716 Anita Mar:

There are so many mistakes you can make early in your business or before you’ve even opened your doors, and one of them is about protecting your brand before you start building it. My guest today – Anita Mar – is a trademark expert who works primarily with Amazon sellers. Listen on to learn all her secrets and why, if you have the digital e-commerce or information side to your business, it pays to think about international trademarks early on.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who lives and breathes all things intellectual property and trademark.

Anita Mar is a registered trademark agent and the founder of Trademark Angel, helping clients to register trademarks in the US, Canada, European Union, UK, Germany, China, Australia, Mexico and other countries since 2017. We’re going to learn all about Anita’s own entrepreneurial journey – as well as everything you need to know now about trademarks and protecting your brand and intellectual property.

Anita will be here in a moment, and first,

Anita Mar left Moscow at the age of 16, and none of the jobs she took after getting her economics degree in the UK won her heart, until she an ad for a trademark paralegal. She didn’t know what a paralegal was, but got hired on the spot, and over the next three years, Anita learned a lot about US trademark prosecution. When she immigrated to Canada, she joined the trademark department of the multi-national firm, Gowling WLG, all while studying to become a registered trademark agent.

Since then Anita has built a prospering business, TradeMark Angel, helping hundreds of small companies, mainly Amazon sellers, protect their brands and businesses with trademarks – both in the US and abroad.

Today we talk about how early in your business you should get a trademark – hint, it should be part of how you decide your name – and when and why it’s important to line up international trademarks. Plus, we talk about entrepreneurship, how to build a team and learn how to delegate, and much more.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Anita Mar and be sure to download Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Anita, welcome to Wings.

Anita Mar:

Yeah. Hello. Hello, Melinda. Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Well, congratulations on building your business. You’ve been at it for five years now. It sounds like you’re doing really well, lots of employees and growing and all to do with trademarks. What was it that made you want to launch a trademark business?

Anita Mar:

Oh, I was actually employed, I was working for other law firms and other companies before, and when I had my third son born, I went on maternity leave and I had plenty of time to think what to do next and I decided that maybe it was time to open my own business. I was very afraid because I’ve never opened a business from scratch, so yeah, that was my first time business that I actually opened. I mean, we owned other businesses, but we didn’t really have businesses that we would create from scratch. [inaudible 00:01:08].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, so what was the impetus? Because so many female founders launch businesses around the time they’re having kids because there’s no flexibility in the standard corporate workplace, and so it’s almost like we get pushed into entrepreneurship. Was that a primary driver or did you always really want to be an entrepreneur?

Anita Mar:

Well, yes, I did want to, but I was afraid and I thought it would not work because it’s such a complicated field and no one will buy from me, no one will want to build with me.

Melinda Wittstock:

All the fears. Yeah.

Anita Mar:

Yeah, but then, when I had my son, I really thought that I couldn’t really go back to working full-time so I thought to myself, well, foolishly, of course, that when I opened my own business, it would be more relaxed, but of course…

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, everybody thinks that. That’s so funny because almost 100% of women say, “Oh, it’ll be easier. I can manage my own time.” Whatever, forgetting that actually, now, it’s like a constant macro going around your head. Even when you’re not working, you’re working.

Anita Mar:

Yeah. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because it’s another baby.

Anita Mar:

I thought it would be more on my own terms.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Anita Mar:

But, of course, I didn’t realize how much time I would actually spend extra, building the business.

Anita Mar:

Not doing actual work [inaudible 00:02:34], but actually creating the infrastructure and everything, so that took a lot of time, of course.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. I don’t know one woman who has not had that experience. My entrepreneurial career also coincided, really, with having kids as well and it does give you the flexibility in the sense that you’re setting your own hours, it’s just that your work is never done because there’s always something more. There’s always the next…

Anita Mar:

Yes, and your mind is always occupied.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, because there’s always the next challenge, there’s always the next learning, there’s always some sort of unexpected failure or you had a hypothesis and you’re testing the hypothesis and maybe the hypothesis wasn’t right, so it’s kind of constant and as you scale, as well, there’s always something new.

