You Are The Authority
Tyler Foley
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/31/2021
You Are The Authority
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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you are the authority so you had touched on it a little bit just 30 seconds ago right you have to be you have to drive the ship if you're a startup if you're a ceo if you're an owner if you're a director that's your job you need to steer the ship but the funny thing is is the captain says go that way there's a helmsman who actually steers said ship and there's an engine crew that's driving the engines and and maintenance and mechanics who are keeping those things ticking you have to see the big vision so you have to you have to know what you know and know that you're an authority but you also have to get very honest with yourself on what you don't know and then what is it that it's okay not to know and what is it that you need to get better at [Music] 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 into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks now today we have another great guest on the podcast tyler foley and give you a quick introduction to tyler so um was self-employed since the age of six and was paying his taxes since the age of six which is always hey way to pay your pay your taxes and pay your dues um but also grew up in the arts and then um when he was 17 had a stroke and had to have about a year and a half of physical therapy which uh kind of crushed it or at least at that time crush his dreams of acting and so refocused him a bit on what he wanted to do but uh a period of time passed by and he decided to went uh full on in and or full into the performing out arts did that until he was 25 went into school and i think got a surveying degree and you'll have to correct me where i'm wrong if that is or um and then did a startup that was for mobile interior mapping um was a bit too ahead of its time it was a capital intensive and kind of was it was ahead of its time in the marketplace um so then uh winter eric shifted from that uh told his friend that he was getting her friend told him to get into safety consulting started a new business and been doing that for six years and then that will lead a bit up to where he's at today so but that much isn't an introduction welcome on the podcast tyler thanks yeah i know that was that was pretty bang on devin that that encompassed the last 35 years nicely all right well then we could just go home and call it a day now just just joking on that end but i gave kind of that quick brief run through of your journey but now let's take us back to i guess to six years old when you started to be self-employed until and pay taxes and tell us a little bit about your journey yeah well so and and to be fair i don't know that i i was legally required to pay taxes until i was 18. um but i i definitely had a sin number here in canada and was you know registered and a social citizen and working and i definitely was getting deducted at source for sure for a long while um and that happened because i i got into theater and film and television at a very young age when i was six years old i my father passed away and um we were looking we my mom and my uncle were looking for kind of outlets for me just to kind of keep me on the straight and narrow and get me exposed to different things keep me occupied all the things that you would normally do with a six-year-old but i had a pension for the arts so i had been in a couple of school plays you know little pageant stuff like christmas play and and i think we did a thing around easter and i played peter rabbit and stuff like that and so they saw that i had this um desire to perform i really really enjoyed it i remember the very first time in that christmas pageant um i got to play joseph and the um the three wise men came and gave me their gifts of gold frankincense and more and each one was wrapped in uh like a christmas present because you know we're quite literal when you're six years old doing a school play and so we took these gifts and as i received these gifts from the wise men i then gently and carefully place them down on the head of baby jesus in the cradle and that made everybody laugh because i didn't know any better they were like give it and you put it next to baby jesus and i was stacking it on this poor little doll's head and uh i remember the audience laughing every time i put it down so then i started putting it down intentionally like that and then they would laugh more and i remember the joy that i felt with that and that feeling has stuck with me ever since i i seek that out i love it i love interacting with an audience it just it brings me joy so my mom and my uncle my uncle actually worked in for the city of calgary and right across from what was city hall for a long while the is our fine arts uh center and he'd overheard a casting director complaining about how hard it was to find um young young children who could you know listen and behave and and just generally act like she's i remember her saying how hard is it to find a six-year-old right and uh he heard that and he was like well my nephew's six and he he loves being on stage what you know what's how do i do this so he ended up having a discussion with the casting director and she gave him hit her card and then he contacted my mom and next thing i knew i was auditioning and and i've been in theater ever since and then started to get into film and television when i was about 12 13 and uh eventually moved out to vancouver to do it with as you mentioned i did have a mini stroke at 17. i was at a fine arts