Podcast E103 – Interview with David Sparks

February 15, 2016

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This week I talk to David Sparks about the legal aspects of running your WordPress business.

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Segment 1: In the News

Segment 2:   Interview with David Sparks

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Segment 3: Tool of the Week

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Adam: This is the Kitchen Sink WP Podcast: Episode 103. (music)

Why, hello there, this is Adam Silver, host of the Kitchen Sink WP podcast. Thanks for being here, let's get started. Upcoming events, I made a mistake last episode, I was a week off. I don't know what I was thinking. There were no word camps last weekend, to my knowledge, but there … No word camps this weekend, my mistake. There are no work camps this weekend, there are word camps next weekend, the week of February 20, 19th through 21.

They are WordCamp Norway, like I said, WordCamp Miami and WordCamp Prague. I am not going to be able to make any of those, I really wanted to go to Miami, it is a nice, large WordCamp, it is pretty awesome. I think there is like 700 people going, 800 people. I know a lot of people who will be there, but, nonetheless, I won't be able to be there, like I said. My father will be 85, my son will be 11, so I will be home for that. If you are in the area, there are still tickets, I believe, so check that out and go to either WordCamp Norway, WordCamp Miami or WordCamp Prague.

Segment one, in the news, moving right along here, there is a new WordPress IOS app, it was updated to version 5.9, that is the IOS app, not the actual WordPress version itself, so just the IOS app. Now there is no desktop required, you can actually create a new, dot-com site within the actual app, which is really cool. Another updated feature is that you can search and filter themes within that browser, so also very nice. If you are using the IOS app, check that out.

Also on the developer-esque type news things, the WP REST API version 2.0 beta twelve came out. I looked at this briefly and it is way over my head. No, it is interesting. It is actually way over my head to some extent. I am not going to lie, I am not a full blown developer, so the new beta 12 came out, if you are into the developer REST API arena, I will put a link into the show notes on that on workpress.org. It is on the make side of things, so check that out as well.

Alright, moving right along. Meat and potatoes, this week's show, my interview with David Sparks. Actually, before I do that, I want to talk about my sponsor for this week's show. This weeks show is hosted by A2 Hosting. Now, I am not alone when it comes to living and learning.

Truth be told, I went cheap way back in the day, like really cheap way back in the day, when Is started WordPress in looking for a host. I learned my lesson because I kept getting these emails “site down”, from my uptime monitor. Site down all the time. In the last six, nine, twelve months, on a daily basis.

I went ahead and switched. I recently moved Kitchen Sink WP to A2 Hosting and I have not gotten a single down email since. On top of that, the site loads wickedly fast. I expected it, I didn't know how much faster, so I did some tests.

Prior to me moving it over from a cheap web host, I was getting approximately 5.9 to 6 seconds load time. It is down to 2.8 seconds and that is not even using the custom A2 plugin that they have optimized to make it work. I didn't even put that on yet because I am still making some tweaks.

I will be doing these tweaks and doing some modifications to the site. I am working on a redesign and I will share what I find over the next couple of weeks as well. Thanks to A2 hosting for sponsoring and being wickedly awesome. Also, I had them … They went ahead and donated a year of hosted to a lucky listener, so you need to register for that. Go to kitchensinkwp.com/a2giveaway for the details and you can enter and we will pick that out in a month, so check that out. Again, kitchensinkwp.com/a2giveaway for the details and you can enter to win a year of hosting.

Now, onto my interview with David Sparks. David is an attorney, he is awesome. He is a co-host of MAC power users and I just really wanted to bring him on to talk about contracts and legalese for what we do here in the WordPress space because I see a lot of what is going on out there on Facebook and private groups I am a part of, so I thought it would be interesting to have him on the show. Take a listen to the interview and I will be back with the tip and tool of the week after that. Here you go.

Today I am joined by David Sparks. David Sparks is a hopeless geek, a podcaster and an author who writes about finding the best tools, hardware and workflows using Apple products to get work done. In his free time he is also a business lawyer. I love that, so welcome to the show David Sparks.

David: Thanks, it is a pleasure to be here.

