Navigating the World of Trademarks with Elizabeth Henson

Hello all and welcome back to this episode of the Sugar Show. I absolutely love doing this podcast and mostly because I get to meet the coolest humans. Now. I introduced you to Joey Vitale back in the day. We've had him on a couple of times to educate you about trademarks and being legally strong in your business. He started indie law quite a few years ago and has really reached out his hand with his team to help us to understand exactly how to just be legally fit and legally smart in our sugar business and our skincare business if you're an esthetician or a cosmetologist listening to this. So in this episode I actually got to meet Elizabeth Henson. She is the chief marketing officer at Indie Law and her job is to help build brand awareness around trademarks and she supports Indie Law in being the go-to firm for trademarks. But really, what you're gonna learn today is how strong you need to be before and after the trademarks process, because it is so important for us to understand how to get a name and then what do you do when somebody copycats that name? That's what this episode is all about and I cannot wait for you to meet Liz. Welcome to this sugar show. I'm Shannon O'Brien, body sugaring expert and licensed esthetician who's taken my own skincare business from zero to multiple six figures and has helped over 3,000 students learn how to do the same. Now let me tell you it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the time, budget and knowledge needed to grow my small business as a body sugaring pro. If we were to press rewind, you'd see the many failed attempts and lessons learned that have helped me build the profitable business that I have today, one that runs on its own and gives me the lifestyle and freedom that I only used to dream of. I created the sugar show to hand you my secrets and give you the simple, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. So if you're a cosmetologist or esthetician or wax professional who's looking to fill your books, make more money in your business and enjoy greater balance between your work and home life, you are in the right place. Let's dive in. ["the Last Song of the Year"]. Ms Liz, it is so good to have you on the show. Thank you for coming.

Hi Shannon, I'm so excited to be here. Joey has said such wonderful things about you.

I love me some, joey, and, as they know, they can always listen to our previous episodes of Joey and those are all inside the show and I am glad to have your fresh face. Not that we don't love Joey, but I'm glad to have your fresh face because it's always fun. I love his team. He has built such a awesome, dynamic group of boss babes that have created that make up his team. So you are officially the CMO of Indy Law. Yes.

Yes, yes, CMO, head of growth, whatever you wanna call me with that day.

And the key is you're really just trying to spread the word right, like let's get the right message out there, so people are learning the right way. And that's what I absolutely love about Joey's training is hey guys, let's make sure that we learn the right way, how to do this, and not what Google tells us or not what we heard from a friend, but really from people that know, and so that's why we always have you on the podcast. We love it.

Yeah, and I love how Joey talks about playing offense and not defense, right, like we're here to protect our brand so that we can sleep better at night, not necessarily to go after everybody else, right?

Yeah, I mean, that's what we don't wanna do. That right. We also need to protect ourselves and make sure that we're doing good business and to be legit in this world. So I brought Ms Liz on today to talk about picking a legit name and not being a copycat. And that's huge in our industry, liz, as you and I were talking before the show, because there's so many sweet names as it relates to doing sugar and so many smooth names and radiant names, and all of that with an esthetician. You have an esthetician right.

Yes, and I love her. Shout out to Natalie I'll have to send her this episode, but I have been with her for gosh probably five, six years now. Yes, I love it, your face lady. You called it, I love it. I call her my face lady. Anybody that compliments me on my skin or my brows, I'm like well, I have a face lady and she's wonderful. She's responsible for this. I mean, I wish I had like a before and after, because I actually look better and younger even though it's six years later. But I have pretty intense rosacea, I have tantalisia, I have all the things, and I just didn't have to care for my skin. And now that I have her, every time I go see her, she's like oh my God, oh my God, because I do what she tells me to do. I'm like Natalie. What do I need to do? I'm running a race this weekend. It's going to be cold. I'm a snob about my skin. What do I do?

I love that. Everyone needs a good face lady. Everyone needs a good sugar babe.

Yes, and we use the sugar wax, so I know exactly what you're talking about.

