Attention, business owners, what are you doing to protect your brand, your original works, and your inventions? And how can you have more fun as a leader? Join us to find out on this edition of the Inside BS Show. Hey now, I'm Nikki G, this is the Inside VS Show, and boy, do we have a show for you today. This is all about protecting your brand, protecting your inventions, your original works, and having fun, having fun as a leader.

So we have a special guest for you, and before we bring on our special guest, I have to bring on my co-host, the godfather of growth. Good morning, Dave. How are you? Nikki G, the energy in that opening, I can't take it.

I've created a monster. I've created a monster. Oh my God.

Good morning. How are you? I'm fantastic. Had a little too much coffee this morning, maybe, but it's working in my favor.

I can tell, and so can everybody else. All right, so we got six NBA championships behind you. What is going on in the world of Nikki G? What's going on? We're talking IP today.

Who could be more excited about that than me? I love the law. I love protecting you business owners, making sure that everything you're creating is well protected, so we're minimizing that risk. Yeah, we have a guest today who is as smart as he is funny, and I hope to God you find him as funny as I do, because I never hang up the phone without thinking to myself, I need more time with this guy.

Our guest today is Tony Laurentano. He's a great IP attorney based up in New England, and he's someone that we've gotten to know through a networking organization that we're a part of. The group that he leads is called The Fun Club, and our goal today is to help you understand exactly why this guy leads The Fun Club.

So, Nicola, if you had only one question, only one question you could ask an intellectual property attorney, what would the one question be that you would ask, if you could only ask one? Only one? Only one. Only one question. That's not in my nature.

I know. I love to ask questions. One question.

You know, number one for me, because of where we are right now, is AI, just protecting what is going on in the artificial intelligence world with IP, like that is so fascinating right now, and I think it's so challenging for professionals, because it is moving at such a fast pace. So I really want to explore that with Tony at some point. I would say something similar, and what I would say is, what happens if the AI gets so good that the AI starts inventing stuff? Who gets credit for that invention? Is it the owner of that particular AI? Who gets credit for that? So that's what I would ask.

I think we're going to be able to get to ask those questions. Why don't you kick it off? Okay. So let's bring on our guest, Tony.

Tony, good morning. It is such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you.

Super loving the energy. Nikki G bringing it. Tremendous.

Tony, we have to. I mean, you're the founder of The Fun Club, so we have to have fun on this show. Oh, my God.

And show people why your group is so fun. So here's what I want to start with. I really want to start with just your background, how you got into IP law.

I think I got into IP law because, really, I was a master of failure. For people at my age level, we sort of got here by accident. This is a non-traditional career path.

Growing up, if I said to you, hey, did you read that patent yesterday? You would probably look down at your pants for the pattern that was on your pants. Like, what the heck is a patent? And so I'm from the sector of folks that we tried and failed at a bunch of different things. I actually wanted to be a doctor.

And so I started college. I was a biochemistry and genetics major. And then I quickly realized that college and I, we probably weren't simpatico at that level or an age of my sort of existence and being.

So I said, why don't we just decide on a slight parting of the ways? And so that created my first life crisis. What do I do? Oh, my God. I don't know if this is really the background for me.

And then, you know, one of the few times in my life I actually did a halfway decent sort of self-analysis. I realized, well, I'm a STEM kid. I'm a STEM child.

I should probably stick with STEM. So the classic sort of next step is engineering. And so, you know, when I filled out my application to the University of Lowell, which is a pretty cool state school here and well-known in sort of the engineering program, I sort of just checked the top box and showed up the first day.

And there's a big banner, welcome class at 1989, electrical engineering. And I turned to the gentleman next to me, he says, guess I'm going to be an electrical engineer. I didn't realize that the double E box that I checked stood for electrical engineering.

I just said, I'm going to be an engineer. Well, you got to sort of figure out what type of engineer you want to be. But I figured I'll take a couple of classes.

If I don't like it, I'll switch. You know, I have a pretty deep chemistry background. But it was just really cool.

I really enjoyed it and really enjoyed sort of the learning experience. And then I became a senior. And then I realized, I don't have the passion for this much like the folks that I am sort of studying with and hanging out with and talking to my professors.

And just by weird happenstance, a good friend of mine was going for his master's in finance degree at a local college. I was over his house. We were sharing a beer.

And, you know, there was a Fortune magazine on his coffee table and open it up and start flicking through. And there was this three-page article on this weird thing called intellectual property law where you have a technical degree and you go to law school and you marry the two. Now, if we were having a conversation when I was in high school about my top 10 list of career choices, I think typewriter repairman would have been higher on the list than an attorney.

It's just it was not on my mind map. And so I could sort of experiment back then because schooling was so cheap. So I said, you know, again, you know, what do I have to lose? I'll apply.

I get in. I'll go for a semester or two. And if I don't like it, I'll go to the next life crisis and kind of figure it out.

And it was the perfect marriage. The law is sort of the, you know, broad concepts that you deconstruct it. Nicola, you know this fundamentally being as an attorney, it's like we love this sort of fact set.

We love deconstructing the fact set. We love mapping it to the law. That's sort of the theory of the equation.

And then there was an output. That's what our conclusion is. And so it really sort of sort of worked law school with the way that my brain was sort of set up.

And then, you know, God gave me a little bit of a break. I graduated law school in 92, which was the explosion for the high tech sector. You know, it was the transition to semiconductors, which was super cool.

It was the run up to the dot com. It was a great time to sort of just enter the profession as, you know, a young double E person working with high tech companies. So Tony, when so you you get out and you go into intellectual property and you're looking at the spectrum of intellectual property and it always fascinates me that you choose because you're an engineer to go into patents and you're focusing on patents, I would imagine in the electrical engineering space.

Do you remember what the first patent you worked on was? It was a medical device. OK, well, what did it do? What was it? So I don't think it was one of the first ones, but it was, you know, back then, a lot of the local institutions, we call them, you know, the medical hospitals, teaching hospitals. We just call them institutions.

We're generating a lot of IP today. The institutions generate ninety nine percent of it is biotech oriented. But back in the day, this is really before the rise of biotech.

Many of their innovations were high tech oriented. And I remember because just life has a way of sort of connecting dots for you that you don't see yet. I sort of took over prosecution for a case and sort of just filed some additional cases on an epidural catheter.