Adam: I know you from Mac power users, you are one of the co-hosts of that show with Katie Floyd and, like I told you before, we have hit record. I have been listening for the past four or five months and a couple many years ago and I am a big Apple guy, big Mac guy and my audience knows that.

I didn't bring you on the show to talk about Apple products specifically, or really at all, I brought you on the show because what we talked about before. You are a practicing attorney.

David: Yeah.

Adam: I see a lot of … I have been viewing a lot of things on Facebook groups and other groups I am a part of about contracts in the solopreneur freelance WordPress development world. I am not a lawyer, although my father is, like I told you. He doesn't have the current knowledge of what we go through as freelance and entrepreneurs that you do know about so that is why I wanted to bring you on and ask you questions. You said yes and you would come on and answer some questions and get them by the actual legalese and have them done right.

David: Yeah, it is really tough because people working in software development, word development, WordPress, website stuff, you are in a very weird position. Whereas the computer industry has infantilized everybody except people on the inside and it is so difficult to understand this stuff that to very sophisticated business people and doctors and lawyers, all of these people out there who are very smart, have no idea what you guys do. As a result, you get granted the title of wizard with your job and the problem with peddling magic is that when it works it works and when it doesn't work it doesn't work and they don't have any clue why that happened.

It could be that somebody in the office downloaded some porn and infected the whole system which blew up your server and yet it is your fault because you are the wizard. It is a very difficult position to be in and I represent a lot of people who do this stuff and every one of them has at least one war story. Probably where something went wrong with the client and it was not their fault at all and yet the client threatened to sue them and all of these terrible things.

If you are in an industry where you very much need strong contracts, very proactive contracts, that protect yourself because not every client, but there will be some clients, where that language is going to save your bacon.

Adam: Right, the question I have for you … I have couple of questions, like I said, I want to be respectful of your time. First off, when should a soloprenuer freelancer have a relationship with an attorney? Before starting a business, immediately after, when they form an LLC, that kind of stuff? Should they do that kind of stuff? In your opinion, when should somebody … Obviously, not when it is too late, not when you are being sued, that is too late.

David:Yeah, definitely not then.

Adam: At one point in the business model is it time to say “You know what? I should know an attorney.”

David: I think the trick is, and this really depends on every circumstance, there are so many factors. The thing is when you start taking on contracts that are big enough that when something went wrong, it would cost you more than a month or two earnings to fix it. If you have something to go wrong and it takes you a month of income to fix it, you can probably survive that. If it takes you years of income to fix it, you are, I think the legal term is screwed.

You really want … Once you start getting into contracts that are of a decent size, you should get a relationship with somebody. Even just … You mentioned earlier do you do an LLC, that is really a question you should really talk to an attorney about because there are different business formats and an LLC and corporation have very different benefits and some of them are contrary. You should know this stuff before you just jump into it. You should do it right.

I just had a case where we were able to make the person behind the company individually liable because they set it up on Legal Zoom, I think, or somewhere and they didn't do it right. They didn't do the right filings so it didn't protect them. Whenever you start getting into those things, you should be looking into an attorney.

I also think whenever you start doing decent sized contracts, you should look into an attorney. Once you get that set up, then the relationship becomes very dormant. A lot of my clients will spend some time at the beginning of our relationship just kind of cleaning up the corporation, getting the right contract in place, then I might not hear from them for a year or two because they just trudge along with a good contract. You would rather much do that at the beginning than in the end.

Adam:In your mind, in your opinion, what is a decent sized contract? Is that a personal choice, $2,000, $5,000 and $10,000 and up?

David: Well, like I said, it depends on how much you can afford to lose.

Adam: Got it.

David: Frankly, when you think about it, one of the ways people come after developers and web guys is they don't just say “You screwed up and I paid you $5,000, so I want my $5,000 back.” They will say “You screwed up and as a result my website was down for two weeks and I lost $150,000 of revenue because of it and I want you to pay me that.” You want to … The contracts I write for my clients, a lot of the times we have, and this is something out there that you should talk to your lawyers about if you are doing this, it is called a “Limitation of Liability Clause”.

