Adam Torres and Pankaj Raval discuss small business contracts.
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Show Notes:
Small business owners often do not find out if their contracts are compliant until an issue arises. In this episode, Adam Torres and Pankaj Raval, Founder Carbon Law Group, explore small business contracts and why business owners should be proactive when it comes to making sure their contracts are compliant.
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About Pankaj Raval
Driven by his desire to see his clients develop world-class businesses, Pankaj focuses on serving entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized companies. Industries served include technology, fashion, entertainment, cannabis, personal and retail services, health care, and real estate, in the for-profit and non-profit space. Pankaj has served businesses in foundational and development matters such as entity and corporate formation, partnership agreements and dissolutions, and trademark, copyright, and intellectual property disputes.
Before the launch of Carbon Law Group, Pankaj worked with two Tucson, Arizona based law firms. During his tenure, he handled a variety of business law matters. In particular, Pankaj focused on securities litigation, civil litigation, and employment law.
After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Pankaj began his career in the entertainment industry. Realizing he had a passion and talent for working with creative businesses, he co-founded The Fashion Law Group. This boutique fashion-focused law firm is dedicated to serving Los Angeles’ thriving fashion industry. After selling his interest in The Fashion Law Group, he went on to open the Law Offices of Pankaj S. Raval. His solo practice quickly took off and rebranded as the Carbon Law Group in 2016 after bringing on associates and staff to cater to increasing demand.
About Carbon Law Group
At Carbon Law Group, they believe in fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration. Their team of attorneys and support staff are dedicated to helping small to mid-size businesses succeed, and they approach every case with a proactive and solution-oriented mindset. They understand that starting and maintaining a business can be challenging, which is why they offer a range of legal services designed to support and protect their clients as they grow. Their team is passionate about what they do, and they take pride in their ability to provide personalized, high-quality legal services to each and every one of their clients. They believe that by working closely with their clients and applying design thinking principles, they can help businesses reach new levels of success.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So did I have Punkage Ravel on the line? He’s founder of carbon law group.
Punkage, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. A pleasure to be here. All right, man. So lots of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives watch this show. And when we talk about covering ourselves, whether it’s contracts or otherwise, Hey, we need help. So great to have you on today and love this topic.
So really creating small business contracts. We’ll talk about that and more, but before we get into that, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So Punkage, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission.
Punkage, what mission matters to you? It’s really the mission of helping entrepreneurs thrive and grow. And it’s in that process is building these transformational relationships with entrepreneurs so they can go from just transactions to really building transformational businesses. And that’s what we pride ourselves in.
Yeah. And and that’s what I know you for, by the way. So, I mean, we’ve, we’ve gotten to know each other through different events and just just being out and about, and I see you come up and I hear you, you know, people talk about, you know, I always, I always hear good things. So I was excited to invite you onto the show to get into like how you’re helping business owners.
But before we get into that, like, how did all this start for you? Like when, when you going into law, like how did all that come about? Great question. And, you know, I would say that. The, the Genesis story is that I was a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi growing up just being surrounded by literature, my parents, you know, very involved in kind of social work and and I read his, I read his autobiography my experiments with truth and probably around 13 or 14 and it really just Changed my life.
I think in many ways it, it was so captivating to see someone who could have such a profound effect on the world. And it was from that point on that I knew I wanted to do something in social work. I wanted to do something that would have an impact. And I think it was no coincidence that Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer before he was a revolutionary before he, you know, helped free India from, from the shackles of, of colonial British rule.
So I think it was that book that really. Change my mind and put me on a trajectory to doing social work and, and helping people and, and serving. And as a lawyer, I get to do that today. I’m very fortunate that I get to work with now, you know, over probably thousands of clients over the years and helping them build businesses.
And you know, that’s kind of where it started. And I originally wanted to do human rights law, but after working with Amnesty International in college, I found it a little bit depressing and sad because unfortunately, while Amnesty International does great work, it oftentimes is after the fact, after something has happened that is kind of so catastrophic and disheartening.
