The Business Mistakes That Are Signs of a Victim Mentality Ft. Danny Karon

All awesome and welcome into the episode of vision pros live in Micheal host Jackson

Calum founder and CEO of first class business and we got Danny Karen in the house.

This guy is the lovable lawyer and I grilled him to make sure that that was true.

We had a very, very tough first conversation and I was still lovable when we were finished

with it too.

You were the whole time.

I'm just fine.

Let me get you through out the hard questions.

All right.

I'm handled worse.

I handle a lot worse.

Have you handled worse than the podcast industry?

Yeah.

Try to live in with lawyers for 35 years.

No, no, I'm saying I'm saying in the podcast industry is any host been more or no, no,

no.

You're here.

You're here.

Awesome.

And so my friends, this is so important to me like your lives, your visions.

You've got to have the right types of people coming in and I want my professionals to

come in and deliver when they get to come into this particular opportunity where they're

talking about a specific topic.

Perm me diving into the business mistakes that are signs of a victim mentality and don't

turn your, don't turn this off thinking that you're free of a victim mentality, my friends.

We are going to expose some things and help us all realize that instead of saying, you

know what, I'm not a victim.

Maybe we could start looking at, well, the way to second and what ways do I show up as

a victim because I think all of us have a tendency to send some area or another fall into

that reality.

And we're going to talk about legally protecting yourself.

We're going to talk about how to bolster your business as well, Danny's right there

and in the act of building his own brand out as well.

And so, Danny, let's start with your vision.

Tell us about your vision first and then we'll dive into some of the specifics.

My vision for what?

Boy, I got a lot of visions.

My vision concerns this brand and what we're doing is really to make me take off as everybody's

vision is when they're kind of in this social media self-help wellness space.

But I'm promoting something that I've not seen out there.

There's always wellness content out there.

You take a look at the daytime landscape and internet landscape.

You see a bunch of emotional wellness content out there like Dr. Phil, you know, going

on about being safe in your mind and body and there's a lot of financial wellness content

out there.

Jim Kramer, Susie Orman, talking about how to set up a $529 for your kids or 401K for

yourself.

Where it concerns their third essential wellness bucket legal, which by the way when it

tips, it spills into the other two because you freak out and it will broke.

There's really nothing there.

And I want to fill that space by delivering legal wellness in a free, fun and friendly way

in a way that people deserve but don't get because the law is a right and not a privilege

reserved only for folks who can afford expensive lawyers.

And if we don't understand the law, it doesn't serve its highest purpose in calling because

we can't use it to our benefit.

And people that kind of ignore and don't know about it are somewhere in between.

My wish is to deliver legal wellness in an accessible way where people can feel good and

confident about themselves legally as they do physically, emotionally and financially.

I have been through the ringer legally myself right now, when I turned this into my episode

today, but y'all can find that on other episodes.

I want to focus on why it's so helpful and why this paradigm matters.

Years ago, traveling was only for the wealthiest of the wealthy.

From right years ago, getting a financial advisor was only the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Getting access to the internet and higher education was only for the wealthy.

My friends, times are changing.

It is very important to realize you can actually unlock access to new things that maybe your

friends and family are uncomfortable with but that doesn't make it wrong that just

put you ahead.

So make sure to get ahead in this.

We're going to talk about it again, the business mistakes that are signs of victim mentality.

Before we cut to break, we're going to dive in a little bit for first hot and heavy.

So in business, the mindset, you can ask Dan Martell, you can ask Richard Branson, great

leaders, your mindset, can either protect you or quietly sabotage everything that you're

building and everyone that you're building with.

And let's talk about that first.

To break down the legal and mental mistakes that are hurting entrepreneurs the most, what

would you say some of those are, Danny?

What things are you holding this back mentally?

I think the biggest thing is just not appreciating what you don't know.

We always say you don't know what you don't know.

Boy, you really got to appreciate that there's so much stuff out there that you don't know

as a concerns business.

So I'm an attorney.

I've got my own law firm.

I've had it for 20 some years.

I had my own firm with some other guys for another.

But Danny, on Forbes, I read an article that said these are the seven steps to win in

business.

I mean, like shouldn't that be it?

Listen, I'm no sucker for steps.

I'm more nuanced than that.

And my point was going to be that, hey, listen, you stay in your lane.

It's really kind of the lesson.

I don't know from business law.

I know class action law.

I know consumer protection law.

I know anti-trust.

