Ep. 83 - Mastering Trademarks with Kelli Jones: Protecting Your Brand's Future

In this episode, we are joined by the accomplished attorney Kelli Jones to discuss the vital role a business lawyer plays in protecting and growing your business. Kelli shares her journey from the nonprofit sector to running her own successful law firm, offering invaluable insights into the world of business law.

We dive deep into the importance of having a business attorney on your team, the intricacies of trademarks, and why proactive legal measures are essential for any entrepreneur. Kelli also provides practical advice on the difference between copyrights and trademarks, and how to avoid common legal pitfalls.

Highlights include:

• Kelli's transition from nonprofit work to corporate law
• The benefits of flat fee vs. hourly legal services
• Key legal steps every business owner should take
• The detailed process of securing a trademark
• Real-life examples and the consequences of not trademarking your brand

Don’t miss this engaging conversation packed with expert advice to help you safeguard your business. Whether you're a startup or an established entrepreneur, Kelli's expertise is a resource you can't afford to miss.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 4:06 The Importance of Having a Business Attorney
• 12:29 Understanding Copyright and Trademark
• 22:19 Challenges in Trademarking
• 29:05 Importance of Timely Trademarking

Transcript

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 0:13

Ms. Kelli Jones, it's like basketball Jones song back in the day, I love that we have another attorney on the last one we had, we dove into estate planning and how terrible it is to be an attorney at the same time today. However, we're going to speak about why having a business attorney On your team is highly important. And then what I'm really wanting to know is about trademarking. So I haven't done it yet. And I have a little story about not why I haven't, but something about trademarks and I want to get down to that, but without further ado, Ms. Kelli Jones, once you tell us where you came from, how you grew up and why you're an attorney.

Kelli Jones: 0:51

Sure. Thanks so much for having me. So I'm from New York and I didn't really, obviously, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And my mom was always if you don't know what you want to do, do something lucrative. So she was always like mentioning law school. And that was when we thought that Oh, you just go to law school and then you make a lot of money. Going after law school. I'm like, Oh, that's actually not the case. Like I worked at a nonprofit my first year after law school, making 35, 000 a year. It's not the like super glamorous thing that you think. But I'm ultimately glad I did it, but I started in the nonprofit world. Then I went to a private firm and then I've had my own firm for the last almost four years now, working primarily with business owners, entrepreneurs in all of. Contracts, trademarks, things that help protect your business.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 1:44

That's awesome. So how did you go from nonprofit to more of a corporate world? What was that transition like? Cause it had to be totally different.

Kelli Jones: 1:53

Yeah. So at the time, the second nonprofit I was working for it's a New York City, it was a New York City nonprofit, but I was working in their Long Island office and running the whole county. It was just me and a social worker doing everything for the nonprofit in that county while the city had tons of support staff and stuff. So both of us, me and the social worker, a lot of our tasks were not anything related to what we were actually doing. I was like this guy's house, the, his, a pipe burst in his house and I was there for eight hours with it flooding and waiting for people. Because we were guardians for people in the community, like court appointed guardians. So the house, like the person that act, no one was actually living in the house. Like the person that we were the guardian for was in some type of facility at the time. So I was basically like managing this house all of a sudden. And I was like, what am I doing here? Spending like day after day in this house. I'm like, I'm not a homeowner. I'm learning a lot, but not that I asked for any of this. So that transition was really me needing to get out of that job as quick as possible. And it just happened to get in a private firm. And then I thought at the time oh, maybe I'd go back to a nonprofit and then I just got stuck at that firm for the next couple of years. So it just I just really fell into it because the opportunity just presented itself. I got the interview. They hired me on the spot. So it's okay, we'll see how this goes. And then, once you get into one area of law, it's hard to switch because then you have experience in this area. And if you're going to try to go into another, you generally have to take a pay cut to go somewhere else. So it's like at the time I was like I want to do something else, but I live in New York. Can I like have a 20, 000 pay cut? Like it's a lot. So that's how I ended up there.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 3:44

That makes sense. All right. So let's jump into one of the main themes topics of it. Having an attorney from a business owner's perspective, first answer, or first question I should say is why is that so important? Because people can start throwing LLCs and all of that stuff. Like you can do that yourself. I do not, I advise against it compliance when you're listening, I'm, I advise against that. That is my advice. But that being said, why is it so important to, hire an attorney?

