Branded and Protected: Legal Advice for Protecting Your Personal Brand, with Jim Hart

Welcome. To Amplify, the personal brand entrepreneur show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Jim Hart. When you're going to buy a business, you want to know that there's not going to be any problems. And one of the things that provides insurance against problems is having that trademark. So if you don't own that trademark, then that's something else that the person who's buying the business has to take into account. And there's two ways they can take that into account. Either they can do A, and say, I'm walking away from this. I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to wait the 12 to 18 months it's going to take to get that trademark, and I don't want to take the risk. Or B, they could say, Okay, we're going to take that risk, but as a result, we're going to cut the price that we're going to pay for the business. Hi there and welcome back to the Personal Brand Business Show. My name is Bob gentle, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing and monetizing your expertise, intentionally growing a unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show and while you still have your device in your hand or you're sitting there on YouTube with the subscribe button ready, then hit subscribe. That way you won't miss a single episode. If you're a regular listener, then consider sharing this show with just one person. It's the very best way to help me reach more people and help the show grow. So there is nothing that strikes fear in the heart of any entrepreneur more than more than a lawyer's letter. Win or lose, it's going to cost you money. This week, we're talking about how to keep your nose clean and protect what you've built or what you're building. Now, if I saw this in a podcast description, I would think that's really boring. Now, trust me, nobody wants to avoid lawyers more than yours truly. But it's cool because today we're talking to Jim Hart, who is a lawyer. But like I said, it's okay because he's also killing it on YouTube as well as other places. And so I know we're going to have a lot of fun and I have nothing to worry about talking to a lawyer. Trust me, I always avoid it. Jim Hart, welcome to the show. Bob, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm glad to be here. I've never been looking forward to talking to a lawyer before in my life. I don't know why. That seems ridiculous. Why would you not be looking forward to talking to a lawyer? We're great. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Now, I have a lot that I want to talk to you about today. Number one, because you don't get to talk to a lawyer for free very often. And number two, you have a lot to talk about. You have a really interesting story, a very interesting personal brand. And really interestingly, you've done the work as a lawyer, fine. But you've also done the work as a content creator, and I have lots to speak about around that as well. But for the listener or the viewer who's meeting you for the first time, can you maybe just start by telling us a little bit about who you are, where you are, the work you do? Sure, sure, Bob. So yes, my name is Jim Hart and I am a trademark and branding lawyer. I run a law firm based out of North Carolina. My law firm is in Raleigh, North Carolina now. But I run it virtually from Lisbon, Portugal, where we've lived for about the past eight months or so. And I have a YouTube channel with 150,000 subscribers, and we do trademarks, and that's all we do. Does that give you good background? Do you need more? No, that is absolutely perfect. I think we now have a little bit of context. I guess the obvious question for me to start with is trademarks. I think a lot of people have ideas. A lot of people have intellectual property that they've established. And the big question for me is always, when is it worth looking at trademarks? It does cost a little bit of money, but when you're looking at the world through the eyes of Jim Hart, trademark lawyer, how often do you look at things and think, They should have trademarked that. Why have they not done that? Who should be looking at trademarks? And why does it matter? And what does it protect you from? And what opportunities does it open? Okay, well, there's a lot to unpack there, but let me do my best. So I'll say, first of all, I think... So I have several friends now clients who are fellow YouTubers. One of them I know I reached out to because they were getting very successful on YouTube. And I just reached out and said, I have to reach out to you as a trademark lawyer. I'd be irresponsible for not to. I noticed that you have not trademarked your brand yet. Is there a reason why? And so now they're a client. And then there was another person that I think it was a very similar situation. And these are people that have probably anywhere from 20 to 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. And so I was looking at, why would you not do that? So I would say in terms of who should be thinking about trademarking, whether you have a personal brand or you've created a brand for your business, I think that's something you should do very early on in the process. The reason I say that is because, yes, there is a cost associated with hiring a lawyer and filing a trademark application. I do recommend you hire a lawyer for it. It's not a simple process. We can talk more about that here in a little bit. But the reason why I think it's important to do it very early on in your entrepreneurial journey, regardless of your brand new entrepreneur or your seasoned veteran who is just starting a new business, is because it's a lot more expensive to devote a year or two of your life to building a brand that is now generating some meaningful revenue, hopefully, and developing an audience and developing a following of people to have that name taken from you with a cease and desist letter. That's a lot more expensive. A rebrand can cost... And just imagine, Bob, I see your name here. You've got amplify me, you've got the personal brand business podcast. Get that right? Personal Brand Business Show, I'm sorry. So you have these names. And if tomorrow someone were to email you or send you a letter and say, Hey, you ou... This is infringing on my intellectual property. You need to stop using that name immediately. Think about how much time and money and effort that would cost to try and come up with a new name. And then to get all of the people that have been following you with this one name to switch over to a new name and to do that basically overnight. When most brands switch to a new name, they do it very intentionally and they take their time and they educate their audience about what they're doing and why they're doing it. And they do it over the course of several months, if not longer. And then they let people know here's when we're actually switching. So it's a very intentional