Hey, thanks for tuning in to another Partner Spotlight interview at OutsourceSchool.
My name is Connor Gillivan. I’m the CMO and an Owner of Outsource School.
We’re on a mission to help 10,000+ business owners master hiring virtual assistants and freelancers, and industry partnerships is a big way that we’re able to make it happen.
We’re all about creating win-win partnerships where we are able to grow with other companies in the eCommerce, agency, SAAS, and online space.
In this exclusive interview, we interview Dan X. Nguyen from CANEI™ Law.
Dan is a graduate with a Juris Doctor, and Bachelor’s of Arts in Business Administration, Finance. He is an Orange County Native, with a passion for developing and executing strategies to starting, protecting, and scale your business.
He’s had 100s of LLCs and corporations formed, 70+ trademark applications filed, advised 5+ franchise systems, multiple time best selling author, 150+ law firm internet reviews. His next goal is to get 1000+ parent entrepreneurs to hire their own kids for tax write offs, legacy creation, and and financial literacy education.
In his free time, he loves to golf, camp, and spend time with family and friends. He specializes in brand protection, business entity structuring, deal structuring, and marketing.
We hope that you enjoy the interview and that it brings value to you as an agency business owner.
Connor: Hey Dan, thanks for taking the time to chat with us here. We love getting to know our partners better so that our community can benefit from what our partners are offering and doing in the industry. To get started, can you give us a high level overview of CANEI™Law and how it got started?
Dan: I opened my own law practice in 2007 and I’ve always wanted to work with business owners and entrepreneurs. When I had a chance to open my own law firm, we focused on doing business law and eventually became an award winning law firm serving businesses and business owners in the areas of new company formation, trademarks, franchising, and virtual in-house attorney membership program. We are based out of Orange County, California, and have clients all over the world, from new consulting startups to ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club Award Winners. I personally have been practicing law since 2005 and love working with business owners and entrepreneurs.
Connor: Love that! Can you dive a bit more into how you help entrepreneurs to start, protect and scale their businesses? I’m sure our audience would love to know exactly what problems you could solve for them.
Dan: We help entrepreneurs pick the right type of business entity (start), help them maintain their entities, prepare and review the right contracts, secure their intellectual property (protect), and guide them through expansion through purchasing another business or using the franchise model (scaling). We also help them get connected resources where we think it would help them achieve every one of these goals. For instance, one of my clients was looking to bring on their first employee, and in California, one wrong move can cost you a lot of money. So I made sure they connected with a colleague of mine that focuses on employment law to help them navigate their first hire.
Connor:: Jumping off of that…if there was one problem you’d say that CANEI™ Law solves best for your clients, what would it be? Why?
Dan: I think our ability to explain complex legal ideas into plain English terms really helps the client understand some of the work we do for them. Sometimes businesses think that legal fees and advice is just a money pit with no return on investment, but if we can ELI5 (“Explain Like I’m 5”) that will help provide some understanding why certain things are important and they way they are.
Connor: As the company continues to grow over the next year, what are your plans for expansion? Any new products or offerings or enhancements to your current products?
Dan: We are looking to bring on another attorney or support staff this year. In addition, we just re-launched our Virtual In-House Attorney membership program for business owners and entrepreneurs that want that on-going legal support. Much like accounts that provide fractional CFO services, our Virtual In-House Attorney Membership program provides on-going support to clients that desire to have regular access to an attorney without worrying about getting billed by the hour.
Connor: And how specifically would you say that CANEI™ Law and your team is different from other similar businesses in the industry?
Dan: At the risk of sounding too cliche, we try to provide a holistic approach in advising our clients. This means we don’t only provide legal advice and services, but as entrepreneurs ourselves we try to share non-legal resources that would help our clients grow their business. Additionally, we work primarily on a flat fee basis so the client doesn’t have to worry so much about overbilling, and we do a lot of education through our YouTube channel and we have received almost 200 five star reviews on Google.
Connor: What’s your outsourcing story? We find that everyone has a different experience when outsourcing and hiring online. What is your first memory that comes to mind?
Dan: I bought a package of hours from a virtual assistant agency many years ago, but honestly I didn’t know how to properly manage them and delegate tasks. I hired another one several years after that, but it was when I signed up for Outsource School where I really learned how to hire and manage VA. I now have five VAs that regularly work with us.
Connor: Love it! Talking more about outsourcing, what advice would you give to yourself if you were just about to start outsourcing and hiring online?
Dan: Figure out what your hourly value is and learn how to delegate early on in your business. You’ll find out that you’ll make more money as you offload some tasks to your VA and you can focus on revenue producing activities. Get out of the mindset of “it will be faster if I just do this, rather than explaining the task to them.”
Connor: How about this one…how do you communicate with the people you hire online? What’s your best practices there and how has it changed over time?
Dan: For real time communication we use Slack. It’s so much more comprehensive than other chat programs like Skype and WhatsApp, and there are a lot of software integrations to make things easier if you use different types of software. Other must haves are screenshot software and desktop video recording, so that you can give feedback to your team easily and effortlessly. We use Markup Hero and Berrycast as our daily tools. Just understand that that real time communication is somewhere in between walking down the hall to your teammate and sending an email. Don’t always expect a response right away because they could be focused on something else. If you need answers right away, then consider setting up an Urgent channel for immediate needs.
Connor: Finally, this is one that I think our community will love, who’s been your best online hire? What do they do for you? Why are they your best hire? Tell us all about them and that story!
Dan: I think both of my administrative assistants have been my best hires; they keep things running smoothly, including filtering out emails, booking my appointments, collecting payment.
Connor: As we close this out, I just have one more question. Where is the best place to find and follow you and the company online? Also, if you have one, is there any special offer that you’ll be offering to the community today?
Dan: You can search Legal Tips For Smart Entrepreneurs on Youtube where I have over 200 videos. I’m also on LinkedIn where you can search for “Dan X. Nguyen, Esq.”