I love it. You are sugaring. That's so great. So I have told this story. When Joey and I talked about it and I'll just refresh for the audience about how my client started calling me the sugar mama. And we have just been. I've just been the sugar mama for a long time and when Joey and I met I was like dude, I think I probably should trademark this thing. This was like 14 years ago or something crazy, like I think I should probably trademark this thing because it's a pretty great name, right. And so I did. And I am the sugar mama as it relates to all things education and the cosmetology world, and so that's who I am and what I do. And there have been lots of copycats out there and I want to prevent this for our audience from happening, because what happens is they get all excited, they learn how to sugar or they learn how to do skincare and they're really excited to create this name and they call it the sweet peach or they call it the smooth kitty or they call it whatever. And usually what happens and I know you probably heard this what happens is y'all get a name. You've usually had cocktails with your friends and you're like I'm gonna call myself, I'm gonna say sweet peach, I'm sure it's out there Picking that name out of my head. And then you go immediately to go daddy and look and see if the domain is available. And then they say, oh well, sweetpeachcom isn't available, but the sweet peach, is that available? Or the underscore sweet peach? And they start going through these names and very quickly realize like, oh wait, a lot of these names are already taken. But what they're not realizing is that you can't just put the in front of sweet peach and think that you can have that name just because the domain is available. What are you kind of seeing in this copycat space? Like just kind of help, my help, my peeps, with any advice that you have?

Yeah, so first and foremost is when we're going off on our own and we're starting our business, we wanna stand out. So, as cute and fun as the name might be, if you do a search and definitely start on Google, don't just start on godaddycom, but start on Google and Google this name that you're thinking of and see what comes up. Because if you are gonna be a needle in a haystack, you don't want that name anyways. You wanna really create something that helps you stand out in your market. So I actually had somebody copycat my podcast at one point and I was like, oh, I'm sure it's not intentional, they probably just didn't know. But like even the intro had some of the exact same pieces of my tagline. But at the end of the day I was like it's like they didn't even do a Google search, like if you Google my podcast the messy success podcast like it is no secret that I exist, like it is out there. So they had to have like either not done a Google search or not cared, or whatever it may be, I don't know. But at the end of the day I did this huge like sigh of relief because I had trademarked my podcast name and I was just had this moment of like thank goodness that I did that, cause I kind of just got my trademark. It felt like the next step. I knew everyone was complimenting me on my name, so I had something good going and I never really thought like I would have to take advantage of the fact that I did trademark it, and I was so freaking thankful that I did, because it wasn't so much about ew I don't want her using it it was more about I don't want anybody in this world to tell me that I need to change the name of my podcast, and that's what it. That's the relief that it gave me was I own this and nobody can tell me that I can't use it, and that's what was so empowering that and it's really confusing.

Yeah, if I said, oh, I heard about this messy success podcast and there's more than one, yes, it's confusing and it's not fair to the original owner and, to be honest, like you said, you don't want that person's name anyway. So I really don't understand when people will like, copy my name and it's like it's a great name, I totally get it, but why would you copy it if I'm all over the place, I'm speaking with it, I have podcasts about it, I have training, you know training programs about it. Like, why would you want to use the same name? It's a little bit embarrassing for them, but so so what happens then? So this other group started this podcast. Yeah, talk to me about like. First of all, you're like, oh shoot, there's another messy success. Did you kind of panic? A little bit Like, oh shoot, am I gonna have to take my down? I was just so surprised.

Yes, I was just so surprised Like I just never thought I knew someone could go out there and use the phrase messy success Like that I figured was very likely. I'm actually in the process of trading that without the word podcast, but I had trademarked the messy success podcast. So I was like this is a podcast, they cannot do this. And so I reached out to Joey's, the fulfillment team, right Like my pals, and I was like look, I said I'm not like angry, I don't wanna be nasty, but I do say all the time, go to iTunes and search the messy success podcast. Like that is kind of how I tell people how to find me. So the last thing I want is for them to kind of see more than one and be like wait a minute. Like you said, I don't want them to be confused. So they helped me craft up a very, you know, kind and more informal cease and desist, because I really didn't want to go about it and just be, like you know, rude or demanding. Because I'm also a business coach, I wanna empower other people to do their own thing. Absolutely. I do think, like you know, competition isn't a real thing and I believe in community over competition. So I wanted to embody those characteristics but at the same time, you know, do my brand the justice that it deserves and, like, take care of it.

Yeah, it's a business thing, it's not a personal. Gee, we don't like this other person. They might be very lovely in their podcast concept, might be very lovely in their intention, might not have been bad, but at the end of the day it's business. And so you were able to write an informal kind of like hey, what was the response you got from that other person?

So their attorney actually responded and I kind of just left it after that because I was like, look, I just want them to know that I own this and I'm not gonna like be all crazy and like make them delete everything. But I think they kind of transitioned into like a blog presence versus a podcast presence and they just didn't stick around. I mean, a lot of people start a podcast and they don't realize how much work it is. I think they did like six episodes. So at the end of the day, like I'm just not worried, I'm not threatened, I don't feel anything about it, but I did want to make sure that like hey, like I exist, I own this name and you're kind of using it.