process. When you get a cease and desist letter, you're given a set period of time, usually 30 days or less, to basically stop what you're doing immediately and switch over to something else or just go out of business. And so that's why I say that the prospect of that is much more expensive than whatever investment you're going to put into a trademark lawyer. So that's why I think most people need to do it far earlier in the process than they actually do. So if you look at my business, you mentioned, and I'm using my business as an example, because I think most people as online entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs in general, they have several brand assets that theoretically could be trademarked. There's my name, there is the Amplify Me, which is my company's trading name. Then there's the personal brand business show. Then I also have the personal brand business roadmap. So that's four or five assets right there. How would you make the decision as to which ones to trademark, which ones to prioritize? So typically the order that I look at is I say, okay, number one, do you have an overarching brand or business name that is your main brand? And most people, when they're just getting started, they just have one. They don't have multiple. I would typically start with the most important name that you have. I don't know what that is for you, but that's where I would start. Then from there, people will typically have... You can look at this. If you go to somebody's website, it's usually pretty obvious what the name of their business is. Now, if the name of your business, if it's a personal brand, and there are people that do that, like Brendan Brichard or Brené Brown, or people like that that have these big large and life names, then yes, absolutely, you may want to consider registering your name. There are some limitations on that in terms of how that can work, practically speaking. But yes, that is definitely something that you might want to look into doing, and it is something that you can do. But I would start with the name of your business. So if you're operating under a personal brand, you would look at your personal name. If you're operating under a separate name, then whatever that name is. From there, I would look to... If you have a slogan that goes along with your name, that's something you might want to consider registering. If you have a logo, you might want to register the logo. And so that's really the brand trifecta, I would say is you've got the brand name, a logo that does not have any words in it, that does not have the brand name in it, and then the slogan. Some people will register a logo and their name together as one, and we call that a combination mark. I don't typically recommend that, only because if you make any changes to the name or to the font or to anything like that, or you decide that you don't like the logo anymore and you want to pull it out and use the name just by itself without the logo or the logo without the name, then you don't have the protection anymore. It has to be used together. Those are the big three. Aside from that, I would say people could have a podcast that they want to register the name of. They could have a YouTube channel they want to register the name of. They could have a signature course or coaching program that they might want to register the name of, or they could have different product lines that they want to register. Most people, I think, they think that they have one thing that they just need to trademark in their business and that's it. But in reality, it usually can be multiple things that people have that they need to think about getting registered. I have a few questions that come out of that. The first one, I guess, is I'm in the UK, you're in Portugal, a lot of your clients are in the US. There's the question of geography. Now, a limited thinking way of approaching this was I'm in the UK, so if I trademark my stuff, somebody in the US can still do whatever they want. So how would I approach that? That's a good question. I assume based on what you just said that your clients are in the UK for the most part. Your brand is you're selling in the UK or do you sell everywhere? Well, actually, at the moment, my clients are more in the US than they are in the UK, which is really weird. But that's a long story. No, what I'm coming from is I exist in the UK as a legal entity. But somebody in the US decides that they are going to operate as amplify me, and they're just going to run around doing whatever they want, despite the fact that I have a trademark, albeit in the UK. How would you approach a global trademark in such a way that, yes, you might be hidden away in a backwater somewhere, but somebody in another country can't just come and do whatever they want under your name? Because I think that's something that happens reasonably often. Okay, well, let me ask you, so do you have a registered trademark in the UK? No. What I'm offering is the opportunity to debunk what I know is probably a false assumption. Let's do it this way. The reason I asked if you had a trademark in the UK is because if you have a trademark outside of the United States, then you can use special procedures to, I don't want to say expedite your trademark, but you're granted special protections under this treaty called the Madrid Protocol, whereas you can get priority in the United States and you can get a registration without actually even using the name in the United States. That's why I asked that question. Now, since you don't have a trademark or you don't have a registered trademark, everybody, there's a difference between a registered trademark and you can have what are called common law rights. But those are typically limited by geography. So if you are selling to clients in the United States but your business is located in the UK, that's perfectly fine. You can go ahead and file for trademark protection in the United States, and so that you can get it in the United States. And then if you use that as the basis, then you could use that and use the same treaty to get protection in the UK or in other countries in Europe or in Canada or Australia or wherever you want to go, you could get trademark protection under that Madri d protocol. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's... It does answer my question. I was aware that it was a false assumption, but I think it's an assumption a lot of people make that you can only really get copyright or trademark where you are. And if somebody in another country decides that they want to do it, it can cause you problems. But the way that you describe approaching it, it does offer a clear route to protection. And I think where the misnomer, if you will, comes in is, for me personally, I have two trademarks currently that are registered in the United States. From my personal brands, I have two trademarks that are registered. I have another one that the application has been filed, it's not registered yet. I don't really have any intention on pushing those trademarks outside of the United States because everything I sell in terms of legal services is limited to the United States. Now, I might have clients that buy something from me and they might be in the UK or they might be in Portugal or they might be somewhere else. But they're doing it because they're doing business in the United States. And so they are availing themselves of my legal services in the United States. So that's where I think the misnomer comes in. If you're selling an e-commerce brand or something of that sort where you are selling in amazon. Com and then you go to sell in amazon. Spain and amazon. Uk and amazon. D rmany or whatever, then you might want to look into expanding your trademark protection to those countries also. But yeah. So another perspective on this is the question of time. If I have an idea, let's say I want to set up a company called Hawthorn Law, for example. I've decided I want to set up a company called Hawthorn Law, and I'm busy beavering away. I've invested a lot of money in this. And then one day in six months time, six years time, I've had the trademarks gone through. It's all fine. But there's this other guy who's been doing this for 30 years in the US called Jim Hart. I'm not that at all. But okay, we'll go with it. We'll go with it. I don't know if I'm setting an example up very well. No, that's okay. I understand what you're saying. I'm new to the party and I managed to get a trademark through. But we discovered that there's another guy down the road. He's been doing it for 30 years under that company name. Can my fresh, out of the box trademark, be used against him to essentially have him move away from that brand name. So the other person does not have a registered trademark? No, but he's been doing it for 30 years and never felt he needed one. Yes. That is a fabulous question, actually. I'm so glad you asked that. So your new outside the box trademark could absolutely be used to shut down that 30 year old business. Absolutely. Because all this other person has is what are called common law rights. And so their rights are limited to where they do business. And so the US trademark system is what's called a first to file system. So the first person to file an application for a certain name is the one that has priority for that name. I'll give you a great example that's very similar to what you just said. And it's actually a real life example that I've talked about before. And so I assume you have Burger King in the UK. Burger King, right? So it's a fast food chain started in the United States. And so there is a small little mom and pop hamburger restaurant called Burger King in a town called Mattoon, Illinois. And I've actually been there. And there are no other Burger King's within a certain mile radius of this Burger King in Mattoon, Illinois. And the reason for that is because way back in the day when the National Chain Burger King went to register their trademark and got the trademark, they went to try and there was basically a conflict because this local mom and pop, I believe they may have filed for state protection in the state of Illinois, but they didn't file for federal protection. And so what happened is there was an issue between the National Burger King and the mom and Pop Burger King about who was going to have the rights to this name. Now, a lot of people think, Okay, well, I've got the state trademark, so that should protect me. They had it for all of the state of Illinois. The problem was that federal law in the United States trumps state law. So if there's a federal statute on an issue and there's a state statute on an issue, but the state statute is a little bit different, federal law is going to control. And so the same is true with trademarks. So when Burger King gets the federal trademark, they go into Illinois and they decide they want to shut down this Burger King or make them change their name. Ultimately, they reached a settlement where the mom and pop store only had the name in this one geographic area, basically common law rights, but they're not permitted to use it anywhere else in the state of Illinois and obviously outside the state of Illinois. So that was the way that case was resolved. So fortunately for that mom and pop store, they had, I think, registered the state trademark. Otherwise, they may have had an issue where they weren't going to be able to use that name at all moving forward because of the national brand, obviously. Something that springs to mind here is back in the early 2000s and even now, things like domain squatting were a real problem. People would buy up lots of domains and then essentially sell them back to the brand owners or just speculatively hold them until somebody decided they wanted to operate under that brand name, couldn't get a domain and then they had to pay through the nose to get one. From what you describe, I'm wondering if there's a shark in the pool that nobody can see other than lawyers who understand the industry a little bit better. But is there a predator ecosystem around the trademarks where people are trademarking things that they can see, have value, but haven't been trademarked? And would that fly? Okay. No, that won't fly. And I do. Number one, they've dealt with there's a cyber squatting rule, there's a cyber squatting law now that deals with that exact problem. So people can't do that anymore to answer the first part of your question. And if you can't hear, the dogs just came down. It's all right. We like dogs on this show. They're all dog lovers, my listeners. Both of them. Okay, all right. Good. So the first part of your question is there's a cyber squatting law, federal statute, that deals with that issue in particular. The second part of your question was, and that. I'm sorry, I. Can't remember. The predatory ecosystem around the trademark being set up maliciously. Yes. Okay, so the second part of your question was with regards to this predatory ecosystem. And no, that is not possible. And so I'll give you a really good example. And this was in the news and actually reported by... You probably listen to the BBC, but in the United States, we have a very similar... It's called NPR. You've heard of NPR, right? Yeah. Okay. So NPR actually reported on this. And I emailed the or I sent a tweet or something to the person that wrote the story and said, You're completely off base with this. This is completely wrong. But there were a couple radio show hosts who basically decided to file a trademark application, and I'm abbreviating the story here. This is not the whole story, but you can Google it if you want to learn more. But basically they tried to trademark or they filed a trademark application for White Lives Matter. T his is a big issue because the reason their stated reason for doing so was that they want to prevent anybody from selling merchandise under