E173: The Art of Business: Expressing Yourself and Building Success with Danya Shakfeh

Danya Shakfeh
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[00:00:00] Ronald Skelton: Hello and welcome to the How2Exit podcast. Today I'm here with Danya Shakfeh. She is with, is it Motiva Business Law. And we're going to talk about some really cool stuff. You have a different perspective on business and we're going to talk about the art of business today. So, uh, thank you for being here today.

[00:00:15] Danya Shakfeh: Yes. Thank you for having me. 

[00:00:17] Ronald Skelton:Okay, cool. We always start with the origin story. The running joke is, you were born and then something happened. Now you're on a show about mergers and acquisitions. Could you fill up that small gap in between? So tell us how you ended up on, in the M& A world. 

[00:00:29] Danya Shakfeh: Well, so yes, I was, I was first born.

So I initially wanted to become a lawyer too. I think a lot of lawyers go into law school thinking they're going to change the world. Especially me being a minority. I was like, Oh, civil rights and, world peace and all that. Well, unfortunately I'm not going to have an impact on world peace.

There are a lot of very intelligent people that came before me that could not do it, but I don't see how I can. So anyways, so I ended up kind of in the business law because I started to see a lot of situations around me where people who were friends, or people who knew each other and had good relationships before they go into business and then there's a dispute. They end up hating each other and things go badly and so, and they end up in court.

And so I found myself wanting to add value to people's lives and business owners. Specifically by helping them prevent those issues by doing the things that they should do when they start a business. Like getting their partnership agreements, making sure they understand why they're in business together and how they can protect the business itself and, and, themselves as individuals.

With M&A specifically, it's kind of weird, you know. I'm a smaller law firm and I admit the concept of MS, or M&A, was very intimidating to me because I imagined it to be the kind of a law where only these big wig law firms on, wall street doing these big deals. And then I had found that, no, it's actually something that smaller businesses do on the daily, on main street.

And it's something I enjoy. It's a nice combination because I don't like to litigate, but there's still some interaction, there's deadlines, there's still some strategy, kind of like litigation. Versus just like writing a contract. And so, um, that's why, that's how I ended up here. 

[00:02:07] Ronald Skelton: I interviewed a lot of, entrepreneurs who were attorneys at one point. It's one of the, it's one of the few things that I've ever come across where.

I think there's a high percentage. I haven't ever done the research on it, but I would imagine more than 50 percent of the people who graduate law school and pass the bar don't practice for more than 10 years.

[00:02:25] Danya Shakfeh: Probably. 

[00:02:27] Ronald Skelton: They're all doing something else, right? They got into it and the interesting thing was is, I actually wanted to do law school too.

And, in one of the many paths I was starting to take on my life. I actually, got accepted into one of the part time programs. Was a class or two, I think it was two classes, getting ready to start the third one and ended up in a vicious divorce with my first. In the process of trying to find an attorney, I was like, I just can't find anybody I really like.

A lot of these people were just like, Oh my God. And as far as like quality of human being I wanted to be around. And that's something I do with everything. Who do I want to, I'm gonna have to work with this person off and on. I want somebody that's good, but I also want somebody who's just not, just not a bad person, I guess is what I look for.

And I was like, I can't even find anybody that I like. I don't know if I want to be one. And then I got really lucky in the fact that I had to drop out of law school. Out of the program I just started because of all the money I was paying out to the attorneys and divorce and all that. 

[00:03:22] Danya Shakfeh: That's a huge misconception because law like on TV is so glamorous. Courts and trials. But I think what people don't realize is that most of law is you're, you are sitting at your desk. Like even if you're a litigator or a trial attorney,you're reading memos, you're doing research. There's very little of that courtroom stuff.

and even when you go, it's not nearly as exciting. But, um, yeah, so business, uh, attorneys, and business, I think law school is actually, I mean, more recently they've been more open to teaching lawyers business, or how to be a business owner. But before it was usually like, they would just assume that you're going to go the big law route and almost like the law schools were designed to create jobs for those big law firms.

And by creating jobs that profit for them. That's really what it comes down to. So,most attorneys don't know, or like most attorneys to start their own business, don't know a lick about business. And I would even say that the way that we're trained in law school, actually hurts, our ability to become entrepreneurs because we're kind of trained to be a risk averse.

We're trained to not really, or just to look at details that maybe on the business end don't matter as much. And there's kind of the people interaction aspect that kind of goes out the window too, in that process. So, um, I had to unlearn a lot of things, when I started my own business and got proper business coaching.

[00:04:41] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, I bet. The other one is, is, almost all college degrees are what you said. They prepare you to be a good employee. I did go back to school. I got a master's degree, MBA in marketing. And I thought, this is great. I'm an entrepreneur. Actually, I started to get one in technical management, and I realized I didn't, I hated tech.

And so I went into the like the counselor's office. Was like, look, I'm dropping out. I'm not going to finish this. She's like, you finished, like you pretty much finished everything, but your capstone, your major. Why would you leave now? You got to take five more, four or five, four or five more classes.