It is absolutely key for developers and web guys because you do not want that call about $150,000 in lost revenue. You want to say “No, look at my contract. It says the most I can possibly owe you is three months of income. Or three months of fees or $10,000”, or some number. You want to have a limitation of liability clause in your contract.

Adam:Actually, that was one of the questions that one of my colleagues sent in, wanting to know the importance of having E&O insurance, would that be in that category there?

David: Oh, yeah.

Adam: Okay.

David: Oh, yeah.

Adam: Back before I did web development work, my audience knows I was a professional photography work and did some videography work out of Colorado and I had E&O insurance because of that reason. I didn't want my camera to jam and not be able to shoot the event or the wedding and be sued “Hey, you messed up.” Or “You lost our images.” It was cheap too, is it still relatively inexpensive?

David: Well, it depends on what you do. Talk to a good insurance broker and they will get you some quotes.

Adam: Yeah.

David:It is not that much.

Adam: I think I paid for … My basic overall insurance and that, I think I paid $300 to $400 a year for a million dollar liability, that kind of thing.

David: Yeah.

Adam: Now we know it is important to have an attorney set up the company correctly as well. What is the difference, if you could explain, because I don't know what is the legally right way to do it. A retainer vs. deposit for work started,

David:Yeah, it depends. You can define those terms however you want.

Adam:Okay.

David:You are talking about when you get a new client and you get a deposit or a retainer?

Adam:Yeah.

David:Generally, the thought is the retainer is something that you bill against, so if you get a retainer, $5,000 and you are billing $100 an hour, you just do the math. If you finish the project before you use it all up, you return whatever is left.

Adam:Right.

David:Some people call it a deposit and it depends how the contract is written. Really, in most cases, you are billing against that amount. It is rare that a developer can say “Yeah, if you just want my time, you are going to give me a $1000 to get in the door.” If you are really high end and in demand, I guess you can maybe get away with that, but it is not very often.

Adam:Right, okay. It kind come comes back then … It circles back around then … I know retainers … Lawyers work off of retainers, “Here is a deposit to start the work”. My father does the same thing, he has been a lawyer for 45 years, like I mentioned earlier, he gets a retainer before he does anything because he doesn't want to chase money down the line. He can't spend his time and then not get paid for it. Can a deposit be legally … Can they both refundable? Can someone say “Oh, I gave you a deposit, but I want to cancel the job”?

David:Well, you should have a contract when you get a deposit, or a retainer, and that is what governs it. You can write clauses into the contract that say “Okay, you are going to give us a $5,000 retainer and we are going to bill against if you terminate us before we use up half of it. We keep $2,500 as a termination fee.” All this stuff is negotiable.

One of the nice things is you are in a commercial relationship, as opposed to a consumer relationship. Businesses is doing businesses where the other is commercial and the courts stay out of the way so if you guys make an agreement that you get to keep a certain amount, then you get to keep a certain amount, but it is up to you to have done that in advance. If you don't have any agreement to the contrary, you are going to have to return whatever you didn't use.

Adam: Right, yeah. That is the ethical, not just legal, it is also the ethical thing to do.

David: Yeah, exactly.

Adam: Some people aren't. It is unfortunate, some … In every industry you are always going to have people like “Oh, we did more work”, and they didn't.

David: Well, I want to talk a minute about getting paid because, for me, that is really important for you guys. It is tough if you don't get paid, especially with the amounts of these jobs. I don't know for certain, but I would guess that there is very few people doing WordPress development jobs that are like north of $100,000. Most of them are probably under that.

Adam: There is about, I would say, half a dozen, maybe 10, companies that do the enterprise level work in the industry.

David: Yeah, so for a lot of indies out there, you are doing job that might be a $5,000 job or a $20,000 job and if they stiff you and you don't get paid, then you got to go talk to a lawyer for sure. The problem with that is lawyers are expensive and litigation is like a bonfire of $100 bills. I don't know how to put it.