Anita Mar:

Yeah, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

No matter how many zeros you add to the business. And so, tell me what some of the early struggles were. I mean, first of all, you had to overcome your fear, you did that, you jumped in. What were the things that were the most maybe painful, difficult or challenging lessons or learnings along the way?

Anita Mar:

Yes. Yes. It was quite challenging because, I mean, immediately, I think from the first month, I hired my first person and that was challenging because I was so afraid to let go of total control and to trust somebody and I thought that no one could do the job as well as I could do it, and it was difficult because I had to train that person and then I had to hire more people, so that was challenging because I didn’t really know how to do this, so I had to write manuals, I had to train, I had to think about the overall workflow.

Anita Mar:

And at the same time, I had to work on the website, the articles, all the email templates, so a lot of these things were happening at the same time. And finding clients. So, but yeah, learning to outsource, to delegate, that was really difficult, but I’m happy I did this really early because I know some lawyers who are my friends who are terrified and still haven’t learned how to delegate work and they struggle and they are completely overworked just because they don’t trust anyone, so I think I’m really happy I did this early.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. It’s a really interesting challenge, especially for women entrepreneurs, to let go, because I think we have this perfectionism gene and we know how we want it done so we want people that we hire to do it like us, but to scale a business, you got to let go of that.

Anita Mar:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s really changing the mindset to, it’s not really about the “how”, it’s the “what”, making sure everyone’s aligned on the “why” and it’s the result that you’re getting from the employee because everybody has a different way or a different process of getting there. And so this is something that comes up over and over again on this show, that so many women do struggle with that letting go and it can really keep businesses small.

Anita Mar:

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

And only 2% of women hit the million-dollar mark.

Anita Mar:

Oh, really? [inaudible 00:06:14]?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Yes.

Anita Mar:

Oh, I didn’t know that. Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? And I think that’s one of the reasons why, I think it’s the perfectionism and it’s the control thing that holds us back. So what were some of the things, like you, so you just… At a certain point, your business is going to succeed or fail and you come up against this wall and you got to figure it out, right? So what was that moment for you?

Anita Mar:

Well, I think, very early, I realized that it would be successful because I was quite lucky, clients just found me because I had the website built from Day 1 and I did some posts on social media like Facebook and I don’t know, clients just found me and they brought friends, so for me, the moment I opened it, I didn’t doubt that it’d succeed. It’s just deciding to open the business was really, really stressful because I had a very good job before it with great income and quitting that job was painful, but the minute I did that, I was really happy that I did because I just realized that I should have done that earlier. That’s my only regret.

I think having a good website was also, really, it was a good decision because clients could find me, so yeah, creating a website with lots of information and articles and posts is really important. I know that, again, many of my lawyer friends still don’t have a website after many years in operation or have a really basic website and they don’t realize how important it is to be present on social media, on the internet, in Google results. That’s extremely important, doing the SEO work on your website. I mean, for me, I think that really helped.

Melinda Wittstock:

So you had that nailed right from the beginning so you could get really good inbound marketing, people were finding you. How did you work around things like pricing and knowing your own value? What was your approach to that?

Anita Mar:

Yeah, so I did the market research, I asked for prices, I asked around, about 50 companies, so I knew who charged the most and I couldn’t compete with huge law firms, of course, on the pricing, but the same time, I didn’t want to put the lowest pricing, so I put a price that was a little bit, it was below market average, and I think that the first year, it was, I would say, well, it was quite low, but then I increased it as soon as I realized, “Okay, that price is too low. I mean, I get clients easily.” Then I increased the prices, I think I increased them twice.