And you, and then you're done. And I was like, cause I don't want to do technical management anymore. It's like, oh, cool. What do you want to do? I was like, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm going to start another business. And she's like, cool. Do something in that. And it came down to either accounting or, marketing.

And I'll be honest, the accounting just, I had, you have to take that for your undergrad. You take two classes, one and two. And for your graduate, MBA program, got to take accounting one or two. I already had enough. I know I didn't like it. Right. 

[00:05:35] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. The education system is really designed to teach people how to conform. And entrepreneurship is the opposite. You shouldn't conform. You're doing what everybody else is doing then you're, you're only going to get the same results everybody else is getting. 

[00:05:50] Ronald Skelton: I have a lot of people that go to the meetups and stuff I host and mergers and acquisition ones and entrepreneurial stuff I host. And they're always like, there's two different groups of people like, Hey, I'm going to figure this out.

It's like, cool. You're going to make it. And the other guy's like, well, I've done X, Y, and Z. And I know everything about business. Was like, you'll probably never start one for real. Cause the moral of the story is most people I know who did really well in business will tell you. Had I known now, if I knew what I knew right now, I probably would never start up the business in the first place.

I knew how complex it was or how regulated it was, but they didn't they just started. They got an idea, the, what is the internal optimism of an entrepreneur? They got an idea they're going to figure it out. They just go, go, go and they run into these obstacles and they climb them one time at it. One obstacle at a time and they make it to the other end. But if you ask them if okay, if you had to start over again, what would you do?

It's like i'd probably pick a different field. This one's really complex, right? There's a little bit of brilliance in not knowing. 

[00:06:43] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. I guess for those who kind of appreciate the, or can kind of get through that process of learning and being open to different experiences that make you, at least make me uncomfortable.

To me, if, if you're comfortable being a business owner, you're not doing it right. It's supposed to feel a little bit scary. 

[00:06:59] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. It's the constant, challenges too. You're always challenging yourself. How do I improve this? How do I, you know, what am I missing? Let's talk about, you have this thing, this concept called the art of business.

Tell us about that. What's your thought process around that? Why is it,why is it related to art at all? 

[00:07:15] Danya Shakfeh: So art is a form of expression. And I think having your own business is also a form of expression. So kind of like what I was saying before about conformity is that, if you're going to conform, then you're only going to look like everybody else.

Whereas when you start your own business, it's an opportunity to build things. And to build the business the way you want to. So it could be your corporate culture. Maybe you are the way that you provide your services or sell your products in your marketing. Even like creating your logo.

I mean, that's, that's art. And if your logo is meant to reflect your corporate culture then that's like literal art. But even more about the way that I want to have my staff interact with each other, the way I interact with them, it's just what I want to do. So, I mean, outside of any like legal reason or regulations, you can do whatever you want in business.

Even when I made my office, I decorated, I mean, it's not like a typical law firm office. It's blue, there's marble decor and my conference table is black and white marble. It's just different because that's just how I wanted to do it. Even the way that I screen clients,there's the way that everybody else does it and then there's the way that I want to do it.

But you know, so that's how for me it's a form of art. It's a blank canvas and I wish more business owners actually saw it that way and took it as an opportunity. We get too scared. We think, Oh, well, we're just gonna do what everybody else is doing because that's just how it's done. But it's like, no, it's the opposite.

You want to stick out. You have to do things differently. And that's where your creative expression can come in. 

[00:08:43] Ronald Skelton: It's interesting cause one of the things that people are told over and over again, when they go to sell their business is, formalize everything, standardize everything. Standard operating procedures, remove yourself from the business, but if you really look at it, that doesn't take away from anything of what you just said, right?

You can have a very artistic, very different approach to business and have a well documented, well oiled machine that runs day in and day out. And I know a lot of people are implementing. I've interviewed the guys who created the EOS system and stuff like that. You can still live within the art of what you're talking about and doing things unique and use a common system for your day to day operations.

[00:09:24] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the standard operating procedure, the, yeah, I mean, you're that's a good point. The standard it's not meant, the standard operating procedures are like your internal documentation. But for me, it's like the guide of the arts or kind of a tour of what that expression is.

So everybody is on the same page in terms of how the business is run. But it's like standard, it's an internal standard. It doesn't need to be standardized. It's like, not all businesses are standardized to each other. 

[00:09:51] Ronald Skelton: What do you think about the, there's this whole mentality built to exit mentality out there, right?

Which is, one of the concepts and I know some people that have done it really well. They actually, they went into, I've interviewed people who went into business with the total view of who they're selling it to. Like, okay, here's five companies that would probably buy this thing we're building.

Let's build it. Let's get it up and running. And then, if any point we're ready to sell, we'll have it, we'll start it from day one with that, with that,you know, built in. So they build the thing, they use this, like they look at those five and they choose, common computers like, okay, these five people use this accounting system, right?

Three of the five use this one. So they pick something that's common and they try to model their business where it's really easy to integrate into one of those big guys. My fear is I've seen two of those guys win and one of them sold to that exact target. I've seen a lot of people try that and they never get off the ground running because they're trying to live within what they think is standard conformity to a certain system. 

And, they don't give themselves the leeway to solve the problems in the moment. 

