IAM2347 – Lawyer, Photographer and Business Consultant Helps Creatives Initiate and Implement Strategic Plan

Title: Transcript - Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:09:01 GMT

Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:09:01 GMT, Duration: [00:16:59.51]

[00:00:00.08] - Rachel Brenke

That's when I realized that there was a market. A lot of other people have realized this, too, but there's a market for helping others become entrepreneurs. And for me specifically, it was for other moms, Just how I got my start. Other moms who wanted to have quality of life, but also have a piece of the entrepreneurial pie to be present with their kids, but also to have something that's their own.

[00:00:23.35] - 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.

[00:00:48.78] - 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 Rachel Brinke of rachelbrinke.com. rachel, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:58.61] - Rachel Brenke

Thanks for having me.

[00:01:00.03] - Gresham Harkless

No problem. No problem. I'm super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Rachel so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Rachel Brinke As a. As a lawyer, photographer, and business consultant for entrepreneurs, Rachel helps creative industry professionals all over the world initiate, strategize, and implement strategic business and marketing plans through various mediums of consulting, resources, and legal direction. Rachel, are you ready to speak to the IMCO community?

[00:01:26.20] - Rachel Brenke

I'm ready. I'm always scared when you lead with lawyer because people don't want to listen to lawyers, but that's okay.

[00:01:32.48] - Gresham Harkless

Exactly.

[00:01:33.62] - Rachel Brenke

I promise, they may not want to.

[00:01:35.25] - Gresham Harkless

Listen to lawyers, but they definitely want to listen to Rachel. So I know you're doing some awesome things, so I'm super excited to hear more about it. And what I wanted to do was start everything off with what I call your CEO story to hear a little bit more about your story and what led you to start your business.

[00:01:48.79] - Rachel Brenke

So all of it actually started with cancer. I was like 20 years old, and my husband was active duty, army. We had one kid and super young to have cancer. And I realized with that, you know, I had been working through undergrad. I had been tinkering with some online business stuff. This was like the MySpace days. Facebook wasn't even around. And I was realizing in that time, going through the cancer treatments and all of that, how much I really enjoyed being able to work for myself and being able to Be near with my family and you know, not to work a 9 to 5 to had other people's dreams and achieve those for them and their goals that I could do it for myself. So from there, you know, I started dabbling in some different online and local community brick and mortar type businesses. I went on to get an MBA because I thought that would be such a great asset to be an entrepreneur. Don't freak out if you're listening. I am one of those will be the first to tell you you don't need an MBA to run a successful business. Do I think it was a value add? I mean I think it helps for my qualification standpoint with me consulting businesses and such now. But as far actually running my business, I don't think the degree had any direct impact. But I was working, you know, my business consulting business in tandem with a apparel company and a couple other businesses including photography. And I realized that there were all of these questions being asked all the time of me because people knew that I loved to research. I love business strategy. And remember guys, when I'm talking about this, this was before this whole freemium model thing expanded. You know, you didn't really have opt ins, you didn't have blogs, were really only personal in nature at this time. I'm dating myself on all this. But you really only could find business information. It was all gated behind like long form, really crappy web pages. Right. And so $9.99 but wait, there's more. And I laughed, but I was part of that as well, you know. And so people were coming to me asking me questions because the premium model didn't exist. And that's when I realized that there were there was a market. A lot of other people have realized this too, but there's a market for helping others become entrepreneurs. And for me specifically it was for other moms. Just how I got my start. Other moms who wanted to have quality of life but also have a piece of the entrepreneurial pie to be present with their kids but also to have something that's their own. So I ended up, you know, did the mba, went to law school thinking that would be a great value add, which it has because I also own a law firm now and I am culminated all that into the different brands that I have online. I have different legal niche sites in different industries. Very specific same idea from the very beginning, helping others get their businesses set up, making sure their business strategized and also legally protected. Yeah, so that's my long winded answer of how I Got to where I'm at, but we're looking at like 15 years of this. So a lot happened and it didn't happen overnight. But I'm quite enjoying where I'm at.

[00:04:53.20] - Gresham Harkless

I know you touched on it a little bit. I wanted to hear a little bit more about like what you're doing to kind of support the clients that you're working with.