I know this much about securities.

But I don't know how to start a business.

I don't know how to write a partnership agreement or a corporate charter.

I don't know how to incorporate in yourself business of hard.

But there are a lot of things that I just don't know.

And what they say, do you know what they say about a lawyer who represents himself

what is that?

He has a fool for a client.

And I don't want to be that poor.

So where it concerns anything business related for me, I talk to my lawyer.

I don't do anything.

And I haven't for 12 years without talking to my lawyer first and getting his guidance.

Even if it turns out I'm right, I want that peace of mind.

So as a concerns copyright issues or incorporation issues or relationships with

co-counsel sometimes, I just need to put it to somebody else to get some guidance.

And what I'm trying to do you see is offer folks like a DIY law degree.

You don't need to necessarily pay for a lawyer if that is you listen to me, if you buy

my book, if you take a look at and pay mind to some lessons that I relate to folks in

an accessible way so that they can you can handle these things to some degree on your own,

not entirely.

Sometimes you do need a lawyer.

If you're in a car crash, you don't want to litigate it yourself.

But there's some steps you want to initiate on your own before you get a lawyer.

That's in here.

That's really my biggest, most important admonition of all.

Not what you don't know, but that you don't know a lot of stuff.

And I really appreciate it, Andy, because so many business owners ignore the CLO.

They don't have a chief legal officer.

They don't even think about that department.

And it is unfortunate when you get to a point where you need it and you didn't prepare.

It's better to prepare and prevent than repair and repaint.

I will also double down on what Danny said about hiring yourself as your own lawyer.

As an entrepreneur, my friends, is a very important quote that stood the test of time and

it is absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And you may think that it only applies to politicians.

But in reality, as a business owner, if the buck stops with you and you don't have any

checks and balances in place, you don't have any team members that can challenge your

authority, you're the one who makes all the decisions and there's nobody who can override

it.

Your veto process, you're going to fall into a very dark and difficult reality soon

in the later.

So what we're saying is instead, just protect yourself, bring the right people in.

Don't feel like you have to do all of this on your own.

You do need great people by your side in order to create great visions.

So we're going to come back and talk about, go ahead.

Danny, you're burning.

You're burning.

I wouldn't fix my own car.

I wouldn't fix my own furnace.

I wouldn't fix my own body when I'm sick.

You see specialists for all that stuff.

You see a lawyer or to the extent you can handle stuff on your own because you can make quick

fixes.

I just got some new Allen wrenches.

I fixed.

I tried to fix the door on the shower, couldn't do it.

But there's some things you can do on your own.

That's where my counseling and guidance come in.

But for the bigger ticket items, let me tell you, there's no, there's no substituting

for an expert, whether it be a doctor, a mechanic, earn is a concern to our conversation

of lawyer.

Nailed it.

And we're going to connect these business that mistakes to victim mentality so that we

can pull you out of the victim mentality and help you run your business as a great

visionary.

All right.

Welcome in to Vision Pro's Live with Jackson Calum on your show host.

We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building

fantastic visions out there.

Hey, guys, again, welcome in to Vision Pro's Live and Michelle host, Jackson Calum founder

and CEO of first class business.

And I'm truly excited to have Danny Karen.

We're going to be using his time as well as possible.

I'm going to go super fast through some extra resources.

But we want to make sure that he's able to get out on his date with his lovely wife.

This is super important to me, guys.

The family is, it comes before business.

Business is important, but balance is so important too.

And so never forget that please as you build your own dynasties or legacies sponsors.

Real quick, AI Mavericks, AI Mavericks is a program that I pay to be part of because

I want to be part of an audience of world class, AI experts, mastermind and scene.

Well, what did they see today that I don't because this stuff's moving fast, my friends?

You want as many of these people by your side as you can get to Austin Armstrong, somebody

I met person at social media marketing world last year.

And I was super impressed at how intentional and on point and like authentically genuine

he was during the whole time that he was with us.

In addition to that, not only was he just present for that, then I found out about Scott

Simpson, who was launching AI Mavericks, when I spent the year watching what they were

doing, tagging my team members on the different projects and seeing just how he could handle

the heat of my, I asked tough questions.

I'll just put it that way.

And we had some battles about AI back and forth and I cannot speak highly enough about

what they've built with AI Mavericks.

They're doing super advanced stuff like creating agents and basically training and I had to

take over job positions and stuff like that that allows the people who do those positions

to upgrade to things AI cannot do.