But it was difficult to decide on what price. I mean, do I put the price high and then make huge efforts to close a client? And I was really afraid of selling and hard closes, so I thought, “Okay, if I put the price a little bit lower, it will be easier for me to close. I will not have to persuade so much.” So for me, that was one of the reasons why I put the price lower. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to put the price so low that clients would think, “Okay, it’s really low so it must be bad.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Anita Mar:

So, I mean, I explained why the price is low because I didn’t really rent an office so I worked from home, I didn’t have a lot of expenses that other real firms had, and at that time, pre-COVID, that was still a little bit weird. I had a client who, at the time of the call, I call him and he’s really upset, like, “Anita, I’m standing in front of the office in Windsor and I drove all the way from far, far, far away, a two-hour drive.” And the office was really like, it was a virtual office, but he didn’t realize I wasn’t there, so at that time, people didn’t really expect that I was working from home.

Melinda Wittstock:

The reason I asked about pricing is because You can approach it top-down in terms of where you are competitively with the industry and then, as you were mentioning, too, you had lower overhead costs, so that allowed you to lower your prices, but at the same time, and this is where a lot of women, I think, make a mistake is underpricing.

Anita Mar:

I think I did underprice my services at the beginning because I had quite a few clients very early and I sold the services low-price and then I had to service them for a few years after that, but yeah, that was… Well, I don’t know if it was really a mistake. I mean, for me, it was [inaudible 00:11:17] easier, but of course, now, I wouldn’t really put that price anymore because it was really laughable.

Melinda Wittstock:

I wonder to what extent that’s tied to just our own perceived sense of our own value, whether women sometimes fall under the trap of underpricing because we don’t quite believe that we’re up to it, like there’s some sort of imposter syndrome going on there that we have to recover from.

Anita Mar:

Yeah, because, I mean, the company I was working for, it was run by a man, a guy, and his prices were much higher and I think I thought to myself, “No way I could compete with him, I don’t know why, and put the prices as high as his, because he’s so established, plus he is a guy, plus that, plus this.” So I put the prices lower to make them more attractive. But yeah, I think you’re right, deep down, maybe I wasn’t fully sure that it could be successful, partly because I’m a woman plus I had kids, so I didn’t know what people would think.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Anita, let’s get into the business of trademarks, What are the biggest mistakes that companies make at various stages when it comes to trademarks? Is it something that a lot of people neglect in the early stages?

Anita Mar:

Yes, because there is no legal requirement to register your trademark, so many business owners think that they do this later once they get established, once they know how the business is doing, so they create a brand for their products or for their services, they start running their business, and then if the business takes off, it may be one year, two years down the road, they decide that, “Okay, maybe I should trademark the name.” And very often, they learn, to their horror, that the name is actually trademarked by somebody else and they cannot register the trademark, and what is worse, they actually use somebody else’s trademark so they may run into another problem, like a trademark infringement, so another company may actually sue them for using their trademark.

Anita Mar:

And unfortunately, a lot of business owners don’t really do a proper trademark search before adopting a trademark name, like even if you don’t trademark, even if you don’t register the name, at least do a trademark search, and the mistake that I find over and over is that people neglect doing even the basic search, they may check on Google, say, “Okay, nothing comes up. The domain is available. The company name is available. Okay. That’s my brand.” And they confuse the company name and the domain name with the trademark and they think it’s all the same and they start using the trademarked name without realizing that it’s actually not theirs to use or that it’s problematic.

So, I mean, my opinion is that a trademark should be filed as soon as you realize that there is value in the name and that you would be really upset if somebody else trademarked that, so that’s when you should actually file the trademark, and ideally before you launch the business, because the moment you launch it, if it’s a good name, somebody else may file for this trademark, they’ll check the Trademarks Office database, see that nothing comes up and file for your trademarked name, so that may also happen.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Anita, if you’ve got your trademarks worked out in the United States and say you’re a U.S.-only business and you don’t have any current plans to operate in any other countries. Do you need to really be thinking about getting trademarks in other jurisdictions or is that really only for companies that inherently have a potential global business or an actual plan to expand beyond the United States?