[00:10:58] Danya Shakfeh: That's interesting. Yeah, I don't really love that idea. I could see why people do it. I mean, if that's their goal, that makes sense. But, just because the, their target company does things a certain way, it does not mean that they would not appreciate something being done differently.

So, I mean, think about like Facebook bought Instagram, for example. I mean, they're complete opposite. Imagine if Instagram was like, we're just going to be like Facebook, then why would Facebook buy it? They wanted something different and now Facebook tries to be like Instagram, which is their target company.

So I think it's more about you know, as the company, if you want, you know, like, uh, if you're creating a business to exit, you want to be clear about what value you're providing and how the target company, no, I'm sorry, the company that's bought, that could be buying, would be how they could, like, why would they find that valuable?

And then everything else is, it's up to you. And that model and everything else could be really part of that art of creating something new. 

[00:11:54] Ronald Skelton: I've got it and I get that and I also seen some really, really rough ones. So when microsoft bought hotmail, we actually did the, one of the companies I work for did the attached spam and anti virus for Hotmail. When they started swapping out their servers from Linux, which is a, a nerdy thing to say for Unix operating system to Microsoft computers because it was Microsoft. Their performance was so horrible.

We actually had to write special code in there because our software quit working right on their new platform, even though we wrote it to work on both. But, it was because their performance was so bad. They had so many memory leaks. They had to shut, recycle or reboot different banks or machines on a regular basis.

They had such a hard time adapting to the differences in technology. So I would say, I would imagine, and I don't know for sure, I would imagine that Facebook and Instagram was probably operated on similar tech stacks, but different models. So what I was referring to is when you're going to build something out and you know that your top five buyers operate on particular tech stacks, probably a good idea to use that technology, right?

You don't want to run a QuickBooks when no, if you're the only, if everybody's running on zero,and you're going to, you want to sell it, you're growing this thing to sell it to one of them. Probably ought to learn if you need any, maybe you don't know QuickBooks already.

If you're going to learn one, might as well learn the one the majority of people are using. 

[00:13:18] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:13:20] Ronald Skelton: That's a horrible example because accounting is going to be, every person I've ever seen that does accounting does it differently. But when I first got into this, I, like I said, I did my undergrad and my master or my master's both had accounting courses.

I thought it was supposed to be a certain way. And then it got into this. Started looking at everybody's books and I've never been a stock investor by any means. I did day trading, but we don't look for at quarterly reports very often in day trading. But, when you start looking at this stuff, every one of them is done differently, right?

Like, what is this? Like, how is this possible? I was, I have a friend who's a forensic accountant. I'd pass them to her and she's like, no, it's normal. That's right. What do you mean it's normal? It's different than the last five I looked at. Like, yeah, that's still okay. So there's an art form in there.

I guess there's this guide that you have to stay within, but so I guess that would be a bad example of it, but for a lot of stuff, just being on similar tech stacks would probably be. 

[00:14:09] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah, that's still, I mean, like the value proposition is going to be different. The corporate culture, I mean, with an acquisition, the corporate culture might disappear, but maybe the, the purchasing entity would, appreciate how things are being done and then, and then change as well. 

What else? So, and then, just incorporating certain values or, artwork,and models too. But, usually, I mean, in my view, like me personally, like as I'm building a business, I don't, I don't, I mean, I do, I run it as if it were to, like I was going to exit just for the sake of, like building a business that can run without me.

But I want to stick to how I want to do things because to me, it's just, it's the way that I'm expressing myself and why I'm different. And that also plays out to how I present myself to my clients as well. 

[00:14:55] Ronald Skelton: It also helps you carve off a niche in a very, very hard to define market. There's one thing to say, okay, a divorce attorney versus an M&A attorney, right?

But if there's six M&A attorneys in town, two might only do really big deals. They won't even look at you unless you're doing a 50 million deal. And then now you're competing with the other, I don't know, say there's 10 of them out there. So now you got eight of them out there. How do you differentiate yourself?

You're going to do it by the art that you put into it. The way you treat your customers and stuff. A lot of the other guys are going to try to tell you a pedigree.We're all Ivy or, or, everybody's going to have, it's the standard way of business. We all have to carve off something.

[00:15:35] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Like for me, I mean, as for my own business, for my law firm, I'm huge about having a relationship with my clients. And not just like a business relationship, but like, I want to, to get to know them as people.

Why are they in business? What motivates them? Like what makes you different? Does it have to be complicated or glamorous? I mean, for example, many, many clients who come to me complain that they're, that, that their attorneys, or attorneys they've tried to hire are not responsive.

I mean, you would think that just, business 101. Like you get a lead, you call them back. And I can say that's true personally because I've hired lawyers too, and I've called law firms and they just never get back to you, which is wild to me. So I'm, and so I know that like one of the things that makes me different is that I have a clear procedure,like an SOP on what happens if our client contacts us.

And how we make sure that we respond to them. And even, or my assistant, my intake, we also call her like the clients of concierge the client. Like relationship manager and like a lot of attorney or excuse me, like a lot of law firms don't have that role, but like what's wrong with having that relationship and it's just more warm and friendly.

