[Nicola Gelormino]
Is your business protected against legal risk in its formation, its contracts, its intellectual property? Join us to find out with a special guest today on this edition of the Inside BS Show. Hey now, I'm Nicki G, this is the Inside BS Show.

We've got a great show planned for you today with a very special guest who's a friend of Dave's and mine. So let me bring up my co-host, Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of growth. Dave, good morning.

How are you?

[Dave Lorenzo]
Hey now, Nikki G, I'm doing just great. How are you today?

[Nicola Gelormino]
I'm doing fantastic. You know I love this topic.

[Dave Lorenzo]
That's what I'm afraid of. I really am. I am scared to death that this is going to be like a legal snooze fest.

So bring in our guest and let's see what we can do to make this interesting.

[Nicola Gelormino]
This will not be a snooze fest because our guest, Jessica Portalatin, I'll bring it in just a moment, is a woman business owner. She's a mom. She is a fantastic lawyer.

So we have so much to explore with her today and I'm sure not enough time to get through all of it. So Jessica, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Good morning, guys. It's so great to be here with you all. It's always fun to chat with you, so I'm excited about today.

[Dave Lorenzo]
So Jess, welcome to the show. It is so great for us to have you here. And the reason that we wanted to have this conversation with you in particular is because we work with you and we know how good you are and we know how much you get done.

And we also know that you're an entrepreneur. You own your own firm and you're a mom. And we know that that, in and of itself, is a full-time job.

So I thought that would be the best place for us to start. Let's start with you explaining to the folks who are with us today, the folks who are listening, the folks who are watching. Let's start by you explaining to us everything you got going on in your life.

And then I want us to have a real straight conversation about how a mom and an entrepreneur can be both of those things, which are both full-time jobs at the same time. So start there.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah. Everything I have going on in my life. You want to fall asleep?

I thought this was not going to be a snoozefest. So let's see. I mean, as you know, I own my law firm, right?

And that takes up so much of my time. But it's such a blessing. And the way that I'm able to do that, and also, you know, be a wife, be a daughter, be a mom, is really just replacing myself wherever I can.

Right. So I, a year and a half ago, I was doing this all by myself. So I was answering my calls.

I was scouring everything. I was doing the work. I was doing the meetings, everything.

And it wasn't until later on that I started replacing myself is when I got my time back. And that's how I'm able to do things. So now I fire myself from anything I can, anything I can, other than being a mom.

Right. And that's so that I can grow both not just in my business, but my husband and I are actively purchasing another business. And the only way that we can do that is if we fire ourselves and replace ourselves with people that do that job or that position even better than us.

So. So, yeah, I mean, that's really how I do it. I just kind of replace myself wherever I can.

[Dave Lorenzo]
All right. So let's let's start with that. What was the first thing, the first decision you made in replacing yourself in your business?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Front desk. Right. So having someone that answered the phone calls, that calendar, my my my meetings.

I remember vividly sitting in front of a computer half an hour going back and forth with someone about when we were going to have lunch, if not Tuesday, Thursday. And after that half, I was like, what am I doing? This is 30 minutes that I could have billed or watch Netflix or done anything else more productive.

Right. And so that was like a like a light bulb moment for me. And I was like, no more those things.

I do not have to do myself. And so kind of just replacing myself from those positions first and then going higher level, higher level, higher level.

[Nicola Gelormino]
So once you replace that first position, tell us, like, what's the thought process? Because you get you get past the first point. You've saved yourself some time.

How do you continue to do that as you're growing?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah, it's scary. Right. Even with that first position, it was stuff like, well, she write emails the way I write them.

Right. And so you're kind of if you're a control freak a little bit like me, it's it's it's almost a psycho, a therapeutic process where you have to learn how to let go of control. Right.

And as you go higher level, it's scarier because the risk is higher. Right. So when I started bringing in people to help me with legal work or doing sales.

Right. That's very scary. We just hired our first salesperson.

And he I mean, he just made his first sale yesterday. We just brought him in at the beginning of the year, made his first sale yesterday. Great job.

And, you know, but I was super scared. I was what if he says the wrong thing? And guess what?

I can say the wrong thing. So it's kind of just getting over those those things and just saying they're going to make mistakes the same way I'm going to make mistakes as long as they're not crippling mistakes. We're good.

OK. And that's just kind of been my process and it's still my process. I'm still going through it.

