IAM825- Entrepreneur Helps Businesses Protect Their Assets

Devin established his first startup while earning my Law & MBA degrees. Since then, he has set up several startups and enjoyed every minute of it. Devin is an entrepreneur who is also a patent and trademark attorney. Devin has obtained several degrees including a Law degree (JD) and a Master's in Business Administration. Devin also has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mandarin Chinese.

While working for a large law firm helping Fortune 100 clients like Amazon.com, Intel, Redhat, and Ford with their intellectual property, Devin quickly realized that there weren’t many good intellectual property legal resources out there for start-ups and small businesses. As an entrepreneur himself, Devin wanted to help other small business owners learn about patents, trademarks, and copyrights so they could build value into their businesses and protect their assets.

In addition to founding and running his own patent and trademark law firm, Miller IP Law, Devin has helped found several startups including a multi-million dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring. Devin also runs a product development company that helps startups and small businesses develop their ideas and products.

Devin has also been married to my college sweetheart for ten years and we live in Utah with our four children. Devin focuses on being home each evening with his family to help find a balance between an exciting career and a well-rounded family life.

• CEO Hack: Automation for efficiency and better quality
• CEO Nugget: Get in and get started
• CEO Defined: Entrepreneur and leader

Website: http://milleripl.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milleripl/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MillerIPL/

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Devin Miller of Miller IP Law. Devin, it's awesome to have you on

00:38 – Devin Miller

Hey, it's great to be here, and excited to be on the show.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited to have you on as well too. Before we jump in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Devin so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Devin established his first startup while earning his law and MBA degrees. And since then, he has set up several startups and enjoyed every minute of it. Devin is an entrepreneur who is also a patent and trademark attorney. Devin has obtained several degrees, including a law degree and a master's in business administration. Devin also has degrees in electrical engineering and Mandarin Chinese. While working for large law firms, helping Fortune 100 company clients like Amazon.com, Intel, Red Hat, and Ford with their intellectual property, Devin quickly realized that there weren't many good intellectual property legal resources out there for startups and small businesses.

As an entrepreneur himself, Devin wanted to help other business owners learn about patents, trademarks, and copyrights, so they can build value into their businesses and protect their assets. In addition to founding and running his own patent and trademark law firm, Miller IP Law, Devin has helped found several startups, including a multimillion-dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring. Devin also runs a product development company that helps startups and small businesses develop their ideas and products. Devin has been married to his college sweetheart for 10 years and they live in U-Haul with 4 children. Devin's focused on being home each evening with his family to help find a balance between an exciting career and a well-rounded family life. Devon, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:12 – Devin Miller

I am ready to go. And that was a great intro. Thank you.

02:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You're doing so many phenomenal things. I love that we get the opportunity to have you on the show to learn a little bit more about how you're able to do so many things. And I guess I know I touched on it in your bio. I wanted to kind of hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story and we'll let you get started with all the awesome things you're working on?

02:32 -Devin Miller

Yeah. And it depends on the CEO of which company, but I can give you a bit of a story. So as I said, I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. So I love the law side, doing patents and trademarks, and working with other companies, by the same token, I love to run my own company. So you kind of hit on the bio I've done and I'm still actively involved in a lot of the companies and several of my own startups of which I am part and also on Miller IP law. I founded that and started out about 2 years ago. So within that journey, Going all the way back to some of the startup side, the first startup was started, as you mentioned, when I was doing my MBA and law degree at the same time. That actually started, I entered a, there was, I saw a sign that said, hey, business competitions have come to see a session, join or join a team or find a team or something like that. So I went, didn't know anybody there, and found a few other people. I didn't know anybody else there.

We joined there, started a team and the first, and we entered the first year, with a, I think it was for athletic gear in order to make the gym bags not stink as much. And we did that, took second place, didn't do much more with it, but got to the second portion of the, or second year of the competition and was saying, hey, we want to come back. We kind of got the group back together. We're going to do it again and decided that we didn't like the first year's idea. So we said, Hey, okay, let's come up with a new idea came struggled for a while and came up with some stupid ideas before we came to that. And I was walking home 1 day and said, Hey, you know, wouldn't it be that time I still do quite a bit I was getting into running.

So I ran my first marathon and did horrible, not horribly time-wise, but it was painful in the sense I didn't hydrate as much as it wouldn't be cool if you could have a wearable and this was the time before I watch or Apple watch or Fitbits, none of those are out yet. It'd be cool to have a wearable that I could actually monitor my hydration level and see where I'm at. So that took me on down on it. We re-entered that came or did the business competition again, got to the end of it, and said, Hey, I'd move back to Utah, I'm graduating. And you guys are all going across the country. I'd like to just buy you out and continue this on my own doesn't make sense to have everybody spread across the country. So that made my journey of a whole long story short which started me down the path of entrepreneurship.