I think attorneys sometimes, want to seem like they're awesome and like untouchable sort of. I'm like, no, we can be relatable. We can be, we can show our human side to our clients and feel like have a warm feeling. Sorry, that came up weird. The warm, kind of that, like that, that human to human connection, I guess, for lack of a better term. 

[00:17:05] Ronald Skelton: I can tell you I'm 51 and I don't know if I've ever, ever done business with somebody I have had to call more than twice. So I have a two, I have a two call policy on anything I do in life. If I want you to come mow my lawn, I'll call you once. If I get a business signal, I'll leave a voicemail and I might call you back these days. I might text you back, say, Hey, call me.

I've got business for you. Call me back. I've even got friends that got mad at me. Like if you're a really close friend, I might try more than twice. But that's probably the only exception. I've got a really good friend who owns a heat and air business. I would give you my business. I own a bunch of real estate or had a bunch of real estate. Less and less these days they're refinancing out underneath me. But, uh, I own or finance 'em all off.

So I wouldn't have to manage 'em. But, if there's an AC down, I call him first. And then I'll text him and say, Hey, I got work for you or when are you available? But I, he knows that if he can't get back to me, these people are living in these things. I don't have to do it. I don't have to do it as much anymore because,like I said, I want to finance them all off.

Now it's like we have a commercial building and some other stuff. So I've, I call him for that type of stuff. That said, he knows after probably a day in Oklahoma, at least I'm in California now, but all that stuff's in Oklahoma and Oklahoma during the August, it gets 110 and humid, right? I don't, nobody's going to show up to work if the building AC is down.

Right. So if you can't come over today or tomorrow, I'm calling the next guy on the list. And he knows that. And, that's why I always, tell people that time we go to business networking stuff and they hand me their card, like, I've got a heat and air guy, but it's never bad to be my second person to call. Like, what do you mean by that?

I was like, cause I'm only going to call you once, maybe twice, right? 

[00:18:43] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. I think that's a really good policy to have. Because if they can't respond to you when you're trying to get there, when you're trying to pay them, like imagine how it's going to be. If you've already paid them, then what's their incentive. So I like that.

Yeah. You want someone who's going to respond to you. And that's kind of a good way to know early on. 

[00:19:01] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. We still have a small business there. And that's like, Hey, we returned everybody's call. Like I tell my guys, it's like, I don't care. And the problem these days is we get so many calls. It's a little pest control company that's run most of it, mostly by my relatives.

If they can't get to the phone within about the third or fourth ring, it rings to me. And I'm in California, but I, we, we answer those phone calls, right? It doesn't go to voicemail. It'll ring to me.

And if I can't get to it, it'll go to voicemail, but we call those people back same day within, within a couple hours, hopefully. Nobody goes and thinks that we're not going to return calls.

[00:19:30] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really important to call people back. And that's just part of, I mean, it's kind of going back to the art of business. Like you have to really identify your core values.

I mean, that's part of being a business owner is do we want to be the kind of business that, that is reachable? There's so much technology too. And there's like services that if you can't get to your phone, then it can go to an answering service. At least a human picks up and they'll say what, we'll have someone call you back as soon as possible. And then we also have like automation so you can automate responses.

Like that's something I do. If you call my law firm, you either, like you get a referral or we tell you that we can't help you and, but you get some sort of feedback from us one way or another because we just care about every person that calls us because that's part of my value system in my law firm. That's my art. 

[00:20:16] Ronald Skelton: So we're talking beforehand, you're kind of in the Chicago area, right? What are the mainstreet type of businesses you get to work with? There's still a lot of manufacturing around or what? 

[00:20:25] Danya Shakfeh: I know that there is, but I haven't really dealt with them too much more like restaurants,lawn mowing companies. I said a lot like service providers, car washes are pretty popular now. I mean, there's car washes blooming. And so, and it's, people like that because it's kind of like a passive income, sort of business model. Some stuff in retail. So those are pretty much the ones that I've dealt with most recently.

I know there's some, like I said, some manufacturing out there, but it just hasn't been part of my clientele. 

[00:20:51] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. I was really interested in the car wash space for a little while there. And I moved to California and they're so regulated here. I was like, I'm not interested. 

Let's go back to uh, do you get to, you refer to it as the art of business. I was curious to, is there much, you know, do you get to work with any of the, uh, are you in art any other way? I guess the word I'm looking for there. Art related businesses, art galleries and stuff, because there's a lot of old architecture there. I've been to Chicago a couple of times. There's kind of like Tulsa. There's some really cool buildings there. 

[00:21:18] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. To be honest, when I think of arts, I actually, I'm, I kind of purposely using it outside of, the traditional art. Or like the word that we think, because I think that anything can be art. At the end of day is your form of self expression.

So no, I have to be honest, I don't. But I mean, that's the beauty of it. It's like, you don't have to be like quote, quote artists to, to produce art or creation on the world. I know that it's just the idea of building and creating. Like when I was little, I've always loved like arts and crafts. I think I used to use an app called, I think front page, it was to actually build websites and I used to make them different. Like different colors, like the scroll bar would be different and it's just this idea of building and creating, like you have something in your mind and you want it to come to life and it can be business. So yes, but, so that's kind of by design and building it. 