Anita Mar:

Well, yeah, I think you’re right here, so let’s break this down. So if you sell physical products and you only sell in the U.S. and you don’t actually ship to other countries, there is no need to file in another country unless you don’t want somebody else to file for your trademark in that country, so that may be one of the reasons to file a trademark in another country, like, for example, in the European Union, just to make sure that no one else does, but if you don’t have any plans to actually operate the business there or to sell to the European clients, you may bypass that. If you sell services, the question is how you sell them. If you just have something local or something like a salon, for example, like a beauty spa, you don’t really need to trademark in other countries, but if you have a business that sells services online, so if you have a website, then it’s definitely a good idea to trademark in other countries, so yeah, that answers your question.

Melinda Wittstock:

So if you have an internet business, in other words, right?

Anita Mar:

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Or anything digital. It’s global inherently.

Anita Mar:

Absolutely. So then, what you should do, you should look at where your clients come from, are they English-speaking clients? I mean, are they North American clients? Are they European clients? And then trademark in those countries. Like, for example, when I set up the website Trademark Angel, I immediately filed trademarks in Canada, U.S., European Union and UK, and then a little bit later in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and other countries where we did business, but you should look at your business model, where your clients come from, like, for example, I don’t have any interest in filing our trademark in many countries in Africa, for example, because we don’t have a lot of clients from Africa so I don’t really care if my trademark is registered there, like in Uganda, for example, or not, because I don’t have a lot of clients, but I do have, for example, I filed in India and Mexico and Brazil, so in all those countries where we trade, I did file our trademark.

But you can start small, so you can file in the U.S., and then, what you can do, you can claim priority from your U.S. filing date, so if you file your trademark in other countries within six months of the original filing date, so that gives you an opportunity to see how your business is going and where you want to file, so let’s say if you filed, in the U.S., your first trademark, so let’s say you filed it on June 25, as long as you file in other countries, like, let’s say, in Canada, before December 25, the filing date in Canada will go back to June 25, so that’s a really useful tool to claim priority from the original filing date because it will prevent other people from registering the same trademark in those countries.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So Anita, tell me about your clients. Who are they, mostly?

Anita Mar:

So most of our clients sell on Amazon, so they’re Amazon sellers, And I think this business has become hugely popular during pandemic because many people were laid off, they lost jobs or they decided to do their own thing, so many people started selling on Amazon so it’s really huge now, and Amazon requires that you have your own trademark to sell there, so to get benefits, to get access to brand registry, so they have their own special registry, you need to file a trademark. And also, Amazon really encourages private-label sellers, so pretty much, you source your products in China and you put your own name on those products and you sell them as your products, so Amazon really encourages that, so that’s the majority of our clients. Well, I would say maybe 70%, but we also have some clients from just U.S., Canada, UK, but I would say yeah, the majority sell on Amazon.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. And so what about people who make apps? Like me, like Podopolo, a podcasting app with 5 million podcasts in every language all over the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because basically every country is an addressable market for us. So how would you roll out that strategy, especially if you’re a young company and you don’t have a big budget, how would you strategically decide which ones first?

Anita Mar:

Well, again, it depends on where your clients come from. Is it English-speaking clients or is it maybe Spanish-speaking clients? But yes, trademarking can get really expensive if you file in all countries. There is also such a thing that it’s called an “international trademark”. I mean, it’s called an international trademark, but it’s still not international so you can file in your home country and then you can designate other countries, but trademarks will still be reviewed in every country by their local Trademarks Office.

So I think it’s important to start from big markets, again, like U.S., definitely, and Canada and maybe Mexico. European Union has a great trade market, it covers all 27 countries over the European Union and then UK, Australia and I don’t know if Asia is important, I would definitely file in, I don’t know, Japan, South Korea, China, maybe. Well, depends on where your clients come from. But a trademark is really… Like, it’s the same. I mean, we can file trademarks for all businesses because it’s done the same. That doesn’t matter what your niche is, if it’s apps or products or services, digital currencies, trademarks are filed the same way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, so if you do one, how easy is it to rinse and repeat? Or is it original work every time you file? Say

Melinda Wittstock:

That process of filing trademark applications, once you have one, say for the UK or Australia or something, how repurposable are those? Or is it original work each time?