[00:04:58.07] - Rachel Brenke

Yeah. So from my legal perspective and education experience, I really am helping entrepreneurs to focus on key protection. Things that you can do first is just liability protection. We put ourselves out there, we're trying to make money, there's liability, we're in a litigious society, need to have that on lockdown. The second step, and these are not in priority order, but you know, got to start thinking about all of the marketing assets or the assets that you're selling. Intellectual properties, whether it's your business name, it's your logo, it's your images, it's your podcast. Right. Anything that you're using and you're creating to help market and, or to sell in your business. All of that intellectual property is so valuable and so many entrepreneurs overlook this until it either gets ripped off or they get pinged for infringing someone else. And so the next step after you know, getting your business protection stuff under control is really making sure that you have understanding of the intellectual property that you have in your business, how you can leverage that, and also making sure that you're respecting other people's intellectual property. Because, you know, this is the thing, like when I first started this business path, if you had asked me, oh, will you ever sell your business? I was so hoity toity. I was like, never. This is me. I could never sell it off. Right. Because I was so impassioned. Not that I'm not now, but I was so impassioned, so ingrained, and I couldn't see long term picture because I was still just trying to climb that first mountain. Right. But as I've gotten over that and as I worked with legal clients of my own, you get to a point where you realize you're not going to do this forever. You know, the reality is we have a finite number of years. Some of us are shorter, some are longer. You may just wake up one day and realize I had a passion for it yesterday, but I don't today in any of those situations. If you're looking to close your business or to sell it, which is a great. Another income stream to look forward to, what is the key thing that you sell? Customer lists maybe. Right. But it's intellectual property. It's the branding that has been associated to that business. And maybe if you're a business that sells intellectual property, like you're a logo designer or a photographer, a videographer, a musician, all of those things, you're selling intellectual property, licensing it, and that is the core of what you offer. And so business liability and the intellectual property stuff on the legal side is really the biggest focus nestled in that business protection and some intellectual property is the use of contracts and business, you know, setting expectations with your customers or your employees or other people you're working with. Really, really important to have all that on lockdown. And I share that information not because I'm a lawyer. I share that because I'm an entrepreneur who also values what I've built in my business. And I want to protect and safeguard that. You know, we all only have certain amount of hours of the day, and I want to be able to have those other extra hours outside of work to focus on my family. So that also comes to the business strategy aspects that I am sharing with entrepreneurs, is you get this legal stuff under control so you don't have to spend hours on a phone with a lawyer. No matter how fun I may be, you don't want to have to pay me to have to fix any problems. Right. So business strategy is being proactive in everything you can do, developing a really good brand, identifying one, what your unique selling proposition is, who it is that you're talking to, and then circling back to the legal stuff, protecting all the brand that is built to facilitate the messaging and the products or services, Whatever type of business that you're running is just to be strategic and protective. So it kind of all intermingles together. But yeah, so this is the major things, business strategy, legal protection, and then also balancing, which I hate the term balance, but I don't think that true balance exists. It's kind of all a give or take in life, but being able to have a successful business. But for me, I want to have a life more than business. No matter how much I love being an entrepreneur, I love life even more.

[00:08:50.36] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that perspective. You're definitely. It's like a triple threat with all the strategic part with being able to make sure that you have your legal in order. And of course, making sure to bring everything together is definitely, you know, of importance for most entrepreneurs and business owners. And you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you and or your organization apart.

[00:09:10.53] - Rachel Brenke

Oh, man. I think it is being very strategic in actions. All of my advice to people is not just this is what is right under the law, it's what is right, but also what's going to be best for you in the future. And so that's for what I. When I teach other people and even when I make my own actions in my own business, how strategic can I be? Because again, when you sit down to work, the actions that you take, you want to get the most out of those. And this is kind of. I feel like, I don't know if it's secret sauce. I've just kind of done this from the beginning because I remember being burnout and I remember taking the approach of you have a to do list. You put it in priority order and you check it off. And the days were burning by husband was deployed to Iraq. We were on Kid number two, then three, then four. You know, I have like 500 children shows up every day in the house. I'm just kidding. We have five. But then I realized that that process of just going through listening to podcasts like you and me, and then making notes, okay, I need a contract, I need this, I need that. That may not be beneficial for you. When I took this three to one approach, then it was, I was getting through tasks quicker. I was able to be more strategic when I was choosing. And also, if you guys are like me, I'm a multi passionate entrepreneur. I get very excited about shiny things all the time and my team tries to keep me grounded, but sometimes that doesn't work. But when I do the three to one, it will show me, okay, that's a really good idea. I may be passionate about X, Y and Z, but it doesn't fit into what I need to achieve these business goals right now. We're going to write that down. We'll come back to it later. And so helps to keep me focused and maximizes my hours. And I just feel like that's a secret sauce to being able to build and grow multiple businesses. But even if you're looking at just doing one, it can help to maximize the hours in your day.