And you, you see here so many horror stories of atrocities happening around the world. And I said, well. You know, to me, I said, well, what, what could help prevent this? What could help alleviate this? And my, and my philosophy was, well, if you can uplift people socioeconomically, if you can provide jobs, if you could provide a better economic climate, then maybe, you know, that could solve a lot of these problems around the world that I think are caused by just inequality and, and lack of opportunity and in certain nations.
So it’s obviously more complicated than that, but I think that. A lot to do with it is when you have a strong rule of law, when you have, when people can depend on that and know that their rights are protected I think you can do, you, you have the opportunity to really grow as a, as a society. Yeah.
And go ahead, just going maybe back a little bit further, you know, you’re coming on the show, you know, I had to bring this. up. You got it. You got a history of entertainment as well. Like, come on, man. You know, you know, I’m not letting you off the show without that. Well at least, yeah. You can take me to the tap in.
You can take me to the MTV days. I don’t know, but you gotta give me something. Yeah, no, I it’s true. It’s true. I, I do find myself you know, a multifaceted interest in life. Okay. That’s a very lawyer way to. So yeah, growing up, I, my parents I think I was a very ADD kid. I think I’m probably still with ADD.
As maybe viewers can hear, I tend to speak fast, which, which I tell my clients, you want a fast speaking lawyer, the charge you pay an hour, you want a fast speaking lawyer. So I so yeah, growing up my parents showed me a lot of kind of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire movies, and I love to dance, you know, growing up, I was at four years old, my parents would have me perform for our guests, Michael Jackson routines.
Like I was, I, I had a Michael Jackson jacket, you know, I was, I had the whole getup, I had the glove, you know, at like four years old and I would perform for all the guests and I just loved dancing. I still today love dancing. And, you know, from there, my, seeing these old movies. I loved the percussion. I loved, you know, seeing tap dancing and that’s something about it.
Just really captivated me. And the funny story is that, you know, I went, my, my mom said, okay, yeah, sure. Let’s go try it out. I was very, it was very lucky to have such supportive parents said, let’s yeah, let’s go to a dance class. And when I was living in, I was born in Chicago, so we went to a studio in Chicago and I went in and I saw all these girls in tutus and I was probably.
Five years old. And I was like, Oh no, no, no, that’s not for me. But sure enough, you know, I kept on enjoying like watching those movies. Gene Kelly was kind of a hero of mine growing up. I read all his books and read everything about his life. And and when we moved to Tucson, when I was around seven, we went again to a dance studio and there was another.
I think one or two guys in the, in the class and cool. I think I got some camaraderie here. We can, we can, we can do this. And and I learned for hobby, you know, I studied tap for probably 20 years or more learned in New York, the Broadway dance school spend time in learning in DC as well when I was out there.
I love. Savion Glover type tap dancing. And yeah, I mean, I would, I remember like leaving baseball practices early to go to tap like performances growing up. And I occasionally got, you know, I got some slack, a flack from people, but but honestly it was the, one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
And, and I mean, and also obviously I think anything that makes you quote unquote. Different or weird. Yeah. I think is a superpower when you get older. Oh, for sure. My philosophy and, you know, and I’m glad I kept it with it and I’m glad my parents can, you know, encouraged me to continue to do it because Yeah.
Through tap dancing, I’ve, I met so many people. It brought, took me so many different places and and it was a great creative outlet, honestly. Yeah. For the energy and all that, that I had. And you know, is when you start dating and things like that doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t hurt to be . Yeah. You have the skills.
I think, I think my wife might have, you know, married me for part, partially for some of my dancing skills. I like to think, you know, so you know, I love to dance together. We love to like Latin dancing and all different types of dancing. She’s a great dancer. So, yeah. And that’s something I try to, you know, have pass on to our kids as well.
So. Yeah. At what point in your life did this concept of mindfulness kind of present itself? Was it through your, you know, through your dance career? Was it later in life? Like, like, how was that introduced and how did that come about? So mindfulness, I’ve been exposed to it off and on doing different spiritual practices as my parents were part of this group called Swadhi and, and, and but it really, they didn’t really.