Well, come to find out when my wife was pregnant and went in to have my beautiful daughter, Juliana, that same epidural catheter that we worked on was the catheter that they used to get her spinal. So so that was sort of like, oh, this stuff has real life applicability. Holy crap.

As if I needed some other sort of light dawn on Marblehead moment. You know that. So although it may not necessarily have been my first, but it was super early in my career, that was sort of one of the early ones that I remembered.

I can just imagine your poor wife is like doubled over in pain. And there's Tony behind her. Hey, look at this.

I worked on this. This was one of mine. Dave, Dave, it's worse.

The anesthesiologist was my client and he was just like, so I got one of yours in the middle of my poor wife's labor. He was just like, I love your husband. Meanwhile, and your wife had some choice words.

Meanwhile, Mary Beth's like, shouldn't I be the star of this show? So explain we got it. We got to explain for people who are listening, who are new new to the show. When you when you talk, when you explain the briefly, very, very briefly, the patent process and you call it prosecution.

It's not like law and order prosecution. Just give people the like because people don't know. Give them the over.

Yeah, sure. So the patent process, believe it or not, it's an exercise. It's a back and forth with the United States government.

The division of the government is the Department of Commerce. Under the Department of Commerce is the United States Patent and Trademark Office. So you're dealing with a governmental administrative agency.

And so when we're working with clients to sort of identify an invention, is there something potentially patentable here? We will work with them to prepare what we call a patent application. Patent application really is sort of just the written description of what the invention is. I like to joke around with my clients.

I said, if you suffer insomnia, just pull down one of the recent patents that I wrote. You're guaranteed to be out in about 10 minutes. But anyways, once we file that with the government agency called the Patent and Trademark Office, we wait for the patent office to pick that application up, that case up for examination.

Which basically means that they've done sort of supposedly an exhaustive review of the case, compared it to the existing art. And then they're making a determination of patentability. It's like, hey, thumbs up, thumbs down, sort of the old Roman Coliseum type stuff, which is, hey, I think it's patentable or no, it's not.

Well, ninety nine point nine percent of the time, the communication that you get back is to the negative. You know, the old sort of old timey joke is that if you get a first office action allowance, you probably your claims are probably too narrow. But but anyways, that just starts the back and forth.

So so they issue a communication saying, hey, it's not patentable. We have an opportunity to respond and sort of adjust and tweak the case, saying that it is patentable and that back and forth is what we call prosecution. And then hopefully at the end of the rainbow, they decide to grant us a patent on the technology.

And there's also litigation that arises from that, right? There are different types of litigation. Just fill the audience in real quickly on the different types of litigation that can arise in your practice. Yeah, sure.

So from a patent perspective. So once the patent grant is issued, so once the government says, hey, your idea, your innovation, your invention is patentable, that's actually memorialized in your patent application. Your patent, believe it or not, is a constitutional right.

It's enshrined in our constitution and it's a piece of property that you own. Now, if somebody is creating a product that you think overlaps with or is covered by the claims in your patent, just a super generalized, if your invention covers elements A, B, C and D and somebody is manufacturing a product that has elements A, B, C and D, it's like, hey, you're infringing my patent. And so you can actually file lawsuits asking the courts to stop them from manufacturing the product and join them.

And then obviously, if you're suffering damages, then you're obviously going to sort of sue them for damages. Those tend to be very complex cases, very unique sort of skill sets for the folks that wind up litigating them, the judges themselves. If they haven't done a case, they don't want to do a case.

They tend to get concentrated with judges that do have experience because the cases themselves tend to be highly complex, highly technical, and they have their own sort of unique sort of structure to it. And then on the soft IP side, that's soft IP, I mean, patent, sorry, copyrights and trademarks. If a brand owner has a mark and they think that somebody is manufacturing a service, sorry, delivering a service or a product with a mark that is confusingly similar, that gives rise to a likelihood of confusion, then we can sue them to stop that.

And so oftentimes, believe it or not, most of your litigation is going to wind up coming on your copyright trademark end because there's just much more of those than on the patent side. But we can sort of just talk about later, if you wish, some of the sort of wonky natures of trademark litigation. And it's everywhere because it's federal.

You can work with a client who's anyplace. Yes, correct. Yeah, that's the thing about filing for trademark coverage with the federal government is that it gives you coverage for all 50 states.

So it's a nationwide, it's a national sort of right, national coverage. What are some questions that business owners can be asking themselves or thinking about when they might need to engage in trying to have this discussion about whether something is being infringed on or it's fully protected? Well, you know, the first thing that I'd love to talk to business owners, you know, that are delivering a service or manufacturing, selling a good, sometimes for smaller size companies, if you say, hey, what's your IP? They look at you like, well, I have no IP. Oh, really? I said, do you sell a product? Yes.

Does that product have a name? Yes. So you have a brand. All right.

So you are getting common law rights. Have you and if you're selling that product nationally, does it make sense to have coverage protection for your mark from a national scope? Because those that were here in New England, somebody in California starts creating a product that is nearly identical to you using a mark that's nearly identical or identical. If you don't have nationwide rights, it'd be super hard to sort of get them to stop doing it.

So that's usually for business owners. They're always surprised when I say, oh, my God, I actually own IP. It's like, yeah, if you're delivering a service and it's branded, you have a trademark.

If you've if you've developed a product and selling a product, you have a you've branded it. It's a trademark. But also for the product that you have, you know, oftentimes products go through a life cycle.

There's continuing innovation. It's like, so are you doing things to sort of enhance, improve the products? Are these enhancements, these improvements themselves potentially patentable? So that, as I say, any business owner would benefit from having a conversation with an intellectual property attorney just so that they get a sense, the business owner, what do I have for IP? What do I own? And then does it make sense at all to to protect what it is that I have? And tell us why is it so important for them to protect what they have in their IP portfolio? Yeah. So if it's a if it's a service, it prevents confusion in the marketplace.

Believe it or not, I see this all the time. And it's just it to this day, I've been doing this over 30 years. And I chuckle dental practices where we're like, you know, the the dental office of Wolverine and then there's somebody else that is the dental office of Wolverine.

But it's not in Wolverine. It's in Framingham. Well, and then suddenly someone says, oh, my God, I have a toothache.