Then we have the AI marketplace, what two of them and ones owned by me, yes, you're right.

Why?

Because I believe in collaboration and abundance and I know that all of you out there

right now, you have the expertise that AI needs and that's not going to go anywhere

anytime soon, but you may not know how to talk about it in an interview and you may not

know how your skill sets translate for your resume and for your LinkedIn.

And so for the professional track, this helps you understand how to utilize AI to belong

in the upcoming workforce.

And on the business side, how to track down what are my bottlenecks as a business that

are applicable in today's world that can actually be fixed and my friends, most business owners

are putting AI into their business in ways that is absolutely ruining their reputation.

Like Ring Central, I'll call them out today.

I try to cancel my service to them today, but guess what?

I got stuck in between AI hotlines and AI chants and nothing was moved forward.

I have to try again tomorrow.

I will never go back to Ring Central because of how abysmal their customer support is

right now.

That's a multi-billion dollar company that is screen up AI.

We are not better than multi-billion dollar companies, my friends.

So we need to be extra careful about how do we use these tools to create productivity

and profitability for ourselves.

And that's exactly what we teach on this.

Our founding memberships are going for $50 a month or $500 lifetime access.

You don't have to pay yearly on that.

Come and join us as a founding member, get ahead of the curve and help us open the doors

for others.

The last thing I'll say about it, my friends, is that we have a grant program for any of

you that cannot afford or don't want to pay for upfront because you want to see the

value first.

Just click the grant program, apply through that system, commit to the five steps that

we ask you to do on a regular basis in order to own that grant.

Just like a great scholarship, I want everybody to be involved in this.

I don't want anybody left behind in the new world of AI.

Then there's a water project, my friends.

All of us have access to water.

If you're listening to this podcast right now, I have a feeling you have a couple water

near you.

These people don't.

There are millions of people who go without a clean drinking water every single day.

There are kids out there who have to leave school to get it for their for their school

as parents.

So after leave work to get water, you can imagine what type of jeopardy that might put

them with their careers.

We have an opportunity to step in and help.

Even if you give 10 to $20 to this project, you actually get to see that project come

to fruition and you may bless lives of 500 plus people for generations.

This is an amazing opportunity to help out.

And lastly, my friends, there are 8 billion people in this world.

If you know of a cause that you'd like to see us support, do us a favor.

Let's create a battle in the comments, drop your cause there.

Let me take a look at it.

I'll personally look at it and if we can contribute, we will or I'll possibly even talk about

it on this show.

But like I said, we get 8 billion people to help bring you back to helping every

single one of you right now with Danny Karen himself.

So Danny, again, thanks for joining me here and thanks for being at the lovable lawyer.

Actually, I mean, you're a lovable lawyer.

I don't know where this is the article.

The distinction with a big difference.

You know why?

It's personal to you.

I'm not just out there.

I want you to feel like my guidance is something you can use in as designed to help

you and your problems because your problems matter.

They matter to me and they should matter to you.

And I want to collaborate with you to make your life better.

That's the whole basis for the brand.

Do I need to contract an agreement before I can claim that myself?

You know, let me talk to me.

Very good fun game.

And I really like the personalization on it and just the way that you show up.

So we're going to move into this super fast ending because again, I got to get you

at the door for you to hear my wife on the phone when I told her it would be an hour.

I was waiting.

I said, you know what?

I know how important it is.

How cool is it when it's entrepreneurs we can under promise and over deliver, right?

So let's over deliver on this one on both fronts.

So from overlooked contracts to unnecessary communication mistakes,

our conversation can highlight the habits that separate resilient leaders from those

who I know and they put their business at risk.

So let's talk there first, overlooked contracts and unnecessary communication mistakes.

What pops up most often?

Nobody reads their contracts.

You know, they don't, you don't, I often don't.

All you got to do is download an app and you scroll through all this stuff and then you

hit accept thing is they designed the process so that you don't read what they're binding you to.

One, it's one thing to scroll through and click.

That's called a scroll through agreement.

Worse yet, more sinister is a click through agreement.

We have to click each page because when you get screwed and you go back and try to sue

when they say you can't because you aced it to you accepted every page.

Why could I have a click response for every single page?

And that's not what I meant by that.

Well, that's why they do it.

And the thing is they vary all the bad stuff, of course, in what you don't read.

Most notably liability waivers.

Those are the waver those are the clauses.

