Avoiding Legal Pitfalls that can Destroy your Hard Work - A Hustle and Grind Recast | 120

Legal Strategies Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know

In this episode of the Don't Skip the Legal Podcast, I sit down with the Hustle and Grind Podcast, breaking down the crucial legal strategies every entrepreneur should have in their back pocket. From protecting your business early to avoiding common legal pitfalls, you’ll learn:

✅ The 3 biggest legal mistakes entrepreneurs make
✅ Why non-compete agreements are on the decline—and what to use instead
✅ How to safeguard your business from costly legal and PR disasters
✅ Why bringing a lawyer on board early can save you time, money, and stress

A huge thank you to Andrew Chestnut for hosting me on his show! If you’re building a business, this episode is packed with essential legal insights to help you avoid expensive and stressful mistakes. Don’t miss it! 

Don't Skip the Legal podcast brings you insightful conversations with successful entrepreneurs, providing real-world lessons on business growth, legal considerations, and much more. Subscribe now for more enriching episodes and practical insights for navigating the complexities of the business world.

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Disclaimer:

Please note that the legal information shared in this podcast is for general informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for consulting with a licensed attorney for specific legal matters. Past performance does not indicate future results; every legal case is unique. Consult your own attorney for personalized legal advice.

Transcript

As entrepreneurs, we all have a reason why we chose to leave our 9 to 5 for an 8 

a .m. to 10 p .m. I'm here to capture those stories of why we all hustle and grind 

for our companies. Andy is a seasoned business attorney and founder of the Contiguglia 

law firm with nearly 30 years of legal experience. His He focuses on business law, 

corporate law, complex litigation, and risk management. He and his team are dedicated 

to assisting startups, entrepreneurs, and established businesses in navigating legal 

challenges and ensuring their success and compliance with the law, branding, and 

crisis and risk management. Andy is the author of Don't Skip the Legal, the startup 

guide for business owners and entrepreneurs, and the host of the Don't Get the legal 

podcast, YouTube channel, and other social media channels. - Well, Andy, thank you so 

much for being on the show today. Really appreciate it. I know we've already had a 

really great discussion, so this is gonna be a wonderful episode. - We're just gonna 

go roll right into it, Andrew. So here's what we need to do. We need to set the 

ground rules right now. I'll call you Andrew, and you can call me Andy. That way, 

nobody's gonna get confused that I'm not talking to myself or you're not talking to 

yourself. Exactly, you know, although my mom was a psychologist and said talking to 

yourself is a sign of good mental health I should probably put in there that she 

said that after I called her out for talking to herself There we go. I Doubt the 

villain But I love it. You are the first Andrew we've had on this show too. So 

that works out. Well, I'm better President company excluded, right? Exactly, right? 

so you've been in law for a congenital engineers. And I think it's really 

interesting, especially in business, I like to tell people, the first person you 

should hire as a bookkeeper and accountant, the second was a lawyer. Just to make 

sure you're good, you know, to make sure you're fine. What kind of law do you 

specialize in? 'Cause at different types of lawyers. - That's a great question, real 

quick about me. So I'm Andrew Contiguglia, I'm a lawyer. I am based in Denver, 

Colorado. I'm the founder of the Contiguglia Law Firm. I founded this business back in 

2007, I've been a lawyer for going on 30 years now. If you include the times that 

I did my internships and things like that during law school, I've been in the legal 

field for over 30 years at this point. But my background is basically business law, 

corporate law, complex litigation, risk management. And I like to call myself the 

corporate casual business attorney because I think corporate lawyers are stuffy. I 

don't think they're fun. I hate dealing with them. And I didn't want to be that 

guy. And so it's important to me, Andrew, that I maintain a degree of 

approachability 

and personableness between the people I meet, people I engage with, whether it's 

clients or just networking people. I want to be available to them. And I want to 

be present for them. And I just think a lot of these times lawyers have these 

ties. Let me just button up my collar here a little bit and get a little bit 

tighter for you. That ain't me. And I think that becomes a really good, you know, 

piece of the way that I've sort of brained myself in the way that I want to 

engage with others as an attorney. So I think that's, that's real big. And I think 

it's, I think it's really important. Like for me, when I, when I look at an 

attorney, I look at credentials and all the stuff that you normally would, but I 

also want to make sure that somebody I can talk to, because We don't talk to our 

lawyers when things are going well. We talk to our lawyers when we've done something 

stupid, something's going wrong, and I want somebody I can talk to and just be 

like, dude, candidly, here's what happened. I think, yeah, but you bring up a really 

good point, Andrew. So you mentioned, you want to make sure you have a bookkeeper. 