You know, my friend said it called the dental office of Wolverine. Well, which office did you want of getting plugged into? And so these sort of areas of confusion happen all the time for, you know, for businesses that are not affiliated with each other, where there is an actual likelihood of confusion, the people seeking that service. And so that gives rise to confusion to the consumer, which is one of the things that we need to avoid.

But also, if you were actually the dental office in Wolverine and you wanted that patient and not have that person go to Framingham, then you're actually losing business because you haven't taken the steps to protect your mark. So so, Tony, if you're if you're in business now and you have an IP portfolio and you've been using the intellectual property for a decade and you didn't have money before to protect it, suddenly your business explodes and now you've got the money. Is there any danger in going back later and protecting stuff you've been using for years? Number one, you can't, but that's OK.

So there there is a statutory bar that arises once there is what we call an enabling disclosure, which is that you publicly disclose what your invention is. To go back to sort of that earlier hyper generalized example, my invention is A, B, C and D. If we talk about or publish about the invention, A, B, C and D, or we sell a product that incorporates A, B, C and D, that starts an imaginary one year clock ticking. We call it the one year grace period.

So if one year passes and nobody has sort of done anything to protect that that innovation, that innovation is in essence dedicated to the public. But that's not to say that the the the company doesn't have the ability to continue to manufacture it. They do.

Oftentimes they're branding it, they have first mover advantage, they're generating buzz in the marketplace. There's a lot of good stuff happening, but that's not the end of the story because the technology has life cycles and innovation continues. And so if you have a product that's already out there, but you have some improvements that you are thinking of implementing, then's the perfect time to actually have the conversation with with an intellectual property attorney to say, hey, are our improvements, in other words, my product was A, B, C and D, but now we're going to add E to it.

Well, is E itself potentially protectable, potentially patentable? And then we'll work with them if it is to sort of just try to protect that. And a lot of patents are on other people's inventions that you improve or modify. Right.

So if you if you take somebody else's invention and you make it better. So, for example, if I invented the skateboard, but it only had one wheel in the back and then I come up with an idea, hey, let's put two wheels in the back and it works better. I can bring it to you before we go to market and we can do something with that.

Exactly. Yeah. But believe it or not, disclosure is the quid pro quo to actually get a patent, you know, not to get too walking on the law.

But the whole idea, the fundamental basis for our patent laws is that they want to encourage disclosure, you know, sort of I stand upon the shoulder of giants type thing. And so if you disclose your invention. Once you have a patent, the quid pro quo is like, hey, I'm going to give you a limited monopoly on that, but in return for that, you have to disclose it so folks can decide, is this really the perfect solution? If not, how do I improve upon this? And, you know, humans are curious beings, highly innovative, always looking to sort of tweak and to sort of modify and to improve.

And so that's the fundamental basis for our sort of whole set of patent laws, which is we want you to disclose because we want the public to get access to it. Not that they can sort of just rip off your invention. They can't because it's protected by patent, but they're allowed to improve upon it or you yourself, the patent owner, potentially improve upon it.

But so can I yeah. Can I ask both of you about so when do you make the decision, OK, is this something that I'm going to patent and disclose, right, so that everybody sees it? Or is this better kept as a trade secret so that nobody knows about it? And like the 11 herbs and spices, I can keep them forever. And good old Colonel Sanders, no, he died.

Nobody knew what they were. Right. So like I'm thinking to myself, there are people out there and we see it all the time that stock biotech patent filings or that stock like Google to see that they comb through the patent filings that technology companies make to determine how to reverse engineer the algorithm or what the next big thing is or which stocks to bet on in the biotech space.

So how do we you know, how do we determine whether we're going to keep it as a trade secret or patent it and disclose it so that everybody can see it? Tony, I'll let you take the patent angle and I'd be happy to touch on the trade secret angle. All right. Yeah.

So so so if you think about intellectual property, the analogy that I use is think of your kitchen table. Kitchen table has four legs. Each leg corresponds to a different type of intellectual property.

So there's patents. That's one legs. There's trademarks.

That's another leg. There's copyrights. And then there's trade secrets and each cover something different.

Patents cover the utilitarian function and feature of an invention. Trademarks are our source of brand identifiers. It identifies the source of origin of goods.

Copyrights protect the sort of expression of an underlying idea. And then trade secrets cover secrets. And so there's a tension between trade secrets and patents.

Patents disclose trade secrets. No, we do not disclose. And so depending upon the technology, depending upon the sort of competitive edge, the ability to protect it, the lack of ability to sort of reconstruct to deconstruct the idea, maybe it's better off to be held as a trade secret than found a patent application.

Nicole, I'll let you sort of walk away with the trade secret. Yeah. So for me, it's something that is so unique that, you know, where you to expose an aspect of that, that's going to basically give your competitive advantage to others.

That's why we think of like Coca-Cola's formula. That's why we think of the sauce that goes into the Kentucky fried chicken batter. It's something that, you know, if we did that, if we allowed that to be out into the public realm, then that's going to just destroy the competitive advantage that we've had.

So it's something that is so unique that it is best kept secret and protected in the right ways. There's certain steps you have to follow in order to gain that protection under the state and federal statutes that they really deem something like so unique that it's worth protecting. Well, that's that's helpful.

Now, it's helpful for people who are who are listening. And now I suddenly want chicken. I'm very hungry for chicken.

We don't have chicken, but we have we have more on Tony's IP knowledge. What I'd really like to move into, Tony, is so first of all, from the folks who are listening, this can already tell you have extensive knowledge about patents. It's that engineering background.

So I want to highlight a couple of things and ask about them. We know you were named a patent star by Managing Intellectual Property magazine. So tell us about that, because that's a significant accolade.

Oh, thank you. Believe it or not, the coolest thing about it is that because oftentimes it's sort of client and peer recognition. That's sort of that's how you wind up making it on those lists is that I've worked closely with many people for a long time.

And, you know, it's kind of cool when you do wind up sort of making these lists is because it's a recognition that your peers actually think that you're pretty good at what you do, you know, or as my wife, Maribeth, likes to say, well, you've been around a long time. That's probably why you're on the list. I'm like, I think it's a little more than that.

So so from that perspective, it's actually pretty cool. You know, it's it's sort of like a peer recognition. Your peers actually think that you're doing a pretty good job.