The language is say, hey, listen, if we hurt you, we're not on the heart.

Your self pay.

I'll give you an example.

I'll give you a little feedback.

Are you all right?

You're good.

Yeah, keep going.

This is the book, too.

This case involves Richard Corwin.

Corwin was a guy in New York City who rented a bike in the middle of Manhattan.

And one of those bike share facilities and to rent the bike, he had to sign up through the app.

Click, click, click, he signs up fine.

He goes, he gets the bike, he takes the bike away from the station, hits a curb immediately,

takes a header, cracks his head open, and he's in the hospital.

He ends up suing New York bike share, claiming, hey, listen, your facility was poorly configured.

There shouldn't have been a curb there.

You are negligent.

And for that reason, I want you to pay for my injuries.

New York bike share defended on the basis of in the text that he accepted.

There's a liability waiver that says, hey, listen, for gross negligence, meaning like a really bad like we saw you coming

and we put our foot out and tripped you kind of thing, that we're not off the hook for.

But for ordinary negligence, like you're alleging, you know what, that's on you.

Now, you might wonder, what could he have done to change that?

Well, nothing.

If you want to rent from, you know, Manhattan bike share or Midtown bike share or wherever,

it's going to have that same language.

No different than if you sign up for cell phone service from 18 TT mobile or Verizon,

they all have the same language in them.

Believe me, you can't change it.

That's called the adhesion contract.

Take it to leave it.

He could have gotten a scooter.

He could have taken this subway.

He could have walked.

He could have driven, got it for a bit.

But, you know, he wanted a bike.

So what do you do?

You rent the bike.

So he can't change it.

So you might be thinking, okay, so then why are you even wasting my time, Danny,

describing these contracts?

If what's in them is in them, how's that going to change?

What's going to change even had I read it?

I'll tell you what would have changed for me had I been him.

Is it had I seen that I was going to be self pay for $100,000 in damages,

lost work, other consequential damages related to your head injury.

If I were to take a header, what would I have done differently?

I don't want to help it.

You can do a lot of things to build into the language that you can't avoid.

What ended up happening for him?

He lost as you'd expect because the languages in there, not all states are going

to side with the company, some are more liberal.

They said with a victim, you would have thought if anybody knew your code,

but no, even in New York, he lost.

So people don't read their contracts.

They don't know what to expect.

They don't take proper precautions based on what language is in them to the extent

they can change them.

They don't even try to.

None of these options are good.

Read your contract.

My friends, a lot of us who thinking I don't have time to read those contracts

and that right there is our first blind spot of victim mentality.

We all have 24 seven, right?

We all have 20 hours in a day.

We've all got the ability to go into it.

Now, you might think you might be hurt and be like, well, Jackson, I can't afford

to do that.

I'm really sorry for the entrepreneurs that have put themselves in that situation.

It sucks.

You still did it.

You really don't have to read their contracts here in business.

It's part of doing business to give you another example.

This is a personal one, but the same theme.

My son is renting an apartment in Washington, DC.

He just graduated college and I read his lease.

He didn't read the lease.

Why could kids don't read leases?

Never mind.

There's nothing I'm going to tell you that's going to make a kid read a lease.

I read the lease.

My mom, my mom can tell you, kick them out of the house and let them figure it out on

their own.

Well, you know, kids have to grow up and they're not going to grow up with his parents.

We don't let them.

But I didn't.

I read the lease anyway.

And what I noticed is there's a 60 day notice provision for not wanting to renew.

So I said, Morgan, my son, let's calendar 60 days out from the expiration of the lease

because if you don't want to renew it, you better tell your landlord.

Otherwise, you're going to have to pay some correlated part of the number of days

you didn't for which you didn't give notice.

What ended up happening to a couple of buddies of his when they were all in school

was they had the same, the same, no, I'm sorry, this happened to him.

There was a 30 day notice provision in his last lease.

I didn't read it.

And when they gave notice, they gave notice like two days before the lease expired.

And the landlord came back and said, you owe me 28 days.

And you know what, they did.

And that was because they didn't read.

I didn't read the contract.

Listen, man, I do that stuff too.

We all got to do our best to protect ourselves.

And that isn't easy.

Absolutely.

And all of us kids that are university, age or older, it's like, grow up.

Let's get out of the victim mentality.

It's on us to do it.

If we also wait until day 60 and something happens on day 60, welcome back to

victim mentality, you should have planned ahead and started on day 50, right?