You want to make sure you have an account. You want to make sure you have a 

lawyer as part of your team. And everybody-- all right, not everybody. Most people 

look, including a lawyer as part of their business team. I wrote a book recently 

called Don't Skip the Legal. It's the guidebook to entrepreneurs and business owners. 

And the first chapter in there is the argument, make a lawyer part of your business 

team. You're starting a company. Have a lawyer ready to go. And there are different 

fee structures. There are different ways that you can integrate a lawyer into your 

business startup and into your business growth so you don't run into these problems. 

And what I tell people, Andrew, is listen, you go to the doctor because you don't 

want to have the heart attack. You don't go to the doctor after you have the heart 

attack. So equally so, go to the lawyer so you don't run into litigation. Go to 

the lawyer so you don't have problems with risk. Get somebody to help you evaluate 

the problems that you're going to come up in your business and help me teach you 

how to navigate those so you don't run into problems. Most of the calls I get, 

you're right. They are, oh my God, this happened. How do I fix X in the past? And 

I sit there and I'll bang my head against the wall and go, God, had you just come 

to me four months earlier, this all could have been avoided. And it's this idea 

that what I call preventative law that nobody wants to get involved in preventative 

law. My motto is protecting you on the front end so you don't take it in the back 

end, but you gotta get here sooner so I can protect your back end. 

Otherwise, your back end's already done and we're just healing you at this point. 

- It's just, it's like with CPAs too, same thing. If you only go to the audited 

And it's like, that's not really when you need them. You need to be somewhat 

proactive, especially with them. And there's a lot of-- Come to me before the 

problem. Come to me before the problem. So there you go. And there's so many 

pitfalls to fall into, too. Like, a lot of-- we were talking about, like, let's 

actually go into it, non -competes. You know, that's a new thing now. [LAUGHTER] You 

know, tell us a little bit about-- A new twist, yeah. A new twist on an old 

topic. And There, you know, you get a number, you used to have companies trying to 

tie their employees into working for them. And what companies like to do is say, 

Andrew, you're working for me, but you're so good. I don't want you to leave. And 

oh, by the way, I don't want you going across the street and opening up a 

competitive donut shop across the street from me. And that And that was the big 

thing with non -competes. I want to keep my employees from being able to go and 

compete against me and taking away my market share and affecting my business. That 

was the argument. And for a long time, that was there. State by state, very slowly, 

that's transitioned into this, yeah, you can't force employees to not compete. 

That's a violation of a work, you know, ethic and in many state laws. 

And so they limited it to some scope. Recently, and when I mean recently, like 

within the last year, the Federal Trade Commission started evaluating the whole idea 

of non -competes. And they reached this conclusion that it violated, you know, 

rights of trade and rights of competition. That was really what it came down to. 

I'm paraphrasing it for simplicity here. And the Federal Trade Commission started 

passing rules and regulations that basically said any non -compete is illegal. You 

can't do that. So if you're working for me, Andrew, I can't have you sign a non 

-compete. So you can't go open up that donut shop across the street. Now there are 

limitations on this. So if you and I are business partners, I can certainly put 

limitations on you opening up a competing business after I buy you out for periods 

of time in a certain location for a certain period of time. So there are 

limitations to that, but it's usually up at this executive management decision making 

level or at this partnership co -ownership level. So those are in there. 

The FTC put out a whole laundry list of things that are exceptions to that. 

And by the time this broadcast probably will be a year into it, and things will be 

a little more fleshed out. But the Federal Trade Commission, you can literally go 

onto their website. They have a PDF that they put out about non -compete, it's that 

you can do it. You can also look on my website. I've written a lot about the non 

-competes, and this change in the law, I have four blogs that I just recently put 

out at Contagulia .com where you can read a lot about it and gain a better 

understanding of that. So anyway, Federal Trade Commission comes in, they put the 

kibosh on non -competes, they leave a few things in place, like upper management, 

partners. But one thing you can do is you can protect your trade secrets, so I can 

have a confidentiality, non -disclosure agreement with you, that everything you learn 

while working for me and you can't take to somebody else, you can't steal my 

customers, you can't steal my clients, you can't steal my employees. So non 

-solicitation provisions, those are still in play. So there are ways that you can 

