Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden Braden Drake

On today's episode of the podcast we're chatting trademarks and what we've learned about the trademark filing process over the last year. In the past year we've filled 22 trademark registration applications and we've gotten back eight of those thus far. The way we kick off our trademark application process is through what we call Trademark Quickie Searches (notavglaw.com/tmquickie). A traditional law firm would charge you their trademark fee up front (typically $1k - $3k for smaller business, up to like $10k for big businesses like Procter&Gamble because there's a lot more that goes into it). Once you retain them they'll do a trademark search and chat with you about the likelihood of approval of your application and if you have over like 50% odds they'll file the application. Sometimes they'll also look into alternative trademarks for you. We do Trademark Quickie Searches first (these started at $10, then became $25, $50 and are now $100).We raised our price point to help with conversions because at $10 we were getting more people who were just curious about trademarks, not because they were interested in getting one. These searches are time intensive for us, it's not something you can just click a button to search. We are currently accepting five new TM Quickies. You can get started at notavglaw.com/tmquickie Registering a trademark at the federal level has several benefits including: • The right to exclusive nationwide ownership of the mark (except where it’s being used by prior users). • The right to put the ® symbol after the mark. This puts others on notice that you own the registered mark. • A legal presumption that the registrant owns the mark. Trademark rights are given to the person who first uses the mark in commerce, not the first person to file, although filing is still a great idea rather than relying on being first inuse. “Use in commerce” means you’re actually using the mark to sell a thing. If you rebrand, your new mark isn’t being used in commerce until you release it to the world. What we've learned from filing trademarks: 1. Likelihood of confusion is maybe not as big of a deal as we thought it would be, at least it hasn't come up in the eight marks we've had processed by the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Likelihood of confusion means they can get approved of they're likely not to be confused with someone else's mark. This tells me we can be a little bit more aggressive with the terms we file. 2. People really need to stop filing their own trademark applications. This is because trademarks are more of an art and a science and the way you craft your application impacts approval odds and your ability to enforce the application. Even if it gets approved, you may find your application doesn't have many teeth to it when you try to enforce it. And if it's not approved and you get something back from the PTO asking you to fix it, hiring a law firm to fix it is going to cost a lot more than just hiring them from the get-go. 3. Nearly descriptive marks are a big deal and something most folks wouldn't inherently think about. Some marks actually are much easier to protect than others. Some can’t even be registered. Trademark law has invented a system based on the “strength” of a mark. Astrong mark is easy to protect, while a weak mark may be difficult or impossible to protect. There are five levels of strength with varying rules: Generic: No protection (ex: coffee) Descriptive: No protection unless you can prove secondary meaning. (ex: Coldstone Creamery) Suggestive: Protection (ex: Netflix) Arbitrary: High protection (ex: Apple) Fanciful: Highest protection (ex: Xerox) At a minimum we want it to be suggestive. I experienced this personally when I went to file a TM for the Contract Club. It was at first denied because it was merely descriptive of a club that you can join that provides contract templates. I worked with another attorney on this and we submitted a brief to argue against t

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my March profit report

If you listened to last month's profit report you may have heard me sounding a little bit defeated with my numbers due to some personal stuff going on. If you missed it, go back and listen to episode 330. 

Diving into the March profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode. 

• I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I was shooting for $400k, I think the $300k is still doable now. Last year we hit $270k so I'd really like to get that to $300k this year. 

• Hit 60% in profit. Probably going to be changing 

• Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year

• Consistently hit $25k months. Did this in January and February, not in March, probably not in April

• Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year. This was the big goal to help us get to our revenue goals at the end of the year. We're a little bit less than halfway to this so far. My original goal was to get to 10k by the end of March but that hasn't happened yet. 

 

Let's recap what happened in March: 

• I've previously shared that if all things went to plan, March was going to be a $40k month. That's what I was hoping for because of launches we had planned. Those didn't end up happening, 

• We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening

• We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails. 

 

Projections vs. Actual

1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $4,000 → $1,000

2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,100

3. Legally Launched - $500 → $250 

4. Monthly services - $5,00 → $7,145 

5. Tax - $4,000 → $3,000 

6. Trademarks - $1,250 → $1,250 

7. Other - $1,000 → $1,010 

Total revenue - $17,750 → $15,265

 

Expenses

Employee wages: $5,200 (this does not include myself)

Contractor expenses: $4,700

Owner wages: $2,900 (after my taxes. I paid $2,500 into taxes)

Monthly tools: $500

Affiliate payouts: $650

Total expenses: $17,600

 

Profit 

(- $2,400) While I know a revenue of $15,265 sounds great, when expenses are $17,600, it makes it a lot less exciting. 

I then paid myself my salary of $5,300 so the total business profit was about (-$8,000). This is why it's good to have a little bit of cushion in our bank accounts. 

In April, I'm hoping to make a little bit more money. We're not really doing any promotions this month to make a lot more, but a lot of the team expenses were for Unf*ck Your Biz clients we were wrapping up and our bookkeepers were working on some clients' books that were several years behind and it's a project to really get them caught up. 

I'm probably going to need to readjust my profit goals because it's dawned on me that I've essentially built an agency. It's a law firm, but it's an agency and I may need to hire more bookkeepers to keep up with demand. 

Higher profit means more money in my pocket as the business owner, but I also am not looking to work 40-60 hours a week, for me ~30 is the sweet spot so if I can make less profit in order to bring on more people to do more of the client work, then that's okay with me. 

Because we weren't able to do our launches in March, my biggest issue right now is MRR (monthly recurring revenue). This is not recurring payments for courses, MRR is something you pay every month for until you cancel, think things like Netflix. My big goal is to hit $15,000 in MRR by the end of the year. If our goal was to get five people at $500/month that's $2,500/month times nine months would be close to $25,000 in revenue that we're now missing out on. If we can bring these clients on in May during our launch, that's two less months compared to if we had gotten in during a March launch. I thought

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing our commonly spotted contract red flags.

I messaged MJ, our team attorney, to put together some of the red flags they've been spotting in contracts because they are the primary person responsible for updating our Contract Club templates and working one-on-one with our Unf*ck Your Biz clients to give them their full suite of contracts that can typically range from seven to 15 contracts to each client.

If you're not familiar with the Contract Club, it's all the contracts you need, all in one place, all for one price, just pay the cover and you're in for life. You can pay your $30 cover and join the club at notavglaw.com/contract

We have dozens and dozens of templates already in the club and we're adding more all of the time. We're always putting out new ones in response to contract requests in our Facebook group, Braden's Besties.

 

1. Repetitive, contradictory terms

Repeating yourself in the contract might feel like emphasizing a term's importance, but it can hurt you. When a judge or mediator reads a contract, if you have two different versions of the same term, if there's contradiction in any way between the two, the judge has to decide which controls if they don't just toss them out altogether. If you do need to repeat in the contract, just say "refer to paragraph five for the cancelation provision). I the terms are repetitive but not contradictory, your duplicative terms just made it longer which is unnecessary for you and your client.

 

2. Inconsistent style of writing

We love a patchwork - for quilts only. It does not belong in a contract, and when you're copying and pasting parts of your contract from multiples templates you've found here or there online, lawyers can always tell. What ends up happening, for example, is different contracts from different attorneys will use different terms to refer to the same person, such as "photographer" or "company" and it's confusing to the client. It's a bad look and tells a judge you weren't being very serious about your legal needs and that you might not know the legal footing in your case.

 

3. Unfair or unenforceable provisions

If you put unreasonable shit in your contract, a judge or fact-finder is going to be very suspicious of the other stuff in your contract. There are certain things you cannot put in your contract which is pretty standard and varies a little by state. The way we typically draft our templates is if it's a red flag in some states we just don't include it. For example, non-disparagement clauses. You typically can't have these in client contracts i.e. in California you can't say a client can't write a bad review about your business. There are policy reasons why this is prohibited and suing people for being open and honest is not very good for the general public.

 

4. Language you don't understand

If you can't explain what the contract says to your client, it shouldn't be in the contract. This is not only why it's important to get a professional contract, but that you take the time to read it and understand what's in your contract. Just because you don't understand it at first, doesn't mean that you should immediately cut it out, it just means you should take the time to understand it. It's okay if you don't understand it at first. We do videos with most along with most of our contracts inside the Contract Club to explain what each and every paragraph means. We don't want you to just buy a template and not know how to answer your client's questions, and they will have questions.

 

5. Formatting issues

Like an inconsistent writing style, having an inconsistent format is a bad look. I don't think most people will have a problem with this because, working mainly with creatives, aesthetic is typically on your mind but if you aren't being careful, it shows that you're okay with shotty legal work. Make sure you use consistent spacing and standard fonts. It's not worth the time and energy to make a

On today's episode of the podcast, I chat with Jodi Brandon about preparing for unexpected time off in your business.

I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house

Jodi and I go way back to a mastermind event in 2019 and have been in a mastermind group together ever since brainstorming ideas and solutions in our business alongside for other business owners. She is also my book coach for Unf*ck Your Biz.

Jodi has one of the most streamlined businesses I've ever seen which lends well to taking unexpected time off, something Jodi has had to do. The streamlined organization is the product of the time off Jodi had to take when he husband had to have a valve replaced in his heart and what was supposed to be an easy procedure became unplanned open heart surgery that was much more complicated and required time off.

At this time, Jodi was doing all one-on-one copy editing work with no subcontractors or SOPs in place. This wasn't something scalable and Jodi was out of work.

This time off is what led her to diversify her offerings, including the book coaching she now offers. Subcontractors now on her team work on the copy editing.

After her husband's surgery, they knew that in the future he would need to have this same valve replacement again. Jodi wanted to be prepared for the next time she would need to care for her husband so she got to work learning about systems and preparing for what happens if you can't run your business.

She has a network of colleagues that she wanted do be able to line up work with in the event of an emergency so her clients wouldn't be out of luck.

During this time Jodi had some clients who were okay with being moved off her plate to someone else she lined up, some who were good to paise the project until Jodi could work on it again, and some who were unhappy and wanted to stay on schedule because they'd had a contract.

Jodi still discloses to all her clients that she is not always the main one to be doing the work because sharing your book can be a vulnerable project. Their contract is with Jodi Brandon Editorial, not just Jodi Brandon.

If you aren't in a place to financially hire someone just yet, that doesn't mean you can't plan for the unexpected. You don't necessarily need to have someone on stand by or do doomsday preparation, but you would be surprised how often these conversations are happening to prepare for all sorts of scenarios like maternity leave or chronic illness or caring for a relative.

To prep for this, you can charge the client more than you need to pay who you'll contract to. You may be making low overhead to keep your business afloat, but if you have long-term goals for your business, this is better than referring everything out and losing out on weeks or even months of client testimonials.

Systems are also an incredibly important part of preparing your business. The clearer your standard operating procedures are and the systems you have in place, the less someone will need to ping you to constantly be asking for info they can't find. These are all things we should have in place anyway, especially if you have team members who take time off, planned or unplanned. Loom videos can be incredibly helpful to create your SOPs.

If you need to give yourself unexpected time off, give yourself grace. Even when the business is still operating, it's easy to get caught up in negativity and frustration. It won't be forever, even if it feels like it when your life is in disarray. It's important to give yourself the mental space you need to not go down the negative rabbit hole. You likely won't look back and regret that time you spent during that unexpected time.

Going back to preparing your aud

On today's episode of the podcast I'm breaking down my February profit report and what's been going on behind the scenes of my business and personal life.

I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house

If you've listened to the podcast, you know I'm all about transparency and while I don't share every detail about my personal life, it felt like I should share what's been going on the last couples months because you'll also see my numbers are down this month and this will inform a lot of that. I took a few weeks out of office when my mom's health began to decline due to the cancer she was diagnosed with in 2020 and it was clear we did not have much time left with her and then a full week completely off from everything including email when she passed. I'm back home and back to work but it's still hard some days knowing I won't have my mom around for more than half my life.