Talk too much about mindfulness. I really, it was in when I went to volunteer in India, I was fortunate to be part of a group called Indy Corps. And Indy Corps is essentially it, it was derived from the model around Peace Corps and it started by three siblings. And and what they said is they wanted to do something for second generation Indians to go back to India to do development work, to do volunteer work and service work.
And lucky, you know, serendipitously in my life. I’ve had all these serendipitous moments. I was at a dinner party in Tucson and someone’s sibling had been part of IndyCorp and I said, Oh wow, that sounds amazing. And I knew I didn’t want to go straight from undergrad to law school. So I said, this would sound like the most, this sounds like an amazing experience to do something like this between undergrad and law school.
So I applied. And you know, it’s a longer story, but I applied for the program. The, the, the application was probably more intense than Harvard than any of the Ivy league schools out there, because they had, I think a 50 page application and then five interviews to be selected for this. Yeah, it was, it was no joke.
They wanted to make sure that you were committed to the cause and, and really you’re the right fit for, for this program because you’d be spending a year in the villages doing volunteer work. And I made it through all the interviews, made it through, you know, the application. I felt like I had a really strong chance, but they said that you know, they said that, well, you know, we, we really like you, but we don’t have the right project for you.
We feel, it was like really crushing for me, but part of me, you know, the, the thing I think about me that I, I don’t take no, you know for an answer easily. So I said, well, that’s, that’s fair, but I’m coming anyways. And I went, I came and they said, well, okay, fine. You know, you can work with us, maybe administrative side supporting the fellows.
And honestly, it was the most it was the best experience and probably better than I would have had, had I been a fellow because I went to India, spent a year there, did the fellowship program with all the other fellows, kind of did the training. And then I worked with the organization, helping them build like a website to To connect short term volunteers, I went to the coast of Goodroth to work on a legal case, protecting fishermen, fishermen’s rights.
So I got to research the Indian constitution, understand, okay, what are, what are arguments we can make to protect their land? Because they were being kicked off by these larger corporations. And then I went to Dharamsala or McLeod Gange where the Dalai Lama lives to learn yoga as well as tutor Tibetan monks in English.
So that’s where I really. That year is where I really learned mindfulness and meditation. I was there meditating in the, what was that? What was that age group? Like what were you about? It was probably like right after college. So 21 to 23, maybe. Yeah. What an amazing time to be experiencing all that and how that shapes your concept of what happens going forward.
That’s amazing. Yeah. I mean, it was really just everyone there. It was such a. Transform transformative experience. I mean, I’m so fortunate today to even like be part of that because I don’t think the organization is doing it anymore. They, I think after about 12, 13 years, they said, okay, we want to do something else now, I think it was hard to run it.
But yeah, so I was fortunate to have that window and, and, and find out about it and that’s where, you know, serendipity, you know, comes in and it’s like, just. Being out there meeting people and you find out about these things and, but being there in that year, honestly, one of the now that was before law school, right?
Just before law school. Yeah, she deferred my mission a year to do that program. And, you know, being there around people who are so dedicated to just service, you know, it was such a different Feeling where here in the West, we’re like, okay, how can I do better? How can I, what can I do to be better? It’s got to be infectious, huh?
Yo, it’s gotta be, it was absolutely infectious. It was, everyone left their lucrative careers. Everyone was very successful, their jobs and, and said, okay, I want to do this, this work. And they were there just to serve. We lived in. We were paid a hundred dollars a month as a stipend to to live so that we lived, you know, four or five guys, we lived in a two, two bedroom apartment and right next to the Mahatma Gandhi ashram.
This is the ashram where Mahatma Gandhi led the salt March in India. And it was in Ahmedabad. And we, we would stay, we would have these mats that are probably like, you know, this thick and we lay them on the ground and we’d sleep on them in the daytime. We’d stack them up and that was our couch.
And and then we did that for, for months on months. And honestly, though, you know, I don’t, it was, it was rough. I don’t remember really complaining. You know, I don’t, it was so amazing because we got up in the morning, went to the ashram, helped out we went into the slums and across the ashram and, and worked with them in the, in their community centers, help build a community centers.