I ran that alongside those companies and continued to grow while doing my full-time job, which was a lot of a lot of patent attorneys, working for a number of firms, did. And I kind of got to a point where I wanted to do my own thing, both from the side hustles that I've been doing, growing those, those are getting bigger. We had investor dollars, they were gaining traction. And I also wanted to do the law firm and say, hey, I wanna both combine all my interests and set my own direction, all of these. So I just went out, did my own thing full time, started Miller IP Law, and said, hey, now as I'm doing this, what do I wanna do as a law firm? Where do I enjoy it? That's what startups and small businesses do, and that's where I wanna focus. So that was a short question, a much longer answer, but that kind of gives you an idea of at least kind of what got me down to the path of running my own companies and being the CEO.

05:36 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely love those stories and love, you know, how, and here now everything kind of unfolds from there. Was that kind of like a startup weekend, 1 of those kinds of opportunities or was it something a little bit local where you guys?

05:46 – Devin Miller

No, it was like, it was a multidisciplinary business competition. We did it over the space of 2 semesters. They started, you form the team, come meet. We'd meet every week, come up with our idea, start to reduce it to practice, and come up with our prototype, business pitch, and everything. And then in February or March timeframe, you'd go present it to a panel of judges and try and win the competition.

06:10 – Gresham Harkless

Okay, cool. Yeah, I've actually covered some of those events, some of those types of events, But it's always great to see how people, you know, come together from different backgrounds, different places, and then come up with some really phenomenal ideas. So as you work, in helping out so many business owners with Miller IP law, I know you know that very, very well, Can you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing with your clients there, how you support it and kind of help them to succeed?

06:36 – Devin Miller

Yeah, so a whole bunch of things that we try and do, or hopefully do very well. So, you know, some of the things we looked at with the law firm, you know, and saying, Hey, what do you, What is the barriers or what do people hate about law firms? What do they hate about patent and trademark attorneys? What can we do better? How can we improve the system? So one of them was people always are afraid to go to an attorney to even ask questions because they figure they're gonna have to pay it. They're gonna have to get charged a whole bunch. And then they're saying, Hey, if I have to go in a hunt if you spend a few hundred dollars, and I may not even need it yet. And so they are kind of bashful. So one thing we did is we set up free strategy meetings or strategy sessions where people can come in, ask their questions, and don't have any costs associated with it.

And then I'll give them an honest answer, saying not only just from a legal perspective, but from a business perspective, hey, this may make sense, here's the strategy, let's talk about it, here's some ideas, or hey, this doesn't make sense right now, or it doesn't make sense at all, but kind of have that kind of frank conversation and answer those. In addition, we also said, hey, what is the, you know, one of the frustrations is people always feel like attorneys, it's an open-ended check. You never know how much you're going to spend. You never know what they're going to charge you. And even if they give you a price quote, usually it goes right past that.

So he said, why don't we make it easily understood? What is this gonna cost you? What are you in for? How, or help people budget for it? So we did it on flat fees. So each time we say, here's our fee, this includes our fees, governmental fees, everything you need to do for a patent application or a trademark application. So we did that. Another thing that we're actively working on that we haven't rolled out yet, we'll probably roll out within about the next month, is we actually are working on building a community.

So as you come in, your client of the firm will actually share with all of our other clients and that, hey, we've got this new client, they offer this services. This is what they do, here's what they can help out with, and here's what their needs are. Maybe you need a new software developer or you need a prototype or you need a marketing service. And then anybody else as a client can pitch in and say, hey, we offer those services or I recommend these, but it kind of creates that community of, hey, we're not just here to do patents or trademarks, but we really are helping startups and small businesses all the steps along the way. So that's a few things that we're doing.

08:44 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. Especially that ecosystem community piece, because I think as you know, obviously the legal aspect is very, very important, but it's not the only aspect of business. And to be able to kind of create those synergies and those opportunities for people to connect and blossom and flourish is definitely phenomenal. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for you personally or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

09:11 – Devin Miller

It's a good question. I mean, lots of things. But probably the thing that I feel sets me apart is that I have both the, and I've ingrained it into the firm, so I've kind of made it part of the culture, but I have both the, I've done startups and small businesses as well as doing the legal side, which a lot of times you'll get attorneys that are, I always used to joke, but I think there's a lot of truth to it that attorneys are great about giving legal advice and they're terrible about giving business advice in the sense that they've never really done a startup they never really run a business they're usually just very trained very well in the legal aspect but they don't give much I don't have much advice outside of that.