[Dave Lorenzo]
So you're you get an enormous amount of referrals. And the reason I know this is because you do a great job of recognizing people who refer business to you. What is it that you do?

What is your what is your process for attracting those referrals? And is that what you have your quote unquote sales person doing now, just connecting with people who can send work to you?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Actually, no. I mean, they are doing their own networking and building their own relationships. But I'm continuing to to to network and build relationships.

And in particularly this year, I appreciate that you said that I'm good with my referral sources, but I actually want to better that. So I think that last year I spread myself so thin with so many people that I wasn't able to go like a mile deep with everyone. And I think this year where my focus is is thinking, OK, who are my key partners, people that I enjoy referring work to that refer work to me?

And like, how can I build that relationship beyond this work relationship? Right. And so really being creative on, OK, maybe we do a cooking class between with spouses.

And, you know, we we grow in that kind of relationship. I'm I'm I'm very much an introvert, but I I don't I don't do small talk. I don't like small talk.

I'm the type of person we sit at lunch. We're like, tell me about your kids and let's go deep. I don't like the small talk.

So I think I take that into my marketing. And so when I have one to ones, we tend to go deep. And I think that has a lasting impression on people.

And it's not something that's forced. It's just naturally who I am. I like to peel back the layers.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yeah. And Jess, you know, that comes across even in the newsletter that you send out to your clients. You know, we've seen those.

We love them. They're personal. They're deep.

The thoughts that are, you know, open that letter for for you to be interested in hearing about what's going on in your life is it's really, I think, a reflection of who you are. So tell us, because this is the inside the show. What are some of the things that for you really helped you kind of market your business early on?

Because I think there might be people out there struggling with that thinking like, you know, where do I even start?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah, man, you have to do the group work. Like I remember the first year I went out on my own, I would wake up at five in the morning, go to a breakfast mastermind at seven, I would be at the chain for breakfast. After that, I would go to any networking events during the day.

And at night, I would be at a happy hour. Right. And that was my day, like every day for months.

I was exhausted. But you know what? People remember me and people saw my face.

And years later, people sent me referrals from that breakfast. Right. So you have to do that work of going to the events, really making the connection.

It's not just about handing out cards. It's really getting to know people and having them remember you. I don't think there's any skipping over that.

And I know that there's some businesses that SEO works for. Right. And SEO is great.

And so is social media. Right. Like especially for products.

But when you're in a service based business, you've got to do the networking. There's no skipping over that. And that's just the best referrals.

The best leads you're going to get are going to be from referrals.

[Dave Lorenzo]
They're already sold on you. So how many different avenues do you have to attract clients? And the reason, by the way, if you're if you're listening to this show, if you're watching and you're saying to yourself, why are these guys spending so much time with this lawyer on talking about marketing stuff, on talking about business development?

We're spending this kind of time because she's really good at it. She's good as a business owner. Forget about as a lawyer.

She I wouldn't even consider her like 90 percent of you lawyers who are out there are just terrible at marketing and business development. It's the God's honest truth. You're just awful at it.

Jess is good as a business owner, not just as a lawyer. So this is instructive for us to share with the people who listen and watch the show because Jessica is successful because she invests time, money and energy in business development. How many different ways do you have to attract clients?

We already touched on at least three of them. Right. We touched on networking.

We touched on you having someone who's proactively out there starting new relationships for you. And we touched on your newsletter. What else do you do from a business development standpoint?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Right. So we do have SEO. We do our social media and then we also have webinars.

Right. So we have webinars here in the US and then we also work with a lot of foreigners. So we have webinars that we invite people from Latin America.

So that that does a lot. So we have a lot of different avenues. We have some avenues that are a little bit warmer.

Right. The networking and stuff like that. And then we have a little bit colder.

So it's a balance. And we understand the conversion rates for each. And so we know from each source what we have to hit every month in order to hit our goals.

And so really this year, that's what we're focusing on. OK, so we need X from the webinar. Did we hit X this time?

And so you have to know your numbers as a business owner. It's it's something I didn't know at the beginning. I looked at my bank account and I saw, well, I have enough money to pay my bills and there's still some left over.

I'm good to go. That's not how it works. And, you know, it took some learning and, you know, some hard, hard years to to figure that out.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Tell us just how many years have you been in business?

[Jessica Portalatin]
I started in 2017. We're in 2025. So eight years, eight years now.