high school at the time my senior year and new year's day 1997 i woke up and i don't drink um at least i really didn't i did not drink at all in up until i was probably about mid 30s and now i'll have a social drink now and then it's not for no reason other than i just i've never really liked the taste of alcohol so i've just never really imbibed very much so i was the dd on new year's eve and i remember waking up being confused as to why i felt weird seeing as i hadn't done anything i hadn't ingested anything into my body to make me feel weird and it ends up i had a small blockage i something had happened where i had a blockage of pressure build up in my head and it had caused a small stroke and i in the morning when i tried getting out of bed i couldn't make the left side of my body work and i remember brushing my teeth trying to you know just get ready for the day and the toothpaste was just pouring out the side of my mouth and i couldn't figure out why i couldn't make it work and it wasn't until i'd gotten out of the shower and showering was weird too like i had to stumble around i couldn't make my leg or my arm really work very well and finally i got out my mom looked at me and she said tyler what's wrong with you i said i don't know and i but i'm saying it like this and then off to the hospital we went and and i thought i thought my career was over at that point right because when your whole goal for 12 years has been leading towards you graduating from the alberta high school of fine arts and moving on to at the time i thought i was going to go to la or new york and you know be an actor and you're going to broadway star and i'm going to sing and i'm going to dance i'm going to do all that fun stuff and when your leg doesn't work and your face doesn't work that that takes that away really rapidly and that was my only focus for a long while was how do i get back and luckily i um i was surrounded by really supportive people an incredible medical team who were dedicated to my rehabilitation um a big big big big shout out to uh joanne corbett who worked with me three four times a week doing laser acupuncture and uh physio and chiropractic work and um all kinds of different things to try and get not only feeling back but function back to my face uh and everyone else that had worked on me but she she was definitely a big part of that recovery and so you know i was able to move to vancouver and and make a real career of it and then one question is before you so before you move to vancouver why you're dealing with the mini stroke did you you know decide to abandon it or you put it on hold or you didn't know what to do or kind of did you start exploring other options because i mean i i certainly get if you had you know if only a partial or portion of your face is working and you know and only some of your limbs are working it makes it difficult to do at least a typical acting career and so as you're trying to get into that and figure out what to do did you say hey i'm going to put this on hold hey i'm abandoning and i'll hope i don't know it's too soon or kind of how did you kind of deal with that as you're as you were going through that um i was i first of all there was never a plan b uh i think will smith has a really famous quote about it uh forget about plan b it only distracts from plan a um and i i knew that if i had to i was going to specialize right i would play the roles of maybe you you know find some some some way there's always a role there's always a rule um it just they would have been fewer and more far between if i couldn't have gotten my mobility back if i couldn't have gotten my face back but there was always a role so i was always still working on my craft i never stopped working on my craft what i did was double down so i had one doctor tell me that it was just how it was and it was just going to be that way and i had another doctor say that i had the potential for recovery but given the damage that i probably wouldn't and then i met joe and she said i've never known anybody to be 100 right and i can't predict what will happen but these are the things that we can do that if you can recover this will speed your recovery and one of the nice things about her was she she has many many many many many degrees and she has studied medicine in multiple disciplines and she believes in a very holistic approach to healing and i don't mean that in the you know chiropractic or eastern medicine way although she does practice those things she believes in a whole body approach so if you're going to heal the body that includes the mind so we really had to work on my mindset make sure that i was committed to recovery that i could see a path um there's a really fun saying that i've just discovered you have to be it to see it not the other way around a lot of people think that you need to be able to see a thing and then eventually your body will believe that thing and that's not the case in order for you to be able to see that come to fruition you have to already believe your body so i believe that i was 100 healthy i just needed my body and mind to catch up so i embraced yeah go ahead no i just that was it was a mindset that i embraced and uh a lot of that due to the help that i got from joanne and robert corbett and a couple of other people so now and and i think that's it's an awesome testament to you know perseverance and working through it and great you know greater people that are you surround yourself with and be able to kind of make that come back and it sounds like now you did you went through rehab you're able to make it at least you know a full recovery and then you were going