Anita Mar:

Well, it’s not copy-paste if that’s what you’re asking. It has to be tailored to the specific country because the way that you file trademarks in the UK or European Union is different from the way you file trademarks in the U.S., Canada or China, because each country…

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s a different process. So what happens if you, say, have a very established U.S. trademark for a very established product that is global inherently, but then you find that somebody’s squatting on that trademark name in a market that’s desirable for you, what kind of recourse or what can you do?

Anita Mar:

Well, by squatting, I mean, so if somebody is using your trademark in another country…

Melinda Wittstock:

So you have a product, it’s established here in the United States, right? But somebody in India has filed an intent-to-use, but you already have the product, you are ahead of them or whatever. What is the recourse? What can you do? And do you help people in those situations?

Anita Mar:

Yeah, so yeah, we do, but not in all countries. So if the trademark is registered and it’s not actually in use, in many countries, there is a process of cancellation, so you can cancel the trademark for non-use and that’s relatively easy in many countries. Well, except the U.S.. So if the trademark is not in use, you can cancel it and then it will be removed from the register. That’s the easiest way to proceed. You can also approach the owner of the trademark to try and buy it, that could be also a good option. You can negotiate from them. You can take… If that’s your trademark, the exact trademark that you’re interested in for the exact products, you can maybe take a license to use it, or the trademark may be just sold to you.

But if it’s not in use, if it’s just registered and then abandoned and there is no interest, the easiest way is to cancel the trademark, and yes, we do help with that. Again, it depends on the country, but it’s quite common that, let’s say, your trademark is taken by somebody in another country and you want to go there and you see that there is an obstacle. So definitely, in many countries, if the trademark is not registered, you may file in a position during the registration process, so you may actually say that, “Oh, I am against registration of this trademark because I’ve been using it before.” Or on some other ground, so you can actually stop it from getting registered. But if it’s already registered, then the only way to cancel it, try and cancel it, and it’s usually an administrative procedure that you do through the Trademarks Office.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So what’s next for you and your business, Anita? Are you always going to stick with trademarks? Are you going to expand out into other things?

Anita Mar:

I think I will stick with trademarks because that’s what I know well, that’s what I like doing and it’s a field that you never get tired from trademarks because they’re always new. I always meet new clients who open new businesses and we filed a few trademarks for digital currencies and NFTs, crypto, so that was quite exciting, and we filed a lot of trademarks for cannabis, well, in Canada, it’s legal as you know.

So, I mean, I’m really excited. I find this area of law really, really stimulating so I don’t really get tired from that. I wanted to go and try and sell on Amazon at one point because I saw how people could get really successful, but then I decided that I don’t actually have enough time for that, so I’d rather just continue doing what I can do well and just limit the number of hours that I work, spend more time with my family, so I think I’m happy where I am, will continue to maybe expand and add the countries where we file a lot and bring them under our price instruction, offer packages, but I don’t think I’ll do anything else like patents, for example, or litigation. I don’t think so.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, thank you so much. I want to make sure people know how to find you and work with you if they need trademark work, either in the U.S. or anywhere in the world, what’s the best way, Anita?

Anita Mar:

Well, the best way is to go on our website, trademarkangel.com, and just book a phone call with me or just fill a form where we can do a free trademark search to see if your trademark is registrable and it’s absolutely free, there is no obligation, that’s the best way, or clients can also email us at tm@trademarkangel.com. But we are very approachable. They can even find us on Facebook or there is a website chat on our website, so we are way easy to find.

Melinda Wittstock:

Great. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Anita Mar:

Yeah, that was my pleasure, Melinda. Thank you.