[Nicola Gelormino]
So I think that's important because right now you're hearing about all these different avenues for marketing your business and you've really got this down. And I want people to appreciate how hard that process is early on, which you already described, and then getting to this point. So this doesn't happen overnight.

We're talking seven years. So they're seeing the seven year business owner here who really understands her stuff, knows the numbers, knows you need to focus on that, really knows all these avenues for marketing. I mean, what for you really kind of helped you frame your thinking to know, OK, this is what I need to do because you've got the right mindset and you've got the plan in place now.

So what really helped you with that?

[Jessica Portalatin]
You just said it mindset. So I had a hobby for five years. I can say it like that.

My business was a hobby. It was not a business. I was not running it like a My books were terrible.

I didn't know what I was doing. I was making a little bit more money every year, but I had no idea what I was doing. And it wasn't until I got some coaching and I changed my mindset and I really understood what I had to do to run a business that I was no longer an attorney.

I was a business owner that sold legal services. Once I understood that, it changed. And that happened fairly recently.

I would say two, two and a half years ago. So this big change happened in the last two years. So it doesn't no one has to wait eight years for this to happen.

And I hope they don't. It is very hard if you wait this long. So if you can get coaching, which, by the way, I used to think coaching, ha, I was that person.

And coaching changed my life in the aspect of my business and even my personal life. There's so many things that now I'm open to doing because of coaching, business coaching. It wasn't even like life coaching, business coaching, and it changed my mindset and it changes the way I make decisions.

[Dave Lorenzo]
So that's great. I'm glad you said that because it is it is incredibly valuable to have a fresh set of eyes looking at what you're doing and giving you insight into things that you had no awareness of previously. Jessica, before we get into the legal stuff, and I'm going to I'm going to let Nicole lead the charge in talking about the, you know, the legal work that that you do and some of the things you've done for us and some of the things you do for your other clients.

Let's talk specifically about how you plan and how you prioritize the things that you have to do throughout the course of your day. And, you know, my experience is no, there's no one right way to do things. So the more ways that people have, successful people have to do things that we're exposed to, the better off we are because it's like a buffet.

We pick what we want and we employ that in our life and we leave what doesn't work for us. Right. So, you know, for for my purposes, I love to combine business and personal throughout the course of the day.

I may do five business things and then do three personal things, five business, three or four business things. How do you organize your day as an entrepreneur so that you get all your business stuff done, handle your family, you know, be a be a great daughter, spouse, everything? How do you organize yourself?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah, I have to block scheduling. And I've been in and out of it. Right.

Last year was chaos. So it kind of fell out of it. But I'm back on it now.

And so I still have to do a lot of legal work. So I block off a day where my mind is just attorney, that that's who I am for that day. And then I have other days that I am the business owner.

And what are we doing? We're strategizing. We're building business plans.

The next day, we're doing marketing. Right. We're doing one to one.

I'm going to these networking groups with you, with you guys. And so I really that shifting that mindset helps me. And then, you know, I'm being very much, of course, like last night was a late night, but I'm being very intentional about ending my days at a reasonable time because I have a baby and I need to be that mom and I need to spend that time and I have I have a husband.

So I'm trying to cut my day off at a certain hour, going to exercise with my husband to have that time together, walking with the baby. So just the blocking out time and respecting that time that that's what I'm working on.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yeah. I mean, both of us are big proponents of that, like having that block time really does help you focus yourself moving forward. I mean, every week we do it right.

It's the focus time for the business owner, the high level thinking at the most productive time of the day. And then it's the focus time for the attorney time. And, you know, that's a lot of quiet time sometimes for us as lawyers.

It's shutting the door, shutting off the world and just getting done the actual legal work. I know there's entire times where I had to set aside half a day to a full day just to do that work.

[Jessica Portalatin]
You know, I call it going dark when I'm doing my work because with you know this, Nicola, a comma makes a difference. Right. And so I go over the same contract and I'm like deep in it.

So if someone even asked me a question, it completely throws me off. So I disconnect my phone. My team is not available for my team.

My husband cannot even knock on the door unless someone is something higher. And so I call it going dark. And that is my production time.

And that's when I focus on my legal work.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, this is a great lead in. So the comma even matters.

Right. And what you do for a living is you help business owners really put that foundation in place. So I spent, as you know, 13 plus years only handling legal disputes.