out doing acting performing arts and then you did that for a period of time and then what was the you know and i think you mentioned he did that until he was around 25 years old and then what was the reason or the motivation at 25 to kind of switch and go get the or go back to school and get the degree uh well a couple of things so from the time i was six years old being on stage and being in film and television was fun um it brought me joy it was i mean it's a cool thing right when you get to say that you're a professional actor you get to show up on set um you know there's so it's just fun get to hang out at the crafty table meet people you'd never have normally thought you would meet um i i got to jam in my trailer with william h macy and sit across the diner table from damn helen mirren you know i i got to be shown at the golden globes when damn helen mirren won her golden globe the clip of us at the diner scene was what was shown like that like those are just really cool things that other people wouldn't normally get to experience and i'm so blessed to have done it but at about 25 it it became a job and i remember getting calls and and you know you have this audition and i at the time i was commuting um i had been living in vancouver but uh a girlfriend of a long-term relationship that i was in for a long while and i had moved um to the interior of bc so it was like a three three and a half hour commute for me to get in for an audition which i was happy to do right as an actor you're you might have a couple of auditions a week sometimes not at all and living in the okanagan was beautiful because it's it's you know a vacation destination place anyways and it just it was it was fun but i remember um going in for an audition uh and then driving back and i was probably an hour outside of the city the greater vancouver regional district the gvrd and driving on the number one highway about to take the split off um to take the crow's nest pass and i was just about to lose cell reception and all of a sudden my cell pinged off and it was my agent saying hey i've gotten an audition for you um or it might have even been a callback actually like i had gone in and auditioned and then they wanted to see me again but they wanted to see me like that day and she's like and they want you back in the next hour and i'm like it'll take me an hour and a half with traffic and everything just to get there she's like we'll get there and i remember in that moment being like i'd rather just go hang out on the beach and as soon as i realized that i was like oh you need to take a step back tyler you need to what's your priority why where did the joy go why is this why did you have this attitude and so i really looked and i and i analyzed it and i had stopped having fun about six months prior and i thought well you know at the time too like at 25 like that was if i hadn't made it by 25 it wasn't gonna make it it was the mentality that i had in my head i'm like nobody knows me and to this day you you google my name and i come up on imdb and i have a whole bunch of film credits but nobody knows me you know they popped up nobody went tyler foley is on devin's podcast oh my goodness right like nobody no nobody cares and uh so i i had to step back and i had to really analyze what do i want like what are some of the things that are priorities to me and my father being an educator um and at that point i hadn't pursued any higher education but i've made a lot of money in film and television so i'm like what am i going to do with this with this cash and i decided well invest in yourself um what what interests you and my uncle was a photogrammetrist which is a very fancy way of saying that he makes maps with pictures my other uncle is a cartographer which is a very pretty way of saying that he makes maps by drawing um my grandfather was a surveyor for a small amount of time um my other uncle did um sonar work um i can't remember the fancy word for ocean sonar um with the canadian military so like i had this background and a general understanding and so i thought well let's go back and do geomatics which is just again fancy way of saying surveying so i went it's an engineering discipline so it's an engineering degree with a specialty in geomatics and earth study and i went back and i learned how to make pretty maps with pictures and that that kind of transitioned me out of acting for a very long while so now and so you went back you you got the degree you know said okay it's taking a step back if you know in your mind if you hadn't made it by 25 you're not going to make it and i have no idea if that's true i assume that their actors have made it after 25 but i have no idea but you know so you do all that and you go get the degree and then i think you after you got the degree you got you got into a startup to do uh mapping uh mobile or mobile mapping of interiors and we said that was a bit ahead of your uh ahead of its time ten years ten years ahead of its time easily so when i was going through school i again one of the things that i've always sought out in my entire life and learned from being in theater is always find a mentor find somebody who is better than you who can coach you and guide you along and i found an incredible woman very very well respected within the industry both of my uncles knew her by name and said if you get a chance to work with her go and do and um and i don't know i must have impressed her somehow because she was pretty um permitted when it came to her craft like she had her business and this was what she wanted to do but i i'd reached out to her and said listen i'd love to work with you if