Yeah. And look, there's a lot there's a lot of recognition out there in the industry. We can kind of vote for each other.

These are not. So I really want to emphasize the importance of this. When you receive recognitions by these magazines that you have, it truly recognizes your expertise in this industry because others have said yes, like Tony knows what he's doing in the patent space.

We'd recommend him to do this work. So, Tony, you're you get business from a broad spectrum of types of clients. The copyright or trademark stuff you get can come from the marketing area in a company.

The patent work you get is going to come from R&D, research and development, or it could come from the operations aspect. So you have to be able to speak to a lot of different people across a whole different scope of industries. How did you develop the skill set to speak business language to business people when every fiber of your being wants to nerd out every chance you get? Yes, fight the inner nerd, believe it or not, by watching and listening.

You know, it's when I started off in this career, I came across a quote by Einstein. It was tremendous. It says, I have no special talents.

I am only passionately curious. And I remember thinking, God, I think that's me. I can't hit a home run at Fenway Park.

I can't dunk a basketball in the NBA, but I love learning about technology. So you can geek out when you're dealing with the engineering side, the CTO side. But you have to be able to step back and talk business focus, business purpose if you're dealing with sort of C-suite executives.

And believe it or not, early on in my career, I was really sort of lucky to to sort of cut my teeth in an IP boutique, an IP specialty firm. And back then, when we did it, the IP specialty firms did it all. They did the patent prepping process.

They did the trademark prepping process and they did the litigation. This is before the GP firms got their hands on the IP litigation. So it was really all in house.

And so the training was, hey, we're going to train you on the patent side. We're going to train you on the trademark side. And then when you hit the middle stages, we're going to get you exposed to litigation and then we're going to sort of figure out what your path is.

Well, each of those sort of. Practice channels requires you to interface with somebody different if it's on the litigation and oftentimes because these are big ticket items, you're dealing with the C-suite executives, so you sort of have to make the business case, understand sort of what's their motivation, understand what their pain points are, try to address their pain points and is sort of the litigation going to solve the pain point or is it a vehicle to a solution that's going to solve their pain point? So I was really lucky to sort of just be exposed to some really good attorneys early on that did a wonderful job interfacing with the clients. I work with them firsthand.

I listened. It's not always my strong suit. I listened, I learned and then, you know, I sort of try to replicate and then sort of over time morph it into sort of my style.

While this is such a great segue into your role as a leader and networking, I have to ask the question about AI that we opened with because Dave and I will both be upset if we don't ask about it. So tell us, we can't wait to hear the answer to this. Like what, how does the law view, let's start with this, how does the law view the protection of something that is created by AI as it stands today? So not surprisingly, the courts have recently said that for inventors of technology, they have to be human.

I barely qualify, but apparently that means that I am there. So the AI model itself cannot be listed as an inventor. The model is just an algorithm.

It is just trained on data that you've trained it on and it is processing the data that you provided by a prompt. So the laws and the USPTO basically came out twice with some guidance. First was, hey, humans are inventors.

And oh, by the way, AI assisted inventions are OK, you know, because we understand that in order to get an output from a model, it actually, you have to give it instructions on what to do. And so there is human input. There is human ingenuity that sort of goes into it.

You know, the fine granularity of sort of the level and where that is, that's sort of to be determined, so to speak. But fundamentally, if you sort of step back, you're just going to realize because, you know, we think AI, we think sort of Hollywood sci-fi and high tech. They're just an algorithm.

It's just a model that is trained to do something, you know, based on the instructions that you're going to be giving it. So I thought that, believe it or not, the courts got that one right. Surprisingly, the patent office got that right, which is humans have to be inventors.

You know, by the way, you can use AI models to sort of just help you during your inventive process. But they did sort of give a funny little thing. It's like, hey, we're not going to do the analysis ourselves.

We're going to rely on you as officers of the courts to sort of just be honest with us. But, you know, I think, you know, at the end of the day, it's probably going to be sort of much ado about nothing that it's these are just trained models and they're doing what it is that we're training them to do. One thing I think about related to this that kind of has me scratching my head a little is related to code.

So if you've got if you've got an AI bot that takes code and fixes broken code or makes an improvement to code with training, right, enhances, augments the code so that it functions better or does something that we didn't know we needed until it did it. That's the that's the area where, OK, so if, you know, XYZ company owns the owns the artificial intelligence that now is responsible for monitoring the code and making improvements to the code as the particular function evolves and the code improves. And while it was initially designed to do X, it is not doing X plus Y. It is now doing Z, which was not a an offshoot that the human who originally created the artificial intelligence could ever see.

Right. That to me is where it gets complicated. And we're not that far away from that point right now.

So that's the thing that kind of has me like it's what everybody's afraid of. Right. It's it's how from 2001 Space Odyssey, you know, I can't do that, Dave.

Like, that's what everybody's afraid of, because Hal now is smarter than Dave. So that's, you know, so I'm kind of curious to see where that goes. And obviously, somebody who's not human can't own that.

But we wouldn't have gotten to Z without the without the guy who started it. So I guess the guy has to has to own it. Yeah, I think that's what you were saying, Tony.

Is there the way that the USPTO office is currently viewing this is that there has to be some human input. So in your example, Dave, like we would never have gotten there without some level of human input. So my question for you, Tony, is like, do you think that as this gets so much better into the future and, you know, we're not holding you to it, but do you think that that view may change? Like, where do you think that might go now? Because remember, these are just boxes, these sort of big black box.

It's super bright. There's a lot of coolness in the black box. But the black box can only give you something if you tell it what to do.

So it's the input that's with us now. That's not to say that you can't have models that are generating prompts that, you know, to go to a model to do this. But even those models then are going to need an input.

So without going too deep on the rabbit hole, I think that there's still the significant sort of human input into this thing. But it is we really are sort of tip of the spear in terms of its usability, in terms of its use case. It's going to be pervasive across many, many things that we do.

And so it's going to be really sort of interesting to sort of see how this sort of evolves over time. You know, but these models have been around a long time. This is the funny thing.

People are just like, oh, my God, AI was created two years ago. No, a lot of these models were created 35 years ago. The improvements have been made over 35 years.

