How to Win the Startup Game: The Maverick Method

The Maverick Method

The Maverick Method

How to Win the Startup Game

Matt Swyers

Maverick Method Enterprises, LLC

Contents

Dedication

Forward

Introduction

1 IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME?

2 LEGALESE

3 BUILD IT TO SCALE

4 SHAMELESSLY MARKET YOURSELF

5 YOU CAN'T PULL THE CART BY YOURSELF

6 IGNORE THE NAYSAYERS AND WORK YOUR ASS OFF

7 CASH IS KING. EVERYTHING ELSE IS DETAILS

8 KEEP MOVING FORWARD

9 CAPTAIN YOUR SHIP

10 PLAN TO SUCCEED

11 YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL

Appendix A

Appendix B

More on the Web

To what matters most in the world to me -

my family: Madison and Kennedy, my children,

Andrea and Jerry, my parents.

the wonderful people of The Trademark Company,

TTC Business Solutions, and the Swyers Law Firm, past and present

Nothing would have been possible or worthwhile 

without your love, support, and dedication.

Thank you for the honor to be known as your dad, son, and co-worker.

Copyright © 2022 by Matt Swyers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2021 | Revised & Expanded, 2022

Forward

Fifty percent of all new businesses fail within the first five years. Fifty-percent! That means that if you start a business, and a friend or family member starts a business, on average, one of you is destined to fail. Why? Why do so many fail, while others succeed?

By the time I was 45 years old, I had founded two multi-million-dollar businesses that, in turn, have assisted thousands of other small businesses in getting their respective start. As such, over the past twenty years, I have been blessed with the perfect focus group to study what works and what doesn't when starting a business. 

After years of toying with the idea, and with more than a little encouragement from friends in the industry, I sat down and put pen to paper. In the following pages, I have attempted to impart, to the best of my ability, that which I have learned from running my companies and helping launch over 100,000 startups.  

My goal is that by sharing these concepts with you, your new business will be positioned not only to be in the 50% of businesses that survive past that initial 5-year mark, but will thrive throughout the life of the business. 

We will explore these concepts in greater detail in the chapters to come. But to wet your whistle, here are the Maverick Method’s Top Ten Rules to win in the startup game.

Top 10 Rules to

Win the Startup Game

RULE 1: Create a Product People Want 

Seems obvious, right? But as you will soon read, 50% of all business fail in the first five years because a shocking 43% have no market for their product. This means that over 20% of businesses fail in the first five years (50% overall, five-year failure rate x 43% = 21.5%) because they simply created a product no one wanted. 

RULE 2: Make it Legal

Once you have a product people want, protect it, and yourself, legally. Secure any patents, copyrights, or trademarks (a.k.a intellectual property) that are unique about your offering to make sure what is yours stays yours. Most importantly, protect yourself by forming an LLC to run the business, which will protect your personal assets from the business’s liabilities. Lastly, get insurance for the business and your products or services. This adds an extra layer of protection, should things ever hit the fan. 

RULE 3: Build it to Scale

Write every system down, every formula, every manner for running your business. Create manuals as if you will franchise your business one day (even if you are not). Once pen has been put to paper, future employees can be trained to perform the requisite roles in the business, so it can be easily scaled. 

RULE 4: Shamelessly Market Your Product

They can’t buy it if they don’t know about it. Even if you make the greatest widget in the history of widgets, no one will buy one if they do not know it exists. So, if you make it, make sure everyone knows about it!

RULE 5: Build a Great Team

You can’t pull the cart by yourself. Invest in creating and sustaining amazing teams. Take care of your people, and they will take care of your customers.

RULE 6: Ignore the Naysayers and Work Your Ass Off

Along your journey as an entrepreneur, you will encounter people who will criticize you and your vision. Learn how to distinguish between those who know what they are talking about and those who do not. Only heed the advice of people who know what they are talking about, and who have your best interests in mind. And, more than anything else, roll up those sleeves and work your ass off! 

RULE 7: Cash is King

The lifeblood of a business is money. Without positive cash flow, your business will cease to exist. A business’s purpose is to profit. Thus, your revenues must exceed your costs. Period. When they do, put away a percentage of your profits for strategic reserves. If your revenues do not exceed your expenses, and you do not have a realistic plan to get them there, you must shut the business down. 

RULE 8: Innovate and Refresh

Even if you come to market with a completely innovative or fresh product, create an innovation schedule to push out new products, innovations, or fresh updates several times per year. You are either growing, or you are dying.

