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How to Create an Amazing Brand Name

Lesson 13 from: Protect and Profit From Your Intellectual Property

Rachel Rodgers

How to Create an Amazing Brand Name

Lesson 13 from: Protect and Profit From Your Intellectual Property

Rachel Rodgers

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Lesson Info

13. How to Create an Amazing Brand Name

Lesson Info

How to Create an Amazing Brand Name

So I think my buddy Matt is ready to talk to us about coming up with a good brand name. Hey, Matt. Rachel, Awesome. Great to see you. And just so you know, you can't see us, but we can all see you. OK, great to not see. You also think this is why I like working with Matt because he's pretty funny, actually. How I met him is what was the name of that company that I met you through? Folk art foot cardigan. Exactly. So he was involved in a project where they're selling socks, and they called them foot cardigan instead of socks. Which is really clever. I've actually had a client who came up with a trademark that are a brand name That was sort of like socks E or something along those lines. And then they had a big fight with another company That was like a sock subscription type situation. Um, so this is wait. Clever. Right foot cardigan. Who else is gonna come up with that? E? Nobody s so so Yeah. What s O mat? Just give us a little bit of background about yourself so folks know who you ar...

e, and why they need to listen to you. Sure, Yeah. My background is in literature and philosophy in terms of education. And then I became a copywriter at a creative agency where I got to spend lots of time writing, you know, really exciting about us pages and our services when pages for corporate clients. But I also got to do some some really cool stuff and s O that was great experience and did a lot of naming and branding, but was also a little bit frustrated because we would sort of come up with these great ideas for our clients. But then we just sort of sent them off and said, Good luck. I hope that was a good idea. You know, the rial feedback on whether it works so that I sort of transitioned into my current role at a Greek marketing here in Dallas, where I'm the VP of analytics and optimization. And so my job is to figure out what's gonna work and to determine whether or not it worked. Sort of both sides, the creative side, but also the analytics and, uh, did the data side Well, yeah, exactly. Because we don't want to just come up with ideas that sound great. I wrote them to actually be great in reality and generate revenue for us. Right? That's the whole point. So mad and I have talked about recently, and one of the things we're working out right now is a naming guide because so many of my clients come to me and say, Hey, I want to register the trademark and I'm like, OK, awesome. What's the trademark that you want to register? And it's something along the lines of first name, last name consulting, you know, And before you pick on me because I do realize that the name of my law firm is Rachel Waters. Law office. Okay, so before you do that, just know that I'm bound by bar rules. So I'm bound by, you know, ethics and professional responsibility rules that are related to my profession. So I have to use when you're in New York lawyer, you have to use your last name in the name of the business, and we're actually changing the name now because it's no longer just Rachel Waters is a couple of other attorneys involved. So we're gonna change and make it us funky as we can while still using the name Rogers, because I have no choice, you know, So I'm required to do that. All right. You don't have the same excuse. So we have to do better than just, you know, first name, last name consulting, cause that's not trademark herbal. It's descriptive. And when you have a descriptive mark, you cannot register it, okay, because there's nothing unique about it. So the uspto wants to see a unique sort of brand identify air. That ah, bunch of other people are gonna come up with the exact same thing because then there's confusion in the marketplace, right? And that use PTO doesn't like that. So you got to come up with something unique. So how do we actually do that matter? How do we come up with, like, ah, clever brand name? Sure, it's It's a really hard, a hard question, and a lot of people struggle with it. But the key for me and I think for everyone is to be a really thorough and kind of do your homework. And what I mean by that is that most people tend to start what I would consider the very last step, which is trying to come up with a great name on. So people will just spend time brainstorming and trying to think of funny, clever names without really knowing what they're trying to accomplish, Right? So the first thing we start with this always, you know, what's your market? What's your industry? Who are your competitors? Who is your target audience? What do you want them to feel about? You kind of go through all this basic, you know, value proposition in brand statement and mission and vision and all these things on Day two really male down as much of that is possible in pretty pretty thorough detail. And so they that way, once we have that sort of foundation all nailed down, which, if somebody has a decent business plan that should be able to rattle it off the time head, you'd be surprised I have the world. A lot of us want