Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit, just working in your business and start working on it, join us here, where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up, you guys, and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva. I have to start by thanking one of our beautiful listeners for this great question. Every few podcasts I try and take on a listener question.
If you have something you’re hoping I tackle in the podcast, make sure that you head to iTunes where you can leave me a rating or a review of the show, rate me 1 to 5 stars, and in the comments section you can ask your question. I pull podcast topics from there all the time and this is one of them.
This listener said first, “Love, love, love your show,” which, thank you very much. The question was, “How did Drybar do it? I built a business plan that I’m confident will become a big thing. How do I protect it?”
Such a great question, and you’re asking the right person. I happened to be a huge fan of Alli Webb. I think she is just a phenomenal industry pioneer, an incredible business woman, just all of the things. I’ve listened to just about every interview from her I can get my hands on because every time I listened to that woman speak, I just feel so incredibly inspired. So Alli to you, I think you’re amazing.
Alli built an empire and she built it herself. I tend to think she had that same feeling that this listener had is… I have a business plan. I think this is going to be a big deal. I don’t know that Alli could have predicted it would have been a massive deal at the scale that it’s become. But I think she knew she was onto something. When you look at the actions she took, she was smart. She was strategic, and there’s no doubt that that strategy helped to get to where she is today.
The question from this listener is, I have a business plan. I’m confident it’ll become a thing. How do I protect it? I want to use this podcast to talk about trademarks as a whole, copyrights, patents, protecting your brand and making sure that you are building a successful business with longevity. I want to talk about what you do need to worry about, what you don’t need to worry about, and everything in between. Even if you are not looking to be the next dry bar, create an incredible franchise, invent a product, anything like that, this is still going to be a good podcast to listen to.
I get questions all the time about Britt, do I need to trademark my logo? Do I need to trademark my salon name? Do I need to worry that there’s another salon two towns over that has the same name? How do I make sure this doesn’t happen again? All really good questions and I want to tackle all of those things today.
Let’s first start kind of at the top. What is a brand? It’s such a good multilayered question. A brand, to me, is what speaks about a business before you walk in the door. The brand is an energy. The brand is a vibe. A brand in the colors, in the fonts, in the images, in the graphics should let you as the consumer today know what you can expect from that business before you actually experience it firsthand. That is massive. That is so huge.
I think that we put a lot more trust and weight into what a brand does or doesn’t do today than we ever did before. 10 years ago, branding was important. Now, branding is critical. It’s not an option. It’s essential, and a stylist or a salon owner who chooses not to brand themselves is choosing to play a 1999 game, for lack of a better word.
There was a time it was optional. We’re living in a world where today it’s mandatory and you can either hop on the train or be left behind. But the train has left the station. At this point, you’re holding onto the back, your legs are flying off the back of the caboose, and you’re hoping to get on the branding train. You must. If you’re wondering why your business isn’t growing fast enough, there is a huge chance it’s because your brand is either not effective, not established, or not speaking to your target market.
If you need help on branding specifically, check out www.thriverssociety.com. It’s one of my specialties. It’s something we tackle real big in Thrivers Society. For a lot of my students, they’ll say it’s what made the huge difference for us. A brand can’t just be done. It has to be done right.
So the brand is something that does carry a lot of weight in your business. This is why a lot of people, once they’ve established a solid brand, start asking themselves, do I trademark? Do I copyright? Can I get a patent? What does all this mean?
Let’s start big scale. When we look at a business like Drybar, which if you guys don’t know this, Alli doesn’t now operate single-handedly all of the Drybar locations. It’s become a franchise. It’s a huge, massive movement. The business it looks like today, the business we admire, was not the business a decade ago. So when I’m about to drop a huge knowledge bomb, and when I do don’t think, okay, so that’s what I need to have right now. This is what’s been built over time. Okay?
I looked at the Drybar trademarks, which trademarks are public information. That’s the whole point. Whenever I’m looking to create, let’s say a new course or a new program, I have to check it against the existing trademarks to make sure I’m not infringing, which would be illegal. Yes? So there’s a website called the USTPO.gov. You can go there and search for what I searched for. It’s totally public knowledge and information. It’s free to search.
When I searched for Drybar under the USTPO, they have 109 marks. That’s just marks. That’s not patents. That’s not anything else, 109 trademarks. When you look at what they’ve trademarked, it’s a lot. They’ve trademarked multiple logos, their names. The name “Drybar” in the hair and beauty salon services category.