I was a litigator for many, many years and everything in it is super expensive, so the trick is you don't want to have to go to courts to get paid. Then you go and you sue them, and let's say you win, if they don't have the money, you still don't get paid. You want to put as many teeth as possible in your contract to avoid that. If you got a contract, and you should have one, you need to have clauses in there like, an attorney fee clause, “If you don't pay me and I sue you, you have to pay my attorney fees”, and that is a huge bludgeon.

If I write a letter on behalf of a client to a company that doesn't pay my developer client, I say “Look, you haven't paid and there is an easy way and a hard way. You can either pay now and you owe $7,000. Or you can pay later and my fees and you are going to owe $27,000. What do you want to do.” You put a clause like that in there and it give you teeth.

Another thing you do is you put a clause in there that says interest, that allows for interest. Not only if they don't pay you and your attorney fees, you are going to collect interest on the money. You should also put a clause in there, especially if you are working outside of your home base, a lot of developers work all over the place, is to put local jurisdiction. Make them have to come to court where you live.

Adam: Where you live, right.

David: Rather than you having to go across the country to sue them.

Adam: Okay.

David: Those are another three things. Put it on your list, talk to your lawyer and get that in your contract. Those three things. If you take one thing out of this whole podcast and you put those three things in, you are in better shape than you were.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. It makes total sense, it really does. You don't want to have to use a contract, but you need to have it there just in case.

David: You are going to have a crazy guy at some point.

Adam: Of course. I have had one. One in 15 or 20 years. I shot a wedding back in my photography days and they didn't like the end result. My contract says, Creative Control was my company name, and they owned the footage and, long story short, they had no case because I had a decent contract.

David: Another common issue for developers is that customers, in addition to thinking of wizards, they also have no idea of what it is that they want. You will go in with mockups and wire frames and they will say “Oh, yeah. I love it” and they will sign the bottom of it and you will spend hours and hours creating it. They will say “Oh, you know what? I don't really like that, I want to do it differently”, and in their mind differently will take you five minutes when actually it would take you five days.

Adam: Right.

David: You need to document the whole process. You need to write into the contract about extra work and changeovers. You just want to have the ability, if they change their mind, you can point to the contract and say. “That is fine and dandy, but you are paying me for what I have done before and you are also going to pay me for the new stuff I am going to do.”

Adam: Right. Actually, that leads to the next question I had of one of my colleague, Alex, asked. Could it make sense, or would it make sense, to dictate how the work is used? For example, you are going to build a website, in this case to sell goods, but then they take the site and use it to a platform that makes a lot more money, using the same functionality.

I guess in this case you are pricing it to do this job and then the person who hired you is going to use it to something else and make some more, but you might have priced it higher because they are going to make some more. Does that make sense?

David: Yeah, sure. If someone reverse engineers your website, or they turn it into a cookie cutter …

Adam:Right.

David:  you can limit it. That gets complicated as possible and I say the way we usually do it is I try to attach intellectual property to the design and say “We are going to give you a license to use the design and you can use it for this website, but none other.”  That gets complicated and it kind of … I wouldn't do that with every case.

Adam: Right.

David: To a certain extent, you are being paid to deliver a website and if they want to go do something else to it, that is fine. We definitely would want to put in there that if you use it for some other purpose, that we are not going to be liable for whatever goes wrong with it.

Adam: Right.

David: You can … If you are concerned about that, there is a way to address it, but it is way more complicated than we can cover here today.

Adam: Of course. This one came up a lot and, literally, I asked a whole bunch of people. There is a lot of same themes and one of the themes is that WordPress is Open Source and “free”, and some companies want to own the code, if they will, they prefer, in-house, to own the code.

I remember actually … I know of a story where, I think, Disney was hiring or looking at one of the enterprise companies to build a site, but they wanted to own the code, but the site was going to be in WordPress. You can't own the code … There is that conflict of knowledge because that WordPress part is free, but some of the functions are built on top of WordPress. Can it be parted out, in theory, contractually?

David: It is difficult. WordPress is a mess, as you guys know. I don't mean as a development platform, it is just as the rights are concerned.

Adam: Right.

David: Generally, I recommend that you be really upfront with them that this is based on an Open Source platform and that nobody owns it. I would say that we can own the design that we do, if you are doing custom design work.