protect what we'll refer to as sort of your intellectual property for your company 

and making sure that your employees don't come in, take your information or your 

people and run off and try to hurt you in that respect. I'm I'm actually engaging 

a lawsuit over an issue of that right now. So I think it's really important, 

though, because as entrepreneurs, this is not our world. We kind of have an idea 

about legal, but honestly, we're OK at it. But non -competes are something we think 

protect us, and it doesn't necessarily. And that's something that's changed somewhat 

recently, that we're either unenforceable or now not even possible. So I want to 

pivot a little bit, because what I love to hear is the story of how somebody got 

started. How did you get into law? - Oh, good, yeah, that's that question. - All 

right, so I gotta go back. So here I am. I gotta go back to high school because 

when I was graduating high school and going to college, I wanted to go to college 

to go into anthropology and archeology, all right? So by the time I was going into 

college, I had already been to South America on archaeological digs working with 

different universities on, you know, projects and grants and things like that in 

South America and also in Colorado. And so this was a big area that I wanted to 

do. I loved that space. And of course, in 1988, it was sort of right in the cusp 

of the Indiana Jones era. So, you know, here I am like, I'm going to be Indiana 

Jones and I'm going to go and do this. And I was like, this is the greatest thing 

ever, I'm going to go do this. So enter college. I went to a small liberal arts 

college in Manhattan called Columbia University, maybe you've heard of it. And I went 

in there, I went in there wanting to do anthropology. And in all honesty, 

I did not enjoy the classes, I didn't enjoy my professors, and it ruined my taste 

in that space. And So I was like, this is not what I want to go into. I'm not 

enjoying this. So I did a slight pivot into political science and international 

affairs. And so I ended up graduating from Columbia with my degree in international 

affairs. I earned enough credits to minor in anthropology, which was pretty good, 

which in terms of reading people and understanding cultures and things like that, I 

think is very helpful. But at the time I was in college, My cousin, 

who is from Long Island, was going to Fordham Law. If you're familiar with the way 

Manhattan is, Columbia is up at 116th Street. Fordham Law is down at Lincoln Center 

at 68th and Broadway. So here he is. He's a first -year law student. I got to 

watch him for three years of my college go through law school. Of course, he was 

like my big brother and I was like, "Oh, I want to go to law school just like 

you. I went to law school wanting to be a criminal prosecutor. My whole background 

was wanting to use like, you know, my degree and everything and everything I learned 

in law school to be a prosecutor. And I did. I worked at the U .S. Attorney's 

Office for a little bit. I worked at one of the local District Attorney's Office 

doing real low level crimes and things like that, prosecuting traffic cases, barking 

dog cases, small things like that, and that was really where I wanted to go. And 

for me, it was everything. And ultimately, 

my cousin ended up going corporate. He was a corporate lawyer in Manhattan for 

years, loved it, eventually moved down to Florida. But my path was a little bit 

different. I ended up going back to Colorado for law school and working in the 

local offices of those prosecutors here. But when I graduated law school and passed 

the bar, I didn't get hired by the DA office. And I was pissed. 

I was pissed, Andrew. I was like, fine, that's the way you're going to be. I'm 

going to go do defense work. And I literally jumped the fence from being a 

prosecutor to doing criminal defense work right out of law school. 

So here I am in 1995 -96. I'm doing criminal defense work. I opened up my business 

for the first time back in 1996, and I tried to sort of get into it and build a 

business practice. I did a lot of juvenile delinquency law, did a lot of bankruptcy. 

You're starting a business, you take everything, anything you can. I was taking every 

lawyer I knew out to lunch. I was, because of my work at the DA's office, 

I knew all of the judges and they would give me court appointment cases. I met my 

first wife in the courts. Interesting sidebar. I met my second wife in the courts 

too. 

So we've got so I knew every all the players in the, you know, 

in this community of lawyers and judges. And so they were like, Hey, you're starting 

your business. Let me appoint you to some of these cases. And I would just get an 

appointment after appointment after appointment, which was great because the state 

would pay, I would get appointments, I knew these judges, they knew I would appear 

and I would do a good job for my clients and I built this clientele, literally 

doing, you know, work at 75 bucks an hour, you know, 

doing these sort of little piece of meals. And that's how I built my practice. So 

it was one to the next, I hooked up with a couple of different lawyers and shared 

office space with them. But in 1996, man, I had no business running a business. 