[00:22:04] Ronald Skelton: We're dating ourselves here. Front page, I don't think front page has been around for a while. You brought it up and I was like, yeah, I know that one. I was like, wait a second. That hasn't been around for probably 10 or 15. I still be out there, but I don't think that's around for 10 or 15 years. 

So, uh, let's talk about business law. And, um, what that means to the small business owner. What are some of the things that you sit down at your big marble table when you know business owner comes in and they're either looking to, like sure up the business, they might want to sell it someday, or they just formatted, format, you know, uh, it is, what do we call it? Incorporated or made their LLC. What are some of the things that you would tell them to look at first? 

[00:22:45] Danya Shakfeh: If it's more than one business owners or if they're business partners, I really tell them to sit down and really get a grip on, their relationship amongst each other. Because I've seen even very successful businesses get tanked because they didn't talk about how they were going to split profits or who was responsible for what. 

Or even something basic, like sometimes the bus-, or like one of the business partners may contribute money and there was a misunderstanding as to whether that money was a loan or part of the investment. And so they fight over that. And it's just really unfortunate that you have an otherwise well run business get tanked because of the business owners not knowing what their roles are.

So like sit down and if you have an LLC, you want to make sure that you have your operating agreements and having those discussions is really important. That's where I'd start. The second thing is to make sure if there's any like regulations in their industry that they need to follow. You certainly don't want to start having a successful business and then get fined or the IRS coming after you or anything like that.

Next thing I'd say is like build your team, get an accountant on who can advise you on,taxes. And a bookkeeper so, you know your numbers. As cliche it is, if you're a business owner, you have to know your numbers. You want to know your profit margins, how many clients or customers you need to meet your goals.

What else? Any local, I think what's missed a lot too is any local regulations. It's easy just to look at state level, federal level, but is there something specific to your county or your town that you need to look out for? So yeah, that's where I start. And then also, yeah, contracts too. Making sure that your contract is easy to understand.

So if like, if you have a contract with a vendor or your own customers or clients, make it clear, so that you don't have an issue with those people because, that's also a really good way to lose money. 

[00:24:28] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, we're in the process of moving some of our LLCs here to California because it doesn't make sense like to leave them where they were because there's no business there anyway.

And it's strange here because like we have a parent LLC and then we have a bunch of DBAs. Well, the LLC is not at the state level. The state doesn't do the DBH. You have to go to the county level here. That's kind of like how, so how do the other counties know with it? Cause you go to the local county, you do it and you run it in the local county business paper, right?

So it's all filed at the county level. I'm in a very rural area, right? We're what's called an unincorporated town. So there's no mayor, there's no formal,police department and stuff. There's sheriffs here, but they're county sheriffs. So we're really rural. We're in the woods.

We're back in the woods here. That said, like every state, and I've been in here, Texas. Like I told you, I live in Hawaii. I formed LLCs almost at wherever I live because I've always been an entrepreneur. Even in Hawaii. I used to have a thing in Hawaii called Diamond Cay Networks. We did networking.

We installed networking cables for like the schools and all kinds of stuff.But, um, every state's different. Most of them, the LLCs form at the state level with the secretary of state. That's normal. But when you get past that, like if you got to do a DBA and you don't want to like have an LLC for everything or whatever, like I've noticed that they're just, they're all a little bit different. So you have to like dive into what's different here. 

[00:25:47] Danya Shakfeh: I'm actually, I just looked it up real fast because I was like, no way. But oh my God, yeah. That's wild because that's a lot of paperwork for, I mean, if you're operating throughout the state, we have to register with every county. That seems kind of,

[00:25:58] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, and the second part of that like it's not every like, you don't even have to do it for every county. It's just your county. It's like so I have a DBA that's I'm using only on the internet, there's nobody in my county that ever writes me a check to that DBA. All my stuff's, you know online. But in order to have it in under California, that's where I'm supposed to do the stuff in order to like go and put that DBA on my bank so I can make deposit if it's a local bank to make deposits here, I need that, to make it legal.

[00:26:25] Danya Shakfeh: How would you know if someone else, yeah, like, how would you know? I find that very strange.

[00:26:29] Ronald Skelton: It is very strange. That's like, surely it's not right. It's the same way when like the franchise tax board here, within the first 12 months, you got to pay $800 a year to keep your LLC alive. You got to pay the franchise tax board.

So you pay the state, your LLC thing, but then you got to have this tax thing that's $800 a year minimum until you hit over $250, 000 in revenue and then I think it goes up. 

But anyway, like, yeah. So every state's got different things and every area, like that was only Tulsa County, like Oklahoma city did their own weird thing. And like, if you got outside of the County, so if you went to Sepulper or something and you didn't have to pay, an extra five or $600 worth of property taxes on, computers and stuff I got later on the office.

So, go to your attorney, figure out what's local, but he'll know the local rules, regulations, and weirdness that's for your town or for your state and your county. 

[00:27:17] Danya Shakfeh: That's a good lesson for sure. Yeah. I had someone who tried to start a business and you can, um, here in Illinois, you can do your DBA at the county level.

