Do Your Research In Your Market
Mayvis Payne
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
7/6/2021
Do Your Research In Your Market
The Inventive Journey
Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.
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is to really really research your market um you know and your craft because a lot of times i think we fail we see someone we see someone that is successful and we want that success but we don't do our due diligence to you know research like you know am i can i really do this and one of the things i love i love to ask people is like would you do it if you had to do it for free because a lot of times people don't realize when you're entrepreneur the money does not immediately come and then it's feast or famine a lot of times sometimes you know you're really really making money and sometimes you're not [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast mavis payne and uh mavis uh went uh or had a received a full ride uh scholarship to i think ohio state university to do nursing but decided not to go had interest in nursing but not necessarily for a career um and then went down a route of uh got married had kids worked for corporate america as the i think administrative assistant for deloitte for a period of time loved your job and then also started doing a bit of selling cosmetics or doing uh i think it's matt cosmetics if i remember right full-time and then her husband noticed that she didn't necessarily love her job as a administrative assistant but she loved doing the cosmetics and doing that type of work and so i decided to go and get a bit of training there after doing a vocational school for a period of time um got into doing makeup and in cosmetics and is now doing that for celebrities and stars and everything else and doing that as a full-time gig so with that much as an introduction welcome to the podcast mavis thank you for having me i'm excited to be here absolutely so i just gave the quick 30 second or one minute run through of your journey but maybe take a spit a bit back in time to when you had originally thought about going into nursing and going to ohio state and kind of how your journey started there you know i've always had a love for fashion it started when i was in high school when i was um asked by a former model to um you know walk in this high school talent show i'm sorry fashion show and you know i was bitten by the fashion bug after that and then so i started to pay attention to pretty much all things fashion however i didn't immediately delve into it it came um many many years later when i would commute on the train to washington dc to work and i would receive so many compliments from ladies on the train about my makeup and you know after about four years i decided to research schools and i found one in annapolis maryland and here we are really quick just because we jumped over like the whole journey and especially the fun part of the end but before we dive into that so you were originally because you said you had a diving back to the beginning a bit of the beginning of your journey he had a full ride at one point to ohio state to do nursing what made you know and that's a pretty good you know full ride is always a great accomplishment a good opportunity what made you decide to not go into that or to go a different direction or different gear well um right before i was supposed to start classes at ohio state university school of nursing i discovered that i was pregnant so it had absolutely nothing to do with me going into makeup and i just decided i wanted to be you know um devote my attention to my daughter um and what i discovered because prior to that let me back up a little bit so i attended vocational school in high school because i had enough credits and so i could attend for an entire year so that is what i did and from that i received the full scholarship but i received my training in um a geriatric center a nursing home so as an 18 year old it wasn't as fun as i thought it would be so i would say that it was it was an easy decision to just concentrate on being a mother um so that's basically what happened with that it wasn't that i decided oh no i'm going to do cosmetics so the cosmetics kind of came after after thought although i'd already had a love for fashion if that makes sense no that definitely makes sense and so i definitely get hey i want to stay or stay at home want to or take care of the kids want to make sure they have the parent there that when they get home from school the mom's there to say hi and helpful with homework and everything else and that's what my wife does as well so definitely i think they're the thing that's a great uh path to take so now you at one point i think before you got into cosmetics and i can't remember exactly when after you were married had kids you did administrative assistance for deloitte for a period of time that's correct um and that is actually um the commute that i was mentioning so when i would go to work in the mornings and i loved my job at deloitte oh my gosh i worked for or with the energy group there and i absolutely loved it until i started to work part-time for mac cosmetics so a couple days a week i would you know leave my full-time job at deloitte and then um commute to mac for um you know may i think i was like four hours and my husband noticed that oh my gosh like on the days when you have to report to deloitte i'm sorry to mack you have all of this energy and you know and then on the days where i was not going to mac it was becoming just like draining to go to work and he noticed that so now so you have that kind of so you know one incense love the job and then you're going to part time and you're saying okay husband notices and sometimes it's interesting you know we don't necessarily notice ourselves but those around the same hey you really have a knack for this or have you thought about this this would be a lot more fun and you'd probably rewarding um but you know so your husband knows you know you've been doing that part time your passion is really there you know was it as simple as that you had that conversation you decided to you know go or go into matt or matt cosmetics full-time or was it kind of a slow transition he continued to build up the side hustle as you wound down that but kind of how did you transition from doing the job at deloitte to doing uh the cosmetic industry oh the story would be so more much more exciting if i immediately grabbed that but i did not it took a while because as mentioned before i had a very nice um you know salary with the lord great benefits and so i kept hearing him but not hearing him because in my mind i'm like it's sales you know and you know i've always thought you know if you don't really sell you're not gonna do that great so i wasn't into it um and here's the thing though my boss at deloitte noticed that she goes i think you could really really go into sales you know uh and i just kept all of that