the name White Lives Matter. And what they claimed is now their application was like a month old. Now, right now it's taking 12 to 18 months to get a trademark in the United States. And so they have nothing. They literally filed an application. That's all they have. And they're going around telling people and telling the reporter for NPR that they own the rights to this trademark, so nobody can use it. They're going to be able to shut down all these people that want to use White Lives Matter. Well, this is complete bogus. That's not true. That's not the way the law works. Aside from the fact that I don't believe White Lives Matter can even be trademarked because it's a national movement. The same way that Black Lives Matter, there's been numerous people that have tried to apply for Black Lives Matter, and they've all been rejected because it's a political movement. So it's not capable of trademark protection. It's a form of free speech. And so the same is true with white lives matter. I believe. I think that's what's going to happen. They haven't issued an office action yet. N umber one, they don't own it. Even if it was capable of protection, they've already said, we have no intention of selling merchandise under White Lives Matter because we don't want anybody to sell merchandise under White Lives Matter. And trademarks are connected to use in commerce. So if you're not actually using the brand name that you're trying to register in conjunction with some interstate commerce in the United States, you're not entitled to the trademark anyway. So no, you can't cyber squat, if you will, on trademark names to try and keep other people from trademarking the name. Now, I will say this and contradict myself a little bit. You can file a trademark application if you have a bona fide intent to use that name. Once you receive basically permission from the trademark office that you can use that name in commerce, then you have three years to actually use the name in commerce. So theoretically, if somebody filed a fraudulent application and said, we would like to register this name, and they basically falsified their application and never actually had an intent to use that mark, that would be a problem. But I guess that could come up. I guess the example that I had in mind, and it was more with an intention maybe to helping people understand that just because they don't have a problem doesn't mean they won't have a problem. If we take somebody like Pat F lynn, for example, picture a world where smart passive income as a phrase hasn't been trademarked. I see that and I think my business could vaguely be related to that. I'm going to file an application for that. A, it gets approved, number one. Question number one, would it be approved? It is approved. And then I could potentially justify that I might use it. But now I can go to Pat F lynn and say, Hey, you got to stop doing that, or Pay me. This is what I'm looking at for the malicious use of trademarks. Is that hypothetical example feasible? Not that I'm actually looking to do it, Pat. Sorry. No, I know. I would say, yes, it is feasible. I think Pat has actually talked about this on his podcast where he ran into a problem because he tried to... I forget the name of the brand, but is it the Green Exam Academy or something? He was using some website name in relation to... But he was actually, it's a little bit different because he was basically piggybacking off a trademark brand in his website, but he didn't realize that that's what he was doing. And so he received a cease and desist letter for that. And then he changed the name of the website, I believe, is what he ended up doing. But that wasn't quite the same because this brand was already in existence. But yeah, I think he's learned his lesson. But yes, if somebody big out there has a brand and they... Now, if they've been using it, they're going to have some common law rights. But theoretically, if somebody with enough money and enough legal firepower decided that they wanted to try and oppose that, then yes, they could. Or if they want to try and file their own trademark application, they could. What you have to understand is in any of these situations, a lot of times what's happening is people are inadvertently using somebody else's name. They're not intentionally using somebody else's name. They're inadvertently doing it. And then once that other party realizes that there's been an infringement, then they'll send them a cease and desist letter. Or somebody will... I'll tell you, this happened with me and a client recently. We did a trade. We did a search. I always do a comprehensive search before somebody files a trademark application, and nothing came back. And after we filed our trademark application, I got a cease and desist letter from a big national company, I won't say anymore, that basically asked us to abandon our application because they were going to use a... I still don't think it was similar, but they said they were going to use a similar sounding name to use what they call as a similar product. Again, I don't think the product was similar either. And they were planning on trying to protect that name. And they thought that we would be infringing upon it. I sent them a nice letter and said, I'm sorry, but number one, the name is not similar and the product is not similar. Y ou never filed the trademark application, so we're not doing anything. That could happen. But I think more often than not, it's typically unintentional. I'd like to believe people aren't intentionally going out there and trying to steal other people's intellectual property, especially if you see that it already exists. But I guess theoretically, it could happen. Hi there and welcome back. So for the astute listener or the observant watcher, viewer, you'll notice things have changed a little bit. Jim had an appointment he had to get to, so we took a little break. We've come back for the second part the following day. So we've had a bit of a break. You at home haven't had a break. If you need a cup of coffee, go and get one quickly. Hit pause. We're going to jump straight back into it. Jim, we've talked about all the way trademark protection matters, all the ways that you can exploit them and protect yourself with them. There will be people at home thinking, Okay, that sounds like something I should probably think about. The question they're going to want me to ask you is, what costs should they assume? I guess that you can do things yourself, but what are some entry level trademarking costs that they should budget for, I guess. Okay. So this is such a loaded question, and you probably didn't even realize it's a loaded question. I'm going to start by saying, I think it's important to understand the cost. And I can't remember if we talked about this yesterday. I don't think we did. But the cost of not trademarking is something I talk about all the time. So I forget who I talked to about and who I