And what I saw so many of those were those who came to me and had a partnership dispute or a member dispute if they had an LLC. And the first stop was, what's the agreement between all of you? What do those documents look like?

And they were a mess, Jess. I mean, so many people, they're a mess. So you're the person who helps people understand why those are so important.

So tell us about, you know, why, tell us why that's so important, having those right informational documents in place when you first started business.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah. You mentioned the operating agreement or the partnership agreement. So operating agreements are for LLCs.

It could be a shareholder's agreement if you're a corporation. But that document is what makes the decisions on how the business is being managed. How are decisions being made?

What happens if someone gets divorced? One of the owners gets divorced? What happens if one of them files bankruptcy?

What happens if one of them dies? Right. So having those things in place really limits the chaos that can come after.

And also, if you do it at the beginning, you know, partnerships are great at the beginning. Everyone is cold headed. You know, we're willing to be agreeable on things.

You're thinking straight. Once you're in business and the chaos starts and, you know, disagreements start, people don't want to get on the same page. It's just the way we are as humans.

Emotions kick in. So having these agreements in place and having someone that really can go through, OK, this is what could happen. Let's think of a solution or an exit plan for here.

Having deadlock provisions. A lot of partnerships are 50-50. And yes, I understand why they do that.

But then what happens when you don't agree? So having deadlock provisions that give you an out that don't necessarily dissolve the business. That's not practical if you have an operating profitable business.

So yes, that is probably the most important agreement you can have as a business owner. It's top three for me. And it has to be done right.

It has to be custom. It should not be a template you find on LegalZoom. No hate towards LegalZoom.

It's just not helpful.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

So many of those documents come to me and I'm like, where did you get this? Because I already know the answer. It looks very familiar.

You pulled it off the Internet. Seemed like it worked, but it doesn't for the reasons you describe. It's very personal.

Every business is different. You've really got to plan for what makes the most sense for you.

[Dave Lorenzo]
Yeah, absolutely. What what's the first what's the first document? Is that the first document everybody should have in place?

Because when you're when you first start your business, when you first get into your partnership, I mean, obviously you're you're out there selling, you're out there doing what you need to do to get the business off the ground so that there's money coming in the door. And we talk to our clients about getting those documents in place. But from your perspective, Jessica, what's the first thing, the first legal document that should be in place in a business?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah, I would say the operating agreement. After that, you do want to put in any good client agreements. Right.

What happens if the client doesn't pay you? What are your recourse? Right.

You want to have a strong client or customer agreement. But operating agreement is first. That is foundation.

And once you start selling to clients and once you start operating, guess what? The operating agreement and the partnership agreement, they get less and less important in the mind of the business owner. So you're going to keep putting it off.

So that should be the first thing. You create your entity, do your operating agreement right from the get go.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Jess, how about actually setting up the entity? I know. So that's that's not an agreement itself, but certainly something that's important.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Sure. So, I mean, it depends on what kind of entity. The first step is really figuring out what the right entity is for you.

And that that takes into account different factors. Right. So how many owners are there?

Are you going to have investors? Are you what's your longtime goal? Do you want to be on payroll?

What are taxes going to look like with a corporation versus an LLC, for example? So all those factors are taken into account and then you choose the entity that's right for you and your business. Once you do that, you go ahead and you register, which is, you know, the simple part, right?

It's going to to to some business, clicking on start a business and filing and just making sure you have all that information. But before that, that's the critical part of the strategy. Are we going to what entity are we choosing and what's going to be our structure?

Are we going to be a manager managed LLC, for example, or are we going to be a member managed? And what does that mean? But but yes, that happens first.

And then you form the operating agreement.

[Nicola Gelormino]
And for folks who might not know what that answer is yet, and they're thinking through that process, it's conversations with you and it's conversations with their account. Right. To help you would help somebody really figure that out.

What would make sense based upon questions you would ask them?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yes. So your attorney is going to ask you the questions that are important for your legal protection. Right.

And then you're going to want to talk to your CPA, take that information and say, OK, this is what is going to protect me legally. What are my taxes going to look like? And maybe they can make adjustments.

And then your accountant and your your business should work together. Right. Because there could be times that maybe the tax part is more important for you and the legal liability is not that much.

So you can switch around the entity. So that conversation, you should talk to both of your advisors.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yeah, absolutely. And trying to transition from one entity to another down the road can have significant consequences, right, legally and from a tax perspective. So we can't emphasize what you just said enough.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah. The IRS does not like it.