RULE 9: Captain Your Ship

Determine your leadership style and captain your business. Plan for the best, but prepare for the eventual storms that may arise.

RULE 10: Plan to Succeed

Success does not occur by accident. Success is a product of design. Create and regularly update an Annual Business Map (ABM), charting out the steps you need to achieve your business goals. Maintain a daily checklist of tasks you must accomplish to keep focused on, and accomplish the higher-level goals in your ABM.

Introduction

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Maverick? What an ass you're probably thinking. I mean, calling yourself Maverick? Who do you think you are? Tom Cruise and his iconic character from the 1986 blockbuster movie Top Gun? I feel the need, the need for speed... Talk to me Goose.... talk to me. Are you serious?

Well, if you're reading the book or perhaps just flipping through the first few pages at one of our last remaining physical bookstores in the U.S., you've gotten through that initial objection and I've piqued your interest, if only a little. P.S., please don't spill any coffee on the book before you buy it. Gracias!

Admit it, you want to know why I settled upon this title, and how it all fits into me and my philosophy in helping thousands of businesses to get their start. More importantly, how can it benefit you? We both know you want to know these answers, so let's get on with it.

The reality is it has nothing to do with Mr. Cruise, Top Gun, or even being a traditional rebel. I've only had two nicknames in my life, Maverick and The Hammer. For the purposes of this book, we'll focus on the former, although, admittedly, the latter may be more entertaining. But that's for another book and another time and, well, Tipper Gore may want to put a rating on that one. So sorry folks, it's not Hammer time. It's all about Maverick now. But I digress. 

The nickname Maverick was hung on me a few years ago by author Adam Smith while he was writing an article for The World Trademark Review, a specialized global industry publication for trademark geeks—I mean lawyers—around the world. If you search it, it’s still out there somewhere in cyberspace. But at that time, my first company, a niche trademark law firm, had rocketed near the top, or, depending on who you ask, made it to the top of our industry and was redefining the marketplace for trademark services. In what?, you might ask. Trademark legal services. You know, trademarks.

You see, trademarks are your brand, like Coca-Cola, Apple, or Google. To get a trademark, you generally need to come up with what you want your company or product to be called, search the name to make sure it's available—in other words, make sure that someone else is not already using that name—and then register it with the proper government agency.

Up until about the year 2000, you could do this by yourself, but it was highly technical, and if you wanted help, only a small, select group of high-priced law firms specialized in securing people's trademarks. So, if you need their services, be prepared to fork over plenty of cash to one of these law firms. 

Well, we came along and changed everything. We brought reasonably-priced trademark services to the masses and created a niche industry where none had existed before. In so doing, we opened trademark services to the masses. 

So, during our conversation, the reporter kept asking me for answers as to how we were disrupting our industry, how we had brought this dramatic change and were experiencing such amazing growth. Initially, I simply tried to answer his questions with my typical 50,000-foot overview speech given to so many clients and potential investors over the years.

How? I responded. Name one industry that rewards customer loyalty by raising the customers' prices every year? Lawyers. We simply infused customer service into an industry in desperate need of the same.

If you've ever worked at a law firm and watched this happen, it is fascinating. Almost every year, lawyers go to their customers, clients in the legal field, and raise their rates! Let me say that again, in case you weren’t paying attention or are otherwise not familiar with this practice: lawyers and law firms reward customer loyalty with an annual or periodic raising of their rates! Wow. I mean, thanks? 

Well, this year Partner XYZ's rate is increasing to ten trillion dollars per hour... so, thanks for your 15 years of being a dedicated client ... next year it will cost you an arm, a leg, and hey... is that a spare kidney? 

I mean really, thanks for your business. Here's an even bigger bill! You're welcome.

WHERE'S THE FUN IN BEING A LEMMING?

So, while most industries create incentives and programs to reward customers for their loyalty, law firms act as if the customer is the lucky one to be allowed the firm’s legal assistance. What an awesome racket. And it works, so long as everyone in the industry goose steps to the beat of the same drum. Well, here's the problem. I've just never been that guy. I've always been blessed with my own, independent beat. I'm not what you call someone who is going to conform just because someone else next to me did.

Lemming: Come on everybody, we're jumpin' off that bridge!

Me: Wait, why?

Lemming: Everyone else is doing it. Come on. It's gonna be the greatest thing ever!

Me: Again, wait, um, why?

Lemming: Because... well ... I dunno .. they're doing it.

Me: OK then. Cool beans. I'm um ... just gonna hang here and watch you lemmings prove the doppler effect on your way down. Say hi to Jim Jones when you get to the bottom! Gracias and buh-bye!