you have anything that we could partner up on i'd love to uh learn and explore with you and she agreed she brought me down to her office um interviewed me asked me some really tough questions i think what um impressed her the most was she asked me a couple of questions and i flat out told her i have no idea and that was one of my biggest lessons when you don't know don't try to fake it just say i don't know because there's a lot more respect than that that's authentic that's honest and people if you don't know people people know if you know or don't and if you try to make it up they know that you're making it up and then they don't want to work with you and i remember telling her she asked me i think how to calculate scale from a photograph i hadn't learned it yet i was like i i don't know i don't know how you would calculate a flight path and then she was like oh well you do this and i was like and she goes do you understand why and i said oh no that makes sense because you know if you take the focal length and blah blah and i explained it back to her and then she knew that she could teach and coach me and uh so i ended up getting the job with her and she was tired of looking at the ground from 20 000 feet in the air over hundreds and thousands of photographs and we had all this equipment and we had access to um some really really innovative and new technologies and uh one of the things that we had access to was the imu which is the inertial measurement unit it's a little gimbal that can basically tell orientation we had access to the one that they use in the scud missiles to um guide them in and so we had to get top secret clearance but we built this cart um in conjunction with a really really really well-known survey firm and helped them with their research and design and we had this cart that you could that had lidar in it which is laser measure measurement and we had that from our planes because we were taking lidar from the air and we said well what if you mounted it on the cart and then what if you put in this inertial measurement unit and a gps unit so that you could find out where you are on the earth with the gps unit which needs to see the satellites and then when you move inside you lose the satellites but we have this imu that will continue to tell us where we are and we'll have this these lasers that measure how far everything is from the walls and then we'll put on this camera on the top because we already are taking pictures we already know how to do it and we will make photogrammic photogrammetric accurate layouts of the interiors of buildings so that people can use it for insurance or whatever they want and we would like everybody can use this so 10 million dollars later nobody used it the technology was so expensive and it was so hard for us to scale it because we had one cart and us as a team and and trying to offset the cost of it like we just there was no scalability of that and uh and then further complicated um my business partner passed away uh very very suddenly two and a half years into the venture and everything was in her name and we didn't have the right director's insurance in place to have a transition to me and so literally my whole 10-year plan evaporated overnight uh just like that by not having the right protections in place and being a little bit ahead of time so you know it was all gone so no and i i mean in one sense it's it's easy to get excited about the technology and a lot of things and and be able to be almost ahead of your time and it's always that difficult nature of timing the market as to when it makes sense from when the market's going to accept it to entering into it and everything else so definitely makes sense how you can get have a really cool technology do a lot of things and then you know the market isn't ready for yet and then you're kind of caught there so now as you're going through that and you're figuring out okay this money's gone and took the investment it's not going to work market's not ready it's not going to accept it then kind of how did or where did you go from there and how did you get into uh safety consulting so um as part of what we were doing so our primary we were trying to push everything into that mobile mapping which by the way now if you look every realtor in america has a guy who comes in and does this mobile scan and does 3d walkthroughs for realtors just so you know so i was i was right you're right you were just early way too early on that bell curve um but uh our primary client because we were still a traditional photogrammetric firm we were still flying planes i had a fleet of three planes that we were sending out um and uh cameras and lidar and all the rest of that our primary client was the government and the government here has a program called core and you need to have this certificate of recognition which is just a way of proving that you've developed a safety system and in order to do that you need certain amount of training and so in order to uh be a client to the government you have to learn all the safety stuff and so when the business collapsed my buddy who's in construction a really really good businessman and owns his own electrical firm his firm was blowing up like he'd gone from a small mom-and-pop operation of about 12 employees up to almost 200 over the course of a couple of years and he had gotten this big oil and gas contract and as part of the contract he needed to have full on time safety and he's like well tyler you've done all that all the core training right and i said yeah he's like you know if you take these two more classes you can become a national construction safety officer