IAM161- Employment Counsel Represents Employees, Small Businesses and Non-Profits

Intro 0:02

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 Harkless 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.

Gresham Harkless 0:24

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 Edgar Ndjatou of McCree Ndjatou, PLLC. Edgar, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Edgar Ndjatou 0:27

Oh, lovely to be here. Thank you for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:33

No problem, no problem. I appreciate you taking some time out. And what I want to do, which is read a little bit more about Edgar, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Edgar is a partner at McCree Ndjatou, PLLC, which specializes in employment law, representing primary employees as well as small business and nonprofits. Originally from Cameroon and raised in New York City, Mr. Ndjatou, who earned a Bachelors of Arts degree in Sociology and a minor in Economics from Brandeis University. He received his JD from American University, Washington College of Law. And Mr. Ndjatou is a member of both the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar Associations. Edgar, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Edgar Ndjatou 1:23

Yes, I'm very ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:24

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was just to hear a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?

Edgar Ndjatou 1:31

Sure. So one thing about law school is that they don't prepare you for starting your own practice. And as a young lawyer, when I initially had the thought of going on my own. I was two years out, but thankfully, in those two years, I gained a lot of experience and work with other smaller firms. So close enough to the business side that second, give it a go. And certainly I imagined in my mind that I would be in a much older attorney before I would have the courage to go on my own. But if I were to present itself at the time, and I figured out look, you know, I know, unless I know what I'm talking about. I think that given my experiences as a student leader, and as a lawyer, that I can pay you to go out in business sighs I was very soft person. And I knew that I could figure that part out. And in terms of the risk factor, I just figured, well, from a very young man, I don't have no kids. So no one's really depending on me to feed them. So I figured let's just give it a shot, and I tell people look it's not that hard to start a firm this age, or you need a laptop and phone. But that wasn't hard to start the firm. But certainly attorneys, that was where the challenge really lies.

Gresham Harkless 2:50

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I've always heard that it's like the easiest time of all time to start a business. But obviously like, you spoke to actually building it and running it maintaining and make sure clients are happy, all those things require a lot more. So often, you have to make sure that you are able to kind of balance those things. But it's good to kind of hear that you took that quote-unquote, risk. And sometimes what seems like the riskiest thing can sometimes be the less riskiest thing, I guess you can say sometimes after you end up doing it.

Edgar Ndjatou 3:17

Absolutely. Yeah. The advice I always give other lawyers or for people looking to start on is you have to lash at this risk, right? You can ignore that I don't care how much money you saved, or how much planning you put into it, you know, anything can happen, that could derail your business equipment is so young, and it's never really a good time. And that was the key for me when I decided to go do like when the interview a good time. Now, if I wait, then I'll have more risk, because I'll probably have like children by that point, you know, if I do it now just sitting there too. So it's never a good time. You just have to just go for it. And just be mindful of know, who you surround yourself with what, are you tapping into all the other resources? Are you willing to be flexible and try new things, and I felt being able to do those things was very important. We're just wanting to try stuff even if it didn't work out. So that's really important.

Gresham Harkless 4:19

Yeah, that makes sense. And I know, that's definitely one of the kind of the integral skills you need as an entrepreneur and business owners to be able to be curious and try different things out. So and I know you work with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. So could you drill down a little bit deeper and tell us a little bit more on like things that you do to help support those clients that you work with?

Edgar Ndjatou 4:37

Absolutely. So we have a pretty robust practice. So this little more backwards off my firm. I practice mainly employment law and a lot of the work we do involves helping small business owners minimize risk and also show that that the proper infrastructure in place to ensure that they're being fair to the employees and comply with the law. That can be anything from I'm jacking up employment agreements, employee handbooks, any other possible procedures, and also ensuring that if you're going to make any personnel decisions that you're doing it properly and compliant with federal local law. Beyond that, my partner Marcin and Alyssa Guzman, they also handle anything from commercial issues like so reviewing contracts you might have or someone owes you money, or someone else money, real estate matters if you're looking to go to in real estate deals out of a commercial space, or otherwise, you can handle that too. And any other matters that might come about, we're pretty full service firm, offer many legal services to small business or nonprofit.