and our friends would tell us you know it will tell me to do it full-time and i never really wanted to do it full-time but what i did do after about a year of him telling me that um you know i decided that i was just going to quit my my job and deloitte and that's what i did i gave my resignation i trained my replacement but i continued to work um at mac cosmetics part-time because i really didn't want to do it full-time and what happened is i was discovered by a television producer she came into mac she needed some help i helped her and you know i talked about this in my book where she had this this face they talk about it when we when they're training us about you know the takeaway and she had this face that she was not interested in anything that i was saying however at the end of our uh conversation she trusted me and she purchased everything that i recommended and then she asked if i had a card i gave her my card and then she told me who she was she said i'm a producer and i'm gonna go back and i'm gonna tell the person that hires makeup artists about you so that's how i started doing television makeup that's a a great opportunity and one that's probably not necessarily anticipated so you know so how long was it so she you know you you convince her that you're skilled that you'll do a good job that and she likes your work and she's going to recommend you now how long a period of time was it from her kind of going back telling the person that hires makeup until the time that you actually got hired on or started doing that um it was immediate which was really you know in my career i found that that was a rarity uh that people remember um so it was immediate she went back and she did tell the person and the person actually had their own makeup um agency makeup artist agency so that person reached out to me just at um you know by someone else referring me she had never met me she called and probably within maybe about four or five months i was she sent me out on my first gig which happened to be um which happened to be uh television it was for aol at the time and that was my very first time doing television makeup and you know i'm grateful that it turned out okay because it's completely different from retail but yeah it was immediate uh what was not immediate was my rise um you know to becoming that go-to person that took a couple a couple of years to get my name out there and then once people you know started to see my name over and over then my career kind of took off from there so you started out and it sounds like maybe you know hopefully not putting too many words in your mouth but you started you kind of got the opportunity started out slow or small or that and did a few jobs and people liked it and you kind of built up a bit of a reputation was it kind of a word of mouth that hey you do a good job would they like what you do and you kind of built up a client tells that how it kind of evolved it pretty is a word of mouth you know i did have business cards because as soon as i completed makeup archery school i made sure i had my business cards but i shuddered and think like when when i look back on those business cards they were hideous guys oh my god it was like this really bright blue eyeshadow however you know i made sure i gave them out to everybody at mac cosmetics i would give them i would give my customers my mac cosmetics business card as well as my personal business card but as you know in the entertainment industry um it's pretty much word of mouth so you know someone referred you you know you'll hear someone saying i need a makeup artist oh i know a makeup artist so that's basically how it happens and then people started to refer me to their friends refer me to people who have uh you know who are looking for a makeup artist and that it just kind of snowballed from there no that's not and that's a good snowball effect and definitely is a fun and exciting one so now how long have you been working with the celebrities and if you can name drop and i if not then i definitely understand but are there any celebrities that people would recognize or that would be uh worthwhile to name drop or that would be fun to hear about oh um so i have been working with celebrities probably about um i've been in my career for a little bit over 15 years so i've been working with celebrities probably about 13 of those um my most memorable celebrity that i worked with is the late dr maya angelou i've worked with piers morgan whom i absolutely love morocca who wrote the foreword for my book uh oh my gosh t.i and tatiana ali and jennifer holliday and star jones oh god like quite a funny people to work with and that's what i was going to kind of mention right after is i think that part of what you've done is you you know work with a lot of fun celebrities have a lot of cool experiences and you've taken that and you've also um you know put that into kind of a book format where you're able to share that is that right yeah absolutely so the book this is oh my gosh it was the first uh this is my first book it was um kind of birth out of 2020 because you know i work in new york city and new york city was closed so there wasn't a lot of production and film you know film and television stuff going on and my husband had been telling me for years because because i would come home and i would tell him these interesting stories about being on set or working with certain celebrities and he would say you should write a book and i never really entertained it until 2020. so i started in may of 2020 i finished in january of 2021 but um the difficult part about writing is because of my work with celebrities i have to get releases right so if i'm going to mention them so that was the most difficult part what i found though once i committed to writing it just flowed you know i could sit down and i could write and then things would come to my memory that i had long since forgotten um and i had no idea that it was going to be the success that it is um it released on amazon april 20th and within 36 hours i've made best seller so it's doing pretty good that's awesome and apparently plenty of people want to hear about all your experiences no matter how what it is to be the makeup artist to the stars so to speak so now so that kind of brings us a bit to where you're at today and you know kind of brings us to the present as far as your journey but now you're kind of looking towards you know the next six to 12 months is the goal to you know promote and do the book is it to um you know go out and and continue to do makeup is it a combination of both or kind of where do you see life and the and the journey headed in the next six to 12 months well i think they kind of go hand in hand that's um you know just like my cosmetic line basically it sells itself because i'm actually using using my products on the clients and the same as the book you know um it comes up in conversation uh you know because most of the people that i work with they're also