[Nicola Gelormino]
They don't like a lot of things.

[Dave Lorenzo]
They definitely Jessica, there's somebody right now that's listening to this show that is starting a lemonade stand and they went they went online in whatever state they're in and they formed a business and they're you know, they're not sure if they did the right thing. So I want to make sure that they're not sure they pick the right entity. Right.

I want to make sure that we reassure them that if you come into the picture two years down the road, I mean, that's not a fatal decision. If they selected an LLC and they realize they should have been a corporation, you can go back and fix that. And I'm sure you've done that in the past.

So address that. So if I've if I've selected the wrong entity today, either for tax purposes or for to to protect myself in case of legal exposure and I contact you, we can still fix that.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Most of those issues are fixable. Again, sometimes it just ends up being more expensive for the client. So if you talk to an attorney or a CPA first, it'll save you a lot of money and a lot of headaches.

So it's it's easier to do it right from the beginning than to take someone's mess and then fix it. So, yes, a lot of those issues are fixable. They're just going to cost you.

And, you know, that's not so.

[Dave Lorenzo]
So here's one of the areas where things need to be fixed most frequently. And I see this because I'm I'm constantly working with business owners on strategy and that's the name of the business. Right.

The name they thought the name of the business was the greatest thing in the world when they named the business after themselves. But nobody knows what the business does if it's named after you. So they want to change the name of the business down the road.

What's your advice about naming a business? And how do you once you name the business, what are the next steps that you should take after you name the business?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Sure. And it's very common. And even with law firms like I, I went through a transition, so I don't know if I had said this to you guys, but early on I had partners.

Right. And I had to change my name because my partners left and I was in the middle of survival. So I didn't have time to think of a name and get all creative.

Right. So I was just like, OK, my name, that's what it's going to be. Right.

So and I think a lot of business owners have that situation. Right. But if you're at the beginning of the process, the best, best thing you can do, and it's so crucial, I can't stress this enough, is do a trademark search for the name of the business you want to use.

Right. Because you do not want to invest thousands of dollars into marketing and building a brand and building a business and then get a cease and desist letter a couple years down the road saying, hey, you got to change your name. Right.

Because someone already was using it and you and you didn't do your due diligence. Right. So that's one aspect of it.

But also, you want to be as creative as possible with your name. Saying I sell cookies and calling it Jessica's Cookies. Right.

I get it. We're going to know what I do. But guess what?

When you go for a trademark, they're going to send you an office action or a preliminary denial because you're just describing what you're selling. There's nothing interesting or special about or unique about your name. So if you want to if your long term goal is to protect your brand, to grow your brand, you want to have a registration.

And in order to do that, you have to be unique and you have to be not descriptive. So those are two key things. First, do your search.

And then once you choose your name, make sure that it's unique and not descriptive and then touch on, too.

[Nicola Gelormino]
It's not just protection, but there's a value component associated with when you protect your brand. Right. Tell us about that.

[Jessica Portalatin]
There is huge value in having a registration and a trademark. So just just for a little bit of background, a trademark protects your logo. It protects your slogan.

It can protect your business name, the name of a product. So it's your brand protection. Right.

And so getting a registration for that not only means that no one else can use it, but you can make money off of that. And so one way that people do it is licensing. I like to give the example of Taco Bell.

Right. So we all know Taco Bell. And now you go into the supermarket and you find a salsa that says Taco Bell on it.

I don't think that Taco Bell went into the salsa making industry all of a sudden. They are licensing their brand to a company that makes salsa. And guess what?

They're making passive income. Right. And that could be your business if you build your brand.

Another way that you can make more money without necessarily working harder with your brand and having a trademark is creating a franchise. Right. So if you have a successful concept for your business, you register your brand.

You're able to have people buy that concept from you and pay you royalties. I also have a client that he sold just this trademark for one point seven million dollars. He built the brand and that's what his business is.

So he builds up brands and then he just sells the trademark. So, yes, trademarks are very, very, very valuable. It's not just a defense thing.

It's a way to make you money.

[Dave Lorenzo]
So, Jessica, let's talk a little bit now about when we bring that client on board. How do we how do we protect ourselves when we're doing business with a client? I have I have a lot of people that I work with.

I mean, I live. All right. So I live in West Kendall, which is like the Wild West of Miami.