It was, I hated it. I hated the bookkeeping. I hated chasing clients down for 

money. I hated billing clients for money. I hated all of the logistics of different 

things. I'm like, yeah, this isn't for me. So I went and I joined a small law 

firm in sort of the mid to late 90s for about 18 months and realized this wasn't 

the right place for me, which was interesting because they didn't think I was the 

right person for them. So we did this mutual departure in sort of mid 1999 at this 

point. So I'm three years into my law practice. And then I ended up hooking up 

with this lawyer in this law firm, a small law firm in one of the Denver suburbs 

called Littleton. And I joined their firm in tober november 1999 and i was with 

them for eight nine years and that that law firm was really where i learned pretty 

much everything about corporate and business about litigation i did more criminal 

defense work i managed and handled some real high profile cases here locally which 

was a lot of fun and as i sort of built up through the ranks of that firm i saw 

so So now we're, you know, we're 2000, early 2000s, I saw the writing on the wall 

in terms of what was coming down the pike, you know, I saw we had the dot com 

bubble starting, you know, you had Amazon that was really now starting to become out 

there. AOL was big everywhere. Everybody was getting those CD ROMs in the mail to 

get AOL and start email and all these different things and everybody was on a 

personal computer so early and I said, "Listen, this world is going to change in 

this dot -com area. We need to start doing more work, and I want to start doing 

more work with businesses that are doing things online." The law firm I was with 

didn't see the utility in that. They didn't think that was a good space to be. 

They liked the brick and mortar, they liked the face -to -face stuff, and so as I 

wanted to look into this more internet -based law practice like influencers and media 

and things like that, they were like, "Yeah, we didn't want to do anything like 

that." So in 2007, I'm like, "All right, guys, you're not going to make me a 

leader in this business, so I'm going to go start my own." And I ended up starting 

my own company back in 2007, and I've never looked back. Here we are. It's, you 

know, as we're recording on this July of 2024. So 17 years of my own, more than 

17 years at this time of my own business, which has been great and I love it. 

I'm still making transitions or trying to make pivots for my own self because I 

enjoy working, I enjoy running businesses now. I don't enjoy the practice of law as 

much as I used to. I think I'm way past that and as a litigator, I think there's 

a sweet spot for lawyers who litigate. I think that's between the 10 and 20 year 

mark. I'm 10 years past that. I wanna just do deals, help people make a lot of 

money, you know, button up projects and help companies stay out of trouble. I don't 

want to fight with people anymore about stuff. So for me, you know, that that's a 

little bit different now. So long way of answering your question, how the hell did 

I get into law? But there you go. And here I am. Hey, I'm the story guy. I love 

the stories that went to like, I went to school for it. A little more. 

You did a great job and I love it. So no, it was awesome. And you're doing 

because I want to just keep going with this kind of train of thought a little bit, 

you're doing a major pivot to something totally different. Like you said, you know, 

you're like 20, you know, 10 to 20 years is about the the best buy date for, 

you know, actually being in law, you're well beyond that. Now you're moving into 

something completely different, which I think is really interesting. Tell people a 

little bit about what happened with that? Like, how did what led up what led up to 

your new venture? - I think that's a great question. And if you look at sort of my 

history, you see these many pivots, you see these many pivots in the legal, in my 

legal world from doing divorce work, which I won't do anymore, I hate it. I can't 

stand that practice area and dabbling in different areas and realizing that ain't for 

me, doing different pieces. But all the knowledge that you gain from figuring out 

what you don't like is incredible in terms of figuring out what you do like. And 

you know, I have litigated some and I'm still in litigation on a bunch of cases 

and it is grinding. It is 

constant cortisol. It's constant fighting. It's constant problem solving. I'm going to 

get off this podcast. I got to call up an opposing council and fight it's just not 

a pleasant place. You know, I'm 54 years old now. I am way past this, you know, 

wanting to fight with people about crap, and I'm over it. And so for me, 

now, taking 30 years of legal experience, you know, I look back and I'm like, 

you know, we talked about this earlier, like remember when we were, well, if the 

game of if you could go back to when you were in college, knowing what you know 

now, would you do it? And everybody seems to think, yeah, if I could go back to 

college, or go back to high school, knowing everything I know now, I could rule 

that school. I could crush it if I had to start all over again. And so I take 

that philosophy, Andrew, and I sort of juxtapose it up to, you know, Gary 

Vaynerchuk's, you know, big pitch, which is like, listen, if you're in your 50s, 

you're still young enough to start a business. And so here I am looking at making 