no he's like if i pay for the classes will you come and work for me okay so that's what we did he paid for me to go and upgrade these two classes i think it cost him 300 bucks and i go and i take these two classes and all of a sudden now i have this designation this national construction safety officer designation and i get shipped up to the oil sands and help with building this camp and just i was suddenly exposed to a new world that i actually understood a lot because when i was in vancouver i used to do a lot of stunt work and so everything that i'd learned doing stunts all of a sudden translated to to safety it was all safety and i was like oh no i get that we do that yeah that engineering control that's like you know when we did this in stunts and we had a decelerator or oh yeah no substitution that's like using a stunt guy instead of the star so that you know you're mitigating risk all of these things came together very cohesively for me and and then on top of it hopefully your audience can tell i'm charming and articulate and i'd like to think i'm at least a little bit smart but i have an ability to communicate to different stakeholders so i have a real easy time getting into a flow talking to the trades guys being one on one and buddy buddy but i also have an ability to really smarten up and have educated conversations with stakeholders ceos um the c-suite the executives management and so i have i suddenly found an incredible niche for myself because i was all now i was the go-to i was the person who could translate and that's a big part of safety is just making sure that processes are understood and followed and so yeah the the career just spun from there so what looked like a tragedy at the beginning with the collapse of the business actually became one of my uh biggest freeing moments because now i'm able to do this and i have a lot more time freedom than what i would have had if i was still running the survey company so now no you know it's always interesting how you know sometimes you're looking at what what is a failure at least appears to be a failure and only you know and you tend to focus on the negative because you know you feel like you failed and you're having to recover and yeah there's opportunities that lie in in lieu of that or because of that that sets you up for something greater now so now taking us full circle um where does that leave you today or you know are you still doing the safety consulting did you go somewhere else where's your journey led up till today um so now i what i found is my passion and my drive within the safety was the actual training and a lot of the training that i ended up doing had nothing to do with safety itself it had everything to do with communication so a lot of people would be like that you know i used to run a lot of what they call toolbox meetings which are just meetings in the morning to prep people for what they're going to do in the day and everybody would look forward to mine which i thought was funny because most people get glazed over they're like uh think of a board meeting right or any other meeting that you have to go to in any given point of the day it's just a kick-off meeting and nobody enjoys them but i like to make mine entertaining and and and they were engaging and a lot of people would ask well why and how and i'd be like oh well it's real easy i don't know if you noticed but i don't talk in them and they're like what i'm like i don't talk to them i get you guys to talk they're like oh yeah i know i guess and you know i started applying a lot of these principles that i'd learned in performance and acting and a lot of the business principles that i'd learned through my degree and running the business to teaching these mid-level usually supervisors and lower middle management how to more effectively communicate to their labor force so that it wasn't boring so that they weren't being tuned out and that has migrated me back to a lot of work on stage so now i still have the safety company but i have my you know contract auditors who go out and do the auditing for me and i have a lot of really really really good admin staff who kind of keep everything going and now i'm really really hands off on the business i don't have a lot to do with it other than checking in with my people once or twice a month to make sure that you know if they need any contract negotiation or if they need any support and then where my primary focus is is on safety training making sure that people are getting the training that they need that require because that's where my passion is because now i'm helping people help themselves and i've pivoted i took all of that everybody kept asking me how i do it how i do it how i do it and it pivoted into the the book which is the number one bestseller now so i wrote a book the power to speak naked and that made it uh just a lot easier for me to do that from that now i'm going and teaching public speaking showing people how to not only do it from a safety perspective but what is your jam right you want to talk ip law how do i make that engaging for people you want to talk about your mlm well how do we make that engaging for people you want to talk whatever a good friend of mine has an absolute passion for octopuses before that netflix movie came out and we worked together so that he could grow his audience talking about octopuses and finding other people in the planet who like octopus i don't know no i like that example and i think that's a cool journey than to where you've led up to today so that kind of brings us full circle on you know kind of where your journeys led to so now we'll kind of transition