So having that experience of, hey, I've actually done startups, I've run my own business, not even just law firms, but outside of that full startups had to go everything from product development, budgeting, bringing on people, firing people, you know, doing or bringing in investor dollars and doing all of the gamuts, it gives a much different perspective and I think gives a more holistic look at things. So that's 1 of the things that we do that I don't, I think sets us apart. Another interesting thing that I don't think is hard but sets us apart is we try to be much more responsive. Usually, we pick up the phone as soon as you call or the email will respond as soon as you email and we have a rule that you know we almost always will do within 30 minutes and absolutely within 24 hours.

The interesting thing about that legal field is 1 that the average response time for an attorney, so whether you email them, call them, text them, whatever, is 3 to 5 days. Meaning anytime you reach out to them it takes 3 to 5 days for them to, some are much worse at that, and few are better than that. So we set ourselves apart by saying, hey, we're going to be responsive, you try and give us a call, we're going to respond to you, we're not going to leave you hanging. We do that a lot better. And then we last thing and again, short questions always lead to long answers that we also look and say, we're going to take this from a hard-to-teach. We're actually going to educate you or teach you as to what you need to know and understand it as opposed to just, here's what you do and now give us some money and we'll do it for you type of a thing.

11:13 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple Book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:24 – Devin Miller

I'll take it from the effective and efficient. One of the things that we've done is we do a lot of automation and automation gets a bad name, a bad name or bad rap in the sense that typically, when I think of automation I call customer service and I get 20 different numbers that I have to get directed to, I have to answer the same questions 5 times. And then somebody finally picks up on the phone. And they say, Oh, you got the wrong division, wrong division, ugly transfer you then you start all over and you hate it. That is not that kind of automation, but we look and say, what are the touch points that we really won't need to be available for we need to emails we need to respond to different things we need to be there and be but if it's like.

Hey, for instance, a follow-up, or providing them more information or making sure things move along, some of that can be automated and done very well so that we still make sure that things are moving through, we give people the status updates, but we're not we're spending the time on the things that we can add the most value to as opposed to the things that just are needing to get done. So, one of the things that I put a big focus on that helps both in efficiency and quality and I think helps there provides a big benefit to the client is what can we automate so that we can spend the time on the things that we can't automate, the things that we can add the most value to. And I think that is put it or freed up a lot more time and allowed us to be a lot more efficient and provide better quality.

12:45 – Gresham Harkless

So, now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:56 – Devin Miller

Yeah, and as I may have mentioned, I do a podcast myself, and I love doing podcasts, We do it from a different perspective, and a different audience, but our podcast is focused on a lot of startups and small businesses. So I'll give that nugget in the sense that this is the 1 that I hear from most entrepreneurs, most startups, and what they would always do and I think it's the 1 that I find to be reoccurring the most is to just get in and get started and whether it's you know the thing that I find most people when I talk to them is hey I wish I would get started 5 years ago I love it I'm passionate about it it's been so much more fun I enjoy it and it's been rewarding I wish I'd done it 5 years ago. And I think that that holds true probably for everybody else.

13:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Devin, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:47 – Devin Miller

I'll put it as, so there's 1 book that I love to read, which is, it's by Dave Ramsey. A lot of people know Dave Ramsey and it's out there, it's called Entree Leadership. And that's kind of where, if I were to define what a CEO is, it really is an Entree leadership, as you can probably guess, is entrepreneur mixed with leadership. So I think harder to find what a CEO is, it really is that mixture. You can be a great leader, but if you're not an entrepreneur, if you're not coming up with new ideas, if you're not leading the company as to what the next direction is, you're really not being a CEO.

14:15 – Gresham Harkless

Devin, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get out of view, subscribe to the podcast, and find out about all those things you're working on.

14:29 – Devin Miller

Yeah, so I'll give you 3 ways to connect up with you, connect up with me, depending on what you're looking for. So if you're just looking for, generally find out more about the law firm, Miller IP Law, go to our website, just go to lawwithmiller.com and you can find out more about the law firm, our prices, our turnaround times, what we do and everything about us. If it's more specifically, you want any questions about patents, trademarks, or anything of that nature, you can go to free strategy meeting calm, sign up for a free strategy meeting.

We'll talk through those questions. Want to talk to me directly whether it's questions, anything I do, finding out more about me, or shoot the breeze, whatever, whatnot. You can just go to meetdevin.com. Both the free strategy meeting and the meetdevin.com link to my calendar give you a time. Find when I'm available. I'm absolutely happy to chat. So those are the easiest ways to connect with me. And I certainly am happy to talk with anybody about anything that they have on their mind.

15:23 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Devin. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, just so that everybody can follow up with you as well. But I truly appreciate you for reminding us of how important it is to kind of sharpen this saw and you providing so much mentorship and advice to us as well too, because I think that's the way to be successful in who you surround yourself around. So I appreciate you for doing that today, doing that for the community and everything you're building as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:47 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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