Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers, I’m your host, Justin Recla. And today we are talking to Scott Reib. Scott is a Zig Ziglar certified small business lawyer, and he’s been in the industry for the last 20 some odd years and he has some concept of shatter proofing your business. This is Incorporating SuperPowers, we’re all about business, so we’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit about what does it mean to shatterproof your business and what does it take for you to get there in order for you to be able to see and do what’s required along the way? Scott, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it, this is going to be a fun conversation. I see that on your site in everything that you do, it’s all about shatter proofing your business. You’ve got that Zig Ziglar aspect, which I think helps you stand out amongst the sea of other lawyers that are out there in the business room because it does have that personal development twist to it. So, a little bit before we got started, we were talking about what shatterproof means and how that equated to the concept of the business being like the windshield for everything you deal with. To expand on that for our listeners, please.
Sure. Your business is the vehicle that you’re using to achieve your life goals and dreams. And so in that vehicle, one of the things you have is a windshield, and that windshield is made of shatterproof glass. It’s made that way so that when the things on the highways fly up and hit us, they’ll scratch it, they’ll mark it, but they don’t come through and hit us in the face. We don’t get hurt really badly. It’s just a minor crack, we can fix it when we’re finished with our trip. And so we need to build our business vehicles just like our actual vehicles because it’s no longer as if something bad is going to happen to you from a legal standpoint. I mean, we have over 20 million lawsuits filed every year in the US. It’s not when is something going to happen. So we need to plan appropriately and we need to build our businesses in a way that we have the systems and structures in place that make us shatterproof so that when our business gets hit, it marks that windshield, we finish what we’re doing and then we come back, take care of that, and it’s a minor issue and we move on. But if you don’t build it right, those things will come straight through and hit you in the face and ruin your day.
Ain’t that the fact. That is something in the due diligence realm, in the vetting realm, we see all the time. Are people getting involved with opportunities or getting involved with service providers way too early. They didn’t read agreements, they didn’t understand contracts, whatever it might’ve been.
Right.
And so there was always this abdication of power that came into play. And of course, when they did hit the bump in the road, it hit them smack dab in the face. So let’s start there. What is the one thing that you think keeps business owners from building, for lack of better words, longevity, rather than the opposite of just living in the moment and trying to manage this? What keeps people from playing at that level, do you think?
Well, I think Michael Gerber said it pretty well when he said that people generally have an entrepreneurial seizure when they start their businesses, and it even happened with me, really. Very few people spend six months putting together a business plan, hiring all the consultants, getting all the capital, and then they start their business. Anymore it’s you having lunch with someone, an idea gets sparked, or you lose your job and suddenly have to recreate yourself and so you’re in business. And then you’re having to do things you’ve never done before, and so that’s one reason that you don’t take care of some of these things that I think are super important.
The other is there’s an intimidation factor because people don’t want to call lawyers because lawyers are no fun and we suck money out of your pocket. And the way that the system has been rigged for decades is that lawyers bill by the minute, so if you call them and ask a question or have a document looked at, it’s going to cost you a lot of money. And so most entrepreneurs would rather flip a coin, Google it, or dial a friend than call a lawyer and risk that relationship. So we’ve turned that on its head here and created a plan where our clients have on-demand access So they don’t have to have that intimidation factor.
This is good stuff. Folks, real quick, I could verify everything that he said about what Michael Gerber was talking about. Michael’s a dear friend of our family, we’ve had multiple conversations with him over such matters around business and spot on. There has been this villainization of lawyers in the business realm, and I think it even stems from the fact of people’s fears of money. Especially if they’re in a startup, right? And lawyers are a, when I start making money, I’ll hire the lawyers. No folks, start hiring your lawyers at the front. Get organized.
I love that you have a platform that’s built to speak to entrepreneurs in that fashion and help them understand what the risks are and how they can mitigate and shatter proof their business. Scott, before we go on break, where can people go find more information about you?
Yeah, the best way for them to find us right now is to go to our website, reiblaw.com, and we have a special offer there just for your listeners where they can get a free legal coaching session with me and download my ebook, Five Proven Strategies To Shatterproof Your Business
Fantastic. Folks, this is the good stuff about how you can shatter proof your business. When we get back, we’re going to take a look on the other side of the windshield and what you should be looking at, what you should be looking out forward as you build your business. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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