didn't. Okay, anyway, all right, back into it. I think it's important to understand the cost of not trademarking. So there's two major dangers of not going through the trademark process. The first danger is that you are unintentionally infringing on somebody else that's already out there in the marketplace. And practically speaking, what happens with that is you start your business, you choose a name, you don't do a great search, or maybe you do half ass search, if you will, and you don't find anything thing, and so then you move through the process. You build your business, your business is doing well. The party that has the trademark is not going to come after you when you're first starting for two reasons. Number one, they probably aren't even going to be aware that you exist because you're just starting out in business. And number two, because even if they did know you exist, you're probably not making any money or much of a threat to them to make it worth their while to pursue you at that point. And it's more likely the former. So that's the first thing. So what happens if you go down that road is once your business becomes successful, then they will send you a cease and desist. And the cost to not have that trademark can be quite extensive. I would say tens of thousands of dollars to undergo a rebrand, the time invested, all those things. And so that's the first issue is you could be what's called an unintentional infringer on somebody else. The second issue that could come up is that you could become successful and maybe there's nobody out there that has a similar trademark as you. But then somebody sees you and then they decide, Oh, that's a pretty cool brand name. I want to use that brand name. And they haven't trademarked it. So I'm savvy. I know the USPTO is a first to file system, so I'm going to go ahead and register for it. And then at some point when they get that registration, then they can shut you down. So it really protects you on both ends. The consequences of both of those in terms of money and time and the cost to your business can be extensive. I have a friend years ago who started a very successful Amazon business, and he was doing six figures a month selling water bottles. And after he... It was like a light switch. After he hit that six figure month, that's when he got a cease and desist letter from a national brand. And it almost bankrupted him because he had $40,000 worth of inventory sitting in his garage that was branded with his name. I think that they gave him 30 days to sell out his inventory and maybe he had to split the profits with them or something like that. They came up with some arrangement, but that would be a good situation. A bad situation would be where they said, No, we don't want you to sell anything else under your name, our name, anything. And we just want you to go away or rebrand. And then you're stuck with all this inventory that's branded, can you imagine, and not being able to do anything with it? So that is a bigger problem. So with all that being said and how much that could cost, let's talk about how much it actually costs to register a trademark. So there is a spectrum. And again, I know you did not know you were going down this rabbit hole, but there is a spectrum. It depends on who you choose to help you. And there's a cost associated with each of these choices. So on the one end of the spectrum, I would say there's a DIY. You could DIY it. I mean, yes, you absolutely could go to the trademark office, pick a name, file an application, and move forward. The application, I tell people, is deceptively easy, meaning that most people can go through an application and think that they got it right, but they don't realize until eight or nine months later that they didn't get it right. So yes, you could do it that way. The cost to file a trademark application, if you did it on your own, it's $350 per class, and we can go into that if you want. But basically a class is a group of products or services. So that's a DIY. So a class is a group of products or services. They're usually similar, but there can be all sorts of different things. There's only 45 classes and that covers the gamut of all sorts of products and services that somebody might sell. That's not that expensive. $350 if you're in one class, you could file it on your own. That's at the very low end. Then as you move up the spectrum, well, let's say before we move up the spectrum, we'll say the other end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is like a big corporate law firm that does this for big corporate clients, and you're probably not going to get out. They're going to minimum $10,000 to file a trademark application. That's just to file it. That's to do the search, to file the application, to prepare the specimen, all those things. That doesn't cover office action responses and those type of things. That's at the other end of the spectrum. That's typically going to be for larger corporate clients. They're going to hire law firms. These trademark attorneys charge $500, $600, $1,000 an hour to do the work. So you can see why the bills add up pretty fast. So that's the other end of the spectrum. In the middle of the spectrum, you have at the low end still just above the DIY, you have what I would call these trademark filing services that have popped up. And there's a lot of these. I'm not going to name any names. You can figure them out if you Google. And these are basically services who take all the same information that you would put into a trademark application, and they give you a really nice, beautiful looking interface that makes it seem like you're getting the help of somebody else. When in reality all you're doing is filling out a really nice looking form and then they're submitting that form to the USPTO with exactly the same information that you submitted to them without you having to go to the really ugly looking website that is the USPTO website. And then they charge you a small fee to do it. And it's not huge. Usually you're going to pay 100, 200 bucks, something like that, then you're filing fees. So that's still relatively inexpensive. I tell people, do not use those services because like I said, if you're going to do that, you might as well just do it on your own because you're wasting your money because they're doing the same thing that you would be doing, just shuffling the information onto the USPTO and probably trying to upsell you a bunch of stuff that you don't need in the process. So that's the next tier up. Then the next tier up from that, I would say, are the low cost attorneys. And these you have to be very careful of. I don't know if we talked about this yesterday, but I spoke with somebody earlier this week who had used a low cost attorney, a fairly well known YouTubers that also was doing some trademarks on the side and they did a Black Friday sale. This person paid $300 to have this attorney draft their trademark