recommends Stephen King’s On Writing for its lessons on humility and perseverance, and shares a favorite Hunter S. Thompson quote about not taking life too seriously, especially in law. The episode closes with Chapo’s contact information (SoCalInternetLawyer.com) and a light‑hearted disclaimer about his name.
Chapters
Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Richard Chapo with us. He's a lawyer in San Diego who provides legal guidance to online businesses. He's been practicing for more than 25 years, and Richard was formerly an enthusiastic world traveler but has pulled back on his travels ever since his knees started to sound like popcorn cooking when getting out of bed each Morning. So welcome to the show, Richard.
Thank you for having me on. Of course, man.
Pumped to have you here. Uh, we'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Richard, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Uh, you know, I think the best story from my life was probably, uh, something happened around 1999. I really burned out in my specific niche. I was defending hospitals and wrongful death cases where a patient had passed away and the family had sued the hospital. Really wasn't enjoying it, but you know, the financial The benefits were quite nice. And I really just kind of reached the end of my rope and ended up working with a charitable group and going to Russia, to Siberia of all places, for a year-long sabbatical to teach at a university there. And as you can imagine, most people I knew freaked out and thought it was a bizarre event. But the lesson I took from it was one of the best years of my life, to be quite honest. And the lesson was really that you may feel trapped in a niche that maybe you aren't happy with, but there are ways to get get out of it. And, and probably the most important step of that is to take the first step, you know, is to look for an alternative instead of just sitting around complaining and, you know, being unhappy with it. Um, so for me, I think that was probably the most valuable message.
And what is the most valuable piece of information, uh, that we should know that is within your expertise or industry?
Uh, well, I imagine a lot of people will be hearing this through the internet, and something that's going on with the internet, um, that a lot of people are not aware of is something called the Splinternet. Concept, and basically what is happening is governments and economic groups are moving to claim their territory online, if you will. And so we're actually seeing the internet start to break into regional pieces. Europe recently passed a— or enacted a privacy law called the General Data Protection Regulations, GDPR. And it is a militant, consumer-friendly privacy law that makes it very difficult for businesses using US traditional models like email lists and things of that sort to function in the EU. And so you're seeing some US companies, groups like Dick's Sporting Goods, even US newspapers are now just blocking the EU. So they block traffic from there. That's a trend that's going to continue online. You're going to see, you know, the irony of it is a lot of them are trying to compete, you know, with Google and Facebook and trying to limit the effect of those companies. But those companies have the resources to comply with all the necessary little requirements that each country or region might pass, whereas most of the small businesses don't. And so what you're gonna see is kind of a regionalized internet where, you know, unfortunately most of us, I'm in North America, you know, we have a huge consumer and business market here that's very strong. But if you're in another area and you don't have that, you know, you need to be thinking about the future and how best to position yourself, you know, to make sure that you have some kind of a physical presence in the market that you're interested in because Europe's going to be segmented away from North America. There's talk of South America going its own direction. China has already started doing that. Russia's blocking sites like LinkedIn, and we'll just see more of a trend that way. A lot of people don't know about it. I would encourage you to go out and just do a Google search for splinternet and start reading articles, and I think a lot of people will be shocked about what's going on.