this transition from my law firm into a public relations brand management and risk 

management company. And, you know, trying to help companies do either one of two 

things, either grow, and that's where you get sort of the brand reputation 

management, public relations component, or 

manage risk in their business or crises for that matter. And we've done a little 

bit of that for some of our clients. We represented a corporate client that had a 

really, really bad internal event happen. And I'm gonna keep it as generic as I 

possibly can. And we had to manage the board of directors. We had to manage the 

person who was affected by these events we had to manage the other employees and 

other members of this organization and quell their concerns about things. We had to 

manage a criminal investigation as a component of all of this and when we started 

when my old law partner and I were doing this I was like this is great stuff it's 

not law it's consulting and knowing where all the pieces are and being able to say, 

"Andrew, you need to now move this piece to there." Much like you do with your 

coaching and helping people build out TED Talks and speaking engagements, keynotes and 

things like that, you're like, "Here's your process. You need to come up with these, 

come up with your hook and come up with your first prime point. You're in all 

these different things. It's no different in risk management and crisis management. 

It's like, we got to identify the problem. We got to figure out the message we 

want to convey and now we need to help. And I don't have to do that. I can bring 

my brain and my knowledge and to all of this and help people make sure that they 

are making the right decisions, whether it's from a growth standpoint or from a 

crisis standpoint. And in the crisis mode, you get obviously other components of 

public relations, but you get managing those risks and rebuilding brand identity. 

And there are so many great stories about crises. And there is a great saying in 

just sort of things that I've been reading about. There are opportunities in 

conflict. There are opportunities in crises. And you have opportunities for growth. 

And you have opportunities to make yourself better. 

And if you know how to address those events, 

you can really come through the other side having an opportunity for growth rather 

than one that you feel is gonna beat you down throughout that entire process. So 

that's the lane I am now getting into as I slowly phase out my law practice and 

try to build up this public relations company. It's not gonna be a marketing 

company, it's gonna be dealing with these specific types of issues. - And it 

completely makes sense, because as a lawyer, that's often what you had to do is 

kind of step back as the outside objective observer and say, all right, we need to 

take these steps on it, take the emotion out of it. You're the one doing it. So 

it makes sense going into PR, 'cause usually when you're in a PR mess, I had a 

good friend of mine years ago that worked for a large PR firm, and they were 

emergency PRs, what they specialized in, and lots of emotions, lots of things going 

on, lots of disruption, having somebody who knows how to get through that noise and 

be able to say, OK, these are the next steps you need to take. So parallel skill 

set, you know? I mean, that's part of what I deal with. I mean, I deal with 

companies that are in crisis from a legal standpoint and having to counsel people on 

how to maneuver the legal landscape so bad things don't get worse. 

having them look at, oh my God, I'm being arrested or one of my employees is being 

investigated or any of those types of things. And it's one thing to be digging into 

it and doing the legal work behind it and representing people against other lawyers 

and in front of judges and things like that. It's another thing to sort of be able 

to come up with a plan. And what I've noticed, Andrew, just from me and my forte 

is I'm a 35 ,000 foot kind of guy. I am a big strategy here, 

getting into the weeds and getting into the details sometimes is not the best place 

for me. I'm a big picture analyst and I think this will, going this direction for 

me, I think it'll be a good piece for me as I continue to grow in whatever I'm 

gonna do, moving forward for the next 25 years of my life. - Absolutely, So I do 

have one question 'cause I am also a strong believer that legal is a huge part of 

being in business and there's a lot of different places we can trip up. What are 

the three things that you've seen entrepreneurs like especially solopreneurs screw up 

that they can do better from a legal standpoint besides getting a lawyer in before 

they need that? - Getting a lawyer in first, absolutely. So I think you have a 

couple of different pieces of that. And one of the big ones that I run into are 

not having written contracts and you see a lot of people shaking hands, 

patting people on the back, hugging, kissing, whatever it is to seal the deal and 

get this understanding. But a really good written contract is going to help you 

understand my duties and responsibilities in this deal, and it's going to help me 

understand your duties and responsibilities in this deal. And it's important that 

everything is laid out. 