I just don't know why you would, but you can. And so some people, so someone started a business and they had done it that way. And they thought it was what you're supposed to do. And I was like, you don't have any of the corporate protections. You're only limited to this county. In terms of the name that you could use, it's different here.

And so, yeah, you definitely just want to talk to someone who's at least done it before and knows what they're doing. 

[00:27:45] Ronald Skelton: So, like you said, there's the, I think there's an art side of business. Like, well, you're talking about doing things your own way. And there's a little bit of a science things, regulations and rules and, things you don't want to, lines you don't wanna cross on accident. Like, especially IRS.

[00:28:00] Danya Shakfeh: I think when you know the rules,it kind of gives you your boundaries and you can create more art that way because now you know exactly like what lines you have to stay in and what you don't. Instead of guessing and assuming and then, and ending up in trouble or like limiting yourself thinking you have a limitation and then in reality you don't.

I think in that way, it can be useful to, to know. 

[00:28:20] Ronald Skelton: I've been in businesses that were so complex. We had to like,map out all the different rules inside of them. And then move, like put all the, like I had one of my offices, we actually had three at one of the rooms at 360 degree whiteboards. Florida ceiling whiteboards. We wrote all the laws and all the rules regulated in our business.

And then we would map it out and go, okay, living with inside these guidelines, how do we solve this problem? How do we do what we need to do and what we, and serve our customer the way they need to be served. Living inside of what all this said. The only thing I didn't have was the floor of the ceiling.

So the, there was, it wasn't 360, right? But, yeah, all the walls and the doors even, all are all whiteboard materials, so you could just like, go crazy in that room and draw all over it. 

But, uh, you put a group of incredibly intelligent people in the same room and said, here's a, a big, we had a big boardroom table. Cover that with paper, give them crayons, markers, pens, and then the whiteboards or the walls and you give them a problem to solve.

And a way to actually visually think, you'd be surprised on how fast they can solve some really complex things. We call it our little think tank. Our entrepreneur center had one too. So we had a real estate entrepreneur center where we've created a think tank inside of it and people would come over and use it occasionally just to solve problems.

They bring their team over, we roll out the paper all over and cover the desk with these big rolls of paper, gave them bags. Giant one pound bags of, crayons and Sharpies and just random stuff all over the table, like kind of scattered throughout the middle. And then,

[00:29:42] Danya Shakfeh: That's really cool. Cause I think that if you were doing things the way everybody else did, you would just have a pen and paper or a PowerPoint presentation, but instead you're like, here's the way we're going to do this and you're going to get a way better outcome because you gave you and your team that flexibility. 

And, it's not like anyone looked out or like you're not above using a whiteboard or crayons even, or colors. So that's a really good representation of doing things differently. 

[00:30:07] Ronald Skelton: And they would bring in notepads and they could do whatever they wanted. We did the Pomodoro technique, which is that little food timer, right? So I'd write a problem up on the board or kind of give maybe two to three minutes.

Okay, here's what we're trying to solve. I put it on one board, maybe a problem statement. Four or five bullet, like, here's four facts you need to know about the problem. And then I set a timer for 15 minutes and everybody was like, they almost look like you're a prison, eating prison meals. They had their arms out where nobody could see their stuff and they would solve their problem.

It was funny. Cause they'd everybody get a little protective. Cause people get stumped and they start trying to look over and it it's fine. It was fun. Everybody was solving. I was like now right out, you know, just don't think yes or no, don't validate your own thoughts. Just start writing thoughts down and what, you know,that brain dump. Dump everything down and we'll validate in the second round.

And then, so we do like 15 minutes of that and then we did a five minute thing where, okay, now validate. So in five minutes and really figure out which ones are your top. And then the next thing was, okay, you got three minutes to present. So we go around the room every three minutes to present that they're top, the top ones they have. 

And then we didn't make any decisions till we heard everybody's out. So that was a way to solve some of the really more complex things. I've never even brought that up on the show before, but that was done because like, I really brought it up because that was an artistic way that we did things that were probably different than anybody else.

So, um, Let's go back to, back to your law firm and what you do there. When you're looking at these people and they have partnerships and stuff, do you recommend things like key man policies, buyout agreements and that type of stuff in the corporate structure?

I'm a big fan of, if I've got a partner, what happens when, I want to document it what happens when things aren't working. What happens if nothing happens to you, right? 

[00:31:51] Danya Shakfeh: Well, there's like, yeah, you want to like, so one of the questions we ask is, what happens if someone wants to buy, to be bought out? Or if they want to exit? Or, what happens if someone dies or even if they get divorced?

In some states you can include provisions around that. 

[00:32:03] Ronald Skelton: That's much worse. I've had more, I've had more business partners where I've had to go, I'm not in business with your wife, man. And you just got married. I don't even know this lady yet. 

[00:32:11] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I require them to get a prenup of some sort. I make sure they can't have, 

[00:32:17] Ronald Skelton: They just come in the office. My wife thinks we should be an X, Y, and Z. It's like, I'm not in business with your wife, man. Why don't you bring her in here and introduce me. Does she know more about business than me and you? Cause I'd love to meet her. 