That makes sure not to put yourself in a position where you can end up missing out

of those.

I'm going to go into one more victim mentality.

So when we were running restaurant connects, for instance, a lady came up to us at a trade

show and she said, I'm restaurant connect too.

And then she went and she applied for the trademark of the company.

Well, we had the business longer.

And so we decided to fight that in court and $20,000 later that we didn't have as a startup,

we won.

And we got to keep restaurant connects.

My friends, that is not a victory.

If you don't have $20,000 to dedicate towards a situation like that, don't be a victim.

Just change your brand name.

There's plenty of names out there.

You don't have to go to war over it.

And when Apple patented our software, we were not a victim mentality.

At first we were, I spent about three hours looking at holy crap, Apple just patting

everything that we've built.

And somehow they built things that we hadn't thought of and they love to do this to companies.

Well, after the three hour panic attack and wondering if I was going to have a heart attack,

I just realized, you know what?

I'm never going to win against Apple anyway.

I just need to make my next phone call and I jumped right back on the phones and started to

go back to work.

So instead of being a victim and giving it my company, giving it my dreams,

we decided to just keep building.

And I'm really grateful that we did that.

Will I be in prison someday, Danny?

I don't know.

But I know that I'm grateful that I fought for what we had built and decided that in that

circumstance, we had made some stupid decisions as startup people and we did not have the

backing and funding to bring in yet another lawyer in this in this reality.

But that's another lesson for all of us to learn.

I'm not being a victim about it and saying, oh, poor me, I wish that I,

no, no, just got to own it.

Sometimes you have to own your mistakes.

You're not going to be, you know, it wasn't a criminal offense.

It invalidated the criminal code.

You won't wind up in jail.

I might get sued.

I don't do IP intellectual property work.

That's something I go to my lawyer for with all the social media stuff I'm doing and

brand related stuff I'm doing.

I mean, I talk to him about everything.

Now, let me offer this by the way.

You know, we're talking about victim mentality.

Here's here's another way of considering the whole victim mentality concept.

That's so much as preventive where you want to avoid becoming a victim

by being prepared.

But when something happens to you, being proactive.

There's one thing we prepared, it's another we proactive.

So for instance, this is in the book too.

A friend of mine got a crown on his tooth.

And he comes home from the dentist and the crown falls off.

He calls me up.

What do I do?

I'm like, you know, I'm a dentist.

What do I mean with that?

I might say, you know, should I pay him?

Should I go back?

I said, should you pay him?

Did you pay him already?

Didn't you?

Yeah, put on my visa.

I said, first thing you do is you call visa and you stop payment.

Then you send him a letter and you say, I want this thing fixed

and you're going to accommodate me somehow whether it's price or convenience or whatever.

He freaks up.

He says, oh, no, you know what?

Like, I don't want to get in trouble with the guy.

I don't want things to go sideways.

I don't want him to send my, you know, build a collection.

I said, oh, my God, you cannot have this victim mentality.

You did nothing wrong.

You got to stand up for yourself.

I'll tell you the first thing doctors, first and last thing doctors don't want

is a medical malpractice case.

You threaten anything in that space.

They freak out.

You let him know.

You're going to sue him.

We've got to fix this damn thing and you're not going to pay him anywhere near what he asked for.

You're going to have him talking and dealing with you on your trip.

I'm going to play angels advocate a little bit though, Danny.

On this, I'm going to play angels advocate.

Is it okay to like,

whatever kind of advocate you want?

Is it first okay to talk to the dentist and then like be like, hey, can we fix this?

I said, you know, I said send a letter.

He could call and talk to him for sure.

I wonder whether I recommend that.

I don't know that I did.

I think I was kind of pissed off for some reason at the back.

I didn't really do it.

But I always try to talk first before escalating things.

Okay.

You're absolutely right.

So let's say they talk and it worked out fine.

Let's say they talked and it didn't.

Then you put it in writing.

So let's go that route, okay?

You put it in there.

You need a record.

And the last thing they want is to get sideways with a patient because you got a malpractice case.

You got the state medical board.

You are dental board.

I guess it's called whatever it's called.

And on and on.

Over nothing never mind fee.

What ended up happening was the dentist put on a temporary, gave him his money back.

He went to another dentist.

Got to fix better for half the price because he refused to be a victim.

And he said to me, you know, the minute you told me I can stand up for myself and be proactive

and take my life and matters and justice into my own hands.