I think thoroughly, so there's no misunderstanding about how we're going to engage 

with one another. It's like going out on a date with somebody and making sure that 

you have these lines of consent in place in terms of what you can and cannot do 

with one another. I think the business relationship here with people and really well 

-defined contracts helps build better credibility. I told you I'm leasing out my 

building and in the process of doing this right now, I'm learning a lot about my 

tenant coming in and we are going back and forth and negotiating the different 

pieces of the lease. They're bringing to my attention concerns that they have by the 

way things are written and I'm exploring, you know, the nature of their business and 

what kind of accommodations and things like that they need. And so we're both both 

sides are putting a lot of energy into the way this lease agreement is going to be 

drafted between the two of us. And in the process of doing that, Andrew, it's 

bringing us closer, I think, as as business associates as I become a landlord and 

they become a tenant to really understand what they need. And I think that builds a 

better relationship between us and it builds credibility between us. And I think 

those are really important. And the other thing with that is bad contracts are still 

binding. So making sure you have a good one is important. I don't think you can 

just sort of one size fits all, hit up legal zoom and say, give me a commercial 

lease and everything is gonna be happy. Because what I've learned throughout this 

process with dealing with this tent is I'm building a relationship with them. 

If I just hand you a form contract, Andrew, and you read it, maybe you understand 

it, maybe you don't, but you sign it, what kind of relationship are you going to 

have? Yeah. That doesn't build trust, it doesn't build a relationship. So I think 

that's a big one, that's number one. The next one really sort of falls into areas 

of, I think, 

classification of workers. We talked about this a little bit earlier. And what I 

find is many entrepreneurs and solo entrepreneurs, when they start having people to 

work for them, are misclassifying the people who work for them. So we have two 

classifications of people. We have either employees are independent contractors. And 

the problem that you see is people misclassifying people who should be classified as 

employees as independent contractors. And that becomes a big, a big issue. So another 

story, as I was telling you, you know, I just got done with an audit by the state 

of Colorado, who decided that they wanted to audit me for 2023 about the 

classification of my workers. Now, I'm smart enough Because I deal in this area of 

law all the time that people who come in and work with me in the legal field are 

going to be employees for exactly this reason. I was like, I don't want anybody 

coming in here and auditing me and I don't want to be dinged for some something 

stupid. So for me, I pay the extra money for people to come in as employees 

because it's worth the insurance policy to me. Now, of course, you know, on the 

audit questionnaire, they're like, do you understand the difference between an 

independent contractor and an employee? I'm sitting there looking at this going like, 

you are an idiot, you call me for that advice. That's like, yeah, I teach this, 

I write about this, here, check out this blog, I'm literally like in my audit, I'm 

like, here's an article I wrote about it, of course, I know. Did you ever do any 

legal research on independent, I'm like, God, are they really asking me these 

questions. And so I, you know, worry about what the auditor was thinking, 

when she got my response to all of these things. She's like, oh yeah, this guy 

probably would teach me the right thing to do this stuff, you know. But in any 

event, misclassifying your workers, I think people who do the business, who are 

helping you do the business that you do. So let's take like you, for example, 

or no, let's, let's simplify this more, because I think you probably ended up 

getting a lot of marketing people listening to this. If you run a marketing agency 

and your job is to produce content to people in their works, 

so your company writes blog posts and things like that for me. If you hire an 

independent writer to write blog posts for me, through your company, 

arguably that person who's doing your content creation for you to pass on to me is 

your employee. You know, the IRS and the various departments of labor, 

there are like 19 different factors that they look into to decide if somebody is 

properly classified as an employee or an independent contractor. And I will tell you 

this, you can never be punished for misclassifying somebody as an employee. If you 

classify them as an employee, even if they are plumbers, nobody's going to care 

because it's a greater burden to you. And the state's not going to want to 

reimburse you. That's really what it comes down to. But if I misclassify somebody as 

an independent contractor, and it comes back through an audit like the one that I 

just had last week, I can owe penalties. I can owe interest on those penalties. 

I can owe those people who used to work for me money and it creates a lot of 

risk. So the true independent contractor, Andrew, is the person who does not engage 

in the business that you engage in. This is, I'm a marketing guy, my computers are 

down, I'm calling the IT guy who's gonna come in and fix all my computers. So 

that, you know, the guy who runs, you know, Chestnuts Computers, Inc. or Chestnut IT 

is going to be the guy who's going to come in, fix all the computers and then go 

off to the next job and do somebody else's job. That is the true independent 

contractor. Now, could I hire you as an IT guy internally in my company? 

Absolutely. But they would be employed because they're helping me run and operate my 

company, but I'm not in the business of IT work. I'm in the business of running a 

law firm running a marketing company, whatever it is. So you see that, you know, 

for me, it would be a similar situation where here I am running a law firm and 

I'm contracting out paralegals, or I'm contracting out lawyers, they're in doing the 

same business. Now, if I control the outcome of the work that they are doing, now 

I am taking or steps to having them be classified as employees rather than 

independent contractors. So if you're going to have an independent contractor 

relationship with somebody, you really need to manage it as an independent contractor 

relationship, which means, "All right, Andrew, I'm hiring you to help me write a TED 

Talk, all right?" And you go, "Great, Andy, I don't know how you do your billing. 

But let's just say you do it by the hour. All right, great. I'm $500 an hour and 

you're going to pay me to do it. I'm like, great, this is going to be worth it 

because Ped Mile High is going to love me. 

And we work, we work, we work and we do this. And then at the end of every 

month, you send me a bill, Andy, here's your bill for $5 ,000 for the 10 hours 

that I've put in. And I'm like, yes, you're so awesome. Here's your $5 ,000 where 

you're like, "Yoo -hoo !" And there we go. And I pay your company. So it's an 

expense to me and income to you. You're running your own business separately. That 

is a true independent contractor relationship. That relationship could change if I 

also am a content creation company and I'm helping people coach and build talks and 

keynotes as well. And I'm And you're I've got this project. I'd love for you to 

put it together for me, but it has to consist of these different things I need to 

deliver by a particular date now I'm putting control in on how you are managing and 

operating your business Which you wouldn't do if if you and I were just independent 

contractor and client it wouldn't work that way I don't get to control how you do 

your business I don't get to control how the plumber fixes the toilet or how the 

content creator drafts an article. Those are things. So you're looking at degrees of 

control, you're looking at degrees of overlap in terms of the business you do and 

the business that I do. And that, that is a very, I'm going to caveat this a very 

superficial view of this and everybody really, if you're worried about something like 

that, go talk to an employment lawyer who can really sit down with you and help 

you classify people properly because it is is not a one -size -fits -all. - Yeah, 

and I think as entrepreneurs, we just think, oh, you know, I have more work that I 

can deal with. I'm gonna go hire somebody else to bring it in. And there's a lot 

more to think about in the back end of that than-- - Absolutely. - A lot of 

questions you need to ask and talking to a lawyer can really help out a lot. 

- Yeah, and the last one, you know, I think the last one is data privacy laws and 

making sure you have enough insurance. I think those two are really big. I'm gonna 

tell another story because we like stories on this podcast. - Sure, it's great. I 

love it. - I represented, I represented a client. I'm telling you, I got a story 

for every situation. All right, so I was representing this client and they were a 

medical office. And over the weekend, I get this call and they're like, you're not 

gonna believe what happened. I'm like, what happened? Well, one of our employees 

opened up a phishing email and the next thing we knew everything got shut down. 

They lost all of their medical records. They lost all of the data on their 

computers, all of this. And so I'm like, all right, well, let's walk through this. 

I'm like, that sucks. Do you have cybersecurity insurance? And they're like, Oh, God, 

no, who thinks cybersecurity like we're medical office, who wants to hack us? You 

know, and I'm like, Well, let's clearly these people did. And it And it was a 

blackmail. So they shut it down, you pay us X number of dollars and then we'll 

release your computers, that kind of thing. And so, I'm like, well, great. I'm like, 

let's check your insurance policy. And they're like, yeah, we don't have it, but 

there is a little piece, they only insure up to $10 ,000 of cyber hurt. And I'm 

like, how much do these people want? They're like, they want like two million. I'm 

like, oh God. I'm like, all right, now let's back this up. I said, who's running 

your email servers and they're like this other company is and like and they're doing 

all the storage and everything from your for your business they're like yeah I'm 

like what promises did they make you as you built this relationship with them well 

they they told us that if we use their services 

that they would you know everything would be data would be protected they wouldn't 

be able to be fished and all these things and I'm like well guess what, I think 

they breached that part of the contract, we need to reach out to them. Now, 

thankfully, they had like, you know, $2 million, $5 million in insurance coverage for 

something like this. And ultimately, the company that was hosting all of their data 

paid out these black mailers to get it paid out. 