[00:32:25] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then I always, I tell my clients, part of me helping them assemble their team is make sure they have an insurance broker. So for those key men policies, make sure,that they have something in place for their, for that. So absolutely just to make sure again, like, I mean, the whole goal ultimately, what is to do is, so that the business owner can focus on, on making their dreams come true. 

And if you're in, if you're ever in survival mode, it's hard to be creative. And one way to be in survival mode is to end up in court and you're not really thinking about growth and creativity. You're thinking about, Oh my God, attorney's fees and will my business survive and how am I going to get food on the table?

You don't want to be there. So, preempt that. 

[00:33:06] Ronald Skelton: I've been there before. Yeah, not fun. Only once or twice. I've been in, it never made it to court. We got, we settled it out beforehand. I went out and basically hired attorneys. I could barely afford that were better than theirs and hired forensic CPA firms to like go through their books and all that.

And they, they begged for mutual dismissal after they see what I find out, right? Like we don't really, like they were suing us. Like, we really don't want to do this now. Like, okay. We can stop if you want. But they owed us a lot of, the person that sued us owed us a lot of money. We left and created a competing business because of it.

And, he tried to sue us for all kinds of weird stuff up here. And we're like, all right, let's do this. He owed me 62 K. The other guy in my company, about 70 something. Like we're going after our money we're owed and we're going to audit all your books because you're not only did you not pay us, you're not paying any of your investors.

We're going to make that public. The investors that were getting equity also. Weren't getting, they were misstating their books to them when we knew it. It's like, so I hired a forensic CPA firm. Like, what does it call when the two attorneys meet and they like disclose the plan?

Like what, this is how we're going to do it. There's that discovery or whatever meeting. Yeah. Yeah. At the, within an hour of the discovery meeting, their attorney called back and goes, my client wants to, I really encourage we just do a mutual dismissal. He doesn't want to go any further with this.

[00:34:20] Danya Shakfeh: That's good. Yeah. And it probably helps too. If you had, I'm assuming that you, or it sounds like you did have partnership agreements and operating. So that's a lot easier to get your clients, cases dismissed or to have a better outcome because you have those falls and you're not like relying on the state laws because those are vague or they don't like, there's just a lot of gaps.

So you kind of like you had a clear strategy to do what you need to do because you know what the rules are. Coz you wrote them. 

[00:34:46] Ronald Skelton: But, just understand like anybody in business, if you're in business long, long enough, or especially in certain, certain business, like real estate. If you're in real estate long enough, you're eventually going to need an attorney. So better have one to set it all up right. Get it done right.

It's just, it's part of the game. Like the game of business is you need attorneys to set your stuff up, do it right. And you need them to protect what they did when it comes time that someone. A lot of people try to do this on their own. Like I'm kind of guilty of I'll set up my own LLC real quick.

I've got so many operating agreements. I can put one together, but I still, my attorney gets mad because I was like, I just need you to review this. What did you do? And I was like, I set it all up. It took me two, two hours. I've got everything going. I don't want to wait two weeks for you to do it.

And so here's everything. Tell me what, do you need to make any changes. 

[00:35:33] Danya Shakfeh: That;s good to have, yeah. I mean, having those, I mean, cause you, you seem sophisticated enough where you, you kind of know what's important to talk about. A lot of people, they don't. And, they, they try to do it on their own and they don't even think about asking what happens if someone were to die or if there's an estate plan, should that be taken into account. Or what happens if someone wants to leave? Or if there's a minority member? Do they have rights?

All of that, they don't even think about and then until they need to. It's kind of like anyone who's ever been through a divorce, which sound like you have. Kind of wish you had a prenup and you would have spent any amount of money to have that prenup instead of being in court longer than you have to arguing over assets and custody.

[00:36:10] Ronald Skelton: The last one you said there, if you're a minority member, do you have rights? That depends on state by state too, doesn't it? 

[00:36:16] Danya Shakfeh: Well, you can also put something in the operating agreement too. Like, yeah, like tag along rights and drag along rights. 

[00:36:22] Ronald Skelton: That's one of the things that got him is he didn't say that we didn't have full rights, right?

Inside of the operating agreement or thing. Basically, I was a 12. 5 percent owner. The other guy was an 18 percent owner. And, bought because they didn't define everything. We had all the rights to see all the books. We had all the rights to like to do that CPA audit and everything. Because, we were full acting members under state Oklahoma anyway. So our attorney is like, Oh, you have the rights to see all this stuff. Like he didn't, because you were, he didn't state in there because you're a minority thing. You couldn't do certain things and you never agreed to be limited. So let's, let's do it.

Yeah, so, uh, it's important if you,if you're out there creating the stuff to have an attorney go, Hey, how many people are going to work with this are going to eventually give other people equity? What do you want their capabilities to be if you give them equity, that type of questions, right?

[00:37:07] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Those are questions that we ask. 

[00:37:09] Ronald Skelton: Have you ever seen the book by Mike Moyer called slicing pie? 

[00:37:14] Danya Shakfeh: I don't think I have, no. 