And that's where we are today. And oh, by the way, you had some companies that decided to sort of launch like chat GPT, open AI, some really cool, detailed, highly trained models, these large language models working on massive data sets that people can sort of play with. But, you know, I mean, we're like, hey, write me a poem, write me an email to my mother because I haven't said hello in a month.

You know what I mean? It's just, you know, but the use cases for these are sort of super cool, you know, highly predictive. In other words, if I give you this sort of just fact set, you know, what are the predictions of forecast you're going to make based on this fact set? I mean, the use cases are just tremendous, but we're still a ways away from this. But these models seem to be sort of getting better leaps and bounds on shorter and shorter time periods than even I thought.

But I'll probably be retired and not have to deal with these questions. Until then, no, I'm kidding. We appreciate you answering that.

Like this is it's just so fascinating for all of us. It's great to have an expert to ask some of those questions, too. So we've definitely delved into the technical aspect of this.

And now we ought to have some fun. We want to talk about your leadership. So if you don't mind, let's move into talking about your leadership of Boston Forward.

Tell us what the fun club is, Tony. Oh, my God. So so for the folks that know what provisors is, it's a it's a networking group for senior level trusted advisors.

The organization provisors is a concatenation of groups. The groups are a concatenation of members. And so you need a leader.

You need someone to organize the chaos for each particular group. And so I lead a boss for, you know, fun club sort of arose the day this probably before your time. But, you know, back in the day when they were trying to figure out group leaders, it was like a Senate confirmation hearing.

It's like I had I tell I tell people it's like picking a pope. You look for you look for smoke. Right.

Only instead of smoke coming out of a chimney, it's like the regional director. Oh, my God. It was like, you know, it's like nowadays it's like, yeah, I think that'd be good.

Yeah. All right. I'm going to have you lead it back then.

It's like it was like four level sort of interviews. And but the thing, though, that I appreciated about the Senate confirmation process was that it forced me to think what the heck I wanted to do for the group. And I'm a little wacky.

I can be a little zany. And I kept saying I needed to be fun because I had been to to a number of group meetings and they're fine. Right.

No, I'm a full throated supporter of provisors. I believe in its mission. I think it's great for folks.

But if you want to sort of keep people actively engaged for the entirety of the hour and a half that you have and sort of captive, I think you need an element of fun. And so we were sort of trying to sort of figure out what our sort of angle was, how to how we deliver it. And, you know, sort of necessity is the mother of invention.

Then the pandemic hit and we were sort of forced to go online. And so we quickly realized that if we took a live meeting format and did that online and if you know this because you do an online meeting, you're going to lose the audience within what, three minutes, five minutes, almost instantaneously. And so I decided, how do I sort of bring fun in a virtual environment from a live environment? So we went theme based.

And so when we went back live, we sort of carried over the theme and Dave, you've been to our meetings, you know, we sort of take our themes pretty seriously. Like, for example, next month, it's dead icon, dead legend. So so come dressed as your favorite dead icon.

Dave's threatening to come dressed as Elvis. But, you know, you're killing it, man. You're killing it.

I was going to. So I'm going to do a costume change midway through. I'm going to go from young Elvis to fat Elvis with the tassels halfway through the meeting.

Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to transform right in front of everyone. Oh, my God. You know, and so the reason why the reason why we decided to do that is that it's a common theme.

Not everybody needs to sort of get involved with it, but at least sort of creates a sort of, I think, a next level connectivity for the folks. And I think it creates fun. And I think that when people are engaged, when they're present, they're present, it's easier if they're sort of enjoying themselves, if they have an enjoyable experience.

And I think that benefits everybody in the room. I think I think commerce increases. People are more engaged.

People are more likely to sort of, you know, the whole give to get mantra. And so, you know, and from that, I wasn't the one that coined it. I think it was our regional director, Shep Becker, had sort of coined us the fun club.

And as he likes to describe us, he's like, they're a little different because they're not quite right in the head. Now, Dave, you've attended one of Tony's meetings. So I want you to tell us because I really want to emphasize it's not just, OK, let's get together.

We'll laugh. We'll have fun. His meetings are over the top.

So, Dave, tell us about your favorite fun club meeting that you attended. So I've attended two meetings and I had the same experience both times. I laughed until my sides hurt.

And then I also cried like a little baby. Like, and I'm not I'm not joking. I will.

I'll tell you that. First of all, I, you know, Nicola will tell you that if there's a if there's a commercial where the dog runs away from home, I cry. OK, so I'm I'm easy.

I'm easy to begin with. But there was there was a woman who I think was a woman whose house burned down and like five people in the group helped her. And she's like walking over as she's giving her testimonial and touching each one on the shoulder.

And then she gets to like the public adjuster who got her all them. You remember this? Got her all the money for the house. And then they both start sobbing as they hug each other.

And I'm sitting across from them like tears streaming down my face. And I'm a and I'm a guest and I'm dressed in some sort of costume because it was a theme meeting. And I'm crying like a baby after I had just laughed until my sides hurt.

So like it's like the room is packed with people. You know, there's a there's a theme. So half of the room goes all out and they dress really, really crazy.

A quarter of the room does a half hearted effort where they'll put on like bunny ears, but they won't wear the tail. And then the other the other like quarter of the room is like wearing regular business clothes like they just didn't expect this to happen. And they're members of the group.

And that's the thing that's the most fun is like those people are they're having the time of their lives during a two hour networking meeting in the offices of a law firm. So the first meeting I went to, I remember I was I didn't want to wear the thing that I had to wear like on the streets of Boston, like bad enough. I'm already from New York.

I feel like everybody can see me and they want to beat me anyway. So I didn't want to wear the thing I had to wear. So I'm in the hallway, like getting dressed.

And the woman who's at the reception desk is just like, not again, not another one. Like she's looking to make sure clients aren't getting off the elevator as I'm like in my underwear, stepping into my pants, you know, like the second time I went, I'm like, screw it. I'm just going to get dressed in the I'm going to get dressed and get in the cab and go over there.

And I walk in like Obi-Wan and I push the button in the elevator. And there's people in the lobby. They're just like like it's like once a month.

They just expect the freak show to come to town. Dave, I'll tell you a funny story. So so what are the things it was sort of lower level for us? It was in honor of National Donut Day in Boston, New England.