I was teaching them kids music for a little while and rhythm. This is when, you know, stomp was really big. So I would teach them the. To play music with all the cleaning supplies, just for fun, you know, just to, just to add some levity in there, you know, they live these very difficult lives, you know, they live in the shanties, you know, they’re of Bombay and, and but they were so happy.
These kids were so happy and so pure their, their soul that it was, it was absolutely amazing. And, and those. The, the, the relationships I built then I still have today, you know, these are still my, my closest friends. Today I’m, I’m very lucky to kind of have been around them and, and try to continue that, that, and, and today I try to carry on that, that idea of service with, with our law firm and with everything we do is how do we serve more?
How do we be more generous with our time? How do we be more generous with, with, with how we can help people? Would you say that that working on some of those early cases when you were in India, would you say that kind of solidified part of your path for like, what was next with law school and everything else?
I think so, you know, but honestly, it, when I got to law school, it was kind of a rude awakening because it wasn’t the, like, I’m going to help. The disenfranchised, I want to help, you know, the, the, the down. It wasn’t like that. It was taking contracts classes and taking, you know, con law and taking other classes that weren’t really, I felt a little bit disconnected because law school is all theory.
It’s, they don’t teach you really anything practical, practical, you know, you can go to. Maybe take some clinics. And you can participate some clinics to help people here and there, but I, I felt, you know, it was very theoretical and that was challenging for me because I wanted to do something that had impact.
And, and here I was learning about these, these cases that I felt like, how are they related to. You know, actually helping people dealing with these difficult circumstances, but you know, by the, by the end of law school, I realized, you know, you, you have to have that. It’s, it’s really law school is teaching you how to think, it’s teaching you how to analyze, it’s teaching you how to find information and be resourceful.
And it’s those skills that have helped me be a successful lawyer today is how do I be resourceful? Find the answers to my clients, because even if you don’t know, because the truth is. Most lawyers don’t know before you talk to them because there’s so many nuances to the law and, and every case is, is different in every, every situation is different.
Yeah. And so just kind of fast forwarding this a bit. So you’re in law school and at some point, whether it’s, it could have been. Law school could have been after. But at what point did you choose like, you know, I’m going to work a lot of different, a lot of different things you can do when you, when you get out of law school, so a lot of different types of law, when did you decide or like, how did it come about that?
You said, you know what? My heart’s with small business owners and business owners. Like, how did that come about? Yeah. So. I think I bounced around a lot early on. I knew I wanted to get just a variety of experiences early on in my career. So I did a securities litigation for a while. I did employment litigation.
I did some personal injury. You know, I tried, I tried everything I did bankruptcy. And you know, it was through that, that I realized, okay, here’s what I like doing and here’s what I don’t like doing in law school. I worked for a lawyer. And Tucson who had me do trademarks and I mean, I don’t think I was really equipped to do trademarks at that point, but you know, I learned, I kind of, you know, I taught myself a lot of it and was able to handle the trademark work for him.
And I really enjoyed that. I really like, I used to design logos and design, you know, do graphic design actually. Before, before undergrad, I almost went to design school for a while at FIT. And when I did a summer program at FIT thinking, Oh, maybe I want to do something creative. And I decided to probably, I decided against that, who knows, you know, maybe it might’ve been influenced by external influences, who knows, but I decided you know, I’m going to choose a, the path of law.
And but I always enjoyed. You know, creative side of things. So I still, I found trademark law, allowed me to kind of look at logos, help people to think about logos. How do you create a strong Mark versus a week? What’s a weak Mark. So I enjoyed that. And then working with small businesses actually in law school university of Arizona actually was one of the first that had a.
And a clinic for startups. So there was a startup lawyer in Tucson that would teach the class and he would essentially treat us like his own law firm. And we would be consulting with MBA students on their business ideas. So it was pretty cool that we, you know, we got to apply the intellectual property work.
We learned the corporate work and apply it to what these MBA students were doing and advise them. Okay. How do you protect your IP rights? How do you think about IP? How do you think about. Structuring your ownership of your company. And that’s really where I found this is, this is what I wanted to do.