interested in me and they're saying so what have you been up to and so obviously i'm gonna say hey you know i wrote this book um and the opportunities are coming i was just reading um a couple of emails prior to this podcast and my publicist i hired a publicist and so she had some things lined up for me some appearances writing some articles so i had no idea that the book will lead to those type of opportunities but you know the sky's the limit wherever it takes me i'm going to go with it well that sounds like it's a fun and exciting uh future so definitely uh one that i may decide to see how everything goes for you well now as we as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast we always have the two questions that i love to ask and so we'll jump to those now and just do the reminder to the the audience and the listeners i'm also going to talk or do the bonus question or talk a little bit about intellectual property so if you have have an interest there definitely stay tuned but before we jump to the bonus question on the the normal two questions first question i was asked is what was the uh word along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it the worst business decision i ever made was to believe that honesty is everyone's policy and so what i've learned from it is that get everything in writing and make sure you understand what you're reading not just sign on the dotted line um in my book i talk about some of my early years where i was just so excited to be working on a particular project that i didn't really necessarily read everything that i needed to read or ensure that what i understood was exactly what i was going to get um so that would be my advice to people you know make sure that you are reading it and then if you don't understand it you know have a relationship with someone that is either you know in art in entertainment law you know or you know invest in the money that you need to hire someone so that you don't get yourself in a jail no no and i think that that you know while it's a mistake that you know sometimes can hurt but it's it's definitely one where i think it's certainly understandable in the sense that a lot of times you come down saying oh i think people you know first of all i always think people can read better or always think that they can read people better than they are oh i'm great at reading people i think i've never met a person that says oh i'm horrible reading people but i even think beyond that is you know a lot of times you think you know at least for me when i do a lot of businesses i started out and thinking oh everybody will work as hard they'll do as good a job they'll be there as devoted they'll be as involved and then you get into the reality like hey that's not only the case you know sometimes people don't work as hard they don't do as good a job and you know it kind of creates that so i think that you know figuring out who to trust how to trust how to build that relationship and trust and kind of what responsibilities or what things to turn over is definitely an easy mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make but also is one that certainly to learn from so absolutely now with that jump into the second question which is if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what be the one piece of advice you'd give them oh that was a hard one oh my gosh i had a couple things but what i would say would be the number one piece of advice is to really really research your market um you know and your craft because a lot of times i think we fail we see someone we see someone that is successful and we want that success but we don't do our due diligence to you know research like you know am i can i really do this and one of the things i love i love to ask people is like would you do it if you had to do it for free because a lot of times people don't realize when you're entrepreneur the money does not immediately come and then it's feast or famine a lot of times sometimes you know you're really really making money and sometimes you're not and so that's kind of dual answer to the question but definitely do the research that's necessary do the footwork you know a lot of times people will reach out to me and ask me you know if they could assist me and i always ask the question like you know why do you want to assist me you know what i mean because i really want people to understand the business of makeup the business of being a makeup artistry it's not just about working with celebrities you know you really have to know your market you really have to do everything that's necessary so to be a success because everyone you know that starts a business is not successful so definitely do the research you mean every when you start your own business you're not just a millionaire overnight it's not like in the movies and people really believe that and people really do believe that it's nope it's not it's not that easy no and i definitely agree to be and i think that you know you get a bit of a misconception you read the books you watch the shows in the movies and based on a true story and i think you know a lot of those people you know do do a good great job and they have a successful business but it's always you know a ten year an overnight success ten years in the making and it always takes a lot longer you never hear the backstory you never see what it took to get to where they're at today or how you know all the different paths and different things they lead through in order to be able to build a success and so everybody kind of gets a misconception that oh if i have a great idea i'll just start a business and i'll be rich in you know matter of a week or two and it's never never the case for that no matter which business it is so i think that's a great lesson to learn it's never and no one ever tells you about all of the money that you have to put out in order to you know garner money you have to you know spend money to make money so yeah no i definitely agree so before we dive into the bonus question it's a reminder we'll get that to get to that in a minute but as you wrap up the normal portion of the podcast that people want to find out more about you they want to be a customer they want to be client they're a celebrity they want you to do their cosmetics or make up their hair or anything else they want to be an employee of yours they want to be your next best friend and you're all or they want to read your book and and any or all the above what's the best way to connect up to reach out to you and find out more all right so my website is www.mavispayne.com that's m-a-y-v dot-com and also for my products it's www.getloxed.com i am on instagram i'm on twitter i'm on facebook mavis payne everywhere m-a-y-v-i-s-p-a-y-n-e awesome we'll definitely encourage everybody to reach out find out or connect up find out more because it's definitely a wealth of experience and a fun journey to hear as we wrap up the podcast thanks again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the