to skip the hard work, right? We think of like, oh, I got this great product. They develop it, they put in all this effort, right? And then they're like, OK, you know, I need a name for it. And they just want to slap a name on it after the fact. Well, no, that's a process in it of itself. And it's worth doing cause if you're gonna register the trademark for it and be stuck with it, you know, for the for the eternity of your business, then you want to put the effort in to make it a good one. Just like the amount of effort you put in when you're coming up with a name for your kid, right? We all like, read those long books. We look at all the meanings in several different languages to make sure it doesn't mean, you know, you know, like, you know, someone who kills people, you know, or something like that. Something we don't aspire our kid to be. So you should put that same amount of effort. And when coming up with a name for your brand or product, so tell us a little bit about the process. So once you've kind of got a sense of who is your market, you know what, are you trying to communicate with your brand on what? Yeah, So that you know, once you got all that that foundation stuff done, then we kind of go back through that and really try toe, pull out these little nuggets of some detail or, you know, concept. That sort of represents the feeling that you want your brand to convey what you want your audience toe have when they experience your brand. So you know, if if, if you are in an industry that's typically frustrating, maybe, you know, like, uh, orbits or Hipmunk or one of these sort of travel helping people deal with travel on buying plane tickets, where it's sort of a terrible process in general. And so you know what can you know? That something that you're trying toe identify that your helpful and that your friendly and that it's easy on that. It's delightful and pleasant and welcoming and all these sort of words that, you know, say the opposite of what your industry sort of typically stands for. Yeah, and so that might just be that one particular aspect. That's just the very first question. What is your industry ministry is airfare or, you know, buying plane tickets travel, and it's frustrating. So let's be friendly. Let's be hopeful, and then you move to the next thing. You know who is your audience. Maybe there younger people that are hip and cool and you want Oh, I don't know, appeal toe the kids. I don't something like hipsters. Yeah, you know what are some trying to tap into something that would you represent? That it You know, there's a This is a long process again, it's kind of like really being thorough and trying to come up with these concepts that represent, you know, that one particular aspect. So then once you kind of nailed down, you go from these sick, full paragraph business model type descriptions of your industry to a list of single words that identify a particular aspect. Andi. Then the next step is sort of think, you know, take it. This is where they store. The creative process starts where it's like, OK, so if I want to be friendly, what's on object, or a person or a place or on idea? That sort of communicates that in a visceral way. So, you know, maybe, like, uh, if you want to be helpful and friendly, like a ST Bernard snow dog, like in the cartoons with, like, something I would you know if somebody was gonna return a lost wallet or, you know, let Sherrick AB with you on a rainy day or, you know, just a random smile on the sidewalk or something like that. Where is this sort of surprising, pleasant, helpful Trying to sort of translate this one idea of friendly, helpful, pleasant into on object or really tangible sort of visceral. Well, I'm looking, really. And that's where some of the root of the name comes from. Yeah, terms off. Yeah, uh, the creative side. So we kind of go through that process. And again, we're still just talking about one particular aspect of being friendly and helpful. You could have a list of 50 or 100 of the sort of route concepts, and then you come up with 25 or 30 sort of of these, you don't really concrete this rule ideas or objects that represent one of those. And so you end up with some really long lists. So it's, but that really is the key. I think people tend to think that they're sort of creative magic, right? Like, let's just talk it out and then Oh, my God, that's a perfect idea. Unfortunate. Really? What I tell people. And what I tell myself is that really the goal here is to come up with as many terrible names as possible. We want to come up with, like, 1000 just really stupid things for the business on def that if you make that your golden, it's, you know, it's fine to write down whatever you know, you just writing it down. Everything that comes to your mind and right, What always happens is that something stands out. One of them turns out to be really unique. And your brain surprises you with what it spits out. And so you end up with a, you know, a core list off. We'll try to get to around 5 to ideas that I'm really excited about. Yeah, Yeah. And before we move on to the next step, yeah, and so yeah, exactly. So at that point, you're just coming up with sort of like a short list. So you're giving yourself a process to go through, and then once you have a short list, you can see what sort of speaking to you. Maybe you can add words to it or, you know, the other thing that I think