application. It gives you a lot of peace of mind. You've got a law firm doing it now, but they did a terrible job and now the client has a bunch of issues they need to deal with in terms of office actions. I think in many respects, lawyers are a lot like engineers. Just because you're a lawyer doesn't mean you're good at a particular thing. There's a lot to be said for specialism. In fact, it's almost essential. Well, and I'm not going to say that this attorney isn't good at it. This attorney probably wasn't drafting the application. There was probably a paralegal drafting the application because when you charge $300 for a trademark, you really can't do a whole lot with that client. A lawyer's time, I mean, even halfway decent lawyers are charging $200, $250 an hour. So I have a new trademark client that I was onboarding this morning, and it took me just to go through and I was doing the initial searches and things. I spent a half hour, 45 minutes just going through their intake form and figuring out what type of products and services they want to sell and coming up with descriptions and starting the process of doing a search. And so if you're only charging $300, how much time could I really spend doing that before I'm legitimately losing money? So when you look and you hire one of those law firms like that, you're probably not getting much access to a lawyer. You're getting access to a paralegal who is doing most of the work. And in terms of how good that work is, is debatable. So there are attorneys that charge, and I've seen this, and they advertise for $3.99, $4.99, very low cost. And so you need to be aware of it. But that is one option. And then there's this group of attorneys, I think I would say that I fall into this group where we're offering a little bit more attention, a little bit more service, more access to us as the attorney, but we're charging a premium price for that benefit. And so for me, I have a package where just doing the search and filing the application is roughly $1,000. That doesn't include the filing fees. And then if you want more, we can add more on to that package, and it goes up to about $3,000 or $6,000 depending on the level of service you want from our firm. But I would say in general, if you're spending somewhere between two to $4,000 on a law firm, and that includes responses to office actions and things like that, then that's probably pretty typical. And that's per application, not like if you had three things. If you want three things, then you got to pay that times three. Right. I think for most business owners, that sounds achievable on those costs. You can understand why people might try and dodge it. Oh, yeah. I'm probably trying to dodge it for quite a long time. But as you mentioned, the costs are getting wrong. I'm just sitting here thinking about my own business, doing a Google search for my own business name. There are other people out there using the same name. I am running a gauntlet. If anybody is running a business called Amplify Me and you've registered to trademark, turn off now. Go away and forget about me. But yeah, I can feel the risk myself and peace of mind of a couple of grand to allow me to continue and to invest in that, it makes sense. Additionally, there are people out there trading under my company name who if they haven't trademarked it and I do trademark it, I can start protecting myself from them because I put a lot of work into this. I want to tell one more story, and I know we didn't talk about this yesterday, of the potential downside of not trademarking. So I actually did a podcast with a good friend of mine who she runs a six figure e-commerce coaching business. So she started a brand, and this is all public, we did a podcast interview on this, and she was never a client. So she started a subscription dog business. She wasn't selling dogs out of a box, but she was selling dog toys and treats and scarfs and different things like that. And she had a subscription business, a subscription model that she started, and she grew that business very quickly and then sold it within about four years. But she never got the trademark for her name. I actually know several entrepreneurs who have this exact same story. What happened is, come time to sell, that was an issue because when you're going to buy a business, you want to know that there's not going to be any problems. One of the things that provides insurance against problems is having that trademark. So if you don't own that trademark, then that's something else that the person who's buying the business has to take into account. T here's two ways they can take that into account. Either they can do A, and say, I'm walking away from this. I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to wait the 12 to 18 months it's going to take to get that trademark, and I don't want to take the risk. Or B, they could say, Okay, we're going to take that risk, but as a result, we're going to cut the price that we're going to pay for the business, which could be, I guarantee it's more than the $2,000 to $4,000 that you're going to pay for a trademark. Or and those are really the options. Or C, they're going to say, Well, listen, you do this, and then we'll come back to you in 18 months. And if you still have the business and we still feel like there's a good fit, then maybe we'll buy. So best case, you're still going through with the deal at a reduced price. Worst case, you're losing the sale of your business, which if you are an entrepreneur who's looking to sell your brand at some point, which for me personally, that is a goal that I have. I know other lawyers have sold their law firms and websites and things like that. So at some point, I would want to do that. Not having that trademark is a huge red flag to a potential buyer that would come in to buy that business. Yeah. And here's the thing. Anybody buying a business will have a lawyer beside them. And the basics of due diligence are going to flag that up extremely quickly. Oh, yeah. Especially for an online business where name is everything. Local business, you can get by because nobody's ever going to know about you. Online, the whole purpose is everyone knows about you. That's right. Moving on from the money then, I think what I'm really curious about is, as a lawyer, what you've done building your own personal brand online with the YouTube channel and the other things that you do is not normal. Lawyers don't usually do that stuff. Number one, I'm curious about what was it that triggered that for you in the beginning? Because for most people, it's outside their comfort zone. Lawyers typically have a comfortable living. Nothing's forcing them outside their comfort zone most of the time. So why do that? And then what's that journey been like for you? Well, I would say there were a couple of things. I started practicing law back in 2004 in Florida. And by default, because I rented space from somebody who basically said, Do