Is the minute I felt a lot better in a workout form.

So don't let this stuff go.

You know, get your goat.

You don't have to.

It can be hard to because the emotions behind it.

We got, I was very blessed and fortunate when my last daughter was born,

blessed in a lot of ways.

She survived the hospital experience.

Mama survived the hospital experience, but it was an absolute nightmare.

And we didn't have insurance because she was from Mexico.

We got stuck in the United States due to COVID long story.

It was a train wreck of an experience.

But we were going to have a bill of over $300,000.

And they, but they did such an awful job that by the time day three rolled around,

the CEO had already written us a letter, apologizing, waived off ease, everything.

We didn't even have to communicate about it.

Oh my God.

And so I remember thinking like, I have a feeling they know that we could have

we could have sued the living crap out of this hospital.

I don't know that they do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts.

Sometimes that happens.

It's usually a financial tell.

Oh no.

It's not worth the money to just really hold their ground.

A couple of few years ago, my wife was right here where we are.

I'm in Florida.

I'm going to let me give you two minutes in this one,

because I know we're going to get you out of here.

Oh, no, we're good.

Oh no, we're going to make this happen.

I'm going to give you two minutes of the story.

I will not say who is at fault.

We'll leave it at that.

But she ended up crashing our new car.

Total loss, other car, total loss, some injuries.

Lawyers get involved.

By the time you add it up, you're talking about two cars, 100 grand.

Injuries, 150.

That's 250.

Lawyers, another $300, $350,000 swing, right?

The insurance company, when we made a claim, said you're not covered.

We're denying your claim.

Like, you got to be kidding me.

I'm like, why?

And they gave me some half-baked reason.

Didn't hold up.

And I had to take matters into my own hands.

Even though I'm the lawyer, I had to represent myself.

Why?

Because number one, no contingency fee lawyer is going to take the case.

I know, you know, pay me one-third of fine to cover.

Because that's not even a thing.

And no hourly lawyer, I couldn't afford it.

$500 an hour, I'm upside down like you described earlier.

So I did do it myself.

I got my friends, of course, and reconstructed the facts.

I got the lease.

I got the email chain.

I got the cell phone records.

I got the odometer statement.

I got everything I could and needed

to build a story.

I put together a page letter supported by 13 exhibits,

sent it in, waited four weeks, heard nothing.

I was about to file a federal complaint

in a complaint in federal court

when they called and said two things.

One, they said, you're covered.

And two, they said, we're sorry for what we put you through.

The letter was that compelling.

So you know what?

I could have taken it and gone personally bankrupt.

Right.

Or really pushed.

And I like to say, adversity really makes you helpless

in that you have no choice but to succeed.

And that's what happened and that's what I did.

And you got to self advocate.

I appreciate that a lot.

Now we put in here why say less and read more

is a powerful business strategy.

We also have any or how better habits can protect our business

relationships and reputation.

Let's start first with say less and read more.

What's that all about?

My grandma is always telling me you can't go wrong with your mouth shut.

I mean, there's so many ways to get into trouble these days.

These defamation cases are epidemic and they're massive.

I mean, they're not nickel and dime cases anymore.

I mean, look at like Alex Jones got sued for the Sandy Hook thing

for like a billion dollars.

Donald Trump got sued several times for multi tens of millions of dollars.

And on and on and on with the you know,

the facts voting news with the voting systems and everything.

So it's really stupid to pop off if you don't know the facts

and more so if you don't know the law

that you're taking refuge in to support what you say.

Look at a couple of years ago on campus with all the Gaza Israel protests.

Kids were saying thinking they could say what they want when they wanted

for however long they wanted to whomever they wanted about whomever

and they could take refuge in the First Amendment.

I'll bet you anything 99 out of 100 kids didn't know what the First Amendment

said much less where to find it.

Maybe they chatted GPT at most about it.

But you know what?

The First Amendment doesn't allow you to say

and support your saying whatever you want whenever you want.

It's got limitations.

A lot of them obscenities, fighting words, defamation and so on.

It doesn't apply to private institutions like private schools.

They only adopt the First Amendment's requirements

because they're bastions of hire learning they want to kind of play and look

the part as you would expect.

But they don't have to.

That's why restaurants can say no shoots no shoes no shirt no service.

Because they can say whatever the hell they want it's a private entity

and so long as they're not discriminating against a protected class

they can do it.

And kids say that stuff all the time.