[00:37:15] Ronald Skelton: Check that out sometimes. You were talking about equity and how it's split and whether a money is a loan or not a loan. Mike Moyer, I think is his name. M O Y E R. He created a system for that. Mostly it came out of the text. 

[00:37:27] Danya Shakfeh: I've heard of it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:37:29] Ronald Skelton: And basically it has a mechanism in it to determine equity ownership based on the hours you put in, the value of your hours. And then equity ownership based on the dollars you put in. And it's a standardized process. He even has a little software tool and stuff.

You can actually track it and it's way more equitable in my eyes than going, we're creating this business together. Me and you.And we're going to do this and you get 50%, I get 50%. You're busy and I'm busy, right? I own multiple businesses. I've got things going on. How many hours am I going to give you and how many hours are you going to put in?

Who's more passionate in this is, going to drop some of the other stuff to get it done, right? It's never going to be fair. It's never going to be fair. And if, you either have to acknowledge that and like, okay, I'm going to be getting most of this stuff done and only own 50%. Or, find a system out there that rewards you for the hours you put in and the money you put in.

[00:38:19] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah. And I think another way too, is to give the person who's working more salary. If an accountant agrees. I would say consult your accountant on that too, but that's one way I do it too. So, but that's, yeah, I'll definitely check that out. 

[00:38:34] Ronald Skelton: That's a real simple, small book, but it's the premise is really cool. And they have, they have some software and tools. 

I recommend it all the time. So there's two books I recommend all the time. The other one is the, Who Not How by Dan Sullivan. And basically it's about, any time you procrastinate doing anything, you probably should have somebody else do it for you. Yeah. Anytime you're asking, it's like, Yeah.

Or how do I do this? If you got to figure out how you're probably, you're probably not the right person. How do I write an operating agreement? Yeah, you're probably not the right person for that. Probably have an attorney do it for you. Unless you've seen a hundred, like I'm kind of, I'm 51. I've seen so many of them.

I can get the premise of it down. I've got so many samples from everything. I can get the premise of it down and hand it to somebody and go, how much trouble am I going to get into by running it this way? Now, if I switched attorney, I guarantee every attorney, operating agreements are kind of like trusts.

Every attorney that sees it a trust, and I use a lot of trust for different things. Everyone that ever sees one that's, that it's new to them thinks it's wrong and they want to do it their way. Operating agreements are the same thing. If you give them your operating agreement to any attorney on the planet, I swear they're going to make a dozen changes to it.

And then you take it and he thinks it's perfect. You hand it to the next attorney and they're going to make a dozen changes to it. 

[00:39:43] Ronald Skelton: The other thing is I don't typically go to attorneys. I asked them, it's like,how do you like, how do you like doing litigations and stuff? And my business attorney says, I don't, I don't ever go to court. If they say I'm good at it, I'll do it if I want to, but it's not my, it's not what I want to do. That's my attorney for me, because anybody that writes a document for me, I want them to be the person, either at least have somebody on their team that loves doing it to defend the daggum thing.

So if we end up in litigation because of that contractor, you're going to be able to argue your work. 

[00:40:09] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah. Although some might see it as a conflict of interest too, I don't know. 

[00:40:16] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. Might be a very personal preference of mine. 

[00:40:19] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. No, I mean, the lawyer might see it as a conflict of interest because they are, they need to represent their client, but they're also kind of defending themselves.

So I think that might be one reason why attorneys might not want to do that. Just really truly in the best interest of the client. But,I don't litigate. 

[00:40:35] Ronald Skelton: I get that. I get that. So,how do people find you? What's the way you want people to reach out to you? If they have questions for you, you and I met on LinkedIn.

I know you're active there. Actually, I thought you had, you putting out video out there. I thought you had your own little podcast and stuff. Cause I see that

[00:40:48] Danya Shakfeh: They keep passing through my problem. Like, no, I just found that off other people's podcasts. They can email my, so they can email me directly at, danya@motivalaw.com. 

So D A N Y A at Motiva law. com. Or call our office at 6 3 0 5 1 7 5 5 2 9. They can also, if you just Google the name of my firm, you'll also get our YouTube and Instagram. It's a great way to get to know me as well by just seeing my videos. So that's the best way to get ahold of me and our website, of course, MotivaLaw. com. 

[00:41:18] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, well, I think we're almost out of time. So we'll call that a show, but thank you for being here today. It was fun. One, one last thing. We always do this, one big takeaway. If somebody could remember only one thing from our show today, what would you want them to walk away with? 

[00:41:31] Danya Shakfeh: You can, um, a cheap tool is an expensive tool. If you try to do something cheap, you're going to pay for it later somehow, in some other way. So I would say that. 

[00:41:39] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. So, and I get that. I've done that before. I'm going to save money. I'm going to do this myself. And then later on, I was like, ah, I wish I had to pay double. 

It's cheaper, much cheaper to pay attorney to set something up for you than it is to pay an attorney to defend you in something. 

[00:41:51] Danya Shakfeh: Yeah. Yeah. Something that, that a lay person wrote. Yeah. 

[00:41:55] Ronald Skelton: Exactly. All right. I appreciate you. You have a great day and we'll call that a show.