Dissatisfied with my original answer that we simply infused customer service into an industry in desperate need of the same, Adam pushed me for more. Finally, I relented. I asked him if he had ever seen a 1994 Western movie co-starring Mel Gibson and Jodi Foster. Being from the UK, he conceded he had not.

I LIKE TO WATCH

In the film, Mr. Gibson plays a card player in the American Old West, making his way to a huge poker tournament with a massive cash payout. To do so, he must journey across the West while securing enough cash to buy into the game along the way. The movie follows Mel throughout his travels, as he plays in lesser games, calls in loans from friends, and, of course, has the occasional run in with the mysterious bad guys trying to keep him from the tournament. 

In one of the more memorable scenes, Mel asks to join a host of local card players in a game of poker, in a small-town saloon. The players are reluctant to let the slick-dressed Gibson into their poker game, concerned he'll easily take their money, leaving them with nothing but broken hopes and dreams and the smell of defeat. 

Well, after flashing that famous smile, our hero Mel is allowed to play—with a catch. He promises to lose for the first hour he’s at the table. Lose for the first hour? Who wouldn't take that deal in poker? I mean, if you have an ante (the money every player at the table must put in at the beginning of each hand) that is guaranteed money in the other players' pockets, right? Well Mr. Gibson, let me dust off this chair for you, right by me! Can I get you a drink? Maybe some peanuts? How about a steak sandwich? Or another steak sandwich? Sorry, I had to insert at least one reference to the movie Fletch. I am a kid of the 80s after all, what can I say?

Anyways, Mel's character does exactly what he says. He starts to lose. And he loses again, and again, and again. Now, during this time-lapsed sequence, we see Mel glance occasionally at his handy-dandy pocket watch. Obviously drunk on the excitement of winning, the other players lose track of time. And eventually, the big movie moment comes when another player goes to rake in what they think is their winnings…only to see Gibson flip down the winning hand. Of course, the other player is a little confused by our leading man, as the tension quickly rises. But as Gibson smugly reminds them, I promised to lose for the first hour gentleman. The hour is up.

The players play on. As they do, the montage turns to one of Gibson just cleaning house. He rakes in pile after pile of money to his side of the table until, in a very dramatic moment, one of the other players accuses him of cheatin'. Guns are drawn. Tension mounts. After all, this is the Old West. After some quick-witted dialogue, Gibson finally reveals his secret.

Guys, what did you think I was doing for the first hour? I wasn't just losing. I was studying you all, learning your tells, learning how to beat you. Now do we want to fight, or do we want to play some poker?

Well, if you don't know by now, the name of Mel's character was Bret Maverick. The movie: Richard Donner's classic 1994 western Maverick. 

Bringing this back into focus. How did I do what I did? Well, sit back and listen, I continued with the reporter. It all started when I was at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), working as a trademark-examining attorney. For years, I had been told I was not good enough to join one of those fancy, niche, prestigious law firms that practiced trademark law. I would apply, and they'd say, No thanks. I'd apply again, I'd get the same response. I think I applied to work for most of them in the industry. And the answer was always the same. Thanks, but we're good.

Dejected, but resolved to get into the industry, I enrolled at George Washington University School of Law to secure my LLM. In short, my plan was to get a Master's Degree in trademark law. With that, I left my original job as a personal injury attorney and went to work as an examining attorney for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). I figured, with that experience, and an LLM in trademark law from the prestigious George Washington University School of Law, I'd be a shoe-in at those snooty firms, right? 

Survey says.... X.

But then a strange thing happened along the way to realizing that goal. In the course and scope of my work for the USPTO, I was blessed with the opportunity to be able to review those law firms' work that had so frequently scoffed at my candidacy. And guess what I found? Their work was replete with errors and mistakes. Shoddy work. These lawyers, whose ranks I had been killing myself to join, weren't that great after all. I mean, if you pitch to your clients your brilliance and expertise, why were they making these routine errors? And not just once or twice. All the time. I was stunned.

When thinking about it, I could only come to two possible conclusions as to why the level of their work was not what I thought it should be. First, they simply weren't that great. The proof is in the pudding, right? I mean, if you tell me you're awesome, shouldn't your work reflect it? Shouldn't you get things right the first time and not have to correct them at the request of the USPTO time and time again? If you charge someone a premium because your work allegedly deserves it, shouldn't your work reflect that alleged expertise and skill? Following me on this? At a minimum, please don't make common grammatical errors and mistakes. You're better than that, right? I mean, that's what you're charging the big bucks for, right?