I'll tell you the person who would have benefited a ton

from having this much legal wellness as the concerned

Virginia defamation law was Amber heard.

Because her case with Johnny Depp.

Tomorrow I'm also retelling.

You'll see on a goka.

Sometimes she goes out.

Hey, how you coming in?

Yeah, right, right.

Right, I don't know what I said.

Amber Alexa, I don't know, kind of close.

So it was a spous, it was not a spousal abuse case.

It was a defamation case.

And had she known what not to say

under Virginia common law with the elements of the defamation claim

are there, which she had no clue about.

I was sure of it.

As many of us most of us don't in our respective states.

She would have not said what she did.

And she'd have been up anywhere.

It's projected between 10 and 12 million dollars.

Where did pop enough get her?

I understand her message.

And it's an important one.

But damn, I'm telling you, if you are walking into something like

an op-ed published in the washinimpost.com

without any aptitude for the law,

having talked your lawyer,

and I don't know whether she did or didn't,

but if she did, why did she get the wrong advice,

then you're doing yourself a real disservice.

You cannot go wrong with your mouth shut.

Now, I just saw an article on or video on your website.

And it looks like you cover some really, really cool and important

and pointful topics.

You're probably going to be taking a tick tock at some point.

That's right.

I got from your mouth.

There's a topic on there about

wage theft, or are you victim of it?

And on the business owner's side as well,

let's dive into communication a little bit.

What are some of the things that the mistakes

from a communications standpoint

and a business owner can make with team members,

clients, etc.

What are some of the most common ones

that they don't realize that they're walking into?

Well, you know, if you don't communicate with your employees,

you're not honest with them.

If you don't give them the documents and data

that you required to give them by the state,

by the BWC, Bureau of Workers Comp,

by paychecks or whatever payroll provider you're using,

you can be in real trouble.

It's so easy just to kind of gloss over things.

If you pull tips and take part of the tips as an employer,

can't do that.

You're going to walk into a wage an hour claim,

a fair labor standard practices claim.

I mean, you just don't want to do that.

Know the law, talk to your lawyer, talk to an employment lawyer,

and find out what the rules of the road are

as a concern interacting with your employees,

what your duties and obligations are to them,

and their duties and obligations are to you,

because it's a two-way street.

Very, those are a lot of really, really powerful examples very fast.

You want to pick through this stuff, so I'm trying.

I love it, man.

And so those business owners as well,

you got what about an independent contractor?

You talked about employees.

Well, an independent contractor.

My son is a DJ, so he's an independent contractor.

His employer has to make sure that he's paid for the work he performs.

And if he's not, my son has every right

to pursue a claim for a wage theft.

Now, I don't want to recommend that he do that.

He's got a great gig.

It's going just fine.

But you've got to be really careful

as somebody hiring independent contractors too.

And you've got to, for your part,

you want to provide them W-9s to ensure that you don't pay taxes

on the wages you pay them.

That's an important thing.

And as a young person who's an independent contractor,

I've had to counsel my son as to what that means,

because he's learning about tax issues

for the first time, especially now,

it being tax season.

He's like, I'm getting paid.

Can I keep it all?

I'm like, no, you can't.

You got to put, we literally had to stock yesterday.

So you got to squirrel.

I said, take a third, just to be in the safe side.

Put it aside into a tax account.

So come tax season.

If you owe money, taxes on your W-9 income,

you'll have it available rather than getting caught,

flat footed.

Nobody wants to be caught short, come April 15th every year.

Right.

And now diving into that same topic,

if I'm a business owner and I hire an agency,

is it, are they considered team members and employees?

Are they considered independent contractors?

And again, are there communication mistakes that occur

in that field?

I've hired document reviewers.

My cases are so big that they require lots of

bodies to look at documents.

These are typically antitrust cases,

federal antitrust class action cases.

And I routinely hire independent contractors

through agencies.

And I treat them the exact same way.

I've created an agency like an independent contractor.

I pay the agency, I don't pay the worker,

the agency pays the worker, but I pay the agency.

Now how the agency interacts with an independent contractor,

I'm not sure because that's not my space, whether the

treatment is an employee or an independent contractor,

I don't know.

I just know that my independent contractors

tend to come through agencies and interact with the agency.

So do you then send the W-9 to the agency?

Yes, I do.

And I do all my payroll and payment processing,

so to speak with the agency.

I would never pay the document review personally.