It's just it's Dunkin Donuts. And this was not long after the last Super Bowl where Ben Affleck did the Dunkin's commercial. So I found the Dunkin's suits online and so got them for a bunch of folks.

And we wore them and we had a grand old time. And then after our meeting, we actually go across the street to a nice little facility called the White Bowl Tavern for what we call Fun Club Extended Hours. It's to sort of continue the networking and the fun.

Well, walking across the street, me and another member, Jonathan White. And this is right by Faneuil Hall, which is a major tourist center for Boston. And the tourists are snapping photos.

A woman comes over, thinks I'm Ben Affleck. And so I'm looking at her and I'm like, you understand that he's taller, better looking, has hair and is a lot richer than me, right? Just thought he was walking around in Boston. But in a Dunkin outfit.

And they thought that Jonathan, my buddy next to me, was Matt Damon. Oh, my God. So so I said, you know what? We're just going to take photos.

So I was a celebrity for a moment. So, you know, I was waiting for the paparazzi to arrive. And so explain to folks how how this leads to business being passed.

Right. What? So when I tell stories like this to people who are who are not familiar with networking and don't know anything about provisors, they're like, oh, it sounds like you guys, because I tell I tell stories about when I get together with people like you who are from all over the country, like I go to Chicago, I go to New York. I never eat alone.

Right. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. When I go to these cities, provisors, members, if I arrange for it in advance, I meet three or four people.

We have a great time. Tony, explain how fun leads to business. Oh, my God.

One hundred percent. So so so as we say, so our tagline and, you know, back when I used to do a little sort of PowerPoint, you know, it's like we're serious about having fun, but we're highly serious about business. And so the fun is simply the lead in to the latter.

We never lose sight of the focus. We're here to get you to connect with folks, to hopefully sort of drive commerce back and forth. And I think fun is just simply the lubricant.

It literally just puts everybody in a good mood. It makes everybody present. People are more engaged when people are more engaged, the more active, they're happier, they're more likely to sort of just, I think, be open to sort of new experiences, just sort of working with their fellow colleagues, you know, because networking is hard.

Right. I don't want to go into the networking is work. Yeah, yeah.

We sort of all know that. But can you imagine just showing up to a meeting, you know, going through the sort of fundamentals of the meeting? And it's all great. I believe in the fundamentals.

But if you get nothing pulling you into the meeting consistently, then you're going to sort of drift unless you're one of that rare person that can stay sort of, you know, actively engaged. And I think by making it fun, like 15 minutes will go by, a half an hour will go by and people like, oh, my God, I thought it was a minute. And so they're there, they're present, they're open, they're engaged, and it literally drives commerce.

Some of the other groups that I go to that are more traditional in their manner will do fine for commerce. And if those folks come to, you know, to my group and it's like three times the volume of business is being done and I'm like, because we set the environment for our wonderful members to succeed and I think the fun is part of that. You know, part of it, too, is the fear that we all have about networking and I don't care if you're an introvert or an extrovert.

It's that it's what do I say to get the conversation started? So if you go to a group like yours, like I could walk into that room and know nobody. But because they're all dressed like there's somebody dressed like a squirrel and then there's somebody dressed like a beaver, like I can walk up to them and be like, why did you pick the beaver instead of the squirrel? At least I got something to break the ice, you know? Or, you know, do a nice beaver like that's like that's exactly what you want to say to break the ice to somebody like so that that's why fun makes all the difference in networking if somebody gives you an opening. It's so much easier for you.

All you got to do is get over that first hurdle, that first question, the way to make the conversation to get the conversation started and you don't have to be the one that I mean, you wear the costume, but you don't have to be the one that looks the goofiest because I guarantee you in that room, somebody is going to do a better job. Like you can't there is no way you're never going to be the the wackiest. Like just when you think you got it all done, you're going to walk in there.

You're going to go, oh, man, I wish I would have thought of that. Holy cow. Like, Dave, like, for example, so for our January, you know, it's the new year.

So, you know, little sort of, you know, New Year's theme. OK, celebrate the New Year's. One of my members came dressed as baby New Year.

It was hysterical diaper and everything over clothes, folks, over clothes. This is all business appropriate. But, you know, it's just you're totally right.

It's something it creates a conversation point for folks. And plus, one of the additional things that we sort of realize is that my members, the fun clubbers, when they go to other groups and they talk, oh, I remember the fun club, they know that we're a theme based. So that creates a car.

Oh, my God. So what was your theme last month? So it creates openings for them in other groups because of the sort of a little bit of the wacky and the zany that we do in our groups and that carries over, spills over to some of those other groups. And so at least at least my group members find that helpful.

Yeah, I think it's really about a point of connection, like you give them a way to connect, like everyone can relate to. And whether it's fun or for us, you know, the giving group more focused on philanthropy and charitable engagement. It's a way for people to connect.

And what we see is when they start to connect on that level, you give them something to connect on and those relationships start to really blossom. And then, as you mentioned, like the commerce, it just naturally flows from it. It's making the meaningful relationships and then that will come after it.

And you're as far as recruiting goes. So here's the thing. If you're if you're joining us and you're not familiar with provisors, if you're if you're graced with the ability to or you're it's bestowed upon you that you're going to lead a group, it's expected that you're going to try to get new people to come to the group.

One of the little secrets that I don't know if Tony has ever revealed to people, but I'll reveal it because it works great for us is if your group is a group that people want to come to, it is a lot easier to recruit people than a group where they just sit around and read the provisors mission statement and everybody does their introductions. If you're going to dress up like, you know, you're going to dress up like your favorite cartoon character one month and then the next month you're going to dress up like a historical figure. It's a lot easier to get people to want to come to your meetings.

And if people want to come to your meetings, that's 90 percent of the battle for recruiting is to get people to want to be there. I mean, it's it's so it's such a it's such a no brainer. Like if people enjoy themselves and they look forward to spending the two hours there, they're going to want to join your group.

So it makes it it makes it that much easier. All right. Let's talk now about what you do, Tony, to make sure that everyone in the room has the ability to present themselves in the best light.

How do you create an environment that allows your members all to represent themselves in the best way? Oh, my God. Great question. So it's not really one thing, Dave.