And there's a lot that's done here on a handshake agreement. That's a bad business practice. So what do we need to have in place to protect ourselves when we're working with clients?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah. Handshake agreements. Those never end well.

Look, if someone is serious about doing business with you, they have no and they're being transparent about what their intentions are and what they want to do. They have no problem with putting that on paper. And in fact, not putting it on paper or having it in writing causes an ambiguity, miscommunication, confusion, all of which can damage or break relationships, whether that's a relationship with your client, with a friend, a future partner.

So actually putting these things in writing, whether it's a transaction with a client or like I said, with a partner, putting it in paper and putting it in writing eliminates that confusion. And that also protects that relationship so that it's able to flourish for longer and you're able to have a healthy business relationship with that individual. So I'm against the handshake deals for that purpose.

A lot of people say, well, we're friends. Exactly. Let's put it on paper.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Yeah. Couldn't agree more with that. Just tell us just kind of high level, what are the common provisions to look out for in those agreements, whether you need to use them to protect yourself or you're on the other side of one of those agreements working with, whether it could be a vendor, it could be a client, but just high level, your top, top few provisions that are the most critical in those agreements.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Right. I mean, of course it varies from every agreement, right? But basics, you want to make sure that the parties are listed correctly, that the signatures are both there for the clients, that the effective date of the contract is clear.

You want to make sure what are the obligations of each party that they're listed and they're very clear. And how do we terminate this agreement? There's, there's so many agreements I've read.

I'm like, how does it end? And so having clear termination clauses and, and, and procedures for that termination are great. And then lastly, I would say, make sure that there's remedies for the breaches.

I think that's really, it creates just so much simplicity, right? So if you breach, these are my remedies, whether that's liquidated damages, you pay me X amount or specific performance, right? So just listing those things, I think those are the key ones for every agreement.

[Dave Lorenzo]
All right. The last area to touch on here, Jessica, because what we're, what we're doing is this is, this is a foundational discussion. These are the basics you need to have in place.

And then the final basic is exposure and insurance. So if you're getting into business now, and you've done what Jess says, you did your search, you get your name, you find out that you're the only person that's going to have this name. You're good to go.

You've contacted your lawyer. You've contacted your CPA. You figured out what entity you want.

You go to see Jessica, you tell her all these things that you've done. She interviews you, you get your operating agreement. She's in the process of drafting your operating agreement for you.

The kind of cornerstone of this process of your startup now is protecting your exposure. How do we protect our exposure?

[Jessica Portalatin]
With insurance. And it's so funny because I know that we had this conversation recently or for, this could go on for an hour, right? So I'll touch very basically.

So you have to have your basic general liability, right? But if you're a professional, have your professional malpractice insurance. You want to make sure you have that.

Dave, you have talked about in our conversation, event insurance, right? So if you're doing seminars, if you're doing workshops and you have, and you're taking money from people to reserve their spot and something happens, you want to make sure that you have insurance to cover if something happens and that event can occur, right? If you get sick, things happen.

Another type of insurance that's very, very important, especially if you have a partnership is buy-sell insurance. So you have, your two partners and one of you dies, right? That naturally, that interest or those shares go to the heir, whether that's a spouse or a child.

What if you don't want to work with that person's spouse? What if they know nothing about your business? What if they have a bad attitude?

Whatever it may be, you want to be able to buy back those shares or that interest in your business, but you may not have the liquidity. So having life insurance, buy-sell insurance, which is one partner has life insurance on the other partner. The other partner has life insurance on that one.

And if one of them passes away, they use those proceeds to buy back the shares of the business so that they can keep everything. That one is so key if you are a partner. And yeah, I mean, we can go on forever, business insurance, key man insurance, but buy-sell insurance for business owners that are partners is so key.

[Nicola Gelormino]
Absolutely. And a lot of this is a discussion with your lawyer, with someone like you to say, okay, here's what's going on in my business. Let's figure out what insurance makes the most sense, rather than just kind of, let me just pick a few of these policies and get them.

And we've seen it. I've seen clients who've come to me with policies that don't unfortunately apply to the circumstance that arose. I know it's tough folks.

And we're having this conversation because if you do it on the front end and really be thoughtful about it, Hey, Jess, like I'm hosting these events. Okay. Well, what size are they?

Right? You're asking these questions about exactly what you're doing in your business or something else. For example, I have a huge online presence.