If you’ve never filed for a trademark before, or you’re not familiar, it’s a really interesting process. You can’t claim world domination with a mark. You claim the mark in specific categories or for specific uses or in general areas. So the name Drybar, because of their mark, can’t be used in the hair and beauty salon services category without potentially being in violation of the mark. That’s a really powerful move, right? They have marks on blow dryers, product names, blow out names.
If you’ve not been to a Drybar, you should. It’s just such a cool experience. The concept is so highly unique. Talk about finding a gap. It’s just so well done. But when you look at the names of the blowout, it’s not like straight blowout, curly hair. They’re fun names like “Mai Tai”, and just really fun and thought through. Those names are trademarked. You can’t just steal their names. That’s illegal, she’s protected all of those things. Or I should say, Drybar, the business, the corporation has protected those things. The brushes, right? They sell tools. All of those things, protected.
They’ve even gone so far as to protect the look of the salon exterior. There’s a mark that says if a salon has these flower beds, the logo put here, the glass like this, the awning like that, you’re in violation of our mark. They went all out. So when this listener asked me, how did they do it? They really, really went for it.
I’m certain that that happened in layers. It wasn’t like on day one, Alli was like, okay, let’s do 109 trademarks. She couldn’t have. She didn’t know it was going to be all of these things. But you start off slowly and the more highly specific your business gets, the more you’d want to consider it.
Now, if you have a single salon location, do I think you need to trademark your awning with the floral planters and where the logo is placed? No, because I don’t think it’s going to make a radical difference in your growth or not. Because Drybar chose to be a franchise and literally have hundreds, if not thousands of locations, it was crucial. The reason I share that is because the need for trademark copyright patent varies dramatically based on your goals and your needs and your aspirations and what is happening with the business.
I’m going to pause for a second and talk about my specific experience with trademarks. I have a few trademarks in my business. I trademarked Thrivers Society years and years ago. It is trademarked in very specific niches. I have had to file some cease and desist against those who are in violation of my mark, and I won every time because I protected myself and my brand and my business by doing so. That is the purpose.
That being said, I’m not the only person with a business called Thrivers Society. There’s a big name in the health space, fitness I think it is, that’s the same thing but we’re not competing businesses. They can use that in their space. If you’re choosing them, you likely aren’t choosing me. We’re not direct competitors. That’s why I’m saying with trademarks, it doesn’t protect you. It’s not a world domination, like nobody else can use that phrase. But I’m the only person who can use the words “Thrivers Society” in these very specific industries without it being an infringement on my mark.
So the process of going through that, I had to prove that I was already using the mark. I had to be very clear on the areas that I was trying to legally protect myself. And then the USTPO had to approve my requests.
Now, recently I tried to file a mark that was denied and it was denied for two reasons. One, it was seen as potentially being a direct competitor–it’s interesting–with a different business name that was not in my same industry. We weren’t even going for the same industry, but it didn’t matter. It was determined to be too close.
The other thing is I hadn’t established enough authority or specificity around what I wanted to do with the mark. What they said was, listen, if you want to go back and try and create a little bit more grit to this, show us exactly what you’re going to do with this thing, we’ll reconsider. We’ll take a look at it again. You can pay again to do that, but we’ll do it. We can take another look. I’m in the process of that right now.
So it’s not a surefire thing. More often than not, it’s actually a denial if you haven’t done your research. It’s important to go into the trademark process eyes wide open. People ask, how much does it cost? If you look it up, you’ll see figures all over the place. You’ll see trademark for $69, trademark for $299. You can certainly file your own trademark. The fees vary and so I’m not going to get into that specifically. It varies anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to, if you work with a lawyer, a few thousand dollars.
What are the benefits of working with a lawyer, and should you? When you work with a lawyer who knows how to do the trademark process, it’s a little bit smoother and more streamlined. The other benefit is, too, you often don’t waste as much time and money.
I’ve worked with a lawyer to do mine every time I’ve done one, and they’ve often saved me from myself. They’ll do some initial research to be like, no, we shouldn’t even file this. Let’s just go a different direction. Because if I go through the process of filing, waiting, being declined, I’m going to lose a lot of time.
That’s the other thing you should know about the trademark process. It takes a lot of time, like months, if not over a year. If you file for a mark today, it’s not like in eight weeks it’ll be done. 0% chance of that. It takes a really long time because there’s research and there’s all of these other things that go into it.
You can do it less expensive, more expensive, but with anything you get what you pay for. You can totally DIY it, just know that you’re really going to DIY it. So you’ll want to make sure that you’ve really done the critical research, looked on the USTPO website… Googled. It sounds so simple, but have you Googled the thing you’re trying to trademark? Are you sure that there’s not another nine businesses that have it? Really go in and make sure that this is appropriate and that you can handle this yourself.