Nicole, I think it's a series of things, like, for example, number one, you want to make sure that you sort of, I think, create a really good environment that folks are very comfortable and I think fun helps that. I think it's easy to get acclimated and feel comfortable in the environment. Plenty of sort of icebreakers around as you folks sort of just quite astutely sort of picked out, but also for folks that are first time guests or if we have some prospects or folks that are thinking about joining provisors, you know, there is a behind the scenes where I have some of my members of the of the of my executive committee.

We'll sort of wait for these folks to come in and without having it looked contrived or orchestrated or organized, we'll sort of just meander over to them, have a conversation, bring them, introduce them to some other people, because the whole idea is to smooth the skids for folks because networking is hard. It's really it's only the Dave Lorenzo's of the world that of the world that really find this sort of just natural. And then creating continual engagement with my EC and then what I call my super members, which oftentimes are super guesters, guesters meaning that they're just going to a bunch of other meetings is I have frequent conversations with with some of my super members, you know, multiple times a month where we'll say, hey, this was a hit.

This wasn't working. And oftentimes if you're leading a meeting, there are things you can pick up on. But there are some things that I'm not picking up on simply because your sort of mind is consumed with sort of running the meeting.

And so I think it's really important to hear sort of just honest feedback from your folks picking up on some things. It's like, hey, I think so and so, you know, this is happening or, you know, I think that this person is a little quieter than we think. And so we'll try to find ways to sort of engage them.

And oftentimes it's based on sort of background. In other words, if somebody is introducing themselves, but I know that I have a quiet member that might be in a similar spot, I'll have them sort of follow up with their introduction after that. If I see some folks that may be struggling with their introductions, keeping it sort of pithy, keeping it succinct.

We're pretty active about sort of following up with them and sort of just talking it through. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that, you know, especially for attorneys and Nicola sort of understands that we do a lot of different things. And so we want to just tell the whole world that we're awesome.

And we do five or eight or nine different things. Well, the human brain only remembers one. And so just pick.

And so some of that is just coaching, which is, hey, listen, you know, we call it penetrate and radiate, which is pick the one thing that people are going to remember, and then as you build your relationships with folks, then radiate so everything under the planet. But if you say 10 things, then nobody remembers one thing. But if you say one thing and then eventually you'll be able to sell everything.

And so we really sort of are on the lookout for that. And a lot of that is sort of behind the scenes training. And I think that that sort of makes the members better.

And I think eventually we'll sort of create evangelists. I know that that's a term that you've heard me use before so that, you know, ultimately where people know you so well, it's like Dave and Nicola. It's like you don't even have to be in the region.

And I sell the you know, your services all the time in New England. And so imagine marketing and you're not even in not only are you not at the meeting, you're not even in the region. And so that's the whole idea, because we know what you do.

Remember what you do and we can sell the services. If you talk about 10 things, I can't remember one thing. That's a great takeaway.

And thank you, Tony. That was very kind of you. I want to ask this because you've been a group leader for several years now.

You've now talked about kind of key points where you really focus on helping to build that group, helping others so comfortable. What has really been for you the biggest takeaway as a leader that you've taken with you to being in your professional space? So, by the way, Tony is a partner with a national law firm, top IP attorney. So what has been the biggest takeaways for you as a group leader, provisors for your business? Believe it or not, I think it has made my client interactions better.

Does that make sense? And, you know, you show up in that dunking outfit, like dancing. And your patent didn't get approved. I'm really sorry.

They said no. And lawyers struggle with that, right? Lawyers struggle with being like overly professional and not really focusing on those relationships as much. So and you are you're fun.

You're fun to be around. It's infectious. I'm sure that that has impacted your ability to just be a human and develop relationships and no slight to lawyers.

Like we're all there. We have to be so technical and no one really teaches you business development or the fact that you have to like really be personable to get clients. Yes, totally.

And believe it or not, unless you're a trial attorney and sort of that's your skill set and that's a major skill set, it's a skill set that I didn't sort of opt to pursue because I love the puzzle side of it. That's why I do preparation and prosecution. You know, it's easy for us to live in our own headspace.

It's easy for us to live in the office. It's like the whole sort of pitter patter of the interaction sort of starts to fall by the wayside. There are a number of attorneys that I chat with day to day.

I'm like, my God, you could sort of benefit from a finishing school. And so being a G.L. puts you in front of people and you're getting blistering real time feedback. So you hone yourself.

All those little birds get shaved down. And believe it or not, my presentations to client boards are much better. I'm very comfortable with myself.

And I think that that sort of bleeds through. Yeah. So so it's a sort of a forced finishing school for us knuckleheads.

Well, let's ship them over to my lawyers group, too, because we work on professional development there. I'm trying to help out the profession. I got feedback the other day from my EC that an email I sent was and here's the way they put it, ill-tempered.

Oh, I love it. That was my intention. I intended to be ill-tempered.

Nicola, when was the last time you got to use that word ill-tempered? Oh, wow. I didn't really think about that. Oh, it was the greatest.

And it's an email that I've been sending out for two years. I've been sending this email out for two years. And then the guy raises, listen, I want to say something.

That line that you put in there about leaving the meeting early, it comes off as a little ill-tempered. I was like, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. So now I'm changing the line to read.

I would say something really bad, but I don't want to appear ill-tempered. So please, pretty, please do this. Oh, well, to put this into context for folks, it was about you're going to leave the meeting early to not announce your departure for the world because nobody wants to hear that.

And what was quite ill-tempered was the fact that you had mentioned that it's an embarrassment to you and to not everyone else. If you're leaving. I actually love that portion of that of your email that people, people, it's like they're getting up going, got to go.

It happens. You have to tell them. I got a little trumpet.

Stop the meeting. I'm leaving. David, I'm leaving.

You're going to miss me. So true. They unmute or they put it in the chat.

It's like I just and they didn't like my response either because I was in favor of what David said. And mine is, you know, please just depart. Do not announce your departure.

Please just depart. Yeah, listen, I view it as it is incredibly embarrassing to you that you're leaving this important meeting early. Why draw more attention to yourself? That's with you.

But, you know, I my my ill-tempered nature could apparently rub some people the wrong way. So I will say pretty, please, with sugar on top, if you're going to leave the meeting, just get the fuck out of here. All right.