Gresham Harkless 5:45

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And I know that it always seems like it comes up as a question, especially in this day and age, especially like the 1099 gig economy especially, do you find that a lot of people that start businesses have questions around if a person is an employee or whether or not they're hiring somebody as employee? So I guess I'm kind of asking if even though you've been having an employee, is this something that you can provide help with for those clients?

Edgar Ndjatou 6:12

Oh, absolutely. Super sure. I mean, I think in this day and age, that's a common question we get all the time, from small business owners and nonprofits. How do we properly classify someone, and it's becoming harder and harder? Because I think, because of this new gig economy, a lot of people think that they can patch up those impending contractors, but you still have to be very careful, you know, any exertion of control with someone's schedule or when they come to work or what they're doing could put you on line or over the line as to whether or not they were an employee? And so is that fine to make things like council? A lot of my current clients or potential clients is how do you make that decision as to whether to classify someone, as a tonight not as every two employees. And a lot of times now, it's more than just following what we call the economic reality test, which you can find on the IRS website, or on a live website. It kind of comes down to a premise you want, and what that person will be doing for you. And in some cases, after we have a conversation about the business and what you're looking for in a position like that, you might want to person as an employee, because there's a certain level of control you need, and in terms of just risk to you is, it might be better, is it more expensive? Yes, it will be more expensive. But I better to do that than to have issues, trying to know what kind of vince you're looking to run. So and that's what we do all the time. You sit down with people, and it's more than just, you know, we look at the test and make a judgment call, we want to talk to you about your business goals, or the goals or the position in question. And you come up with a strategy that makes more sense. It's never a cookie cutter solution.

Gresham Harkless 8:00

Yeah, kind of sounds like there's no one size fits all, especially Robins legal work, because there's so many different factors. That kind of sounds like to determine what is an employee, what is not an employee, how you can help out that client or not help out that client. So that makes perfect sense. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you and your company or organization or for yourself. So could you give us an example for that?

Edgar Ndjatou 8:23

Sure. I always say that our secret sauce, what distinguishes us is part of reason why we opened up our law firm was because one make sure that clients that came to us folks that they could afford legal services. And of course, there's always a fine line between getting paid and paying your bills and having the life that you're with to have. But at our firm, it's very important to us that clients know that from the onset that one, we try not to make money a barrier to working with us to be very flexible and honest about these we charge and why we try to do them. And in cases where we believe that we can help someone on contingency we'll do it if we if someone was able to do it wrong. So I think that's what separates us from other firms in the market that we we try not to make money in an issue. That again, of course, is this column between being paid for your work and your time, also acknowledge that if you lost your job, of course, you would not be able to pay for a lawyer. We try to be sensitive about that, that people come from many different places and coming from IVR.

Gresham Harkless 9:33

That's awesome. And especially like it like we've talked about in this day and age, you know, especially when you think about hiring an attorney, sometimes you're automatically afraid that just from talking to the client or talking to a lawyer for maybe 30 seconds or so you're gonna get like a $3,000 bill. So people kind of make that call. So it's great to hear that first and foremost, it sounds like you put the client first and you try to have a conversation to determine exactly where they are and then you kind of go from there to kind of make or that you're serving them, but also making sure that you're still going to be able to be in business.

Edgar Ndjatou 10:04

Right, right.

Gresham Harkless 10:05

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or a book or habit that you have. But it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as an entrepreneur or business owner.