Now, then comes the question of, is it even worth it to mark? Let’s take a look at that for a second. The main benefit of a trademark is registering your brand in exclusivity, which means you’ll be the only person in the entire United States able to sell products or services with that name.
The question is, do you really need that and does that matter? Because for some of you, you’re like, well, I have the cutest salon name ever. It’s, I don’t know, Lavender Salon, which obviously is not unique but I’m going to go with it. Lavender Salon. I want to be the only lavender salon in the country, and if anybody else has it I want them to have to shut it down because I want to be the only one. That’s likely not going to fly and also, I don’t think it’s necessary. You being Lavender Salon in your neck of the woods and somebody two states over being Lavender Salon, are you guys really direct competitors?
That goes back to the, does it really matter? In that instance, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to affect you one way or another. If you are inventing something; if you are creating something like Drybar, where it’s this very specific, I’m going to call what she’s created a methodology–which is what I consider Thrivers Society to be too.
When you look at a business like Drybar or a program like Thriver Society, it’s highly specific. It’s not just cool concepts strung together. It is a system and there’s a framework and there’s a rhyme and reason to it. That’s something that deserves trademark, copywriting, patents, things like that.
The reason why Alli did all this is because at every Drybar you have the same menu, the same experience, the same look, the same colors. There’s a uniformity to it. If somebody were to rip all of that off, that could potentially be devastating. She needed to do all of that.
For you to share a salon name with another salon two or three towns over, you have to ask yourself, is that affecting my business? Is this devastating? Is this something I want to pursue? Only you know, the answer to that. I think in some cases, the answer is, yes, it is devastating and it’s something I’m interested in protecting. A lot of cases, it wouldn’t be.
Really just ask yourself, is this something viable that I want to invest the money and want to invest the time in? Is it going to have a dramatic impact in my business? That’s probably going to help you to determine if it’s truly necessary for you.
Now, what if you are inventing something? I talked about if you’re a salon owner or even a studio suite owner. If I wanted to brand Hair by Britt, first of all, likely wouldn’t get past. Like I said, you can’t dictate world domination when you do a trademark. There’s a very low probability that they would be like, oh yeah, she should be the only one who has that. Likely I’d waste time and money. I don’t know. You could certainly file and try that. The other thing is, I’m not sure that it would actually impact your business that way. So just something to think about.
Now, if you are inventing something or you’re creating something highly specific, then you might want to dive deeper. You can protect things like text and teaching materials by copyright and trademark. Trademark might be something like a logo, a look, branding elements, physical items, things like that. Copywriting would be on your written work, your teaching materials. When you go into Thriver Society, you have all of the material copyrighted. Our brand logo, colors, name have trademarks. Different things.
Then what is a patent? A patent is really different. There’s specific patent attorneys, and those patent attorneys will determine if you’ve actually developed a teaching method that is patentable. There’s a difference between what can be protected by a copyright, a trademark, and a true patent.
When we look at things that are inventions, often those things get patents. You can’t just take somebody’s, you know, luggage concept and steal it and put your own brand and logo on it. If they invented that and they’ve patented it, you can’t have it. I would imagine that Drybar also has patents on some of their tools because they’re so highly unique. They don’t want anybody creating a knockoff of it and their patent protects that. It’s a different level of protection and they’re all different ways of protecting your brand.
If you are thinking, I am doing something highly specific. Maybe you have a salon and you imagine having three to five locations one day; definitely consider doing a trademark, absolutely, on your brand and logo. Just be certain you’ve got the brand and logo you want to do.
Here’s the catch. If you design a logo today and you trademark it and then in two years you change the logo, you’ve got to trademark it again. You gotta do it over again. You can’t just be like, well, I trademarked the old one, so the new one stands. That’s not how it works. This is a real legal process, guys. And so you would need to go through the process again. You just want to make sure that you’re solid in your plans and that you actually know where you’re headed before you walk into this journey.
So questions to ask yourself, am I solid in my plans? Do I know where I’m going? Do I believe that doing a trademark is something that really is going to make a massive difference in my business? Are there people trying to steal my brand? Is this something I need to be mindful of? What exactly are the elements that I need to be protecting?
The other thing you want to ask is, do I want to go this alone or do I want to seek out the advice of an attorney to do so? Am I willing to spend the time and money to get there?
I hope this has given a little bit of clarity on what it would look like to get a trademark, whether or not you truly need to protect your brand or genius concepts, and how to start the navigation. You guys, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