This is so much fun. I love working with startups. I love all the new ideas. And that’s really what kind of set me on my trajectory. And so now you’re in working with startups, with business owners. I mean, one of the things that you and I talked about a lot, a lot of different ways we could have taken this interview, but one of the core things that that you mentioned were oftentimes lacking for small businesses and not as our contracts, and that’s where maybe a lot of individuals either don’t protect themselves or they just don’t, they grow, they don’t think about after that growth that, Hey, they need, they, they’re not, you know.
Just a startup anymore that they’re a larger company. So maybe they need to think about you know, rethink the way they do, or maybe that contract they had before is not necessarily never was the best. And it was a bandaid at the time, but time to update things. Like, where do you want to start with this?
Like, how do you want to unpack this? Yeah. So, you know, the, the discussion about contracts, I think is, is interesting because there’s, there’s so many different types of contracts we’d be talking about. There’s lease agreements, there’s, you know, contracts, partnership agreements there’s service agreements.
So you know, you can’t really say, okay, there’s a one size fits all when it comes to contracts. But like for one example, I’ll give you that came up just recently was that someone came to me. There was a friend of a friend saying, Hey you know, I, I have a, they do video production or some kind of video production and they entered into a con, they drafted the contract themselves and it wasn’t great.
You know, honestly, it was missing a lot of terms and now the other party breached the contract. My, my client had already kind of said no to other business to, to perform the services for this contract, but the other party wasn’t paying. So now he comes to me and said, Hey, well, what can we do? We need to get paid.
The, the, there’s three major issues with that contract. The first one was. That didn’t include important terms regarding late payments regarding interest regarding attorneys fees. Okay. If he had an attorney’s fee provision in there, then it would be much easier for me to say, okay, let’s even, if we need to file a claim against this person, because they’re going to have to pay my attorney’s fees.
And now they’re going to be much more inclined to settle and pay what they’re owed. Because now if we go after them, the mother, oh, is going to be. Increased, you know, quite significantly because of my attorney’s fees. So attorney’s fees provisions, you’ll, you’ll always want to have in there. Especially if it’s a services agreement where the chance that the other party will breach is much higher than you’re breaching the other things where there’s just the clarity of the terms, you know, you, what you don’t want is ambiguity of terms.
And this is where a lot of people who try to do their own DIY contracts or, you know, find things online. They don’t recognize that there’s ambiguity in those contracts and that’s going to be. A big problem when it comes to you know, questions about whether terms are enforceable, how to deal with disputes because ambiguities are expensive.
Ambiguities are very, very expensive and there have been cases litigated about a comma in a contract and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent about the placement of a comma. So you want a contract that is precise, that is explicit, and that doesn’t have any ambiguity because that could really be a challenge for you if it does.
So. Yeah, so if somebody is watching this and as they kind of listening to this in their car and they’re like, you know, we never have had the tightest, you know, legal situation. And that’s something that they know, like maybe they have some contracts out there exactly like you said. You know, there’s only so much money.
There’s only so much time. How do you normally a Approach where somebody should kind of start. And again, understanding nothing’s one size fits all different companies, different industries. But I just mean like logic and methodology, like framework, somebody’s listening to this and they’re like, ah, where do I start?
I got this contract, this, this, this, where do I start? Yeah, I would say. Think about where your biggest risk is. Like think about where your biggest risks are with the business. You know, is it someone not paying you? Is it a product being defective and you getting sued? Is it and maybe sometimes you don’t know, because honestly, you know, in law, a lot of, a lot of clients.
You know, you don’t know what you don’t know, you know, yeah, yeah. You don’t know what you don’t know. Right. And, and that’s where we come in and say, Hey, you know, we’ll review your contract for a few hundred dollars. Let’s have a consult, a consult about it and let’s discuss, okay, what are the issues here that maybe you haven’t thought about?
Because that’s, that often comes up, you know, we’re trained. I’ve been doing this for, you know, 14 years now, a while I’ve, I’ve taken a masterclass on, on contract drafting in plain English, which I pride myself on because, you know, I, I paid, I made a significant investment of time and money. Too, because I feel that contracts need to be clear and a lot of contracts are so antiquated in the language, you know, they, they referenced, you know, Latin, a lot of people don’t think critically about contracts, you know, people, you know, some lawyers and non lawyers, you just take a contract and say, okay, well, this is how other people did it.
So this is, I’ll just copy what they did, but why did they do it? You know, like people sometimes do these templates are just reused and reused without, without the critical eye taken to these, like, but why ask the question, why is. Is so important as a lawyer, why is it written like this? What, what is the point of this language?
Because oftentimes you’ll see language in contracts that really has no meaning or place in that contract, but yet lawyers just include it just because that’s how other contracts were and they feel that safer to include everything as opposed to include what’s only necessary for that agreement. What do you mean by when you say that you took a masterclass in contracts and that you, you, you, you invested a significant amount of time into learning that?
Like what do you mean by all of that? Yeah, so there’s a there’s a great, here’s a great plug for Ken Adams Ken or Kenneth Adams. He’s a, he’s written out I think five or six additions of, I think it’s called a contract drafting and playing plain English. I believe hope I’m not butchering the title, but yeah, Ken Adams, if you look him up online, it’s, it’s really about drafting clear contracts and he has a masterclass for lawyers, in house people who deal with contracts as well.
That helps you understand, okay, how do you think about drafting terms? And he gets very, very detailed about, you know, even the use of shall, you know, there’s a whole probably. Section on the use of shall and when is appropriate and when is it not appropriate? He talks a lot about just the details and the minutiae of what makes sense when drafting contracts What what language is precise and what language is vague and and or ambiguous and what’s the difference between all that?
You know, it’s a lot of people don’t think about these things because that’s not your job But there’s a lot to be said there’s a lot written about you know language and how we how we Draft agreements is really about the use of language. And are you being precise or are you not? And I think, you know, I pride myself on being a little bit of a nerd about that because I think you need to be to do it well.
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and the reason I asked you that question, by the way, and I wanted to drill a little bit further is because, you know, it’s, it’s not assumed that, you know, everybody’s created equal in this particular part of it. Like you said, like some people are reusing things that have been used or not, like, it doesn’t mean just because and not, not downing anybody, but you, you can, I can, I can tell that you really enjoy digging and nerding out and into the contract side of things and making sure things are done right.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I do. I do. And I mean, pride myself on being, you know, a dork about that stuff, you know, a nerd, because I think you want that people should want, by the way, that’s awesome. Yeah. I think you want someone who’s, who’s going to say, Oh, well, let’s, let’s think about this. Does this make sense? You know, to question it.
And, you know, you don’t want a lawyer. He’s just going to be a yes person saying, Oh yeah, that’s fine. You know, that’s fine. You want to think about, okay, Okay. What are, what are the pros and cons of this language? And of course that takes time and that takes an investment by the clients. You know, some clients just want a quick contract and more power to them.
But, you know, I like to think about these things, analyze them and say, okay, does this make sense for this deal? And, and, you know, I’ll, I’ll be realistic. You know, if it’s a small deal, maybe doesn’t. Make sense to spend thousands of dollars on the contract, but it’s a bigger deal. And if it’s, if it’s something that could help really, you want to invest in the growth of your business, then I think it makes sense to, to invest in getting a contract that is, is right and makes sense for, for what you’re trying to do.
But, but yeah, I mean, with, with contracts, you want to, you want to be. Really picky about what that language is and how it’s worded. And, and also as someone who, if you’re not a lawyer, you don’t question the language, question the lawyer and make sure that it makes sense to you too, because sometimes lawyers put things in that, that maybe they don’t always understand.
So it’s, it’s really, really important to do that. So one of the ways that you work with your clients is just is this concept of fractional general counsel. Now I’ve heard of fractional CFOs. I’ve even, you know, fractional CMOs, but fractional general counsel, maybe give us a little bit of insight on what that looks like.
Yeah. So essentially I come in and you know, sometimes I’ll have an email with your company. I’ll almost act as another, another arm of your company, but you’re not paying me a salary. Essentially you’re paying us for the work that we do as you’re outside. We’re factional general counsel, but I’m there to understand what you want to build, how do you want to build it and understand the more kind of business and legal affairs of your company, as opposed to just drafting contracts for you and saying, Hey, I want this contract on, please do it.