[00:10:57.77] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I think that it rang true in everything that you're doing because everything seems like it is in alignment. And that kind of makes sense based off of what you said on how you've kind of strategically made decisions on everything that you're doing so that it's all in alignment with who you are and what you value. And I wanted to Switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And you might have already touched on this, but this is something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

[00:11:21.00] - Rachel Brenke

I think scheduling everything. I don't know if that's the right answer. I'm kind of a free spirit, but I really do thrive on pressure and timelines at the same time when it comes to business type stuff. So for us, and I say us because we're very team based now, I wasn't always. We are very strategic. On this day of the week, I work on this day of the week is this business. This day of the week is that business. And even within those days, if, like at the first of the month, the first week of every month, each of those days has their own specific ad tasks for whatever specific business I'm working on that day. Because I was finding, when I was switching gears, I wasn't getting squat done, I was overwhelmed. I wasn't able to focus. I work the same way with like batch creating content. I'll do a whole bunch of my own podcast interviews crammed into one day. It's exhausting. But then they're done for like the quarter, right? Then I don't have to worry about it for three more months. And so being busy does not equal business. And I guess the follow up to that is asking yourself, now, this doesn't always work, but asking yourself, do my fingers have to be the one to press the button? Right? And that's a question that I ask myself with my team all the time. Because I'm one of those, like, I love web design. I'm not a web designer. I know enough to be dangerous. But my team will say, why are you doing it? Your fingers don't have to touch that now. I'll come in, finish out the copy and that kind of stuff, but do I actually need to be the one uploading the logo that goes at the top and those sorts of things? So it's figuring out where you fit into the business at point of your business trajectory that you're at. Like, in the beginning, I wore all the hats and I did all the things and. But now, well, and I think part of that was mistaking busy for business, but also because I didn't have the money or know how to hire other people. Once you have that and you start investing, you really forcing yourself to say, do I have to do this task now? Don't take that as this elitist response of, I'm the CEO, I'm Too good for that. It's not about that. But if you look at it like with this podcast, I couldn't task anybody else on my team to come do this. Why? Because they're not me. So in order for me to have time to come do things like this, I have to give them tasks or schedule for me to do later tasks that don't necessarily mean my fingers to be touching and doing.

[00:13:40.21] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. No, I love that and I love that kind of idea. And reminders. And definitely, you know, with so many things moving, you want to make sure that you're aware of what's going on, how long it might take, and be able to kind of put that in the right person's, I guess, inbox or whatever, their lap so they can make sure that it get it done. And I know you touched on this a little bit too, and I wanted to ask you for your definition of what it means to you to be a CEO.

[00:14:01.72] - Rachel Brenke

Oh, man. It's the brains. It's the brains of the operation. Now, for someone like me, all of my staff are smart. I've chosen that. And they all have entrepreneurial mindsets. And that's actually a very specific skill set that we look for. And I do recognize that I could lose them one day since they are so entrepreneurial minded. But it's being the brains. And in my case, it's also being the face. Now, not all CEOs are the face, right? We can think of some large corporations with very smart CEOs, and there's multiple of them that were the brains and only maybe one is the outward face. So me, I just get the pleasure of being both. And then I don't know. I don't know if that answered the question, but it's having the brains and knowledge to strategically run the business, but also to create a culture within your company amongst your staff or your team, and also surrounding the brand that you've created. I think that is what an effective CEO is.

[00:15:04.17] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah, I definitely love that definition. And Rachel, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. What I wanted to do was passionate Mike, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then, of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

[00:15:16.60] - Rachel Brenke

Can find me@rachelbranke.com I have a free legal checklist that you can go through. Doesn't matter what industry that you're in, it'll walk you through the steps. Kind of touched on it a little bit here, but it can really flesh it out a bit more for you. I want you guys to take the time. Listen, my recommendations on legal stuff is so that you cannot have to deal with legal issues later on down the line. Focus on growing the business. Focus on having a life outside of business. So if you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to me. Rachelbranky.com is the hub for everything. You can find all of my different niche sites there as well as the podcast. And again, I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm the only Rachel Branke on all social media, so just reach out. I do all my social media myself and yes, I did ask myself, do my fingers have to be the one that touched that? The answer was yes because I prioritize and put great value in interfacing with my audience. So it'll be me if you guys reach out.

[00:16:12.90] - Gresham Harkless

Nice, nice, nice. Wow. I definitely appreciate you Rachel so much for giving so much insight and all the awesome things that you're doing. We're going to have the link in the show notes as well so that anybody can follow up with you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:23.79] - Rachel Brenke

Thanks. You too.

[00:16:24.86] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the IM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue16Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IMCEO Code. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts and watch videos at CBNationCo. Also check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.