Adam: Yeah.

David: That that is our intellectual property.

Adam:  Okay, and then lastly …

David: It is a simplistic answer to a complex question.

Adam: It is. I think … The people I asked about, I told them I was interviewing an attorney, they were like “Oh, great!” Obviously, it is going to be case dependent each time.

David: Yeah. In fact, I am supposed to say something like “You need to talk to a lawyer, don't rely on everything I say here. Blah, blah, blah. Don't come sue me.” A lot of it is common sense stuff, but you should talk to a lawyer. If you are in this business, you should have somebody at your back.

Adam: On that same topic, on the open source and the proprietary issues. I guess, legally, or how to word it? Legally, if the themes are in the repositories, the WordPress repository, if I go out and pick a theme that does something with Gravity Forms, or if I buy Gravity Forms, I can re-brand it as my own and start selling it myself. I can put it somewhere else.

It has happened, people have tried this. They buy it, change the name, change it from WP something to something WP and then they sell it for half the price. Is there a legal recourse in that?

David: Yeah. Well, the people who own that, that you bought it from, probably have license that you signed when you bought it and you are probably violating that license at that point.

Adam: Even though … Yeah, I guess the licensing there might be purchasing, or using it in that case, is something to do with some of the art and the graphics and some of the interactivity on the interface.

David: Yeah, I would have to look at the license to tell you that. I would bet you a nickel that if you went and read when you purchase those forms, that you are agreeing that you will not resell them.

Adam: Right, interesting. You are right, it is a tough place we are all in these days and I think the biggest, in my opinion, in my experience honestly, people are afraid … Like you are afraid to go to the dentist and I think people are afraid of even reaching out and talking to a lawyer in a proactive way.

David: It is hard because lawyers … I left my firm last year and went solo and part of the reason was everything in the law business is around the billable hour. When I first started 23 years ago, they said “Well, if you think about the case when you are in the shower, you should bill for it.” I am thinking “What a crock.”

Honestly, it is hard, but there are good lawyers out there. I would recommend, and this is my personal bias, but I will share it anyway. I think small developers are better suited by smaller lawyers. That if you go to big law firms, you are just going to become …

Adam: A number.

David: Grist for the mill, that some young attorney is going to get assigned your case and that guy is just worried about hitting his billable hours and he is going to find ways to charge you and not give you very good service. Find someone solo or a small firm, find someone with experience in it.

A lot of the work I do, and I am not here trying to pimp myself, but the way I do it is I charge flat fees for most of my development representation stuff. The reason it do that is because I found over the years when people pay you by the hour and you talk to them on the phone, they are always looking at their watch and they are not telling you what their real problem and their hangup is.

I want you to feel comfortable talking to me, so I will tell people “For X dollars I will make your contract for you”, once I kind of have an idea of what it is and then everybody knows going in what it is going to cost. Find a lawyer like that.

Adam: Same thing comes to fruition, and I have said this many times on my own show, about value pricing vs. hourly. It is the same thing in web development. Sure, we all kind of think about how long will this take, what parts are going to get by whom, but you say “this is going to cost you $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 period” and just work off of that vs. trying to figure out per hour because, again, same thing. I think developers do the exact same thing. “Am I thinking about it, am I doing a mockup right now, do I charge for this piece, do I install a plugin and charge them for the plugin?”

David: There are lawyers like me out there and, no matter where you are at, I am sure you can find them. You might have to sniff around a little bit, but they are out there and they can make the process collaborative as opposed to a root canal.

Adam: Correct.

David: It is great, I feel like I am in there with my clients. I love representing these small guys, David vs. Goliath, I kind of get off on it, so my clients make contracts with very large, well known companies and it is good because they are aware … I kind of educate them as we go through the process together and, after a while, they become very adept at this as well. I have met a lot dumb lawyers, I haven't met very many dumb computer programmers. That is just an observation.

Adam: Interesting, that is the quote of the show right there.

David: Yeah.