helps to is if you're trying. If you're in the decision phase and trying to decide between a short list of names I like to like, write it down and, like, put it on my fridge for a couple of days and be like, all right, three days later. Do I think that's a stupid name now, or is that still a good name? You know, um, for example, we just came up with the things Sorry, guys. Like Good. Well, yeah, I was just gonna follow that same trail, you know, considering pronunciation. It may seem obvious to you, but maybe it's not to everybody. So writing it down and letting your neighbor and your mom and your uncle read it and see how they say it and things like that, or just sitting on it for a while and and really, this is also the part where you know, the trademark research comes in, like you said, and making sure that whatever this name that you love doesn't already exist somewhere out there. And there's that has to be a very thorough process as well, right? And then you also want to do some research about you know possible what it means in other languages, for example, doesn't mean prostitute in Russia. If that's not what you want to express. You know, if you don't want your brand associated with, like, the word prostitute, then maybe that would be a reason not to choose that name. So you should also be thinking about different translations. And the USPTO actually wants to know that. So if this, you know, phrase has the different meeting in another language, they want you to tell them about that because that helps them determine whether they're going to register the mark or not. And I actually had happened with a client, and they knew that it meant something in another language. I won't say what the brand name was, but it was, you know, pretty well known. And they thought it would be a great was sort of, ah, food object. And they were trying to use it for a tech sort of product, right? And, um, kind of like Apple is your client Apple, you got You figured I got totally shut down because it was too, too generic. It was just It was like naming yourself just chair or something. it was like they in that other language. It was from Italian, and it was such a common word that they not only did they get shut down for their trademark would also there SDO And there you are l availability and the website name and all these other things was it was a huge burden Hurdle and they had to change. Change the name, go something else? Yeah, and that's why this is worth two dio, you know, because then you can figure out all right, Is this name gonna create a lot of problems for me? If you choose a name that is super descriptive, um, and that a lot of other people could come up with on their own. Then you're gonna create a situation that even if you do get the market going to police that all the time because there's gonna be all these other people that are gonna come up with this same idea, that's why it's worth it. And this is actually a trick to lower your legal costs. You know, you want to come up with something pretty unique that no one else is going to do like like legal, None Trucks right. Our guy that we just came up with part of the way we came up with. That is what I wanted to express, like, sort of like with small business bodyguard. I didn't want the word law or legal in it because that just equals boring. Right? So I was like, I don't want it to say law or legal, but I wanted to express like that protection. So we called it small business bodyguard. So legal nunchucks is sort of like a smaller, less expensive version of that, right? So for legal, none trucks, I felt like All right, well, you're not getting a full body guards like you do with small business bodyguard. But you're getting a tool like a weapon to protect yourself, you know? So we call it like the tagline is self defense for your photography business. Um, so legal. None. Trucks was a wave toe, like combined two words and, like none trucks. Who the hell uses? You know, if you Google search legal nunchucks, it's gonna be like a bunch of articles about in what states is having none. Trucks legal. You know, eso There's no competitors, you know, using that name so it's worth it. And honestly, I didn't love it at first. My whole team loved it. They were like, Oh, you gotta use name. It's great. I did not like it, but I was just like, all right, I'm gonna trust you guys and go with it cause it's unique enough and it is trademark herbal. So that's the important thing. Um, and then sometimes it grows on you. So don't just go with what? Oh, this excites me. And I'm so excited. I love it. Doesn't mean that it's a strong market. Doesn't mean that it's trademark herbal. Okay, so it's important for you to know that. All right, So anything else, Matt, you want to tell us, or do you want to give us a couple of examples of like, good names versus, like, really sucky names? One more thing that I will tell you is what I always do. If all possible is to do some real world testing, you know, if you can end up with a list of three or 45 names that we meet all your other requirements and you know that nobody else uses, that's what we did with Foot Kartik and actually where we one of the other name was Rad foot. And then I think the other one was just put sweater, huh? Put Swagger. I like that one way. It was week. We set up a landing page that was identical. We had three conversions that were identical. Except the