Yeah, yeah. But so in your time spent with Joey, what are you hearing? Because if you get the letter that says you're using the name that the other person has trademarked yes, sometimes you've gotten everything put together from a domain name that says, like the underscore messy, underscore success, underscore podcast, like well, that's not the same, but it is. It is. Yeah, it cannot be any sort of likeness to your name. I found out that you can't even spell the name Sugar Mama, so I'm M-A-M-A. You can't even spell it M-O-M-A or M-O-M-M-A without it keeping back from the trademark office, which I thought was interesting. You can't call yourself a Sugar Mama. You can't call yourself, I don't know, the Sugar Mama's, because it's just still really too confusing and they'll kick it back.

Yes, especially when it's in the same classification, because I'm sure there are Sugar Mama bakeries out there, but they're not in the same classification as you, so it's not really an issue. Yes, yes, absolutely.

So are you? What happens if the other party says too bad, we're using it. I don't care what you say.

Yeah, that's when you think you're lucky stars, that you have an attorney.

Yeah, you want to avoid that, right Like you really don't want to have a fight with this person, you know, and that's why you have an attorney and they can hold their feet to the flame. It's so funny because estheticians, we want love, peace, harmony. We don't want it to be messy, as you would say. We want everyone to be, you know, prosperous and to really do well in their business. But you can't use my name in the meantime.

Yeah, and you don't want to, because you want everyone to stand out individually and to have something that makes them unique and have their name, you know, mean something that's unique and special to them. So like, at the end of the day, it's like kind of they're only hurting themselves, you know, if they copycat, if they don't go out on their own to be innovative and creative. They're only hurting themselves because they're just going to blend in even more.

So there is. We didn't talk about this before, but I think you've probably heard. There's a new way to search trademarks and it's no longer that archaic way, right? They have a whole new system now. Talk about that.

Yeah, so Joey is actually doing some trainings on this right now. He did his first training on it last Friday, just to kind of show people how to use this new search engine that they're creating, and then he's doing another one next Friday. So I don't know if that's something he'll continue to do. I think the official change is getting rolled out, like at the end of the month, or more parts to the change, I don't know, because you know I'm on the marketing side so I'm not super deep in the weeds of the the searching. But I do know that he's been providing some really good resources and tools on like how to use that, because it is going to be different and you're going to see a lot more results than you did before.

Okay good, because before it was like archaic the way they did it. It was just like you had to use plus and and and star after each word. And you know I mean I took a whole class on it with Joey. It's thank God he has his classes, because he really made it so much easier and less waste of my time. So if you haven't already taken this class, we're going to link that to show notes, because legit was like the way that I'm able to do a trademark I could do another trademark with by using those same same skills as well.

So it's a really really great class to take, yeah, and he really breaks it down and makes it so simple and I love that he talks about, like what kind of entrepreneur do you want to be? Do you want to be the duct tape entrepreneur that's always kind of winging it, or do you want to be like the more legit CEO and business owner? And I know that really resonated with me because I always know that when I take myself seriously on the outside, I'm going to take myself seriously on the inside. If I'm getting my business license, if I'm getting my trademarks, if I'm getting my contracts in place, I'm that much more confident, you know, going out and facing the world.

Yeah for sure. So you also have quite a treasure chest of materials and I'm hoping to provide some to my audience. But talk about, like, what are the things that people should really start in their toolbox as it relates to kind of legal forms. Like there's just so much to know and I feel like it changes all the time. It was different when I started my business 20 years ago than it is now. So what are the kind of top things that people should have top of mind? Besides, don't just go to a domain search to see if your name is available. Let's do this the right way. So let's talk about some of the tools in the toolbox that someone should have.

And we do have all of this in a free gift for you guys. We're going to put that in the show notes, but it's indielawcom slash bundle, but essentially everything that you need to get started in Indie law can help with your LLC as well, so they'll do your trademark and LLC together. But this special little free gift has six different contract templates. Think about like terms of use that needs to go on your website or an NDA when you hire your first VA or whatever it might be. But all of these different contracts so you can customize them for your own business in just minutes and have everything you need. There's also the ultimate business survival guide that covers seven mistakes that you can't afford to make. So let's just go ahead and get it out there Everything that you don't want to do. And then, of course, our trademark masterclass that you just mentioned, which is so valuable and helps you protect your ideas and kind of avoid these copycat situations from the get go, because this person that named their podcast the same thing as me. Seen a training like this, then they could have avoided that altogether, right, right.