The other possibility was far worse. Were they intentionally making errors to charge their clients more? Gouging their clients on purpose? Noooo. Not a lawyer. Say it isn't so. People love lawyers, and their bills are always so reasonable. I mean, when most people open their legal bills, their first reaction is, Oh my, how affordable. How did they do so much for so little! Right? If you've ever hired a lawyer, you get the sarcasm. If you've never hired a lawyer, but someday will, you'll get it then. If you never have to hire a lawyer, God bless you, and please call me to tell me your secret. But again, I digress.

Back to the quality of these law firms' work: these were simple errors. Stuff that should not be done by these premiere law firms. But guess what? When the USPTO sends a letter to counsel asking them for clarification of some issue, guess who gets to charge money for reading that letter? The big firm lawyer. And guess who gets to bill for writing the client telling them about the letter? The big firm lawyer. And guess who gets to bill for fixing the error they shouldn't have made in the first place? The big firm lawyer. Are you picking up on the theme here? Bill. Bill. Bill. Now, don't get me wrong. Bill, Bill, Bill is fine when you're at a Shakespeare look-a-like festival, but not when you're paying for legal services. Come on. And it's certainly not fine when those bills are to pay for the correction of errors which should not have occurred in the first place. Capiche?

What a racket, I thought. And this second alternative is even worse, right? I mean, that's a very dangerous road to go down. Intentionally creating errors in clients' applications to bill more? Hello, state bar associations? I think we have some relatively large issues we need to address.

So, while working at the USPTO, I decided the practice of law, or at least in my little corner of it, trademarks, had to change. We could build a better mousetrap. After a brief stop at another DC firm, I made the fateful decision to put my money where my mouth was, make the leap, and hang out my own proverbial shingle.

OH LORD, IT'S HARD TO BE HUMBLE...

In September of 2003, I founded The Trademark Company from the basement of my Northern Virginia home. It was a dark, musty basement that had not been updated since the house’s construction in 1970. I mean, 8-foot-high popcorn ceilings, with my desk situated under an HVAC return that hung down to only 4 to 5 feet off the ground. Water-stained carpeting and wood panels that cautioned Highly flammable. Avoid exposure to flames. The basement was also clearly lacking well-sealed doors and windows to the outside, as every morning I'd have to clean up the dead bugs on the floor before getting to work. On an aside, ever wonder why bugs crawl into your house to die in the middle of the floor? I mean, it's sort of strange, right? Here they made it in from the cold, only to perish on the relatively warm floor of your home. What's up with that? Are they committing bug suicide, or bugicide if you will, and just want you to know? I mean, really.  Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

You get the point. To say the conditions were spartan in my basement would be an understatement. No more Class A glass office buildings on K Street in Washington, D.C. No more power lunches downtown with other lawyers and business friends sniffing each other's business cards. No more being stalked by James Carville of the Clinton campaign near the Farragut West Metro stop. I swear, there was a two-month period in my life where, every time I turned around, he was right behind me. Startling, really. I can still feel his presence. But nope. I said goodbye to all of that, James included, and set up shop in a tiny, musty basement in my 1970s fixer-upper. Talk about keeping you humble.

At the time, I walked away from a law firm job that was paying me a salary of about $50,000 per year. By DC standards, this was modest. That said, it's far easier to start your own business when you only need to cover a $50,000 price tag as opposed to $100,000 or $130,000 like the salaries my friends at those big firms were making. In fact, if I had been making the big bucks at the time, I probably would never have ventured out, as I couldn't have taken the pay cut to do so. But at $50,000, well, that was not so bad. In short, with virtually no overhead like the premiere office space, I only needed to make about $1,000 per week to replace my salary. No problemo, I thought.

When I left I had two things going for me. First, the most prolific trademark attorney at the time was giving me all the litigation from his then-largest trademark filing practice. In short, he didn't want to get into litigation or go to court for his clients, so he gave all that work to me. And man, did this guy have the life. He lived on Miami Beach. He'd wake up, get a few hours of work done. Head to the beach. Have a nice lunch. Then walk back for some late afternoon work. Knocking off about 5, he'd then head to dinner and out to the clubs, dancing away his evenings with the lovely ladies of South Beach. And the next morning, he'd do it all over again. So why have the stress of litigation? He was only too happy to send it my way. And it was a lot. Again, if he ever reads this and did not hear it from me at the time, thank you! You helped me start my amazing journey.