name was different on Ben. We bought, like, pay per click like AdWords traffic, and sent an equal amount to all three. Onda had just a really simple sign up form. It said, This is coming soon. Um, you know, give us your email address to get notified and foot card again. Got, like, 150 sign ups in a week. And the other one's got, like, three and four. Wow, that's so funny. That is how we decided it was a slam dunk. Yeah. Yeah, I love that process is something that's totally doable. Not expensive. Um I mean, honestly, I know how you feel. Because with anything with, like, pay per click or s CEO, I'm just like, Oh, I don't want a deal, you know? But it's good. Teoh, you know, have resource is like Matt to give you those ideas and then there aren't their tools to do quick, easy landing pages now. Oh, yeah. UNB ounces is what we used in its great abused in baton. And but And you know, they're great if you don't have a website. If you already do this, a ton of tools optimize Lee and even AdWords or Google Analytics inside into those you can do experiments that there's so many more. Yeah, it really is easy, Teoh those kinds of tests. But I like that you're connecting sort of the marketing with the data to make a good decision. And it's worth the effort. Like I said, because you're going to register this mark, it's going to cost you a lot of money. You don't have to change the name, you know, in the very near future. So I'm always wrong in my predictions. Always. I think foot cardigan was gonna win, and it won by like a landslide, and it really waas obvious. Andi, I thought Rad foot was gonna win, But, um, but the data, the data doesn't lie. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. All right. Do you have any other? I have one example that I'm thinking about. I think maybe it's not a good one to share. I don't Okay for terrible names. You know what? One of the ones that I think is really horrible is when you come up with, like, a random word. You know, like when people do this in the tech industry a lot, you're probably from clear with this, right where you come up with, like, you like, there's this word and then you add some like, you know, lead to it or e o you know, or like whatever random ending to it, and think that it creates a good name and often it doesn't like it has no legs. People have no idea what the hell you're talking about. It's not fun to say. It's hard to spell, you know, These are all reasons why it doesn't say it doesn't suggest anything to you. It was which is the purpose of your brand, right? And when you're a new company especially, you know, you really don't have time, Teoh educate people on what? This word how to say this word and what it means and what you're you know, the best friend names, I think are the ones that are memorable and easy to say and that give a pretty clear idea what you do business. Small business bodyguard is perfect words. It's not the normal, you know, like small business legal services or whatever it's like gives you. But it also is a very clear picture of what you're going to do. I'm gonna help protect your business. It's It's perfect. So it's a good name. Good job. Well, thank you. Well, thank you so much. So much, Matt, For joining us and giving us these little tidbits on creating strong brands. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Alright. I'll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. So All right. I think now is a great time to start taking some questions. We've got only a couple of minutes left. So before you know, we actually close out, I want to spend some time. You know, if you've got questions online or here in the audience, um let's dig in and studio go for. So I'm not a photographer, but I take a ton of pictures, adapt them, and I use them in my marketing. Yes. And then I also use a lot of royalty free images. Yes, off of stock photography sites or even sites that help you make little Quotables are right that are kind of presets. Yeah, Are can I copyright those Both my images and things I've adapted from royalty free images that I created my own at a quote, something I said, you know or taken image I blurted out of my Yeah, but cover You know, that's a really great question. So on the images that you create, you can definitely registered the copyright for those. You can also register the copyright with, like, words over them that those air yours, but for ones that you purchase from stock photography sites and they actually own the copyright and they're selling you a limited license and you should actually read the terms for the license that your purchasing because sometimes you're purchasing a license that you can't use in a commercial setting. You know most of them do allow commercial setting use, but like it's limited, you know you can't use it in every way. Like I said, they're sort of piecing, parsing apart. Um, there copyright like the right to display, perform, distribute, prepare derivative works from their limiting your ability to do that. So even though you add your own quote to it, and so sort of add something to it that doesn't make it uniquely yours. The quote, though, could be your So, for example, if you were registering the copyright for something like that, What you would do is you fill out the application and there's I screen where you could limit your rights. And so you'd fill out the application and on Lee, claim copyright registration for the words and not claim, you know, exclude the photograph itself. And I did this when I registered small business bodyguard. I had a professional photographer take a lot of photos, which I have a limited license to use in my business in a variety of ways, but I don't own it, so I couldn't register the copyright for those photos. So I excluded those photos from the actual total pdf that I was registering right, so you don't have to piece. You don't have stripped out. You know, other people's content that you're using in a fair way or that you have a license to use. All you're gonna do is in the actual copyright application. There's a screen where you could say no, not the photos excludes the photos from this copyright registration and Onley include the words You could do that with illustrations, exclude the illustrations or exclude the words and keep the illustrations. There's different ways to work it so that you can register your stuff and exclude other people stuff that's involved in that. And if I I have, I shouldn't go in. Just register one quote, actually, probably go. And when I have a whole bunch, right? I mean to me, I have so many of these little tidbits like, How do I make it manageable? Yeah, how do Isis create question? And I actually wanted to address that. I'm not sure if I did already, but what I would recommend is if you're creating a ton of content, which most of us creatives are right. So if you have like a photography client once a week or three times a week, you're shooting hundreds, if not thousands of photos every month. And so depending on how the same thing if you're creating block post, if you're creating like, thes quotable images and things like that, what you would do is just create a system for copyright registration on a regular basis. So maybe so last day of the month or the first day of the month. Maybe it's on a quarterly basis. Put it in your calendar. Remind yourself that you need to do that. And then when you're creating this content, make sure you're saving it in your files in a certain way that you can find it, you know? And when you're doing this mining process and keeping a list of all the I p that you're creating, it makes it easier for you to just make sure that all of your copyright is captured. All your copyrighted material actually makes it into a copyright applications was all protected, and you can protect lots of different content in one application. Okay, so that's a way to save money and, you know, saving time and energy. Thanks. That's really great studio. I have tons from online, but I want to make sure e let you guys us first. Yeah, yeah, like writing, Naming, you know, don't you think sometimes, like the name comes Meaning of the name comes from the product, Like in a lot of the top companies now, like Apple, Google didn't really mean much. Uh, the names themselves, but they get their meaning from the product itself, right? I sort of I get what you're saying. A company like Google, right? They've had a long time and a lot of money giving people that name recognition, and they've actually had to do a lot to protect their mark. Right, Because we have now made Google are part of our vocabulary. So now we say, Oh, just Google it. What we mean is, you know, search it on the search engine, usually Google, But sometimes you might be using a different search under, and you still say Google it, you'd use it like, sort of make it like a common word. This happened with Xerox, where you know, for photocopies. You know, you're talking about a copier machine, but because they became so famous, people would just say, Oh, just xerox it. So they had to do some fighting some people in some other companies to make sure that they could keep their mark because it couldn't become so famous that it becomes just like a word in the dictionary. And then it's no longer trademark herbal. So anyway, that's just an example with Google. So Google is a unique name when you pick a sort of a made up name, not real words, that a combination of real words that you find in the dictionary. You have to do a lot of education for your clients because there's no point of reference, right, like legal nunchucks. You know, the word legal means something to you in the word nunchucks means something. Will some people, some people have said, What the hell are nunchucks? Uh huh. But the words actually mean something. And so they suggest something to customers would be interested. If it's a made up word. Google without having that brand recognition, it means nothing. So you have to educate your clients, and that's really expensive for small businesses. So that's why I would say, made up names. I'm not a huge fan of it because it costs a lot of money for you developed the following behind it, something like Apple I love because Apple sort of says fresh, you know, that's the sense that I get of it. And like if he if apple, if the company apple sold apples or was an apple farmer, apple orchard or even a fruit stand, they might struggle toe to use the name apple and protect the mark because it's descriptive. But because they're using the word apples to sell computers, which have absolutely nothing to do with apples, that's what makes it a unique mark, you know? So I think that is a really strong mark. Um and it does suggest something to clients. It says fresh to me. Anyway, I don't know if that what other people get conveyed from it. So does that answer your question? I'm not sure that sometimes you have to come up with because all the domain names are taken. Oh, yeah. And let me tell you something for the trip for that, too, is like you can use get whatever it iss, you know? So get whatever your whatever your name is. You know, there are some unique ways that you can come up with domain names, So don't let the domain name stop you. Because if people are interested in your product, first of all that half the time, they don't even know the domain name. Anyway. They just look in Google, they do a search to find. Do you pop up? Um, and they'll figure your domain name out. I think that's less of an issue. It's more important that you make sure it's a strong brand that's trademark herbal. And that sort of, um, says something to your client and gets them excited and interested in checking you out. You know, Banks. Yes, I have a question. So for the copyright for books, you were saying you had to write the whole book to copyright it If you were doing something like a screenplay or a treatment, Can you do liken, outlining? Copyrighted? Yes, you can. So, you know, you don't. What I'm saying is like, you can't have an idea for a book and think that that is something you can register the copyright for. You actually have to have some sort of physical representation of it, right? And when I say physical, I'm also including digital, right? You know, so you can have an outline for a book. You could have a book proposal itself. It can come in many different formats. It doesn't have to be the whole length of the book. And a lot of times to What authors will do is if they're working on a manuscript for a very long time bill register the unpublished manuscript as sort of like a manuscript in progress. Then when the book is finished, they'll register it again with the finished version. You know where they might register it on a yearly or monthly basis, depending on how much progress they're making in the book over time, you know, and do you have to go back in register? Edit. So, like if you do the final, do you have to go register? We'll remember that you that your copyright protection gives you the right to prepare derivative works. Okay, so if you do some minor updates to it, you probably don't have to register the copyright again. If you do substantial updates to it, then you'd want to re register the copyright. And there's a way in the copyright application where you can say I've already registered this. Here's you can check off the box for the new content that's been added. And then that's what that new registration will protect. Will protect all that new stuff. Sure. So yours, girl. Thank you. A lot of stuff. It's in pulling domain, like on Facebook, right? Yeah. So that's not the public. I mean, that public doing, but whatever it is considered. So let's say you write stuff. It's your original stuff and you put it on Facebook. And later you want to go make money off it. Does Facebook have any while Facebook does have some funky terms and conditions, and that's it. I'm pretty sure of that. I mean, honestly, it's like a full time job to keep up with it, because they change them all the time. And this is stop writing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, if something is really important to you and you feel strongly about protecting it, you might not want to post it there. Right? Um, I'm not sure that anything that you post to Facebook they own. But I do believe if I remember correctly that anything you post to Facebook, they have some sort of license dio that they can then use in different ways. Okay, so you're sort of giving them a license by posting it there. And this is true for a lot of different social media. So you want to be very protective of your intellectual property and not post it there? If it's really important stuff, it's good to know that doesn't mean you can't use it at all. But you just reserve your best stuff, your squirrel it away. And don't write it there, you know, or what you do is you can, you know, have it, like maybe on your block in your own domain and then just put something on Facebook that points people to it instead of putting the content directly on one of the social media. So do we have some questions from the online crew? I think. Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot to do. It. That's the time. I'm all right. So one of our viewers want to know, Would you advise a photographer to register all photos before adding them to their website? And if you don't, would you consider that basically giving it away? Um, no. Posting it on your website is not giving it away. Hell, no. On then. There's another part to that one. Um, wait, let me deal with that part first. So what I recommend is that you register all of your photos, probably before you post them anywhere. So before they're considered published on did you check out the advanced I P for photographers? Course we go into detail. But what's published? What unpublished. It's kind of confusing with the copyright office photos air. One of the more confusing things to register. Actually, there's some specific rules about it is a little bit different than pretty much everything else that you interest are. Um, but what I would recommend is that you register your photos, like, sort of on a regular basis. Systematize it, um, and do it s, oh, that It's before it's published. So