Adam: Lastly, when you say you work on a, last question for you, that you work on a flat fee and I think this makes it easier from your perspective as an attorney to say “Okay, this contract is done.” How do you say, in a year … If I have you do a contract for me and I come back in six months or a year and I have you do an update or some modifications, is that a new flat fee to do that?

David: Yeah, you are going to have to pay me again. It just depends, honestly. I had a client who changed their company name, so I just fixed it for them.

Adam:Okay.

David: If you come back and say “Oh, I got this new issue and I need to you address it.”, We will figure it out.

Adam: The reason I asked that question is someone has asked me, at one point, “What is the best way to contractually define a completion of, let's say, a web project.” When do you get paid vs. the work being done?

David: That should be in your contract and there should be a hand-off date where you say “Here are the keys, it is now yours.”

Adam: Right, if you want that is separate.

David: That, to me, that … The additional maintenance a year later where they come back and say “Hey, I need you to do this and this.”, that should be obvious that you are not doing that for free. To me, the bigger concern is just the keeping track of plugin maintenance, software updates. Unless you are getting paid to do that, you should not be on the hook for every website you ever developed.

If a plugin goes bad that you have to go back to fifty different companies and say “Okay, we are going to do this now”, or you shouldn't have to do that for free, in my opinion, so you should address that in your contract. “If I hand it off to you and you have a guy that is taking care of it, then that is his job. If you want me to continue to maintain it, you are going to pay me X dollars a month”, or some financial gain for you to have to worry about that.

Adam: Right, and to have then sign off of that specific line item as well.

David: Yeah.

Adam: Absolutely, I do that. A lot of people, colleagues of mine, we do that, but a lot of times we feel like “Oh, I will just take care of it, it is a quick little thing”, but the quick little thing is a can of worms sometimes.

David: It doesn't scale.

Adam: Right.

David: A quick little thing is fine with one website, but if you do it and you have 200 websites, you just blew your whole week.

Adam: Right, absolutely. Couldn't agree …

David: You got to put bread on the table, you can't do everything, so you just have to plan for it. I think most … We all know that there is good customers and bad customers and I think one of the goals that you should have is to attract good customers and to repel bad customers, because one bad customer, no matter how much money they pay you, is not worth it. I think you put in there, from the beginning … I am going to give you one of my magic secrets of being a lawyer, right now.

Adam: Awesome.

David: It took me 20 years to learn this. Everybody, you are getting 20 years of experience. When you are in business, the most important thing to remember when talking about contracts and business relationships is the “F” word. I am talking about fairness.

Adam: (laughs)

David: That is a well practiced delivery right there.

Adam: Yes.

David: Really, you want to be fair to your customers, but you also want customers to be fair to you and most good customers want to be fair to you. When you are talking about the contract you say “Look, I want to give you an awesome website. I need to get paid for that because I am going to be putting my heart and soul into it. Also, I want to, if you would like me to, I want to continue to maintain it for you, but I can't do that for free, that wouldn't be fair to me, because it is going to take a lot of my time.” Like I wouldn't ask you to make your widgets for me for free for the next five years.

Adam: Right.

David: If you use the fairness, if you just slide the fairness word into the conversation, then, most often, people will be like “Okay, that makes sense.” It just works, it is like magic.

Adam: Interesting.

David:  If you are in a … If the fairness word does not apply to what you are asking, then you will know, with your own kind of moral compass, that maybe you got a problem, but think about the “F” word as you are getting into contractual relationship. If both people make money, if both people profit from the relationship, then it is going to be a good relationship, they are going refer other friends to you, you are going to be happy with the work you are doing and you are going to be getting paid fairly. As dumb as that sounds, that really is a … It should be a central point around which you think about all of these issues.

Adam: Right.

David: You don't want a contract that is going to be unfair.

Adam: Right, it does nothing for anybody in that case.

David: Yeah, I have had clients ask me to do that before. They write a contract that is just completely biased in their favor and it can be done. It is usually not the consultant who wants it, it is usually the people you are dealing with who have some in-house counsel that want to write a contract that is going to poop all over the consultant.

Adam: Right.

David: The problem is nobody is going to be happy. That relationship is not going to end well. Ever.