Edgar Ndjatou 10:17

So I would say that, as a lawyer, a lot of our time spent on email. It's basically the life was how we communicate with the outside world, clients, potential clients, court, whatever you name it. One thing that I have started using for health manage emails, an app called Mixmax, that's Mixmax. And essentially, it's a Gmail add on. And it allows you, which is very important to me to send large files, without any funkiness to it is basically you attach a file, and it becomes essentially like a new window, or like a reset window when you open up or download directly to your internal storage, which is great, because now we can send large documents to people without a problem, like a mixed max that you can schedule emails, so particularly working late at night, and you don't want someone to see that you're up late, because that can set a kind of precedent, or you're working with, you know, I can send an email to go up next the following morning, you know that it's in a normal course of business. Those are your two biggest features I love about Mixmax. And why use it, you can also track email, so you can send email to track when was open if you're attached me to Linux was downloaded or clicked on. So I love it, I stand by it.

Gresham Harkless 11:38

Yeah, that definitely sounds like a great hack, because, like you said, if you're working late at night is I know, I'm a night owl. So sometimes I send emails late, but it's great to be able to know that I can schedule them so that they're not being sent late. And then of course not having to find a link to be able to send so that you are able to send those large files is definitely of great importance as well. And now I wanted to ask you for another one of my favorite questions, which is the CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Edgar Ndjatou 12:12

I would certainly tell my younger business self. And I think sometimes people try to remind myself that this is not a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, you're gonna go through so many roller coasters things can be going great, and there's a gravy, and then you're going to hit, you know, a bad spot, even if it's a challenge you're going to have to overcome. Now we're going to have a bad day. Really bad. They're super bad days. So yeah, it's so it's really important to have perspective and just know that they're gonna be, you know, sunny days and stormy days. But really important to have perspective. Now, if you're going through a challenge, now, sit down and think about it. So colleagues, consultants know people you trust, know, and work to resolve them now and is hoping to move on. That's super important. Because, you know, let's dig into law, you know, when a lot of cases always like it is worth a lot more than you when the challenging situations of clients with opposing counsel the courts. And so what has helped me over the years has been to sit down, think about things, be flexible, change policy, create templates, and just have a big mental library. It's okay not to do that again. No, so that you can move forward and make decisions in the future.

Gresham Harkless 13:28

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And especially within business, you know, there's ups and downs, highs and lows. And that's a great reminder. And sometimes you have to, quote-unquote, fail in order to succeed. So a lot of times you have to hack out hacks things, figure out what works and what doesn't work and at the pivot as a result of it. So I think that's a phenomenal reminder for us. And 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 this show, I want to ask you, Edgar, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Edgar Ndjatou 13:57

It means being creative, and me being brave. And I think it means also contributing to and I think one of the professional love about learning more and practices that have more control to take on the globe workwear. And, in large part, it's kind of creating a legacy. With every decision you make and every milestone we achieve, to me, it's one of the best feelings ever to be able to say, I own this firm, you know, everything that you looking for creating a new legacy, and milestones and something that you can be proud of.

Gresham Harkless 14:38

Yeah, definitely agree with that. And that's again, another great reminder of the the idea of creating your own legacy and why you are running a marathon as you said, because a lot of times you're placing those bricks putting those seeds in place. So that is proud to be, you know, what you plan to have in the future. So, Edgar, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want. to let our readers and our listeners know, and then how best people can get a hold of you.

Edgar Ndjatou 15:03

Sure. Well, thank you again for having me on. I'll start with how to get a hold of me. So we have a website. It's www.mnlawyerspllc.com. We have a social media feed there. And if you want to schedule an appointment with us to discuss any legal services machines might have, and you can do that there as well. I also encourage you to follow us on social media, we have run Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. And you can find all those links on our website. Also different types of parting words. I love to be in the community of business owners. I know we're a law firm, but I do consider myself a business owner and entrepreneur. So what's been so phenomenal to me. As I have opened, my practice has been been able to network with people like you, Russian and other people who are close with entrepreneurs, to share best practices and share war stories to each other. So it's amazing the power of this community. And thanks again for having me on the show.

Gresham Harkless 16:02

Yeah, definitely agree with that. It's an amazing place to be. And Edgar, I appreciate you for what you're doing to help out us as entrepreneurs and business owners, and I'll make sure to have all those links in the show notes but I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Edgar Ndjatou 16:14

And you too the same Gresham.

Outro 16:15

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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai