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Prioritizing In Action with Students

So let's talk about this you know I want you to tell me about your business on dh let's talk about how you can use some of these tools I want to just like sort of workshop with you guys who are sitting here so who wants to go first I want to be my first victim okay awesome great so as I shared earlier I have a lot of content yes I have a course on teaching people how to run their own virtual book tour that's already up and spent up for about two years okay and so that's geared towards authors authors okay my specialty is helping novelist so everything I do is for them okay I have three non fiction books already on amazon plus two novels and four novellas yes I have countless pdf ce I write lots of articles I have three blog's uh in fact I'm about to finalize an article that could be a course so often my articles become courses right on that's a great idea and that's just a perfect example of how you can take this one asset and just use it in a million different ways to generate revenue...

for you so I love that okay so tell me about some of the other assets you have uh gosh that's a lot of stuff a lot of stuff yeah, of course I have some of the you know I have a sales process. Yes, I have a q and a that's upon my sight I probably could revise it and update it gosh um I'm actually training an assistant so I just did a video on how to do the sales process for her yeah I'm creating a writing coaching training that's really valuable to her yes that's super valuable yeah uh I teach on how to prepare your novel that was a live course with video and handouts I wanted I am in the process of turning that into a self paced course right I have another course on how to create a gn forgettable characters yes which I've taught in written format and I have like videos and that's up but I haven't sold that yet okay directly so it sounds like you've got like a plethora of intellectual property which is awesome it sounds like you're kind of already doing this in a lot of ways I am your sort of minding your business as on a regular basis and sort of have a systematic process like you write an article and then you realize you know what this is something that could easily be turned into a course on and then when you do these courses are they free courses or you're charging a fee for them so far their courses that I give to my current group coaching program yeah which is they they're paying me and it's kind of an all inclusive right published market your novel kind of course right, so they're like my training wheels yes and then my idea is to bump it up and put it on this platform I'm developing the school essentially you have self paced video courses that will be sold independently but also sold with me as a teacher maybe my assistant as the teacher all right so some some will be live and some will be self paced yeah I think that you are actually at a really great stage for licensing you're like the prime sort of subject for that right? So if you're in a stage in your business where you've created a lot of content over the years like you have you know you've created courses you've got tons of articles you've got content in a million different ways then you can start thinking about how kanai how's it right all under like one umbrella you khun do something like amore intensive course so it seems like you've kind of laid the groundwork to have these sort of items that bring people in and then once they're in you know you maybe just want to fill out the customer path and creating your school now what I would say to is that if you create this school right and you don't even have to wait until you do that but when you have a lot of content like that, licensing is a really great idea. Andi, I'll give you an example of an entrepreneur who's done that recently that I've been checking out daniel report I don't know all of you are familiar with her but you know I don't even know what you would say she 00:03:57.853 --> 00:04:01. is I guess she's sort of a could result in coach teacher 00:04:01.13 --> 00:04:04. type person right she's definitely a writer as well 00:04:04.42 --> 00:04:06. so she's got this sort of thought leadership right 00:04:06.75 --> 00:04:10. she has her desire map program that's the name of 00:04:10.26 --> 00:04:15. it in which you know she teaches a certain method 00:04:15.05 --> 00:04:17. I guess where you know finding satisfaction in life 00:04:17.88 --> 00:04:20. right and to go after what you want so she's got work 00:04:20.92 --> 00:04:23. books she has the book itself she's got 00:04:24.89 --> 00:04:27. like tattoos now that go with it she's got all of 00:04:27.95 --> 00:04:31. these images and like inspiration decks and like there's 00:04:31.34 --> 00:04:34. all this stuff that goes with it right so when you 00:04:34.02 --> 00:04:37. have a sweet like that licensing is a really good 00:04:37.2 --> 00:04:39. deal because then you can charge an annual fee so 00:04:39.98 --> 00:04:42. let me tell you a little bit about how she structuring 00:04:42.07 --> 00:04:45. and obviously there's a lot of options so how she's 00:04:45.96 --> 00:04:47. structuring it and this is me looking from the outside 00:04:47.92 --> 00:04:48. in you know 00:04:49.99 --> 00:04:53. she is charging an annual fee to be a licensee so 00:04:53.75 --> 00:04:57. you apply um I think there's an approval process I'm 00:04:57.4 --> 00:05:00. not certain but you do pay an annual fee I feel like 00:05:00.64 --> 00:05:02. it's like two thousand twenty five hundred dollars 00:05:02.67 --> 00:05:06. a year or something like that to be to purchase the 00:05:06.42 --> 00:05:11. privilege to teach her content um and then let me 00:05:11.16 --> 00:05:13. tell you the other genius part of this that gets me 00:05:13.41 --> 00:05:15. super excited so all these little pieces of content 00:05:15.94 --> 00:05:19. right like the's truth decks and the the book itself 00:05:19.2 --> 00:05:21. and then the workbooks and all these different the 00:05:21.14 --> 00:05:22. journal you know 00:05:23.29 --> 00:05:26. then she creates a situation where her licensees are 00:05:26.43 --> 00:05:29. now have a reason to purchase all of that content 00:05:29.35 --> 00:05:32. for their workshop attendees so she's got this army 00:05:32.89 --> 00:05:35. of licensees now who are giving workshops all over 00:05:35.25 --> 00:05:37. the world which is more than she'd be able to do right 00:05:38.01 --> 00:05:40. it would be hard for her to go all over the world 00:05:40.23 --> 00:05:43. constantly teaching this stuff it's really intense 00:05:43.48 --> 00:05:45. but this allows you to expand the reach of your work 00:05:45.93 --> 00:05:49. right expand your influence like we talked about by 00:05:49.04 --> 00:05:51. getting more people to experience 00:05:52.3 --> 00:05:55. you know your work and every time someone teaches 00:05:55.28 --> 00:05:57. a workshop they have like you know, twenty students 00:05:57.78 --> 00:05:59. sitting there they're all gonna purchase the workbook 00:05:59.86 --> 00:06:01. they're all going to purchase the book they're all 00:06:01.55 --> 00:06:04. going to purchase is the journal on dso yourself she's 00:06:04.75 --> 00:06:07. selling all of her content not only teo you know she's 00:06:07.74 --> 00:06:11. making money through the licensing fees from her licenses 00:06:11.14 --> 00:06:13. but then she's also selling all of her content this 00:06:13.55 --> 00:06:15. is another example of this that you guys will probably 00:06:15.68 --> 00:06:18. be familiar with is like when you take a class in 00:06:18.07 --> 00:06:22. college and your professor assigns his book as the 00:06:22.01 --> 00:06:26. textbook same type of scenario right on and it makes 00:06:26.41 --> 00:06:29. sense you know it makes perfect sense so it's a way 00:06:29.22 --> 00:06:32. for you to really you know, sell more products and 00:06:32.45 --> 00:06:34. you know have a whole army of people that are teaching 00:06:34.75 --> 00:06:37. your work which is really powerful now I don't think 00:06:37.71 --> 00:06:39. everybody can do I mean, there are a lot of different 00:06:39.94 --> 00:06:41. scenarios for licensing there so there's not just 00:06:41.94 --> 00:06:45. one way to do it that's just one model and we can 00:06:45.68 --> 00:06:48. talk about other models to later today some of my 00:06:48.36 --> 00:06:52. clients have done different models for that but yeah 00:06:52.01 --> 00:06:54. so that's one example that I think you would be perfect 00:06:54.21 --> 00:06:56. for because it sounds like you're in that stage in 00:06:56.05 --> 00:06:58. your business where you've got all this stuff on dh 00:06:58.87 --> 00:07:00. there's only so much you could do so you might as 00:07:00.85 --> 00:07:03. well use like create a program to facilitate that 00:07:03.86 --> 00:07:06. and I will talk to you also later about like how you 00:07:06.46 --> 00:07:09. actually do that because there's a lot of steps but 00:07:09.45 --> 00:07:11. it's totally worth the investment 00:07:12.86 --> 00:07:16. attention to that is my platform is not huge yeah 00:07:16.8 --> 00:07:19. it's under two thousand on my own mailing list although 00:07:19.51 --> 00:07:22. I have a big social media reach yes you know, ten 00:07:22.22 --> 00:07:25. thousand on twitter like three thousand arlington 00:07:25.72 --> 00:07:28. I don't know six seven thousand on facebook various 00:07:28.68 --> 00:07:31. places you know it it's kind of scattershot and that 00:07:31.83 --> 00:07:33. using social media to reach people right? Because 00:07:33.92 --> 00:07:36. my mailing list is still pretty small yeah well they 00:07:36.55 --> 00:07:39. think that you're mailing list being small is a limitation 00:07:39.24 --> 00:07:41. for what you can accomplish in your business this 00:07:41.38 --> 00:07:42. is such a thing 00:07:43.83 --> 00:07:45. where it's like you feel like well I don't have a 00:07:45.84 --> 00:07:48. big list then I can't do this or I can't do that that's 00:07:48.86 --> 00:07:52. actually not true it's not just about the mailing 00:07:52.04 --> 00:07:53. list and it really depends on the business that you're 00:07:53.8 --> 00:07:57. in not every industry or business requires a giant 00:07:57.74 --> 00:08:00. enormous list sometimes you're gonna have a smaller 00:08:00.26 --> 00:08:02. list of really passionate people were going to buy 00:08:02.43 --> 00:08:04. your stuff oh they care you know and it matters to them and it works for them but this is another reason why licensing could be really good for you because if you have licenses who have their own lists then they're bringing your work to their people and so you could structure it that way where that's sort of a requirement where you have to have a community of at least twenty five hundred people or whatever it is in order to become a licensee and then you can reach their audiences so there's really some strategic ways to grow your audience without having teo you know oh I can't launch anything until I have eighty thousand million people on my list okay I let's do away with that right now okay all right I'm gonna pick on you all right so tell me tell me about your business because you're a total in a totally different industry completely eso I've had my own business for almost a year now not quite so I do bookkeeping and business council for mostly creatives yes lee women actually so with photographers and designers and some manufacturers internet stores kind of thing jurors um so it's taking me about a year to kind of figure out exactly what my business is so I liked what you said earlier about um being sure that you're committed but maybe not jumping in right away and registering a trademark until you know exactly what your business is was when I started I had a different idea right I was doing had a broader scope and now I see it differently yeah it evolves over time it has totally evolved and that's why I say like this process that we're going through today you're going to do it on a regular basis so definitely annually at a minimum but I would even say quarterly because things change they do change and I think it's taken me a while too to develop enough material to mine actually so now I think about the questions I get asked over and over again and I have already developed standard written responses and worksheets for people yes not that there aren't a million resource is out there on how to use quicken but they're not your resource is right I don't have time we act like they don't have your ari on touch you no thanks so I mean so I've been developing things that I'm using with my clients and now that I finally have a full like I'm I'm at capacity now I can't take on anybody else which is awesome that's magical after only a year in business how it's really really great teo and you know I'm at the point where I'm thinking have this decision to make of whether I continue saying no yes or whether I higher so I can continue saying so I could say yes you know anyway that said now I'm really seeing all the places where I'm a limitation as just one person right and so how do I monetize than the things I'm doing repetitive lee and make it easier yes right yeah I mean I think that's exactly the stage that urine where when you're at capacity in your business and you know there are a lot of people who might choose to work with you in different ways so some people want to hire you and like for me I don't want to deal with my books and never ever ever want to deal with them so I'm just gonna be one of those people that just pays to take that off my plate right but there are certain things that I still want to know so I'm still a potential customer because I want to know all right so what statements should I be looking at you know? So what financial statements should I be looking at on a monthly basis and like how do I use that to actually make decisions right you know actually that's the most interesting part yeah me and so I do a full range of things so somebody so everybody knows here are ian was a controller for some very large companies so you have a lot of serious acknowledge and inspiration about this so yeah just wanted to give some context yeah but now I work with really small companies which you know that's a passion for me so my business is called do your thing yes and the whole idea is that you didn't get into business necessarily if you're a photographer to do bookkeeping right right so you do that that part do your thing and I'll handle this other part that's super unpleasant for most people but I actually derive a lot of satisfaction from yeah it's a perfect thank god because three eyes in that respect yeah, well I would say that based on the stage you're in this is a great time for youto like mine I think you probably have a lot of content to mine and also when you're mining I want you to know that don't just think about all right the business that I have right now also think about all the things you've done before you got in this business that you're in today. All right, so I'm gonna give you an example of that the same friend who was the graphic facilitator before she did that she was actually sort of a content marketer content creator likes you would help people to find the content that they need to create and you know help them put it out there on dso that's one thing that she did and then before that she worked in magazine publishing right or newspaper publishing one of those publishing on dh she actually was a photo editor so she would take you know like pictures of food or different you know industries I think she's been in a couple of different industries she would look at the photos and decide how they should be laid out how they should be edited that's knowledge that she has that maybe she's not using it in her current business directly but that doesn't mean that it's not knowledge and content in an asset an intangible asset that she has she has that knowledge base that she drive from a previous job and she's made money from it because she's a perfect example for this I love her so so one of the things that she did was partner with a school it's sort of called a school of photographers actually just tell you her name her name is kelly kingman she's fabulous so she has a uh in a book that she wrote for photographers that sold on the digital photography school website. Now digital photography school has like millions of viewers like I think it's like three million or maybe it's more than that on every month so they have ah ah huge huge audience so she took this knowledge base that she had and access somebody she's really a great connector too so she found somebody and honestly this could be with like cold calls I've had great relationships happen and amazing things happen just from saying hey I'm interested in doing this what do you think you know and the worst they could do say no eh so that's kind of how you can access them larger audiences to so anyway she reached out to them or created a relationship with them in some way and then published a book for them and she gets a nice royalty cheque every month from that knowledge base that she had so all she had to do was take all these notes that she had all this information like you know how when you leave a job you've got your box of stuff you never get rid of it you still have it you don't know why you know so she took that knowledge that she had just packaged it into a short guide and it sells on this website every month and every month she gets a check from it while she's doing work that she loves which is her graphic facilitation you know so I want you to think about when you're thinking about this mining step don't think that you're limited to the business that you're in now you probably have knowledge from previous work that you've done and I think that's definitely true for you too ari on that you probably have ah lot of information about how large companies handle some of these questions that you can then apply to your small businesses so that they can be just as successful as those large companies and so that they can really capitalize on their revenue so that's one thing to think about on dh one thing that you can really use as a marketing tool to to like push it to show people that hate I'm not some new kid on the block okay? I know my stuff you know so that's also a marketing too which is another asset but I would say yes you're definitely right for product ties ing your services on we're going to talk in a little while to a client of mine who's done a really good job of product izing her design business and so she's created sort of a semi product to send my service from her design business and her designed is this a science? She charges thousands of dollars to create a website for her clients, but she also had this this audience of people who are really interested in working with her but they could not afford her and so she product ties for services in a way and she also partnered with somebody else to sort of make that happen and have it have very little impact on her design practice on dso that's how she was able to serve that other market that she has access to which is an asset in and of itself without disrupting this business and she generates another line of revenue okay so I think that's a really good idea for you based on the stage that you're in okay so you can see like mining and prioritizing and going through these steps to do an influential property order are good at every stage even if you're like a day one entrepreneur and you've actually just started your business even then you khun still you khun still mine you're sort of mind for all of the things that you know how to do and all the information that you have that other people want okay so who else he wants wants to talk to me awesome yeah so I run in our business and basically I came here to sort of learn how I can put together a good strategy backing that eventually put out a part of my exit strategy yeah business okay so you want to eventually sell your business so you're thinking about alright what is my intellectual property looked like how do I make this an attractive asset to a potential buyer perfect you're in the right place all right so tell me tell me more about what kind of aps have you created and what do you got sitting in your arsenal yes so we have a portfolio of abs community within the health and fitness space on dh you know we want to kind of eventually figure out a way how we can kind of take it to the next level yes by partnering up with existing health and wellness companies right and so how can I go about positioning it in a way and packaging in a way so that I can you know show to them that this would be valuable and and then there were want a choir right so tell me give me a little bit more detail about the app so yeah s o I mean a lot of the ops like they it's like a whole four forty of them right and you know I want to tell that like the whole business instead of instead of just like individual ups right so what are some ways to kind of structure that right and do the apse all serve the same audience are they serving different people mainly the same audience yeah ok which is who mainly you know, people that are like you know conscious about their health and wellness and right I don't care about that right okay do you have like really is it people who have like weight loss goals are isn't people like like my husband who's like super into just looking good? Yeah, people that are busy busy professionals not a bad thing especially for me yeah busy professionals that are looking to kind of like a quick morning workout or less right great you know meditate or new yoga okay yeah okay awesome so you're asking like how can you make this attractive and attractive offer to potential buyer yeah how can you can like marketed in a way that you know people will wanna you know invest in business or like and then are you already selling these app yeah they're already on the story okay they're already making money right right ok that's what one of the things I was going to say is I've worked with clients who are venture backed and then I've also worked with clients who are bootstrapping and I have to say in my experience I think bootstrapping is always better because you get a way better deal if you've already built something up that's an attractive asset from an investor or someone who you want to sell the business to then you do if you start out with venture capital it could be sort of a different animal so I'm a big fan of the boots trappers on that's mostly who I work with this because I love them so I just wanted to add that in but I would say that based on what you have I think one of the ways that you could do that and I think this is a really good question for charlie to but one of the ways that you could do that is to create sort of a a path for people to follow with the apse like does each app need toe have its own audience of ten thousand people or does that same ten thousand people who buy the first app upgrade to this other app and also want this other app so you if you consort of package it together so that instead of having to get an audience of one hundred thousand people for your ten acts you can take your audience of ten thousand people through the path of using all these different aps does that makes sense right? So that's that's one way that I would think about it and then you can also put it in different formats like you could take the content of your app and put it into an e book you could take your app and make it sort of a referral system for maybe some you know people in the health of well in this industry so that's another line of revenue right where they could so sort of advertise through your app and you can you know they could upgrade from your app to a service you know so I would think about all right what is actually the value of the app itself what's the information that's sitting in the ap and like what are some other ways that you can then use that and how do you create ah customer path for those things that people will go down does that make sense and I also think one of the big things to is I think the conversation with david is going to be helpful for you because he's a gatekeeper like I said and so one of the things is I think that you have to think about who do you want to sell it to so whoever you want to sell it to think about what makes sense for them how can you sell them on it like how does this work in their business model why would they want to buy this over maybe somebody else's health and wellness aps okay so some of it is also just the positioning a cz well and also the other thing that I think is big and aps is the data itself so like when people are signing up for a nap they're putting in a ton of information you have that data what can you do with that who wants access to that data what companies want to know how much weight you know these this demographic of people want to lose you know what I mean? So also be thinking about the data like there's 00:22:08.286 --> 00:22:10. all different ways that you could sort of pick apart 00:22:10.74 --> 00:22:13. what's sitting there within the app and then generate 00:22:13.72 --> 00:22:16. revenue from it or use it as a tool to get people 00:22:16.01 --> 00:22:21. excited about purchasing it credit okay? Awesome I 00:22:21.53 --> 00:22:23. love that we have like an awesome different sort of 00:22:23.73 --> 00:22:26. group of people and in a little while we're gonna 00:22:26.92 --> 00:22:30. really dig in tow like the technology piece the licensing 00:22:30.03 --> 00:22:32. and the different ways that you can rework it alright 00:22:32.71 --> 00:22:34. so that's gonna be in the next segment but why don't 00:22:34.23 --> 00:22:37. we take a couple of questions of course actually have 00:22:37.11 --> 00:22:43. a lot way have a question from one of our chat rooms 00:22:43.34 --> 00:22:47. um that says can you sell an interview without first 00:22:47.21 --> 00:22:51. receiving a release whose is it really don't both 00:22:51.17 --> 00:22:54. the interviewer and the interview we own it great 00:22:54.64 --> 00:22:55. question 00:22:58.01 --> 00:23:01. yes ok I love this question on dh this is actually 00:23:01.88 --> 00:23:04. something that I go into a lot of detail in in the 00:23:04.27 --> 00:23:07. advanced type for filmmakers we cover this exact issue 00:23:08.14 --> 00:23:10. um and one of the things that you always want to make 00:23:10.34 --> 00:23:13. sure that you get is a participants release or participant 00:23:13.31 --> 00:23:16. agreement when you're doing interviews or doing any 00:23:16.27 --> 00:23:20. type of video or even audio always always get a release 00:23:20.4 --> 00:23:23. because you you are in the business of transferring 00:23:23.29 --> 00:23:26. around intellectual property right? So if you created 00:23:26.11 --> 00:23:28. jointly with somebody else you need to make it super 00:23:28.4 --> 00:23:32. clear who owns it at the end and if you have no written 00:23:32.33 --> 00:23:34. information whatsoever then it's unclear who owns 00:23:34.83 --> 00:23:37. it so what you could do after the fact to send it 00:23:37.51 --> 00:23:40. to the interview and say, hey, you know, I'm thinking 00:23:40.42 --> 00:23:42. about doing some things with this or, you know, maybe 00:23:42.56 --> 00:23:45. keep it vague you don't wantto encourage them to like 00:23:45.76 --> 00:23:48. say no but I would send them the participant agreement 00:23:48.67 --> 00:23:51. at this point or send them a release now of course 00:23:51.84 --> 00:23:54. after the fact is not ideal because it makes it easier 00:23:54.58 --> 00:23:56. for them to say no you want to get it ahead of time 00:23:56.98 --> 00:23:58. that you know you're good to go with whatever the 00:23:58.56 --> 00:24:02. result is but that's what I would say is is that you 00:24:02.69 --> 00:24:05. should go and try to get the release now because otherwise 00:24:05.36 --> 00:24:07. it's unclear if there's no terms and conditions that 00:24:07.66 --> 00:24:11. they opted into on your website for example you didn't get a release there's no contract between the two of you it's wishy washy who owns that content all right we don't really know that's the problem so I would try and go and get the release after the fact if you want to use that content or just you know send them you know an email asking them if it's okay if you used it and then if they say yes send them the release and get it signed okay jan's is wondering what is the average cost of doing a trademark or a copyright can we do this ourselves or should we have an attorney do this great question I love all the awesome question okay so for copyright registration that's something that you can definitely do on your own it's a it's not easy but it is a simple process okay, so long as you understand the step by step and understand the basics of it then you can definitely do that and in all of the advanced class is the one for photographers designers, filmmakers and entrepreneurs I don't have it here with me but there is a bonus that we gave out which is the copyright registration ci xi that is part of my small business bodyguard product and then there's another one specifically for photographers because the copyright registration process for photographers is a little bit funkier on dh that's from the legal nun trucks for photographers but you get that as a bonus if you check out those courses and I actually walk you through it like right on the screen here I walk you through the copyright registration process so you can know how to do it in your business and you can just do it every time you need to you can protect all your photos at once or all your videos of all of your content on dh so uh the application fee is either thirty five dollars or fifty five dollars is really inexpensive as long as you know how to do it um and then just to give you an example of what a lawyer were charged my practice we charge twelve fifty to do a copyright registration okay so that's what our packages and obviously the fees vary depending on you know lawyers notoriously have all kinds of crazy fees we do flat fees only because I'm just not into like you know, counting hours and heck no I don't want teo oh so we do flat fees and I like you know to be really predictable so that's how we work if you work with another attorney you're most likely going to run into hourly rate on dh copyright registration takes a couple of hours I would say for them to get familiar with the work how they want to actually register it so someone charges maybe three fifty an hour and it takes them three hours then you maybe pay a thousand dollars or something like that so it's probably in that range of what we charge as well on dh then for trademark registration unfortunately that's something that is a lot more complicated the trademark application looks really simple sprites of you go on the uspto dot com website the trademark application will actually look really straight for like just answer these questions and I'm good to go no not so it's actually a lot more complicated than it looks and so what'll happen is you know you'll start working through it and you'll submit the application and then you'll get an office action which happens on is the eighty five percent of the time whether a lawyer doesn't or you know you do it yourself um and then you'll get an office action you'll have to respond to that and it's a legal brief with legal language and could be really hard to understand what they're asking for and strategically answer their questions or deal with the issues that they presented to you so that you can get your trademark through so what happens is I forget the percentage but there's a massive amount of applications that are abandoned right so you might submit an application as an entrepreneur business owner to the trademark office and then you just never do anything with it and let it die right so you lose your filing fees and nothing ever happens with it you never get your mark because it's a confusing process so don't do that just pay a lawyer to do it in the first place and so to give you an idea of what our fees are recharged twenty five hundred dollars for a trademark package and that includes the trademark search which I'm actually showing you exactly how to do in our advanced for entrepreneurs class that'll save you five hundred bucks right there s o we charge five hundred for the trademark search we give you a consultation so you can kind of get a sense of we get a sense of what your brand is and what you actually do need to train marks we give you that advice and then we actually do the application respond to all the copyright I'm sorry not copyright office action type of stuff and then give you advice on how to protect the mark wants we get it for you now one thing I just want you to know obviously I'm not the only game in town there are a lot of lawyers that you can use for trademark registration but I want you to be aware of some what some lawyers do and what a lot of different online services do so you might go and see like oh trademark application for five hundred books yeah that sounds cheap I'm going to do that well first of all they're they're probably not including the trademark search but even more importantly that than that that's just the application and like I said eighty five percent to ninety percent of the time you're going to deal with an office action and so when you get that office action you gotta go back to that lawyer and say hey I don't know how to respond to this and then they charge you more money okay so you think you're getting a deal you're not really really getting a deal so just make sure that you ask that question of whatever provider you use ok so that you don't get like the bait and switch situation going right and remember if you're at home and you want access to rachel's advanced courses you khun search on the catalogue rachel rogers and all that stuff will come out chris eyes wondering I am a digital artist and currently watermark my images with the design and texts stating it is mine along with a do not copy is this protection or proof of ownership enough? I wouldn't say that it's proof of ownership I mean unfortunately there are some really aggressive thieves out there who will strip your watermark out of your images on do you know the copyright registration gives you certain benefits that you don't get like even if you can prove ownership which is also convene difficult without copyright registration you don't get the statutory damages which means that you automatically get thirty thousand dollars or up to you know I think it's over one hundred thousand dollars per instance of copyright infringement that you get you don't have to prove your damages you have to prove how much this infringement made you lose you automatically get that if you can prove copyright infringement you get the ability t o file a federal lawsuit on dh there a couple of other benefits that you get when you registered the copyright? Like I said two it's an asset that's sitting in your business and it's transferrable so you know it's easy for you know someone who is interested in purchasing your work to see ok you have this copyright you can file something with the copyright office and you can transfer that ownership to another person if that's what you choose to do so I would highly recommend that they take the advance I p for designers because we go way deep into that issue