So before we before we wrap it up, Tony, I want to I want to hear two things from you, I want to hear the accomplishment in your professional life that you're most proud of, OK, then I want to hear the I don't I don't I don't want to hear about your daughter and how brilliant she is because she is incredibly brilliant. She's going to be smarter than her dad. She's going to be a doctor and we will do a whole show on that.

But then I want to hear the I want to hear the accomplishment in the fun club that you're most proud of. So in your professional space, OK, in the world of heavy duty, hard, critical thinking, patent prosecution, what are you most proud of there? Believe it or not, that I am still passionately curious after 30 plus years, you know, if I always wondered, my God, because this is, you know, a lot of the tech and for some reason, I've always want to be in at the tip of the spear for technology, always the one tasked to sort of just deal with the new case, the new fangled case. I haven't lost that zest or zeal for it.

It's just and so that to me. Is sort of the thing that I'm the proudest of, so I don't know if it's necessarily my greatest accomplishment, but it's the thing that I'm probably the proudest of, it's like I still dig being a counselor in the IP space for my clients. I love chatting with my clients about their problems, trying to come up with solutions that work, that are tailored or fashioned for their needs.

And believe it or not, you know, secondary to that is, you know, the passion and curiosity. It's like. I try to give the right advice irrespective of what would benefit me, so I have turned down a hundred times more engagements that I've actually taken on because it made zero sense for my clients, you know, to actually pursue something.

And I am blatantly honest about it. And it's something that I will never change about myself. So so that's the stuff that still jazzes me about it.

It's like, you know, all the recognitions and all that stuff. It's to me, it's it's secondary to the fact that I still really enjoy what I do. And I love working with the clients and trying to trying to fashion a solution that fits their needs.

And that has a way of coming back to you. You'll you'll get referrals. You'll get you'll get even more work for them because you're honest and because you're focused on that.

All right. Now, in the fun club, what do you what are you most proud of? I mean, it's got to be like the latest thing. Like, like, what are you most proud of in the fun club? The I love seeing when members who struggled initially get acclimated in and then through encouragement and whatnot, they themselves become super guesters, like all in on it.

And then, you know, and then I'll have conversations with them. It's like, hey, what percentage of your business for your professional practice are you getting from the platform? And for folks that have decided to elevate it. And granted, the platform works a little better for certain disciplines than others, although I think it works for all.

You know, they're like half, 60 percent, 70 percent. That's the thing that jazzes me the most is to see the maturation of some of my members who were a little had to be sort of dragged along a little bit, wasn't necessarily their first forte. Watch them sort of turn into sort of comfortable networkers, then taking the next step to sort of be super guesters and then watching sort of the whole response to it.

It's just it blows my mind. All right. Now I want to talk about Juliana.

So tell me about medical school. Where are we with the I'm serious. I need to know this.

The application process heard back or like where are we in the process? OK, so we're going to break some news here. All right, here we go. Go.

OK, OK. Well, before I before I break some news, number one, it's like if I had known how difficult the process was, I probably wouldn't have recommended this to my daughter when she was in elementary school. It's like you should probably come a doctor because he failed at it.

We're bringing this by the way, we're bringing this full circle. Right. Because you wanted to be a doctor.

You were playing you were pretending to be a doctor when you were a kid and you ended up becoming an I.P. attorney. So you foisted upon her your dreams. Yes.

All right. There you go. It's like, never mind your dreams.

Fulfill my dreams. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't sort of have her do it. But just to watch her sort of maturation and sort of being successful, sort of academically and sort of just doing all check in the boxes that she needed to sort of check.

She's still in sort of waiting to hear back from a number of schools. But she get into one of her top choices, UMass Medical School. Oh, wow.

And that's your top choice. No doubt your top choice because you want her at home. So I get her from because she's in California.

So so she's we will get to move her from the wrong coast to the right coast. And then Mama is sort of super happy about that. And secondarily, it's a state school tuition.

But we're not going to talk about that right now. We're not going to talk about that. No.

But but just to see sort of the culmination of many years of hard work, sort of bring some rewards to her, you know, as a dad, you get super, super happy, super proud. I'm so excited for her. Oh, congratulations.

I feel like I feel like I know her because every time I call you, your picture with her pops up on my phone and I'm like and the worst part is, you know, these two people like, you know, one better looking than the other. They pop up and I'm like and they're at a Patriots game and I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I got to freaking look at this again. All right, Nicola, what's your last question for Tony? Tony, if you could give one parting thoughts to the business owners listening to this about thinking about protecting their intellectual property, what would you tell them? Have a conversation with an IP attorney.

Everybody has IP, but not everything needs to be protected. But at least go through the mental exercise to take stock, to do a little bit of a mental audit of where you are relative to your IP, because I think it'll I think it enhances the value of your business. If there are things that you should be protecting, you should be protecting.

Nikki G and Dave are experts at trying to drive intrinsic value for businesses. So, you know, this fundamentally and firsthand. But please, please, please, if you sell a service or a product, talk, talk, talk to an IP attorney to at least understand what it is that you own and making sure that you're not accidentally doing something that might be destroying the right.

Great advice, Tony. We could spend all afternoon with you, but we know we have to let you go because you have you have a job to get back to. So tell us how people can contact you.

Thank you. I'm on the Web. Anthony Laurentano at Nelson Mullins dot com.

Tony Laurentano. And again, the law firm is Nelson Mullins. You know, feel free to shoot me an email.

I have conversations like this with clients, companies all the time trying to figure out what it is that they own. And if they own it, is there a different ways to protect it? I love having these conversations. It doesn't cost you anything, really, just to sort of just pick up the phone.

Are we dialing for dollars now? I feel like I should just all right. And Dave Lorenzo is going to be singing, you know, operators are standing by, ladies and gentlemen. If you've created something in your kitchen, if it's a plane, a train, a car, a boat, if it floats, if it flies.

Tony Laurentano, he's your guy. Call him. We'll put his information down in the show notes.

In all seriousness, we want to thank Tony Laurentano for being our guest today. We bring you great conversations like this and we share with you how you can have fun as well as make a great living and live a great life. Our show is here every day for you.

You can come back tomorrow at 6 a.m. We're here with another interview every Wednesday. I am Dave Lorenzo. I am the godfather of growth and she is Nikki G. So join us back here again tomorrow at 6 a.m. Join us again next week for another interview.

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