Welcome! Something for You


 

 

Video Transcript

Welcome. I am Aaron Hall, an attorney for business owners and entrepreneurial companies. I am really glad you subscribed to get the free cheat sheet, Seven Common Legal Mistakes Made by New Businesses. This says something about you. It says that you are a person who likes to learn. It says you are a person who goes to experts to get information.

You just don't go anywhere on the internet. It also says you have an interest in avoiding the headaches and the problems and the expense that can come when you make mistakes in a business, and you want to avoid that. So I am really glad you joined today. A little introduction about myself, my background, and trying to fill you in a little bit on what is coming up in the upcoming videos that you will be sent by email.

In the upcoming videos, you will learn about each of the seven topics in this cheat sheet, the Seven Common Legal Mistakes Made by New Businesses. And these videos are free only to subscribers like you. There is no cost to it. And you might be wondering, why am I doing this? Why am I sending out free information?

Well, it goes back to a day when I was in law school, and I was standing on the parking lot of William Mitchell School of Law, and I was having a crisis. Now let me give you a little context here. Prior to attending law school, my plan was, after talking with my wife, I was going to quit work and go to law school full-time for three years.

She was going to work. And then, when we were all done, we were going to look at having kids. Well, she called me one day shortly after starting law school; a couple of weeks after, I could tell there was nervousness in her voice, and she said, I have got some news for you. And I didn't know what it was at the time, but she announced we were having a baby.

Well, that was quite a shock. But she consoled me by saying it is going to be okay. I can still work. Our moms will help out with the baby. Well, a few weeks went by. She had a visit at the doctor's appointment, and I got a similar call from her. I could tell there was nervousness in her voice, and there was something she needed to tell me, but I couldn't figure out what it was because I had already gotten broken the news that we were having a baby, well, perhaps you guessed it. She said, "We are having twins." Well, those twins were born a few weeks before finals in my first year of law school. That is a tough time.

A lot of your first jobs in law are based on your grades in the first year of law school. So what had happened then is we went through the whole birth process. Fortunately, they were born healthy, and that was right before finals. I then studied for finals many times through the night or close to it. I was exhausted, and then that summer, I was working to write onto law review. I was working at a job, and I will just never forget standing in the parking lot of the law school calling my dad, and he asked me, "How's it going?" And I said, "You know, it is tough." And I started to break down. I felt like I don't think I can do this. I can't. The problem was I couldn't be a great husband, a great dad, and a great law student. And by the way, law school is not cheap. I was borrowing a lot of money to go to law school, and let alone I wasn't able to maintain friendships and other relationships. And so it was a very difficult time. And I said, "You know, I am thinking about quitting law school." And I will never forget at that moment what he said. He said, "Aaron, I want you to stick with it, and we will do whatever we can to help. Your family will come behind you. We will support you. We will rally around you." But then he said this, "But don't ever forget it. We need each other, and I hope that you will do that for people someday."

Well, I have never forgotten that the reason I was able to continue through law school was because people did exactly that. They rallied around me. My mom packed up her bags, and she moved into our house for about a month, helping with our daughters and allowing my wife to get some sleep, allowing me to be at the law school studying. I had friends who would come and stay overnight so that my wife could get some sleep so that I didn't have to be there to support them, and I could be there preparing for studying in law school and all that was going on at the time.

I learned at that point or was reaffirmed at that point that we need each other. We need to use what we have learned and our accomplishments, and our experiences, not just for ourselves, not just to make money, but to help others. And so I make these videos on YouTube and other platforms, and now these videos just for you because I want to help you avoid problems in your future.

Not necessarily just for you, but, so hopefully, you can pass that on. You can help others. You can be a better boss. You can be a better employer. You can be a better business owner, a better spouse, a better parent, and a better friend. Because when we can avoid problems that we encounter and create expense and stress in our lives; hopefully, we can be better in the roles we have.

So that is why I am doing these videos so you can spot issues to discuss with your attorney and to avoid problems that you would otherwise encounter.

All right, so who am I? I am an attorney in Minnesota. I am licensed to practice in the Minnesota Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and District Courts. I am also licensed and admitted to practice in the Minnesota Federal District Court in the District of Minnesota. I practice before the United States Trademark Office. I have practiced in the Minnesota Federal bankruptcy courts, and I have practiced before administrative agencies and administrative law judges here in Minnesota.

What is my educational background? Well, I have a degree, a bachelor's degree in marketing and innovation from Concordia University in St. Paul. I have a J.D., or a Juris Doctor degree from William Mitchell School of Law. That law school is now called Mitchell Hamlin because of a merger.

My experience is practicing with business owners, helping them avoid problems, and then also litigating in the courts on their behalf. I have probably worked with hundreds of business owners. I was working on with them, probably thousands if you count the times that I have managed attorneys. I managed a law firm of about 35 people in downtown Minneapolis and managed a team of about 15 attorneys and the various staff that worked in two different offices, and I was involved in their projects. In reviewing their work.

I have received a number of awards and I don't really want to go into all that. You can read that on the website. I have been featured in CNN Money, Consumer Reports, Forbes, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, due to just comments and speaking on issues that are relevant for the day.

But let's talk about you and the Seven Common Legal Mistakes and how you can avoid them. When I started practicing, I started seeing some of the same issues over and over again with new clients who would come in. So I started making a list of issues, and then when I got a new client, I would talk with them about those particular issues just to see if those were a problem for them. It started out with five items and then seven, and then fifteen. These days, it is close to a hundred.

When I would meet with business owners, I would often find that a simple mistake was costing them thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year. That might have been money that they could have saved on taxes. It might have been legal problems that they are experiencing and the legal fees they are spending. Maybe it was a government audit or review or investigation that they could have avoided if they had just done things right. I have seen clients spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing problems that, if they had just avoided this, to begin with, by getting some good legal advice, they never would have had that mess.

So I am here to help you identify those issues so you can work with the attorney in your state to take care of these issues and talk about these issues.

Coming up, you are going to get some emails from me, and those emails are largely based on videos. They are clickable videos, and you can watch me explain the next topic of the seven most common mistakes made by new businesses.

The next one, in particular, is intellectual property. What are you doing to protect your intellectual property? I will talk about what intellectual property might you have, what are your options for protecting it, and what are some of the common mistakes I see and confusion that new business owners have as it relates to intellectual property.

One final note, if you haven't checked out my YouTube channel with public content, you can check it out at youtube.com/@Hall. I look forward to seeing you on the next video, and as always, feel free to email me or comment on my YouTube channel videos if you have any sorts of questions or if there are topics you would like me to address. I look forward to having a conversation with you and addressing the particular frustrations or questions, or concerns you have as you grow a company avoid legal problems, and achieve success in your entrepreneurial endeavors.