So it’s, it’s a much closer relationship that I, that I build with those clients and really help them create really help create a lot more value for them because it’s not just thinking about, okay, what are the legal issues here, but how do we. Think of these legal issues in the context of your broader business and how do you, how do you want to grow?
And what does that growth look like? So I ask a lot of those questions when it comes to my fractional general counsel work. And I really enjoy it because I get to really build a deeper connection and, and help those clients really grow who want to grow without them having to pay, you know, 700, 000 for, for a lawyer or in house lawyer.
Yeah. And so you know, before we get off the line here, I want you to go just a little bit further and maybe just tell us about some of the scope. Obviously, this particular interview was on contracts, but I know you do more than contracts. Maybe give us an idea of the scope of kind of some of the things you handle.
Yeah, so, you know, we work with a lot of startups. You know, when, when you, if you’re thinking about structuring a company how to, how to understand equity distribution between clients. So it’s a lot of startup work, a lot of corporate governance work. A lot of companies who are trying to maybe even re redo their cap table and figuring out, okay, we need to reallocate shares.
We can come in there. Analyze what you have and then help you kind of think about how do you reallocate shares issue options and also as you know, just growth, it’s not just startup, but it’s also growing or growing up, you know, how do you go from a startup to a grown up company, meaning how do you scale, how do you think about that?
How do you, because I think sometimes that is more difficult is the startup is one thing, but now that you have traction. How do you, do you have the right agreements in place? Do you have the operating agreement? Do you have a the shareholder agreement that you need between your founders? So make sure everyone’s on the same page about growth.
So we, we help you guys help. We help clients with the startup, with the, with the financing and the growing we’ll do up to kind of series a or series B financing for a lot of companies. We’ll also do, you know, notes and convertible notes and different types of financing. And then also IP, we do a lot of what I call soft IP.
Soft IP essentially is there’s, there’s four elements, four areas of IP. There’s trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and patents. We focus on trademarks copyrights and really trade secrets. Trade secrets are kind of contract related, but then trademarks and. Copyrights have their own kind of body of law.
I’m not a patent attorney, but we work with great patent attorneys that we can also connect people with as well. So, so it’s really focusing on that area and also some employment contracts as well. So it’s like thinking about, okay, what are, what’s the universe of contracts that a new business will need?
We help make sure that they get them get set up. We’ve done employee handbooks, employment agreements, and and looking at, you know, stock, even compensation plans, and then also. I think the job of a good general counsel is to connect you with the specialists when needed. You know, if you have a tax question, we have great tax people we can connect you with.
If you have a dispute or if let’s say there’s like a labor dispute, we have great labor firm to connect with. So, so we really pride ourselves on the relationships we have as well with other lawyers to get to get the help you need. Yeah, well, punkage. I just have to say it has been great having you on the show today and bringing this content to our audience as well.
I mean, I learned a lot. I’m sure they did as well. That being said, if somebody is listening to this and they want to follow up and they want to connect with You and your team. I mean, what, what’s the best way for them to do that? So in your website, you can just, you can also email us a legal at carbon algae.
com or website is carbon algae. com. And I’m on Tik TOK on virtual GC, trying to put videos out there. And also recently on YouTube uh, it’s just punkage rival business attorney and advisor as our channel. I’m putting a lot of videos, a lot of content out there as well. I’m really trying to be as helpful as possible for our clients, just so people can make better decisions.
You know, my job, I love this because I want to see, I think one of the best things you can do personally as an entrepreneur is use create jobs. If you can be a job creator, you’re doing such a fantastic. Job for this world and such a great service. And that’s what I want to empower. I want to empower people to do that and do it consciously and do it mindfully and, you know, help under society.
It’s awesome. And one more time website for everyone. Carbon. lg. com. So carbon law group, but carbon lg. com. Yeah, wonderful. And we’ll, and we’ll, for all the audience listening and watching this we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in episodes, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives and having them share their mission. The reason behind their mission, you know, why do they do what they do? Like what gets them fired up to go out into the world and to make a difference.
If that’s type of content, that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you. We welcome you hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Punkage again, as always. Thank you. Look forward to the next time we get to do this.
Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. It’s great.