Kelli Jones: 4:13

Yeah. So I always tell people that, when you're looking for an attorney, it's best to find one as early as you can in your business. I always say the first two people you should be looking for is like a CPA and an attorney. And that doesn't mean that you have to, pay a lawyer to do absolutely all of the legal stuff all at once, sometimes one of my consultations that I have is something where we'll talk about what priorities you need for your business and kind of the order of those priorities. Because. What a brick and mortar needs first, like with their legal priorities is going to be different than what like an online social media coach needs first, so you can't just take random advice from like Google or a blog post or something and be like, Oh, this is the order. So I don't need to go to a lawyer until I'm ready for X, Y, Z, because. You might actually need something sooner. So at least just having a consultation with a lawyer to talk about your specific business and what your goals are for growing, it is going to be better than waiting until something happens and then realizing, Oh, now I need to go to a lawyer. And then at that point, it's probably going to cost you a lot more time, money, and stress.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 5:17

Yeah. Attorneys are expensive. They nickel and dime me all the time. I know that's not to be true, but talk us through like someone's initial gut, because everyone's initial gut is that attorneys are expensive. It takes a lot of time. They're trying to expand as much time as possible. Ask me a bunch of questions just to charge up their bill. Can you talk through your process, obviously, but also what you're seeing from an industry shift in that perspective?

Kelli Jones: 5:42

Yeah, so I think overall a lot of business attorneys a lot of us are charging more flat fee based verse hourly. I know that legal industry is always very slow to change things, but. I can't speak for all other type of legal areas because I know a lot of them are still charging hourly. But I think for most of us, a lot of us are now charging flat fees. You can have a consultation for a lot cheaper than maybe you used to. And it's just, you pay for their consultation and that's the time. And then a lot of other things are project based. You pay a flat fee for an LLC or for a trademark or a copyright or a contract or something. Okay. So you know ahead of time what you're going to get and it's not Oh, actually now it's going to be five more hours. We don't bill by like the, like the 10 minute increments, like a lot of the typical legal industry might do I think that's a really good thing that is changing, especially for business owners. You want to know upfront what you're going to have to be paying. And a big part of this is because we want to help you be proactive in legally protecting yourself from the start. I would much rather you pay for a trademark than have to help you. Oppose someone else's trademark who got there first, because sure, it might make me more money to do that, but I don't want to do it. It's a long process. I don't want anything involved with that. Like it's going to take years. It's going to take a hundred thousand dollars. Like I'd rather you pay a couple thousand trademark your brand and, go on building your business.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 7:15

Yeah, and that's the, that's what I love about the flat fee model from my perspective, right? Being I deal with business owners on the financial planning side, we can actually plan those things in advance, right? There's things that are going to happen. Obviously, you need to get an LLC or S Corp, whatever entity you need to start with. But then you're also gonna have like contracts and agreements that you need to deal with. Again, depending on if you're brick or mortar or not, like you've got those issues. If you have employees are going to have employees, like all of those things matter, but they all, some of them have a different timeframe that they need to be executed. And when you have a flat fee, you can kind of space that out when it's all hourly. It gets so muddled and yes, the 10 minute Ackerman or like I've had one per text message. Who the hell wants to track that? I know you have a staff doing that, but like really what anyways, I'll get off on a tangent there. I apologize. When, what type of businesses do you work with? Is it industry specific? Is it startups? Where do you lie with your business?

Kelli Jones: 8:17

Yeah, so I've actually worked with a ton of different kinds of businesses. I've worked with some brick and mortars. I've worked with a lot of online business owners, a lot of podcast hosts and then a lot of people just with random products. Like I've had like solar panels and like hot sauce to like lash artists and like online coaches, financial people, website designers, like all different industries, which is good. Cause I learned a lot about these things. Like now I'm learning about the world of like audio visual equipment with one of my clients.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 8:54

That's fun. See, that just gives you experience and growth. That's just overall fun. That's why I love working with business owners. I also love doing podcasts because you get those stories and you get to learn and you're like, wow, I would have never have thought of, XYZ. Happening or whatnot. Huh. You do a lot of social media stuff, right? That's fun. What is your favorite thing to do from a I guess we're all content creators nowadays, but like, why do you do it? And what is the most fun thing you do when it becomes content creation?

Kelli Jones: 9:26

So I know I'm not a typical lawyer in saying this, but the content creation side of business is actually like my most favorite thing that I do. And I just, it's like my creative outlet. The legal side is, honestly, it is boring and like technical. So this is more of like fun stuff. I love making like graphics on Canva and stuff. And I love making like reels. My favorite is probably when I do reels relating to trademark issues with something in pop culture. Whether it's like someone from Vanderpump rules with their trademark or something that can bring it. So people have something to relate it to that they are already familiar with.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 10:06

And now put your business owner hat on what has being a content creator and doing these things done for your business. If you can track it, sometimes we can.

Kelli Jones: 10:18

Yeah, it's definitely I get more than half of my business from social media. And it's always been that way. I do. Track as much as I can where, clients come from and everything. So Instagram is my biggest source of clients. So that's pretty fun. I love that. Obviously it also is a reason to, that keeps me motivated to keep going with it as well.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 10:43

Important piece there is we all need to be doing it. It really doesn't. There's a few businesses that don't need to, but you really need to be out there doing it. And I've, I say this on almost every episode. I love the pandemic and what it did for a lot of our businesses because it took us virtual and it took us. Nationwide where people can reach out from wherever, right? They just connect with you and they like you as opposed to, pre 2020 it's more along the lines of who's around the corner. And I just don't think that model was great for everyone. Now people can reach out and be like, I love what she does. I can rock with her. And they're going to hire you for that specific reason. Not necessarily because of the nuts and bolts of law, which is, There's a lot of nuts and bolts. So we've, you've teased it a few times now. And the biggest I guess conversation we're going to have today is around trademarking. However, before we dive into that, a little teaser there is what about copywriting, what is the difference between copywriting and trademark?

Kelli Jones: 11:41

Yes, so when you think copyright, that is more of a creation. So it can be a book, a picture on Instagram, even a video, a blog, something that you've created. And as soon as you create it and put it out somewhere, so publish the blog post, post the video, something like You own the copyright to it as the creator. You don't even need to file anything. You own it automatically. So that is like the creation side of things. Trademarks is the branding side of things like the name of the podcast, the name of the blog, the name of the business. It could be like a tagline, a logo, a product line name event for like businesses that have products. So that is more of something that is. On the brand side of things. And it's something that identifies your goods and services. So you see the Nike swoosh sign and you're like, Oh, that's Nike. They sell athletic wear and like shoes and that kind of stuff.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 12:37

Got it. A blog post, a product type thing is more on the copyright side of things, which is why everyone gets in trouble when they don't tag whoever the original author or something is. Makes sense now. Or music for some reason. Music is a huge deal when it comes to all of our reels and whatnot. And then when we get to trademark, that's more of our branding service based, even what about a process? What if I had a certain black mammoth process that's different is that would be.

Kelli Jones: 13:04

So that depends if it's the name of the process and you use it like as a brand, it's like the name of something, then that could be something that's trademarked as far as the process itself. That's something that is more oh, maybe. If you're like sharing it with clients that you have covered under a non disclosure clause in your contract with them. Yeah, it's, that's where that kind of is.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 13:29

I always love throwing those out there because there's always like a, I love answering this way. Everyone says something. You're like it depends, right? It depends. What route do we want to go? What facts do we have? That's hilarious. Okay. Trademarking, start from square one, and you can use me as a test guinea pig, if you will, but where do we start and what the hell do we do?

Kelli Jones: 13:50

Yes. So the first step of the trademark process before we actually even file a trademark is a full search. And this is really to assess the risk level of your trademark because we don't wanna waste time and money applying for something that doesn't have a good chance of actually getting a trademark. So we do this search and you can do a free basic search on the trademark website. It's uspto.gov. And that's a great starting point, but it can only identify like major red flags if someone has like the exact same name as you and spelled the same way. But this search that we do is much more in depth that uses algorithms. Really the two main things we look at, which is also the trademark office looks at is how similar is your name to anyone else's, whether it's registered or pending and not just, so not just identical, but similar in sound and meaning in appearance and even like impression. So how similar is that? And then out of those, how similar in goods or services is it? Because if you have a similar or same name as someone else, but it's something completely different, that's okay, because the whole point is. We don't want consumers to be confused between your brand and someone else's brand. So if you're selling like hair scrunchies and someone else has a financial consulting firm, if both of those have the same name, that's okay. They can exist because someone's not going to accidentally go to a financial consulting firm when they meant to buy hair scrunchies online, and like vice versa, it's really to prevent people that are closer. So like with that hair scrunchies, maybe it's someone who's now starting to sell. Hair shampoo or something like hair care products like that's much closer that people can Google something and be like, oh, is that this brand or this 1? Are they related? Which 1 did my friend recommend? I don't know. So that's really the whole point of a trademark. So that's what we look at 1st to see okay. Is it low risk? Is it moderate risk? Is it high risk and even filing this thing? And then if we do see some like potential issues, it's okay, maybe that's an issue, but I think we can differentiate it because like they're doing something that's not that similar to what we're doing. I don't think people be confused. Then that's when we actually file the trademark, the whole process of from filing to actually getting registered. Is over a year, their average is 15 months right now. And that's because it's federal government. So you're

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 16:12

right. Federal. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's fair.

Kelli Jones: 16:14

Cause the first 10, like nine to 10 months after you file, you're literally just waiting, you're doing nothing. It's just waiting to get assigned to someone at the trademark office. So that's really why it takes so long. And then after that point, it gets assigned to someone. They basically do the same search that we did. And that's when they're like, okay, you're like good to go. Or maybe you get a refusal because of, some other brand being too similar to yours. And that's when you try to convince them no, we're actually not too similar it'll be okay. We can both exist happily. And then, it goes further in the process to try to you try to overcome that hopefully. And then Move on eventually to getting the trademark, but that's potentially like that's really why it takes so long. So yeah, that's basically the

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 16:57

what happens after you get the trademark. What are you supposed to do? Is there anything after

Kelli Jones: 17:02

Yes. So after you get it, you do have a duty to police your mark, which basically just means if you see infringers pop up, like you. To protect your rights that you have, you are supposed to, send them a cease and desist or say something to them to basically not let people, because if there's tons of brands that like all pop up with the same name and they're selling something similar to you, then it's you don't have as strong rights because you're not, you're allowing all of these other people to cause confusion and you're not doing anything. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is just you have to, once you have the trademark, you have to renew it. So between years five and six years, nine and 10, and then every 10 years after, and that's really just showing that you're still in business essentially, because, businesses go out of business all the time, or they rebrand or change names slightly or something like that.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 17:52

What happens when you're in the trademark and someone has already trademarked your name and you are somewhat like each other?

Kelli Jones: 17:59

Yeah. So if you're in the process and you get that refusal, you do have three months to submit an argument to try to, differentiate yourself. That may work. It might not work. It really depends on the examiner because it is subjective to the specific person that we get assigned. 1 might think a certain way, and 1 might think a completely different way. So we try to overcome it. And hopefully that works. If not if they don't accept your argument, they basically send you another refusal. So you have another 3 months. And at that point, you can either decide okay, I'm not going to pursue it. I'm going to, maybe change it. Rebrand something like that. Or you can try maybe, maybe. The other brand is small and they're only operating in the Northwest or something, and you're in the Northeast, then maybe you can reach out to them and both try to coexist and be like, Oh, I won't open a store in California or, something like that. And maybe try to come to some type of negotiation with them and then. Maybe you'll be allowed through with your trademark. But sometimes if they've already got the trademark, they might not be okay with that. So yeah, then at that point you might have to potentially rebrand or just roll the dice.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 19:10

So I have the website, I've got the social media, I've been operating. Isn't that enough? Isn't that trademarking?

Kelli Jones: 19:19

So that is the tough part. So basically there is it's what's called common law rights. So you do have rights once you start using something, even if you don't have the trademark. But the problem with relying on that is if someone else gets the trademark 1st for you to then be like I was actually the 1 using it 1st, you're going to have to either oppose. Their application if they're in process or try to cancel it if they've already registered. And for you to do that, it's going to cost a lot of money. Like average, like 100, 000 to do that. So if you're not the first one to trademark, even if you were using it first, it's going to be really expensive. And even if you do that and get it, you still, it's not guaranteed that you'll still get the more rights than them. You might just be. Allowed to operate in your like, because you only relied on common law rights, you might get stuck into a small geographical area where your common law rights like really exist. It's actually what happened to the original Burger King, which is not the chain we see today. The original Burger King is operating in a 20 mile radius in Illinois because someone else came in and filed the federal trademark. And then even though the original ones were using it first, they got. This exact scenario. And they ended up getting landlocked to 20 mile radius because they didn't have the federal trademarks. So really, even though the law is you have some rights, you should always be the first to file.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 20:47

What if so this is where I, my difficulty comes from, right? Ultimately can someone just come in and file it, even though you've been operating, like what do they have to prove operationally like for domains website domains, for example. If yours goes and you don't pay for it, someone else can just snipe it up and now it's theirs. Is that similar to the trademark side? If all of a sudden I was like, I'm going to look this up. Oh, they don't have one. Can I just file a bunch? Or how does that work?

Kelli Jones: 21:16

So when you're filing a trademark, You either show proof that you're using it either with the application or during the process, depending on if you haven't launched yet, you'll show it during the long process. And really what you're just showing is that you're using it using the trademark in connection with whatever goods or services you're applying for. If you like, we're starting to use something and selling, monetizing it and applied, like the trademark office, isn't going to look at they're only going to look in their database. So they're not going to look at like on Google or who else has been using it. So from a trademark standpoint, like if you're using something with good, like actually selling, you might be able to get a trademark, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to necessarily keep it because if you weren't, Doing it like if you weren't the first user, someone else can come in and try to challenge that. Or if you did it like fraudulently you saw Oh like this artist just came out with this merch, let me go file. Oh, they didn't trademark it because they're a new artist. I'm going to go trademark it, file the application. Technically, you're not doing that in a good faith basis. So Someone could challenge that. The tough thing is just really that, for someone to challenge it, they have to have a lot of money to do that. So that's where it's tough. I saw someone on tick tock once. She was selling some type of product. I don't remember what. But she, had announced it to her following and someone else, one of her followers or lurkers, went and filed the trademark and that, they didn't have the products. It's not like they were going to actually get to registration, but. Because they would be pending, they could hold up or block her trademark. So they basically said to her we'll give you the application for 17, 000. So then she had to decide do I sue them, which is probably going to also cost me a lot of money. Pay them the 17, 000 or rebrand, but she had a bunch of inventory. So it's just tough when you're not the first one, unless you have a lot of money.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 23:12

That's like physical ransomware, basically, is what you're saying. That's really messed up. People suck. Yeah, it really sucked. What or I guess how much does it take or how much does it cost to register and can you do it yourself?

Kelli Jones: 23:26

Yeah. So I charge 3000 plus filing fees for the trademark. This is basically, a large part of that is for the search that we do before we file, just because of how in depth it is. And I always say that's the most important part of the process. Which is also why I say not to DIY your trademark. I do think that you can DIY certain things, like if you're the only person that's going to own your LLC and you're going to do the research and want to DIY your LLC, go for it. Trademark? No, I usually would say not to, just because it's such a long process. So if you DIYed it, you're going to find out 10 months later that maybe you could never have it. Maybe you're infringing on someone and you got hit with a seasoned assist or a lawsuit or, at that stage. There's only so much we can do you can't go back and change certain things in the application. You'd have to start all over again. So really that's why I say always use a lawyer. And then when it comes to filing fees, the fees are 250 to 350 per class of goods or services. Basically. All goods and services are broken down between 45 classes. And then that's when we decide okay, you're selling merch. That's one class you're doing, a podcast or you have workshops, stuff like that. That's a different class. So then filing fees really depend on that.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 24:46

So yours is a flat fee of 3000 for most search. But then if there's other classes in there, you just charge whatever the filing fee is, right? Yes. Unless it's, Completely different, utterly different, I would assume. Why then, why don't we just get these done when we first open a business? Why not just do it right away?

Kelli Jones: 25:04

Yeah, so I think most trademark lawyers probably would say do it as soon as, as soon as you start. I'd say overall from the USPTO website, the amount of people filing before they launch versus after they launch, it's about 50 50. And, that doesn't mean it's always business. Like maybe they're launching a new product and they haven't launched it yet. So they, they're already later on in business and know to file it before like publicly announcing. But it is half and I always tell people like, really, like the three questions I ask people are, do you have something in your brand that, you want to keep for at least the foreseeable future, it's not temporary then would you be upset if someone else popped up with the same or similar name? And you showed, cause you don't want people to be confused. And then would you be upset if you were forced to rebrand? And for some people, some that's why I say it's not always like how long you've been in business because some people know before they even announce yes, I want this name. I don't want to rebrand. This is what I want. So then, maybe they'll prioritize the trademark right away. Some people, honestly, maybe even a couple of years in, they're like, I don't have a true attachment to it. If I had to rebrand, I will. So then, maybe that's when they wait a little bit to trademark.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 26:22

Got it. Got it. Okay. I can answer yes, a screaming yes to all of those. So now to my story. Okay. And I have a compliance attorney and we just haven't, I literally haven't done it and I need to get my trademark on my agenda. So I might just hire you. There you go. There's your pitch. Everyone, hire Kelli. Mainly because New York rules are a lot different. Nevermind. I'm going off on a tangent. Anyways, my story. So I get an email from, I think the guy's name's David or something, from some law firm in California. Yeah. That states that someone has filed, I should actually pull it up and I might within the video, I might just pull it up, but it had stated basically someone has filed and your brand is at risk from this, right? And if you are wanting to compete it, you might want to file your own application. And obviously immediately I know me, I'm sending it to an attorney because I don't want to have to deal with it. One, two, it looks really fishy. So my attorney digs into it come to find out that guy is not licensed as an attorney in general. Two, when you read the email, If you're an attorney, I'm pretty sure, and don't quote me, you can maybe fill me in here, but this whole like client attorney privilege and relationship thing, you probably shouldn't go behind their back and tell them that, and tell another brand that they should file before your client on top of it. But then she's part of this trademark Facebook group or whatever. And so she sent it out to everyone and it blew up. And this has been going on for four or five years. And someone just had a client not come to them and pay 7, 000 for. Someone to file right? And who knows what happens from there, but ultimately of that story, what I want people to know is go to an actual attorney that you trust. Always have 1 and 2. Don't fall for any of that stuff because it's usually not how that would work.

Kelli Jones: 28:11

Yeah. If an attorney is reaching out to you, usually there's unless they're reaching out on behalf of their client with oh, can we do this? Like we don't do that. We're ethically, we're not allowed to like solicit. So I'm not going to reach out and be like, Oh, hire me, to do this. And it's funny you said Facebook group too, because I'm in a, maybe it's the same one trademark Facebook group. And we've been talking about that. Because a lot of people have been getting these kinds of things. And then it's funny because the person probably thinks, Oh, they'll hire them to do it. But so far everyone like in the group is Oh, some person got this. And then reached out to me to file their trademark. I'm like, it didn't work the way the scammers wanted to work.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 28:52

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But they are scams. Damn it.

Kelli Jones: 28:56

Yeah. They are

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 28:56

scams. I don't even know what they actually file for you. They might, I don't know. But they're just shitty people overall. Yeah.

Kelli Jones: 29:02

Yeah, all right

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 29:02

as we wrap up this there's a lot of great information in here but what would you want to leave everyone with what's one thing one topic one idea? Us business owners wear a lot of damn hats probably too many hats. So from your perspective What's one thing as a business owner that? They should do or think about doing,

Kelli Jones: 29:22

I would say really just don't compare wherever you are at to where someone else's that people do that a lot. Not just, yes, in the legal, but also other things too. But oftentimes when we're comparing we're at day 1 and they're at day 700, so it's going to be a lot different, so that's always why it's better to focus on what you're doing and get advice from whatever type of professional you need for your specific business rather than focusing or getting too caught up on what other people are doing or what other people recommend.

Stoy Hall, CFP®: 29:53

There you go. You heard it here first. Don't compare yourself to the Joneses. Don't try to keep up with the Joneses. Focus on yourself. See what I did there? Did you see that? Because your last name is Jones. Everybody, see what I did there? Anywho go ahead follow, share, subscribe. Do all those things. I'm going to tag Kelli and everything as well. But ultimately, become part of No BS Wellesley. Community, right? You get access to all of these professionals. And I hope Kelli one day will be a vetted partner with us as well, because we are here to bring you no bullshit answers, transparency, so you can be successful as well as build your wealth. And that's why we have these guests. This is a huge one. I hope it goes viral mainly because it's very important, but again, make sure you have a team, get your LLC structures filed and probably do your trademark sooner than you think.

Kelli Jones: 30:41

Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

Black Mammoth: 30:44

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