show two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe to your podcast players you know what all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us a review some other people can find out about all of our awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help or patent trademark or anything else feel free to go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat so with that we're going to jump right into uh talking a little bit about intellectual property it's always kind of fun to switch the tables and to hear your questions instead of or meet us always asking the questions so with that i'll turn it over to you to ask your your number one intellectual property question to me david absolutely if you have if you have an intellectual property question love to hear my intellectual property question would be um is there ever a business that would not benefit from having intellectual property you know attorney or is that something that every business should have that's my question that's a fair question it's one where i freely admit you're asking the intellectual property attorney do you need intellectual property but no i think that's a fair question um the one most of the time i would say yes there's typically a reason and it's needed and i'll give you a couple of reasons i can think of why you wouldn't need one but you know if you're doing a brand you're doing you know in almost every business if you're building it to any size you're going to have a brand if you're doing any sort of creative stuff you're going to need a copyright if you're doing any sort of products you're going to you're going to want a patent and you know there's a couple different reasons why you'd want them one is it's an investment it can capture that brand or that product or whatever you're making so such as tangible and half of the business that's investable and has real value to it um as well as it gives you a bit of protection so that if other people were to copy it rip it off and ride your hotels you have records and you know and and it also avoids issues down the road from people yeah and avoiding lawsuits so i would say majority of people if they do fit into that box where there's typically a reason why you'd want to have intellectual property probably the one exception or one of the probably the only exception that comes to mind is a lot of times if you're a small kind of what i would say in mom-and-pop shop in other words you're serving a local community you're just a small you know small store maybe you're on the corner you know you just help you help the local clientele your restaurant or your grocery store or something you really don't have aspirations to grow you're not going to be a franchise you're not going to go nationwide it's like serving a local community i think that's great i think there's definitely a place for it then there may not be as much because you know if you're thinking about that and local mom and pops they probably don't necessarily have a earth shattering or a new product or a new something they've invented they don't necessarily have something that's copyrightable that they're worried about and on the branding side they're not necessarily if you're all you're going to be if you're going to stay in a local community you don't then local communities can know you don't need to protect your brand as long as you don't want to expand out of that then you probably don't need the protection so that's the one where every so often run into that and i counsel people hey you probably don't need intellectual property because you don't have it's not going to add any value it's not going to give you any better coverage so that's probably the one that i've ran into over every so often that doesn't make sense beyond that it's one that it does the other one i guess i'll give you one other one is if your plan is to i'm going to blitz the market i'm going to do it for a year or two i'm going to do it as quick as i can make it you know make as much money and i'm going to be kind of a flash in the pan i'll give you an example you know snuggy everybody knew snappy a few years ago and it was a great you know sold a ton of snuggies but in a matter of about a year or two you know a couple years at most they saturated the market and nobody else nobody's nobody you don't hear about snuggies anymore no ways whisper vikings snuggies because everybody that wanted a snuggie bought one and so their plan was hey we only got a couple year window we're gonna run as fast as we can get to sell as many as we can and so it was such a short window that they probably wouldn't have needed the intellectual property not because it wouldn't if it would have been a longer road they wouldn't have needed or wouldn't have benefited from it because but because of such a short window so those are kind of a couple the reasons a couple of businesses that wouldn't need a i probably wouldn't need intellectual property oh my gosh that was incredible and the other question i had was what made you uh want to go into um ip law yeah i don't know if i want non-skid i was gonna say i'd love going into a lot that was just really a joke but in in the reason a little bit of seriousness is i've always kind of had two passions one is i love startups an entrepreneur be an entrepreneur and doing small business and i've done several of those and i continued to be involved i started my first business when i was in mba school doing my law degree in mba degree at the same time that one's going into a now i think a nine-figure business and i still am partially involved with it um but that was so i always had that passion and i always kind of liked the law i thought it was kind of fun you watch the shows attorneys get to argue you get a debate which is not necessarily the reality of it but you know and it just kind of was i and i'd also had an uncle that was an intellectual property attorney i'd had an engineering degree as an undergraduate so kind of all those i said oh it's kind of is fun that i can work with a lot of cool businesses cool startups see a lot of what they're doing get to be involved without having to do all of the inventing and all that and so i kind of was on both sides and i'll do some of my own startups and small businesses here i also get the opportunity to work with a lot of cool uh cool different companies and startups and small businesses on what they're doing and it kind of naturally just went together and that's kind of how i've taken my career and that very much sort of a nutshell that's kind of how i got into intellectual property awesome that's a great story all right well with that well uh it was fun to have you on it's been a fun it's been a pleasure we'll go ahead and wrap up the episode but appreciate you coming on mavis and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so very much for having me i really had a great time absolutely you
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