During my time away I've also had a minor business crisis because we had to skip two full launches and I had been planning for March to be our busiest month of the year with people wanting to come and work with us around tax season and everything that comes with that.

Diving into the profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode.



I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I think the $300k is still doable, the $400k that I really wanted to hit, I think might be a stretch.



Hit 60% in profit



Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year



Consistently hit $25k months. This is going to be a struggle in March when I do my projections



Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year



 

Let's recap what happened in February:



Not a whole lot



We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening



We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails.



 

Projections vs. Actual:

1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $14,000 → $15,000

2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,080 (I continue to be surprised how predictably this falls between $900 and $1200 without promotion)

3. Legally Launched - $1,000 → $500

4. Monthly services - $8,700 → ~$4,000

5. Tax - $15,000 → $7,000 This and monthly services are the two biggest places where we missed the mark due to missed launches

6. Trademarks - $2,500 → $2,500

7. Other - $1,000 → $1,850

Total revenue - 4$7,700 (Projected to be our highest revenue month ever but I expected us to at least hit $30,000) → $32,000 I'm pretty happy with this, all things considered.

 

Profit

Cost of Goods: $48 (Our only COGs are the physical copies of my book)

Expenses: $22,600 (very high for me)

Owner profit: $9,300

My salary: $5,500

Profit: $3,900

 

Expenses

Employee wages + team contractors (contractors I work with on a regular basis that don't need to legally be employees): ~$13,000 This is double our average. This is because I'm paying our tax preparer for a lot of tax returns and our bookkeeping team put in a lot of hours in February into March because we have a lot of clients who need 2-3 years of bookkeeping backlog

Owner wages/owner tax (what I pay myself, technically expenses for the S Corp): $5,000

Monthly tools: $400

Affiliate payout: $650

Marketing: $300

Travel: $150

Other: $2,600 (included one large refund, a large office expense, a couple Ubers, couple online filing fees and a few meals).

This came to 70% Expenses (need to work on these numbers)

 

Profit margin: 30%

These expenses are the main

On today's episode I chat with Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners, about business acquisition and trademarks. 

We should all run our business with a long-term perspective of "do I want to run this thing until I'm ready to retire?" or "do I potentially want to sell my business one day?" Even if you think you don't want to sell, it's good for business to run it in a systemized way that it could one day be sold. 

Amber Anderson sold her wedding planning company, Heavenly Day,  in January of 2020. She said it was easier to sell the company since it was not tied to her name directly, though the name was not trademarked. When she was ready to sell, it all came down to timing and who was ready to buy at the same time Amber was ready to sell.  As for pricing, Amber calculated based on 3-4x annual revenue. Depending on your timing and if you had a broker and how much time you have will also play a factor in the money you will get and if you can get more. If you don't have solid bookkeeping, you won't be able to calculate this. Amber sold in a self-financed deal. 

Amber now owns Refine, an online community for new, aspiring and struggling wedding planners with coaching, retreats, and templates. When buying the business she received a flat offer and put in a bid above that offer since there were others interested. 

When evaluating a business, it's important to take a look at what the business owns, including intellectual property, courses that have been created, assets, and goodwill which is how well you are thought of by your community. In buying the company, Amber recreated the courses and assets to be her own. 

Upon buying Refine, trademarking the name was on Amber's radar immediately because of the numbers and trajectory of the business. Amber also saw other educators using Refine's first in use terms and was advised by her lawyer that she needed to protect her business each time because if she didn't protect it with the first person, it would be harder with the next. 

 

The USPTO is backed up and the first step of trademark applications can take up to a year, or longer if you mess up the application and have to start all over, a common occurrence if you try to do it on your own without the help of an attorney. It also depends on how layered and complex your name is, as was the case with a more commonly used term like "refine."

Get in Touch with Our Guest

Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners

Check out the Refine for Wedding Planner's websiteJoin the Refine Facebook CommunityFollow Refine with Amber on Instagram