Adam: Yeah, it is a lot to take in, it is a lot to deal with and it is a part of running a business and I think a lot of developers forget that aspect of it.

David:  Can I … Let me mention one more thing about that because a lot of times you are going to be going into big companies and they are going to be throwing a contract at you. Be careful of what I call the “Dummy Contract.” A lot of companies have these contracts and if you read it and it says “If anything goes wrong, you are entirely responsible and you have to pay millions of dollars to us and you have to pay our lawyers and you owe us your soul for the next 30 years.”

It just goes on and on and on and I call them the Dummy Contracts because they just expect dummies to just sign them. If you push back on those contracts, often you will find that they will immediately capitulate, because even they know that the terms are ridiculous, but they will say “Well, we tried.”

Adam: Yeah.

David:Frankly, probably four out of five or nine out of ten people who get that contract are going to be so happy that they got work that they are just going to sign it anyway and not even know how much trouble they are in.

Adam: Yeah, it happened … We all make those mistakes. You start off, you are like you want the work, you want the work and that is when people, developers, give away work for free or so cheap that it kind of brings down an industry. It is a whole separate conversation.

David: Yeah, but when you push back on a contract, when you bring a professional contract to the table, I think, to a certain degree, it increases your value because it shows that you are sophisticated and not a chump.

Adam: Yeah. Well, I do appreciate your time. I believe my audience will appreciate it as well. Very, very, very nice of you to take the time out of your Saturday morning to talk to us. Where could people … Not to … I didn't bring you on … If you want to say where you are located and if you are looking to find …

David: Sure.

Adam: You are more than welcome to, I am okay with that. Where can people follow you online, either the legal side of your life or even if they are interested in Macintosh stuff?

David:  The nerd side of my life is at MacSparky.com. I write books and I do podcasts and I am just a nerd like you guys. I love the stuff. The legal side is sparksesq.com and I am a business attorney in California. I do have clients out of state, it just kind of depends on the things. I also know attorneys out of state, so I guess if you are really looking for somebody wherever you are at, give me a call and we can talk.

Adam: Awesome.

David: My point here isn't to hire me is that you should definitely get somebody at your back.

Adam: Absolutely.

David: Those people you are dealing with, they will often have legions of people at their back.

Adam: Right. It is not just any attorney, it is really going to be an attorney who knows what is going on in the current climate, what we deal with. Truth be told, I talked to my dad this morning, mentioning that I am speaking to you from my podcast, and my dad can't do what you can do. He just doesn't have the knowledge base.

David: Sure, there is lots of different kinds of lawyers. There is divorce attorneys, DUI attorneys, it just depends what you do, but find a good business attorney. Someone who has got a fee structure that you understand. Even if you have taken some notes during the show, talk about some of the principles I talked about here so that they can help you grab something.

Adam: Right, right. Again, Mr. David Sparks, thank you for your time. I do appreciate it and that is it. Thanks.

David: Thanks a lot, my pleasure being on here.

Adam: Well, that was an awesome interview with David Sparks. We had talked a little bit before and another 10, 15 minutes afterwards. I really do appreciate his time. Very, very generous of him. If you are in the Southern California area, or even anywhere, like he said, reach out. He didn't want to sell his services and I am not here to necessarily pitch for him, but he is a nice guy. I would trust him in a heartbeat and I very well may have him review one of my contracts in the near future if I need that. Check him out. Thanks again, Mr. David Sparks, and cool. Just let me know if you have any feedback on that.

Okay, segment three, tip and tool of the week. This week I want to mention namechk.com. It is N-A-M-E-C-H-K.com and what this lets you do is let's you see what is available for a domain. I have some ideas all the time for domains and it lets you put in an idea for a name and it lets you see what is around for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, all the different social media areas what might be around and might be available. Just a central place to check that out.

It is N-A-M-E-C-H-K.com, it is free and check it out. Okay, that is that. Thanks for listening this week, if you have any questions, send them via email at adam@kitchensinkwp.com or use the speech button function of the website. Thanks for listening and go out and do some awesome things at WordPress this week and we will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.
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