and uh jump to a couple questions i always ask the end of each podcast before we dive into those just as a reminder to listeners we are going to have the bonus question we chat a little bit about intellectual property as well so just stay tuned for that if you interested in hearing a little bit about that otherwise as we do the the last couple questions um first question i was asked is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what'd you learn from it uh not having director's insurance and not not reaching out to professionals like yourself who can guide us like get a lawyer get an accountant they are expensive but your roi on that is not even 10 times 100 times thousand times to be set up properly at the beginning so that you can continue your journey no matter what um is is invaluable and i'm i'm lucky in that now i know that and i've i've found a team and i invested up front um a lot of money in a really good lawyer and a really good accountant and um and then found some really good mentorship along the way no not like that i think you know the the problem you always get into with a lot of entrepreneurs and startups and you know founders and co-founders and i'm absolutely guilty of it you think you know everything you think you're the smartest guy in the room or i think you can figure it out or you can google it or whatnot sometimes that's true and you know if you didn't have that ability you wouldn't you can't hire experts in every area that you could ever think of because you have to become an expert or be knowledgeable nor do you have the funding as he knows a lot of times but i think when you hit those critical areas where you do need that insurance you do need that expertise to do that mentorship reaching out and getting that feedback and getting that guidance can save you a lot of heartache and make often times a difference and where the business does well or where it doesn't yeah it's a hard investment up front but it pays off in the long run absolutely so now we'll jump to the second question which is if you're getting if you're talking to someone that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them you are the authority so you had touched on it a little bit just 30 seconds ago right you have to be you have to drive the ship if you're a startup if you're a ceo if you're an owner if you're a director that's your job you need to steer the ship but the funny thing is is the captain says go that way there's a helmsman who actually steers said ship and there's an engine crew that's driving the engines and and maintenance and mechanics who are keeping those things ticking you have to see the big vision so you have to you have to know what you know and know that you're an authority but you also have to get very honest with yourself on what you don't know and then what is it that it's okay not to know and what is it that you need to get better at and doing that gap analysis and doing it quickly but resting in your authority if you have this vision you want to be the world's greatest baker because that's your passion that's great and if you know gastronomy better than anyone else good live in that space and if you don't know marketing find your marketer but you have to know that you are the authority because that's when you can really live in your essence i i say it in the book um authenticity is synonymous with self-awareness you can't be an authentic person if you don't know who you are and i see and we all know it human beings have a bs radar for it you know when somebody's pretending you just feel it innately in your gut so to avoid that don't try to be somebody you're not go back to you know when i was having my first interview with jan and she asked do you know how to do this and i said no no i don't and be okay with that no i love that and i think that is absolutely great advice and definitely one people can take to heart and learn from so well as we before we jump to the bonus question as we wrap up the normal portion of the podcast that people want to reach out to they want to find out more they want to hire you as a client a consultant they want to be an investor an employee your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out and find out more best thing they can do is go to shawntylerfoley.com so it's sean s e a n spelled the right way like connery s-e-a-n t-y-l-e-r f-o-l-ey dot com shawn tyler foley.com and if they want anybody who's going over there right now uh if public speaking is a thing that they want to get into if they want to really be able to grow their business through using the power of their voice finding their authentic story learning how to really sell without selling i've got a little free download for everybody on there just click on the upper right corner it's called the method it'll give you the five insider tips that i have uh from 35 years of experience learning how to teach people how to public speak awesome well i definitely encourage people to reach out check out uh the website check out the book that you wrote and everything and all all the above well if uh for thank you again for coming on now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to tell or to share it on the podcast feel free to apply to be on the show go to inventiveguest.com two more things as listeners one in your podcast player make sure to click subscribe so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and to leave us your reviews so new people can find out about all the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need uh have any questions about patents trademarks or anything else feel free to reach out to us at millerip law