you take domestic work? And he was an older gentleman, nice guy, but that was a nice way of saying, Do you do divorces? And maybe it sounded more appealing to me than it really was, but anyway. I said, Well, if it pays the bills, I'll do divorces. And so he started referring me all these divorce cases. And so once you have some divorce cases and other lawyers who hate doing divorce cases, realizes that you're going to do divorce cases, they will send you a lot of divorce cases, and you can grow a practice very quickly that way. Well, so that's what I did. I built that practice up in Florida and then we moved to North Carolina, and that was all I knew. I started taking divorce cases in North Carolina. And after four or five years in North Carolina and five years in Florida, I was burnt out of taking divorce cases. And I remember very specifically, I was in my office one day with a consultant, and this woman was just seething negative energy. And I'm a pretty positive person. I'm a pretty optimistic person. And it was just bringing me down. And I could just feel the energy draining out of my body. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm done. And so I was done. This is back in 2014, 2015. It took me until 2021 to ultimately shut down that practice. But at the time, I started thinking, okay, what can I do instead? I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to build a brand. I knew I wanted to build a brand that I could do things with people on a nationwide basis. Family law or divorce is basically very... I mean, it's almost people in your county or your city, and that's it. I started thinking, Well, I can answer people's questions on YouTube, and I'll try doing that. And so that's what I did. I just went on the YouTube and I started answering questions about LLCs and trademarks and things like that. Didn't really think much of it. I did it for maybe three or four months. And then as with all things like that, you get sidetracked by life and decide, Oh, it's not really going anywhere. I've got 30 subscribers. I'm going to stop. And so that's what I did. And then during this period, my mother was sick and she ended up passing away at the beginning of 2016. I had stepped away from the channel. Then after she passed away, the next 12 months or so, I just went to a really dark place and I was really depressed. During that period, I was like, I mean, certainly doing divorce cases was not helping my mental... What was going on up there? I basically dove in and did more YouTube videos because that brought me some joy. And then I checked in one day and I had like 6,000 or 7,000 subscribers out of nowhere. I don't know what happened. I was like, Oh, okay, well, I guess I'll continue doing this. And so it's taken on a life its own from there. I've been pretty consistent posting about once a week since 2019 or so, and that's how it's grown. I think one of the nice things... I remember I was watching a video from a guy who was technically a competitor of mine, probably about eight years ago. And my business at that point was exclusively driven by local networking events, local referrals, things like that. I was not happy with the business at all. It was all bargain basement stuff. It wasn't adding energy and I wasn't really operating in my zone of genius most of the time. I was watching this guy on a YouTube video, but he was only 30 miles away from me. And he was talking about how he would never go to a networking event, that he should build your business online, high profile content marketing. I was thinking, That's just impossible. How can that possibly work? I'm looking at my business now and that's entirely what we're talking about. That's what my business looks like now. But I think the problem with local business is you have to do what you're asked to do. If people say, Will you walk my dog? Yeah, okay, I'll walk your dog. Because you don't have the audience to allow for specialism. I think what I see in your story there is exactly that. A local business has to do what it's asked to do. But then once you start building your audience, you can really start to focus in on the zone of genius and what brings joy. And listening to you, the energy of the people you used to work with is very different from the energy of the people you work with now, I assume, and almost feel very different. Oh, yeah. It's funny. So on twice a week, and I guess Wednesday and Thursday, I can't remember what days, I do late calls for clients that are on the West Coast, like California. And so last night I had a call with an individual who was the client that I was onboarding today, and he was out in LA. And it's funny, and this happens a lot when I do my consult call. So normally I schedule my consults for a half hour, which is probably too long. A lot of lawyers will tell me, no, you need to do it for 15 or 20 minutes. But I don't mind, I do it for a half hour. We ended up talking for an hour and a half. The call was scheduled for me at eight o'clock. I was a few minutes late, and he was totally understanding, totally cool about it. Then we just ended up talking about his brand for until 9 30. It was really cool. I would never likely have done that with a family law client, but he was just a cool guy and fun to talk to. I was really interested in his business and what he was doing. He had a lot of questions and I was happy to answer them. He was respectful of... That's the other thing is, as a lawyer, I don't consider myself better than anyone else. But at the same time, my time is quite valuable because of all the stuff I have to do and the clients I have to work with and things like that. I'm sure you can appreciate also, as you start to get busier, your time becomes valuable. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or somebody else. But he was very respectful and told me multiple times, We don't have to continue talking. I know it was only supposed to be 30 minutes. And people that say stuff like that, you can tell they're just good people. And so I believe strongly in giving when it's appropriate. I don't know if you've read the book by Adam Grant, Give and Take. And they talk about... Adam talks about how there's different types of people in the world, givers, takers, and matchers. And the most successful people in the world are givers who understand when they're dealing with a taker. And if they're dealing with a taker, then they stop giving. It's interesting. But this was this instance where I was trying to give, but it was reciprocal because he was bringing me joy just talking to him. And I don't get that. I never got that with my family law clients. But that's pretty common when I'm dealing with my entrepreneurial clients. Most of them are pretty cool like that. The way that you describe your YouTube journey, it's almost like you were shaking it out of your sleeve. It was super easy. Was that the case? I guess it was the case from the standpoint that there's