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Aug 16, 2016

Rachel Rodgers (@RachelRodgersEsq) is a business lawyer turned business coach, intellectual property strategist, and the creator of Small Business Bodyguard.

In 2013, she created the Small Business Bodyguard: Cover Your Bases, Cover Your Assets, Cover Your Ass. This game-changing legal resource has been called “fun and engaging” by New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan and a “graduate-level course on how to build a strong foundation for your business” by CEO of OurDeal, Kyle Durand.

Rachel is known in the legal industry and beyond for being an innovator and master of productizing services and creating high-quality, high profit products. SBB and the other legal kits she has created have been transformative, generating half a million dollars in revenue in just two years and serving 1,700 small businesses around the country. And she achieved those results with almost no active marketing because she simply didn’t have the time (she literally launched SBB with a newborn in her arms).

When she’s not taking care of clients, she enjoys baking in the kitchen (barefoot, with rosé in hand), lifting weights, juicing (the green kind, not the steroid kind), reading to her toddlers, being a “dance mom” to her girls and going on new adventures with her family (her favorite destination being the South of France, of course!).

In this episode, we discussed:

  • Critical first steps every business owner should take to prevent legal headaches.
  • How to stop working "in your business" and start working "on it" to catapult your success.
  • How to establish strategic partnerships and alliances with other entrepreneurs.

Resources

The Rodgers Collective

Small Business Bodyguard

Slack

Helpscout

Mastermind Dinners by Jason Gaignard

The Alchemist by Paul Coehlo

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

NEWS

Julia Love at Reuters reports that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton are pulling in Silicon Valley funding anywhere near what Mitt Romney and Barack Obama did in 2012. Trump has pulled in less than 6% of what Romney did and while Clinton has significantly outraised Trump in the Valley, she’s raised less than half of what Obama did there. The full story is at Reuters.com.
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Curt Woodward at the Boston Globe reports that, as financial firms and retail outlets have significantly tightened their fraud prevention tactics, criminals have now turned to hacking health care records. The health care records of 4.5 million people have been compromised this year, and while this is down from last year, the long term consequences are much more severe than those of financial data breaches.
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Security software maker Check Point has uncovered a huge security flaw in Android phones known as Quadrooter. The breach affects as many as a billion phones, including high-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy 7 and HTC 10. Ina Fried at Recode has more.
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Three House Democrats are calling for GOP leaders to investigate Donald Trump for encouraging Russia to hack into the 30,000 emails still missing from the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she served as Secretary of State. Congressmen Patrick Murphy from Florida, Andre Carson from Indiana and Eric Swalwell from California are all asking a House panel to investigate. Check out Haroun Demirjian’s (DE-MEER-JOHN'S_ full coverage in the Washington Post.
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Privacy advocates are getting worried about customers exchanging their privacy for lower-priced internet services. David Lazarus at the LA Times points to Comcast and AT&T who offer customers lower prices in exchange for tracking their online behavior. Advocates are worried the model is creating a society of privacy haves and have-nots in which privacy will only be available to people willing to pay for it.
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The federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled last week that entities that mimic government agencies must observe the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement for searches and seizures. The case involved a defendant who sent child pronography via his AOL account, which AOL then flagged and sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which it was required to do. A Department of Homeland Security special agent then obtained a tip through NCMEC’s system and then a search warrant to search the suspect’s home. The court found that NCMEC should never have opened the email without a warrant in the first place, since it was acting on the government’s behalf. Cyrus Farivar has more full coverage at Ars Technica.
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A federal judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued a largely sealed ruling last week criticizing the FBI’s new gag order rules. Gag orders demand secrecy from companies regarding data requests the FBI makes to investigate national security cases. The new gag order rules require the FBI to review either on the “close of an investigation” or on the “three year anniversary of an investigation”, whether a gag order is still necessary. So this means the FBI could, theoretically at least, at the close of every single investigation, deem the gag orders to still be necessary, and keep them in place indefinitely. But these are just criticisms. The judge did not order a revamping of the rules. Ellen Nakashima at the Washington Post has the story.
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Finally, Greenberg Traurig—the international law firm— will be lobbying on behalf of the Pokemon Company International, which has come under scrutiny after the release of its widely popular Pokémon Go game. The game has caused concern among lawmakers regarding distracted driving and the potential for pedophiles to exploit the game to harm children. For example, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo banned sex offenders on parole from using Pokemon Go for fear they would put down lures to entice children to come to a particular location. Greenberg Traurig will work to counter that negative perception among federal lawmakers. Megan Wilson at the Hill has more.