I'm selling things online all day long. We'd be thinking about maybe you need cyber protection. So without going too much into this discussion, that the takeaway here is just to be really thoughtful about what you're doing in your business.

Have a conversation with someone like Jess to be able to figure out what's the best insurance I need to have in place.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yes. Yes. Cyber insurance.

Very important. We're, we're fully virtual. So that to us is so key.

[Dave Lorenzo]
All right, Jessica. So before we wrap things up here, let's say you just did an initial consultation with a brand new business owner. What's the one thing, the one thing that they haven't thought of that you want to make sure they know before they leave your office.

They're, they're in your, they're in your office and you've just, we've just gone through, we just did right now, kind of the first, the first meeting with your lawyer when you're starting a business. Right. And you've asked us all the hard questions.

You know, you're, you said your business is 50 50 and what's your dispute resolution policy. Right. Fortunately, my partner is a lawyer.

So literally the first thing we, we worked out when we got together was what our dispute, cause I don't want to be in a dispute with her ever. Like I, there's no chance I have of winning that. So, you know, we, we work that out right up front, but that's a hard question for most people who are in a 50 50 partnership because it's like, there's never going to be a dispute.

We love each other. Right. So that's a hard question.

The other hard question is, Oh, I saw you went online and you selected your business and you made it an S Corp. Why did you do that? Well, I did it because I want the taxes to flow right to my personal taxes.

Well, here's what you didn't think about. You didn't think about if you really grow this business to be a big size, taking advantage of some of the protections that you could have. If you form the business under another entity, how big do you want your business to get?

Oh, I didn't give any thought to that. So what's the other thing, the other, what's the big aha moment that your clients say, Jessica, I'm so glad you asked me that, you know, five years ago, because this situation has now come up five years since.

[Jessica Portalatin]
Yeah. One question that I always ask in every consultation is what's the plan for the business in the longterm? Where do you see it?

Right. Because depending on what that, that longterm goal is, we can set the business up now for that. And sometimes, um, small business owners are intimidated to, to think that way that, Oh, I can't, I mean, yes, that's just a dream.

No, we can get there. We just have to take the steps. And here's where we start.

So asking what the longterm plan is, um, and setting up the business now for that success has been actually, I've seen a shift in, in, in, in my clients and the way that they think now, um, when I asked that question, it's like their, their, their faces light up in that it can be a possibility, right? And sometimes as business owners, we're very self-critical and we think, Oh, that can't be us. We're just small businesses.

No, it can't. They all start off as small businesses, even Chick-fil-A.

[Dave Lorenzo]
And that is the perfect point to end on because that's why we are here. We want people forming their businesses, thinking about their businesses with the end in mind when they start their business. So Jessica, how can people find you if they want to work with you?

[Jessica Portalatin]
Sure. We're on Facebook. I've worked the Latina law firm, and we are also on Instagram, on YouTube.

You could find us at contract law, miami.com. Um, we work with clients all across the United States, especially for the trademark. So feel free to reach out to us.

And if you listen to this podcast and, um, our business owners starting off and you want to make sure that you did it right, we have a really cool checklist that we created for new entrepreneurs. So if you messages and say that you heard us on, you know, the inside BS show, we will send that to you. Um, as a gift.

[Dave Lorenzo]
All right. To get your gift from Jessica Puerto Latina, you need to go to the inside BS show, listen to the entire show. And when you get right to the end, you're going to hear that we're offering you Jessica's free checklist as a result of you listening to the show.

So we're going to put all of that information that Jess just gave you down in the show notes, and we're going to highlight in big, bold letters that you can get your checklist from Jessica by mentioning the inside BS show, Jessica Puerto Latina. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure having you with us.

And for those of you who are listening, we work with Jessica, so we fully endorsed Jessica. She is a fantastic lawyer. We highly encourage you to call Jessica, tell her that you heard about it here on the inside BS show, get that checklist from her better yet schedule a consultation with her so she can fix all the mistakes you made when you set up your business in the first place.

My name is Dave Lorenzo. I'm the godfather of growth. This is the inside BS show.

We are here every day. We will see you back here tomorrow morning at 6 AM. Be sure and tune in every Wednesday for a brand new interview on the inside BS show until then my name again, Dave Lorenzo.

I'm the godfather of growth. And she is we'll see you back here again tomorrow, folks. Thank you so much.

Take care.