by going to strategymeeting.com and grabbing some time to chat so now with that as we wrap up the normal portion of the episode i always loved the bonus bonus section when we or when we asked those questions because we get to flip the table bit and chat about something that i certainly enjoy and then passionate about which is intellectual property so with that i'll go ahead and switch gears a bit turn it over to you and ask or let you ask what's your top intellectual property question well so right now i have a lot of balls in the air particularly i'm you know i've got the book out i've got a series of training uh videos and webinars and online content and we do seminars when we're allowed to do seminars you know we have a two and a half day seminar a five-day workshop we've got masterminds that run i have a lot of intellectual property so um what do i need to know as far as that intellectual property lifestyle our lifespan like where am i in that life cycle and what's what do i need to know what what needs to be copy written what needs to be trademarked do i need to be worried about patents at this point what walk me through help me yeah no i think that's a good question and maybe it's a level set just you know kind of what is intellectual property or what are those three things because that's a lot of times where you'll want to start to focus on which you know the first one is patents go towards invention something that has a functionality it's a device it's software it's hardware it's mechanical in nature any of those are going to be patents if you go to trademarks it's going to be more under branding so name of a company a logo a catchphrase a you know name of a product something that's going to be branding is going to go under trademarks and the last one is going to be in their copyrights that's going to be more on the creative side so a book a podcast a sculpture a painting a video all those are going to fall under copyrights and so you know kind of is generally when you're looking at it first of all understanding what you know which do you have do you have patents you had did you invent anything if not then don't worry about patents because you haven't created anything vice versa if you created a really good invention you know never created anything that's creative side then don't worry about a copyright so kind of figuring out first of all what is it that you which areas that you fall into and then the other thing you'll get into is you know there's a lot as with a lot of things you can get it you can dive into a lot of intellectual property you can get a lot of broad coverage and you a lot of times when you're at least earlier on in a business and you're growing and you're you know you don't have infinite amount of money and you always have more things to spend money on the money to spend then i would start to look more at you know what are the areas that are critical to the business is it the brand are we really creating a great brand that people are going to follow and they're going to like and so that's what we want to protect whether it's a name or the you know a logo or something that or is it really the content is it really hey yeah there's a brand but what it really is is we have a great content uh generation we got viral videos and on youtube and you know those type of things or we got a great book and we want to protect that or we want it we've created a great mention so i would start out by understanding what what are the intellectual properties which categories you fit into and then say which ones are the most critical to our business start there and then start to work your way out from most critical to great to have or broader coverage but aren't critical to the business so that's kind of how i would dive in or start or start out to understand all of that and is there any way to check for uh copyrights and trademarks um yeah you can do a trademark search you can either have an attorney do it for you you can also go to the trademark database and they do have a database where you can go search and see what other people have trademarked you know it's a bit more nuanced some people oftentimes grab at in the sense that you know there is different categories and what is or how similar do they have to be before they're too similar and create issues and so but you can start out either as yourself or hire an attorney and do or do a trademark search copyrights are a bit different in the sense that they when you file a copyright you get a light you basically register with the library of congress they don't do any examination they just take what you submitted they'll put it as part of the library of congress or at least digitally now and then it'll be catalog so you can search some of it but it's a lot more difficult to see unless you specifically know where to look and what you're looking for so that one is a bit of a more hit or miss um you're better to is so if you have something you're specifically looking at you can search otherwise um you're just gonna go out and probably do more of a general search to see if somebody's already created it all right well with that great questions always fun to chat a little bit about intellectual property and appreciate you coming on and asking it if you or you or any of the listeners or audience ever have any questions on intellectual property you want to chat one-on-one make sure to go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat and otherwise we'll wrap up there and appreciate coming on the podcast tyler and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you devon you
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