a lot of people, if your motivation on YouTube is to build and grow a channel and make money off it, then I think you're going to have a hard time if that's the main goal. My goal when I first started was number one, I'm doing this because I'm trying to... I was not thinking, Oh, I want to turn adsense on. I need to get to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. There was none of that. It was, I want to put some videos up and answer some legal questions and hopefully provide some value to people, hopefully get some people to call my firm and maybe generate some business. That was my goal when I started. So one day I remember I had literally 30 subscribers, and then I just stopped paying attention to the channel. And then I logged back in, like six months later, eight months later and something had happened. One of my videos had gone, I guess you could viral. And I had like six or 7,000 subscribers. And so I guess from that standpoint, it was easy but also unplanned. I've seen people who have posted every single day for like 10 years and they have less than a thousand subscribers. So yeah, from that standpoint, it was easier for me. But yeah, it's all about the mindset. My mindset was I just enjoy making videos. And so if in talking, obviously, And so, yeah, I guess from that standpoint is easy. If your thing is I hate making videos and I don't enjoy talking that much and I'm awkward in front of a camera and I'm getting pissed off because my channel is not growing, well, there's probably a reason why. Or if your goal is just to get to making ad sense revenue and that's the only reason you're posting videos, that's going to be a problem. I don't know. Does that make sense? It does make sense. I think one of the things I love about lawyers and it can often turn a lot of people off, is they can be ridiculously pragmatic people. And I think the reason I think your channel is a great example for a lot of people is you're not really focusing on the fancy stuff at all. It's really a great role model for a lot of people because it's content first. They're not much in terms of special effects. You've obviously learned as you've gone. I went back to the very beginning of your very first videos. Oh God. I think that's what people need to do is number one, you're a great example because it shows you can be successful on YouTube without having to be Mr. Beast. You don't have to have ridiculously high production value. I don't mean to downplay your production value, but you know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. The only thing that's improved in my channel is the camera. I started out with probably my first hundred videos were my iPhone, and then I started adding microphones to make the sound sound a little bit better. And then I upgraded it to an HD R camera, whatever. I don't even know, like a Canon camera. And that's all I've really done. Yeah, you're right. There's a really great video from Casey Neistat. Do you know Casey? Yeah. I don't know him. Personally, but I know who he is. Well, no. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I wish I knew him personally. Yeah, that'd be a good person to know. Anyway, so he did a video a while back that talked about how he compared and contrast that the story is the most important part. The content is the most important part. And he showed this documentary that costs under $10,000 to make that was just blowing up online versus a multi billion dollar, whatever special effects movie that was completely bombing at the box office. And so it's not about how much you spend on editing and production. It's about what is the content you produce. And if it's good content, people are going to watch it regardless. And so I took that to heart. Maybe a little bit too much, I don't know. Well, no, because it's obviously worked. That's the thing. So, Jim, I'm aware I've taken up a lot of your time over two days. You've been very, very generous. And I know lawyers are probably one of the very few industries where moving away from trading time for money is hard. So I really do value the time you've given me. If anybody's sitting there thinking, I need some Jim Hart in my life, and maybe need to look at some trademarking, or they just want to connect with you, how should they do that? So you can go to... My website is Hawthornlaw. Net. It's H, A, W, T, H, R, N, N, O, E, law. Net. Or you can go to YouTube and just do a search for Jim Hart or Jim Hart, LLC, or Jim Hart trademark, or something like that, and you're going to find me, I guarantee. But yeah, either of those are great ways to find me. Also, I think we talked yesterday that I have a DIY playbook guide, and I almost forgot about that. But yeah, if you go to Hawthornlaw. Net amplify, you can get access to that. And I will make sure that I'll have some special goodies in there for people who are listeners of your podcast. So I'll just go ahead and put that out there, too. Exciting. Jim, thank you so much for your time. I've learned a lot. I'm terrified now. I need to go and spend some time looking and doing some due diligence, but thank you so much for your time. To you at home listening, watching, thank you very much for joining. Before you do leave us today, remember one thing you could do for me is subscribe. Number two, share the show with one person. And number three, if you have enjoyed the show, you will also love the personal brand business roadmap. It's everything you need to start scale or just fix your expert business. Trademarking is not on the roadmap. I'm going to have to add that. Jim, thank you so much for your time. My last question, what's one thing you do now that you wish you'd started five years ago? I knew you were going to ask this question. And one thing that I do now that I wish I'd started five years ago, I wish that five years ago, I had decided to just go all in with trademarks then. It scared me at the time and it was still easy to continue taking on family law clients. But if I had gone all in with trademarks when I first started doing... I should say, I started doing trademarks right around when my YouTube channel started, but I was doing one or two a year. If I had just gone all in and just started doing just trademarks back then, I think I'd be in a much better place today. So that's what I wish I'd done, but yeah. I think there's a couple of things coming out of that. Number one, the most successful people I know have all become successful through simplifying, not through making things more complicated. And the other thing is, and you demonstrate it very clearly, the more you build audience, the more you build community, the more choice you have to specialize. It's very hard to specialize when you don't have an audience, and you get the proof of that. Jim, thank you so much for your time. Again, you're home watching, listening. Thank you very much and I will see you next time. Thanks, Bob. I appreciate you having me on. You.