Second, I had started to figure out how to generate my own business, contacting and retaining clients in the legal industry, when I was at my last law firm. New and innovative ways that no one had figured out. Again, you'll hear about those later in the book. But I've always fancied myself to be a bit of a tinkerer. Someone who just looks at something and says, how do we make it better? How do we accomplish this? I know no one else has done it. Doesn't mean we can't. So how? And then you do. That's how we innovate. Ask a question as to why something can't be improved and allow everything, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, to be placed on the table. And then you work towards implementing one of those solutions. It's simple once you get the hang of it. 

In any event, a marketing company called Blue Dog Design out of Chicago was my first major client. Their founder, Michelle, wrote me a retainer check that was about the size of half a year's salary from my then-current position to file lawsuits against multiple defendants throughout the country. Things just don't get any easier when you open a business, to have half a year's salary in the bank. 

With this big customer and huge referral source, I settled down in my musty basement and got to work. To match my salary at my billable rate of $200 per hour, I merely needed to make sure I had about 5 billable hours of work per week. Now, mind you, billable hours are the work attorneys do once they have a client, and are billing that client at their rate for services rendered. As any attorney who is a rainmaker will tell you, the devil is in the figuring out how to get more clients, the time it takes to retain them, and to keep those billable hours flowing.

Quick career tip for you fledgling attorneys out there. The fastest route to making partner at a law firm is to focus on bringing in your own clients and building a practice within your firm, not to focus on billing the most hours. Anyone can work on another person's client's work. Anyone can bill 2,500 hours a year. But build your own, portable, bank of business and you'll rocket to the front of the partnership line. Why? Because if you leave, your clients go with you! In short, when you turn into someone who is paying for yourself and others, who work for the clients that would leave with you if you left, you are far more valuable to the firm than just someone who works someone else's book of business. But again, I digress.

Needing to bill only about 5 hours per week to cover my former salary, I began spending vast amounts of time reading business books and studying how to make that better mousetrap. How to get better at attracting and retaining clients. How to build my practice from that dank, musty basement in Northern Virginia.

Coming full circle: during those initial years, I studied what the big firms were doing. I worked in silence. I created 350-page operations manual for how to run and easily execute a top caliber trademark law firm that, with the proper training, could be handled by anyone. I set a fair, flat rate for legal services and shamelessly marketed the same. I planned and worked in silence until the model was ready, then launched it on the world.

MAVERICK? DID YOUR PARENTS NOT LIKE YOU?

Where did it lead? How did it work? Well, remember all those big law firms that wouldn't hire me? Once the model was launched, it took off. Slowly at first, but over a few years, it gained steam. After two years, The Trademark Company would appear on many lists as one of the top trademark filers in the United States. The next year, as news of what we were doing spread, we climbed the list further. 

By 2013, we reached the pinnacle of our industry and were named the Top Trademark Law Firm in the United States by Intellectual Property Today magazine. And the best part: we did all of this while helping thousands of businesses get their start, and realize their own American Dream.

So how did we do it? We studied in silence what the industry leaders were doing for years. We learned how to develop systems that improved upon everything they were doing. We created massive value for the customer that no one else had created. We expanded the market for trademark legal services to a new consumer base. I became our industry's Bret Maverick. 

So does that give you a little better background? I asked the reporter, Adam Smith. He just stood there in silence. After a moment or two of flipping through his notes, he responded, You're Maverick. A few weeks later, his article was published, pinning me with the nickname and, years later, the title of this book. So, without further ado, I present to you what I've learned from building my own business and helping over 100,000 other businesses to get their start. 

I present to you: The Maverick Method: How to Win the Startup Game.

1

IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME?

Create a Product People Want. Price it Right.

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION, BUT IT IS A POSSIBILITY

Twenty percent of small businesses fail within the first year. Twenty percent! The statistics get even worse at the five-year mark. After five years, fifty percent of all new small businesses fail. And if you're lucky enough to make it to your tenth anniversary, congratulations! Because a whopping sixty-five percent of all new small businesses fail by that time. Sixty-five percent! 

That means, for anyone who picked up a copy of this book and is thinking about starting a business for the first time, twenty percent of your businesses will fail within the first five years. One out of five of you will leave the safety and security of a regular paycheck from someone else's business and, within a year or so, need to go crawling back to the companies you had abandoned. So, from the onset, don't burn those bridges!

Oh, and for another thirty percent of you, it gets worse. You'll have the illusion of success for a few years, until reality sets in and your business begins to fail before the five-year mark. And if you