But I think data protection, but on top of all of that, now they had to notify 

all of their all of their employees, I'm sorry, their customers, all of their 

clients and patients about the data breach of what happened. Even big banks are 

having that happen. I've received notices from banks. I'm like, oh, shit, okay, 

I guess my name got put out in a data breach recently. So now we've got to deal 

with that. So I think that is an important part of the way that you're protecting 

data. And I think nowadays when we are also looking at gathering data from our 

communities, like I want to subscribe to your newsletter, Andrew, or your podcast. 

And, you know, you take my information under the GDPR and the CCPA. I think you 

have an obligation to take only the information that is required for this 

transaction. So if I'm going to subscribe to your newsletter, The only thing you 

need for me is my email address. There you go. Don't ask for anything else. 

Don't ask for a credit card. Don't ask for my address. Don't ask for things that 

go beyond the scope of what is needed. And there's a lot under the GDPR and the 

CCPA, but I think these data privacy laws are making sure that you're protected from 

cyber attacks and things like that. I think that is really a really important matter 

as well. There's more, but we don't have time for that. So maybe on part two, 

we'll talk about it. Exactly, exactly. Those are the things you need more. We need 

more things to protect you or put that down. I'm going to do a post on these 

things. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think cybersecurity is something we don't think 

about, but it is a big issue. I was part of the Home Depot, the data breaching. 

I've been part of so I just sort of assume people have my data, you know, at this 

point and just act accordingly. But it is a huge deal right now. And it is 

something we don't think about as entrepreneurs because it's not sexy. It's not fun. 

It's nothing we want to do. We want to go create. And, you know, these are the 

small things we've got to deal with. So every, every time you like log into 

something, you get like this notice from Google or from Trend Micro or whatever, 

like this password was recently in a data breach of 5 ,000 other websites. You're 

like, 

- Right. - Go for it. - You have to sort of evaluate, like, do I care if anybody 

gets this information? God, not so much. - Exactly. - Yeah. - So, nice. 

- Yeah, I use a random password generator and everything. I stop my days of using 

the same password for everything. I stopped that a while ago, just in case. - Yeah, 

I am still learning that. I'm still pretty decent with making sure my but I 

literally, I'm doing it the old fashioned way. I've like got it kept here. I'm 

like, here's, here's the rotation of passwords for this website. Here's the rotation 

of passwords for this one and just making my list. But I think I should randomize 

it and do that. - Absolutely. So as we're getting towards the end of this episode, 

this awesome amazing episode, there's one question I ask everyone and that is what 

is a book or podcast? And I think in your case you're gonna do books. - I'm to 

say books because they overlap and it's sort of like right now as I'm going through 

my own, you know, pivot and spiritual journey of these things. So these two books, 

so The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer, are you familiar with that one? I 

am, yeah. I'm not really familiar with it, yeah. And The Way of the Peaceful 

Warrior by Dan Milman. Yeah, I mean, just started Have you heard of that? 

You've heard of that one? Yes. No, just started it. Yep. So it's those books, the 

way the Peaceful Warrior like changed my whole world in terms of the way that I 

look at everything. And it's interesting how that book sort of goes up. And then 

finally, when our protagonist is out meditating, he comes back and you realize, I 

don't want to ruin it for you. But the main theme that comes out of that book is, 

you know, making sure that you are present for everything that goes on in your 

life, that there is nothing that goes on in life that doesn't happen for a reason, 

that you should be able to find joy and happiness and everything that is available 

to you in that moment in time, and that you really should not miss the 

opportunities that are presented to you. And then when you sort of put that up next 

to the idea under the Surrender Experiment, you know, that book really talks about 

surrendering to life's natural flow, trusting yourself to a higher intelligence and a 

higher being, and that will sort of help you be guided through your events. 

But in that process, you have to be present. You have to be available to what the 

world offers you and be receptive to it. And I don't think that you can do that 

unless you are aware of your surroundings and understand that every opportunity that 

is presented to you is important. And I think those two books have really meshed 

themselves together in my brain right now and as I'm really trying to sort of push 

forward my own spiritual journey in that respect, so. - Well, Andy, - Thank you so 

much for an enjoyable podcast. I really appreciate you being here today. - This has 

been a lot of fun. I appreciate it greatly. - Absolutely. - Thanks again for joining 

us on the Hustle and Grind podcast. If you'd like to learn more about Andy, check 

out the links in the description.