Yeah. I mean, it's about having the knowledge right and just having these tools in your toolbox and saying, okay, I already know this, I know how to do this. I'm the owner of my company. I have to have an NDA if I'm going to bring people in and understand my stuff. I have to have a trademark, I have to have a business license, I have an LLC. Like there's so much to know, and thank you for giving us that little bundle, because that will be really helpful and we'll have that in the show notes as well. What do you think is the number one problem that Joey and Indie Law kind of sees and solves? Do you think it's trademarks? Do you think it's just forming a business? Like, what are people struggling with the most? And how has Indie Law been able to kind of shift? Because he used to just be the trademark guy and now he's like so much more like yeah, I mean we really do just trademarks.

I mean we have some of these extra business-y type things because we believe that they just make your brand even stronger, and what we really wanna focus on is helping people protect their brand and do things so that they don't have to do anything more difficult. But it's all about prevention, like I said, just being able to sleep at night because I know that I own the names in my business and I own my business name, whatever it might be. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't take trademarks very seriously because they don't think that it's urgent. So, while I would like to say that the biggest problem we want to solve is to help people be preventative and play offense instead of defense, we do spend a lot of time helping people untangle problems because they tried to use like Legal Zoom or Trademark Engine, or they tried to do it themselves, and now they're getting C-Synthesis and they didn't do the classifications right, or now they're infringing on somebody else and they've gotta do a $30,000 rebrand. We had a client recently that was like I want this to happen to anybody else. Like I just gotta say C-Synthesis, I'm having to rebrand, it's gonna cost my company $30,000 and I didn't know what I needed to know, and I don't want that to happen to anybody else. So we're spending a lot of time just trying to help people understand how to be preventative. Yes, you might pay two or $3,000 upfront, but good gosh, isn't that better than a $30,000 rebrand?

Oh my gosh, yes, and the feeling that you have a partner in your corner when you get that letter is huge, because it's really scary to get a letter. So getting an audit like, okay, we're gonna peel back the layers of your business and, oh, you're using the wrong name trouble. It's never happened to me because I have Joey, but it's happened to people that I know. And as it relates to asceticians, I think If you know how to find that name for yourself and Joey can help with that, but if you know how to find that name for yourself and what I mean by that is you're not looking up a domain name search, you're not just like, oh, instagram, the handle's available. You know it's using it in commerce. That is when it begins and so you have to. You know it might be that you started calling yourself the sugar mama. You know my name. You started calling yourself the sugar mama and you're a trainer in, you know sugaring and you refer to yourself as the sugar mama and maybe you started doing that, just, you know, a few years ago and I've been doing this for 15 years, you know. And so that's what I really am concerned about is people just not having, you know not having that armor and being prepared, and that's why we're so grateful for you. So okay, miss Singh, thank you so much for all of your information. We're going to get you back on to be talking about this messy success podcast, because I know I'm a walking example of initial messy success, so you can get your sugar mama on your podcast.

Oh my gosh yeah.

Yes, but we're going to talk about that for sure. And, as always, my friends, thank you so much for tuning into the sugar show. It is always just a sweet success to have these gurus on here that can help us and really bring us down that journey to not only loving to sugar but getting our clients to love it to sugar in a safe way as well.

So thank, you, miss Liz, and we will see you on the show again. Thank you, Shannon, and you guys make sure that you use Shannon's link and book a call with us. We do have completely free brand protection calls where we can help you decide if trademarking is the right move for you. So head over to that link and grab that free call. We'd love to meet you, yes call them, use them.

I love it. Thanks, girl. Yes, thank you. Sugar pros and boss babes. I should have hope you had so much knowledge that you had to write down and you had to maybe even listen to this episode over again, because Liz is a bundle of information and I'm looking forward to listening to her messy success podcast because Lord knows that it's been a journey for me and my success, and I can't hardly wait to learn more from her because, as you know, I tell you to always be a student, so don't forget to go down into those show notes. You have the free gift, which is the bundle link, and then you also have the ability to get a free legal consult call with them. I asked them if they would do that for us and they did. They just said let them know that Shannon, the sugar mama O'Brien, sent them, sent you. So I hope that you can really be smart about your business and making sure that you're legally legit and in the law is the place to help you, because they are amazing humans who really do genuinely want you to be smart and protected. I hope that you have a fabulously sweet week and I look forward to chatting with you in the next episode.