even, honestly, if you do a shoot with a client before you send it even to the client, cause that could be sort of considered publishing, and I'm not gonna get into all that cause it's just like it's too much. But what I recommend is, you know, do it on a systematic basis. You have to take every photo like if you got throwaway photos that are fuzzier, that didn't come out good at all. You have to register those but your final products. Those are the things that you want to register on a regular basis. Um, Maxie is wondering, Is it worth protecting a product that can easily be copied? I heard ones. A story about a person who designed a product and to get around the law. The person who copy the product made slight changes to the designs over example. Instead of around Handel used a square handle like just small differences like that. Is this for a physical product or for like, I'm you know what? It doesn't say? Okay, so, um, derivative works, right? So that means that if you own the copyright to that content, making slight changes is still gonna be considered a derivative work in most cases. Now that might be something that you know, winds up. You know, it could be a tough case, and it's hard to tell, and it could be something that winds up in court. The judge has to decide whether it's considered a derivative work or if it's a unique work. But this does happen so you might have a situation where you create your own unique stuff. But it winds up being very similar to somebody else's stuff, and they think you've stolen their stuff and you haven't. So this is why I always tell my clients who are illustrators or photographers or anybody who's creating something. That's why one of the reasons why it's important to register the copyright so that you can prove ownership. But also keep your like process files. You're sort of source files your your sketchbook, your you know, illustrations the way that you're, you know, going through the process of creating that content. Keep that stuff. You know, like I have all the like, raw files from creating small business bodyguard. Keep all that stuff because that is a way for you to prove that it's not copyright infringement. If it isn't, there are sometimes are just two people have the exact same idea. It could happen, Um, and it could come out looking very similar. When it's not, you know, it's it's, it's it's not really an issue. And that actually was the case. Wasn't that recently an issue with, um, gosh, what's his name? That song was just playing just a minute ago. CIA. Sam Smith and Tom Petty, right? Oh, yeah, There was a song that he did recently that sounded very similar to one of Tom Petty songs. And he said, You know what? Honestly, you know, I don't think that I used you know, Tom Petty stuff, but I know that Tom Petty is an inspiration to me. So maybe it did show up in some way. And so they just settled it and worked out a deal, you know, which is awesome. I love that eso. Sometimes that is the case, and it can get wishy washy and very fact specific. So what I would recommend just to protect yourself is to always keep your source files and the way that you come up with ideas, keep your notes on it. So that way, if you ever have to prove ownership, that that's one way to do it in addition to having the copyright registration. But what I mean to say is, if you create a course, there are a lot of people have courses on the exact same topics, like marketing. How many courses have we all seen on the topic of marketing? We've seen 8000 right? But they're all unique in their own ways. They're all talking about different stuff. They've got a little bit different content. But that doesn't mean that just because you create a course that is that a lot of other people have that they can just tweak it slightly and then sell it as their own hell. Now, that's copyright infringement. So we have exactly Ah, One more question. If photographer has a website with all their photographs and they copy right there website Does this mean all their photographs or copyright? If they have a website and the website is copyrighted, so they register, not cooperated or the for the website. Okay, Well, if you did a copyright registration correctly, then the photos should be included. Right? So you would say All right, I've got literary works because I've got written copy on the site. And then I'm also gonna check a box for photographs because I have photographs on the site. So if you've got a couple of different types of content on the site and you included all of that in the copyright registration, then Phyllis photos that are on that site are part of that copyright registration. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, Yeah, that's perfect sense. And then, um, there's actually one here that I saw a couple of votes on that I want to make sure I get it. If you I'm telling you, I love you. Reckon like vote a question like, Yeah, that's a good question. If you copyright a course with accompanying materials? What additional steps might they have to take if they want to take if they want to make changes to the content or materials? I'm not sure I understand that question. If you copyright a course with accompanying materials with accompanying materials. Okay, what additional steps might I have to take if I change the course content? Okay, so that's pretty easy. All right, So if you have, let's say you have a course that has, like, pdf's and then you have some video lessons and then you might have some audio lessons and maybe have some worksheets or workbook that's included in that. So you've got a couple of different formats. You can register the course and all those different pieces of it in one application, right? And so then let's say that you then update the course and change some of the content. If you do major changes and there's, you know, a lot of new content, then I would recommend doing a new application. You can either do a completely fresh application, or you can do an application where you're updating the registration that you already did. Okay to add the new content to it. If it's really just slight changes, then you often don't have to do. Ah, a new registration because you still own the derivative works. And that's it. That's gonna be easily considered a derivative work, because there's only slight tweaks. We've gone through a lot you guys have really powered through. And I'm really proud of all of you for hanging out with me all day and learning about intellectual property and talking about it and figuring this stuff out. Okay, you guys are champions. So, um, here's what we've done, right? You've We've conducted an intellectual property audit in five simple steps. Mine prioritize, rework, protect and profit its profit time. Okay, so let's talk about what that looks like. This is the easy, fun part. Okay, so we've done all the work. All right, Um, and this is the fun part. This is where you bring your newfangled by P to market. All right, So you've gone through the steps, you've come up with some new content that you already have existing, and you're gonna repackage it in a new way and you protect it. You registered the copyright for it, and then you bring it to market, you make more money, you work less and you expand the reach of your audience by bringing that new product to market. And then you're gonna repeat this process on at least an annual basis, if not quarterly. So I want to see you doing this regularly. You know, take a day out of your business toe work on this, you know, quarterly and definitely at least annual if you're gonna do annually than you probably need a week, you know, to really sort through all of the content that you're creating. So you guys have done a really great job, and this is where you get through the so celebration part. And so I want to leave you with a quote that I love. And you'll see this on my website and looks like everywhere. Okay, I love this quote. And it's by Mark Getty, who I believe is the chairman of the board for Getty Images. Intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century. Look at the richest men. 100 years ago, they all made their money extracting natural resource is or moving them around. Okay, All today's richest men have made money out of intellectual property. So that means that you're taking your extracting resource is right. Extracting resource is from your business and moving them around. Okay? You're transferring them to other people. You're retaining the rights or licensing. You're doing all kinds of funky stuff to generate revenue from your content. So I want you to always just be thinking about that. Today's richest men have made their money out of intellectual property and women. Okay, not just men. I'm gonna alter that on my website, actually, um, so that's how you're gonna make your money. Okay, that's how you're gonna generate revenue in your business. And this is the way to do it so that you don't need a whole lot of new human capital. You don't have to spend a whole lot of money. So if you want to really go pro and really generate new lines of revenue and have that $1,000,000 business and reach that $1,000, mark, this is the way to do it. What? We've walked through today. So now you know how to do it. You guys are empowered, and I'm super super excited about that. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been so incredibly awesome.

Class Materials

bonus material

Rachel Rodgers - Bonus Disclaimers.pdf

bonus material

Rachel Rodgers - CreativeLive Handout.pdf
Rachel Rodgers - Intellectual Property Master Class.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Kerri Konik, Brandscape Atelier
 

Rachel definitely makes IP law interesting, understandable, and most importantly, she and her team in this course translates how it is essential in the monetary value of your content, brand assets and business valuation. Build your small business for growth, structured right with real TM protection, aka insurance, aka asset appreciation. Build a creative firm that is built to become and empire.

Kelli LaMantia
 

I highly recommend this class! I barely knew what IP was and Rachel explained it all in a straight-forward fun class. This course is an amazing launching pad for any small business learning about how to rake in revenue from their very own property.

Jas Faulkner
 

Ms Rogers' class is rich in information and her approach is friendly and accessible. If you have been avoiding learning about intellectual property because it seems too daunting, this is the class for you. Every creative professional should know the extent and worth of their IP. According to Rachel Rogers, you may be utilizing as little as five percent of your worth. Five percent? Really? You can't afford to miss this class.

Student Work

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