Wow, man, thank you for sharing that with us. I actually had no clue. I mean, I knew about the And I might mess up the GDPR thing or whatever, just because I know my sites had to comply with that or whatever because we do business with a lot of people in the EU, but I didn't know about all the other stuff. So that's interesting. So next one I got for you is what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
You know, I think there are probably two pieces. The first one is more traditional, which is if you're going to form a business, you're going to form it with other people. Make sure you have a written agreement before you do that. Statistically, most partnerships, or even if it's a corporation, you know, after a year or two, most founders are not going to be there. You may lose one, maybe two. And what happens is those people stop showing up for work. They stop putting in the, you know, the effort that you need to grow the business. And then the question becomes, what do you do with those people if you don't have something in writing? You know, it can become an expensive, nauseating affair and you end up with zombie partners. It's not the most exciting subject, But, you know, for anybody who started a business with another person, they probably know that this can be an issue because you're essentially getting married to that person. You can spend a large amount of time with them. So make sure that you have some kind of exit strategy. And then the second thing, and we see this really with just the digital environment, is be nimble, be nimble. Don't, you know, don't rely on meetings. Don't rely on endless processes. If you see an opportunity out there, you know, take advantage of it and move quick. If, you know, if Facebook calls you and they want to talk to you about doing, you know, an app and they need it in 3 days, you know, drop everything. Yeah, you don't want to have, you know, 3 board meetings on the topic. It drives me nuts with some companies. Um, so if you're nimble, particularly if you're smaller, that's a way to compete with people who are much bigger than you. Because if you move quick and you say yes when other people are hesitating, you can really do well online.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
It would be the same thing, be more nimble. As an attorney, you know, we tend to be very, very risk-oriented. We're always assessing risk. And you see some of the bigger internet companies— I'll give you an example— a company like Uber, you know, any attorney looking at that knew that there was a big legal issue, which is, you know, are the drivers going to be classified as independent contractors or are they going to be classified as employees? It may sound like a boring subject, but it's a huge issue for Uber because if they're classified as employees, then it has to pay employment taxes and provide workers' comp and all these different things, it becomes a much more difficult business model. As an attorney, you know, a lot of us would just stop and look at that and spend endless hours researching it and trying to figure it out. In Uber's case, they just said screw it, went forward, um, you know, and now they're, they're dealing with the issue now. And it's a problem, but of course they're, you know, worth hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars. I don't even know what their valuation is at this point, um, so I'm not sure that they really care what the outcome is because they're obviously already established themselves. So being nimble, I think, you know, being open to that, particularly if it's on the digital side, because things move very quickly. And so that would certainly be something I'd tell myself if I was younger.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Key to happiness is know thyself. There is no universal definition of happiness, in my opinion. I have friends that are attorneys that work 80-hour weeks and they love it. You know, it's not for me. That's not the lifestyle that I would pursue, but they're happy with it. And they do that and they enjoy it to no end. I have other people who are devoted to the 4-hour workweek concept and maybe they don't make as much money as they could, but they're very happy to have all that free time. Myself, I find somewhere in the middle of that. But I think the answer— you're not going to find the answer in an article. The key is to really think about yourself. What if you were diagnosed with some horrible disease and you had 2 months to live? What would you do? Well, why aren't you already doing it?
Yeah, that's a great question. And then what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
You know, I like books that provide somewhat of a surprise. I read a book by Stephen King called On Writing where he talks about how he writes and how he writes novels and what have you. And I'm not a fan of his fiction work. It just doesn't really grab me. But his book on writing was absolutely amazing because it was fascinating to see where he came from, how hard it was for for him. You know, people look at him and they think about, you know, there's this guy that's mega successful, you know, whatever you may think of his writing, um, you know, but it certainly was never that way. And, you know, the struggles that he went through originally and how a lot of the books, you know, the, the, uh, you know, the villain, villain car, villain machine, villain dog, all those things actually came from his life. And, you know, horrible jobs he was working, uh, and it was just interesting to see You know, that he understands not only that he went through that process where he was just nothing to becoming something, but that he has a real humbleness about it, you know, and that he recognizes, you know, that his work isn't for everybody, but that for him it worked out that particular way and he just kept grinding with it. And, you know, he didn't lose his love for it. And I think that's something that's pretty inspiring.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
Probably go with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. Life has become immeasurably better since I've been forced to stop taking it seriously. I think particularly in the legal field, that rings true. Everything in the legal field is so serious.
Dude, thank you so much for coming on. I learned a ton on this episode. And the last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
Well, thanks for having me on. And yeah, you can always find me at SoCal, like Southern California, SoCalInternetLawyer.com, or just look me up by my name, Richard Chapo, C-H-A-P-O. There aren't very many of us. And no, I'm not related to the drug lord in Mexico.
Thank you again for coming on, man. Appreciate it.
All righty, have a good one.
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