That's just not the arrangement.

As we wrap up, Danny, talk to me about your book.

And again, back to that part of the vision

of what you're doing to help people

get legal protection and not fall victim of fear,

not fall victim of ignorance, as well,

and realize that they can protect themselves.

What's your bigger vision for moving it forward?

Ultimately, what I'd like to do,

what drives this whole process,

and this is a really big ask,

and I'm not sure I'm even asking it up,

is I'd really love to turn this brand

and this product and this cause and this goal

and this undertaking and effort into a talk show.

I really want to become the legal doctor, Phil.

There's nobody filling that lane.

The only legal related, not even wellness,

legal related content on TV,

are those ginned up courtroom shows

that are more exploitative than they are preventive

and helpful in that they prey on people's misery and misfortune

and train the cameras on people after things have fallen apart.

My goal is to move the dial back

and give people the tools they need and deserve

to avoid stepping in it so that they're not the ones in litigation

because people say, oh, you know what?

I'll just defend on whatever basis.

Let me tell you, it's not so easy.

Once you're defending your in court and it stinks,

you want to keep out of court.

That's what you want to do.

My lawyer that I've talked to about already,

he once said to me that he had a client

who wanted a real aggressive SOB.

The mean is lawyer he could find

and he asked my lawyer if he was it.

And my lawyer said to him,

where'd I come to live by?

My lawyer said to him,

you know what?

If you want a real SOB lawyer who's going to take you

right up to the line that I'm not your guy

because my job is to keep you as far away from the line as possible.

That's what this book does

is it concerns people's legal wellness,

keeps them away from the line,

keeps them as safe as possible.

Well, I love that.

My brother a long time ago and I was a little told me a story

about three truck drivers who were asked about

the dangerous curve and the first two bragged about how close

they could get to the curve and not fall off the edge.

The other one came in and said,

I wouldn't even dare near come close to that edge.

Naturally, he's the one who got the job.

The same type of thing with the lawyer.

Absolutely, I appreciate your perspective and paradigm on that.

Okay, then last and final opportunity for tonight.

If this is the last chance you have to provide

counsel, wisdom, encouragement to visionaries

that are in this world, what would the council be?

Oh, boy.

I don't mean to sound self-serving, but you know what?

If you have a nice dose of legal wellness,

it's not expensive.

It's much cheaper than a lawyer and not just to counsel you,

but to get you out of trouble if you step in it,

then I've got chapters on all these evergreen topics,

whether what to do in an auto accident,

liability waivers like we talked about,

forced arbitration, which is where companies strip you

of your seven amendment right to a jury trial when something happens

and put you into this black box process

where you lose 97 plus percent of the time the data show.

And on and on and on, 300 pages worth of good stuff

that's accessible, that's easy to read,

that's an audio if you like to listen to books,

and that will keep you legally safe as possible

without having to pay for an expensive lawyer.

My friends, you can tell from the thickness of that book

that Danny's hurting soul when it's saying,

I don't mind you making a plug for that at all

because you spend a lifetime preparing yourself

to put everything together like that.

And it's not like a book from a coach

that, you know, I don't have to worry about liabilities

as a business owner, I can publish a book

and half of it could be just trash.

I wouldn't get in trouble for publishing that book.

Yours has consequences if you don't do that book well.

And so my friends, I believe Danny

when he says how important this is going on.

By the way, that every letter and I have tons of letters in here

that are concrete examples of what you can and should do

if you want to and how you can refashion them

to suit your facts.

And every example is absolutely real.

I've made up nothing.

I've disguised the name to protect the guilty,

but every single example is true

because you cannot make this stuff up.

It happened to me most of the time and it can happen to you.

I wish you the best on your TV show,

Opportunity Danny.

There's a lot of opportunities

with that personality.

You got the face for it.

You got the voice for it.

You got the ability to both be kind

and be controversial.

So I can see that definitely being something

a network would come out.

A little touch, right?

My friends, those of you who are visionaries,

visionproselive.com, top corner,

be our guest, come be our guest.

You don't have to be one of the world's best lawyers

to be on the show.

You can also be starting your vision out as well.

And we'll see you guys on an next episode of Vision Prose Live.

Thank you for being here today.

I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Prose Live.

I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions

as these episodes continue to move forward.

This is going to get more and more fun.

We'll have more and more engagement as well

one by people to participate in the show.

And thank you for giving us your time and attention.

Have an excellent time building out your...