It's time for the b a q a A to b a q A. What you say the big a q a Man Day, the b a q A with tiffin A, the b a q a A. Welcome to the Brida Mission. Question answers, You got questions, we got answers. Although we're not your attorney, what's your financial advisors? We're not your mama, but we are two be beautiful, smart brown girls who know a thing about money, career, business, what I'm saying. So, if you have those questions, you
can send them on them Bridepitchion podcast dot com. Ask anything or like you know, you can send us an audio note on Instagram. We'd love to hear those, and we might introduce you and bring you into the studio to ask those questions live. We're gonna talk about care well, it's our career, but these are this one is actually career.
Ish career life business. It's business business business, mixing business with career. That's fine. Let me read our first question from anonymous Let's go says Hello, I was wondering if you both could possibly touch on finding an attorney for a business. I'm reading gek it with money, geck Good Money dot com and saw where Tiffany has a section on getting an attorney as part of your money team.
She even lists a resource, which was really nice. However, after checking out the attorney's page, I wanted more information on best practices to select an attorney, taking into a consideration costs, etc. What should be outsourced to an attorney, and what can potentially what can we potentially handle doing on our own. Additionally, if you're open to it, could you touch further on Don's numbers, trademarks, copyrights for a business,
or provide more resources to consider for research purposes. Hope this makes sense, Thank you, Anonymous.
It does make sense, Anonymous, Not to me.
What's Done's numbers? Is that the duns on Broad Street thing?
No?
Yeah, numbers?
It's all afraid get what it is again because I have it for my business and I forgot like just that quickly.
I was like, what was that again?
Like that's okay?
Yeah, like no, because I I you know, it's a it's you know what it is. It's like your Okay. Done numbers is universal numbering system abbreviated. It is a prietary system developed and manage Okay, yes, so.
It is done on brad street.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's like you're a security number for your business kind of exactly.
So it's a mm hmm.
So it's important to have that because it also will allow them to see like I think it's attached to your business credit, so you can kind of like track your with your DUNE number. There are things that you can apply for that you might not otherwise be able to do. It's not the same as the EI AN do.
I feel like it's more important you need that EI DE tax id number. Well, you have to don't have a number. You don't have to have a DONE number, but you have to have E I N. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like E I N is the more important. It's like one you've got to have any guys to have.
Yeah, but anyway, so one, yes, one. Let me say that I have the best attorney and world. Her name is Tony Moore. She's a sister m O r E. Her business is legally chic. Follow Tony on all the socials. So I didn't have an attorney like because I wouldn't say so. I don't pay Tony monthly. I don't have a retainer. I just hired Tony to do attorney esque things. So in the beginning, I will say I took care of a lot of things myself. So I trademarked a
budgetista myself. When I first trademarked, because I didn't have the money, you know, and I think the trademark, I think it was like two seventy five to apply.
I did make a mistake.
But I will say with trademarks, they do assign you an attorney, and mine was super nice. So the trademark attorney who was like assigned to my case or whatever, called me. It was like, girl, what is this so kind of was like, A'm I supposed to walking you through this, do this, do this, do this, And I was like, thank you.
So you can trademark yourself.
You just take your time and you could do the now, I you know, I don't I just if I want something, I just said it to Tony. But I would say for the I didn't start working with Tony for it's been maybe three or four years.
I've been in business almost fifteen.
So so for the first ten years of business, I did almost everything myself except for what I absolutely had to get an attorney for. You know, we did a lot of get that contract off Google, which I'm not saying is great, but I get it because you don't always have money.
And then what happened over time is that we replace those things.
I'd be like, you know what, this is the year I'm going to have Tony look at our you know, our employee contracts.
She'd be like, girl, is this from YouTube?
Google up my eightys? She's like, girls, this is not gonna hold up in court. I had Tony update our NDAs. Then like, if I want to trademark something like I trademarked dream Catchers. I trademarked the Buganiessa Molly Moore. Tony like even recuse. I think after ten years your trademark expired. So I didn't even know because Tony did not initially do my trademark for Budganiessa.
I did, and I didn't know that it was expiring.
She hit me up and was like, hey, Budganiessa, Like is it actually it did expire? I was like, wait what she said, girl? Your trademark is floating out here
and win for someone to scoop it up. Do you want me to apply for your It's like, oh my gosh, so a really good attorney will look out for you holistically, because Tony said for all of her, all of her, the people that she works with, she keeps a list of all of their trademarks in general, even if she didn't do it, so she could just check on them, which thank god, because girl, somebody could have got BUDGETIZAI.
Then where will we be?
So I so many different types of attorney and like practices, So what yeah does Tony do like a little bit of everything? And then yes, I feel like this person also is like where do you find an attorney? So like how did you find Tony?
So I say one of the best things ways to find a business attorney is to ask other small businesses, because likely that person has a similar budget to you, you know, and you know it's likely to someone who is like, oh okay, if you can afford them, likely I can to. And also too, you know that you know you can ask questions, have they done a good job? Are they thorough? So Tony is very much a jack
of all trade type of attorney. But I will say I also have an entertainment attorney now because you know, after doing Netflix, I have other projects pending.
It was Tony herself that says.
I can look at the final if you want me to many just to give you kind of like someone behind the scenes girl asking this. But because it's very nuanced that industry. I have a specific Nina Shaw attorney at law.
She's amazing. Google her.
She's a fabulous black woman who was like well known the entertainment industry. And that's my entertainment attorney. But then I also had an attorney where when I really needed to lean into complicated contracts. Not to say Tony can't do that, she can, but I kind of was like I was already, Tony is my day to day here's
my trademark. Take a look at this real quick. And then when I have something that's really really big and important, Like I said, not to say that she can't, but because she's doing already so much, and I want to prioritize that, I have sought out attorneys who do specific things for one off, so I would say it's okay to do things for yourself in the beginning, but I would not negotiate. I mean, I had a friend who
negotiated her own book deal and god child screwed. I mean didn't even make probably one third of what she should have made. Because she didn't have, you know, representation, and so there are some places it just it doesn't behoove you to skimp so major contracts, you know, it's it's it's so what I do is and here's the hack. Try to get an attorney that you can get for a lump sum instead of like this hourly like, okay, I can review this and I'll charge your I was like.
Well, my budget's a little limited.
Can you just say, like, how can you give me a flat rate for this review so that there's a little more back and forth you don't have to say I don't want to ask that question because it's gonna So that was really helpful that it's like, okay, I'll review this contract for six hundred dollars one thousand dollars
whatever that is. So yes, ask other people, make a list of all the things you're needing in a potentially an attorney for if you don't have the budget, you know, there's something you could certainly do the legwork yourself to to do some of those things yourself. Like honest, you just go to the trademark website, it walks you through. You know, it asked you the question. You just fill in those things. You have to understand that when you
trademark though, that you're not just trademarking. Like I trademark the budget Neista for a specific category, but because there's other categories, you know, you could potentially, you know, somebody might be able to open up a budget NIST to restaurant.
I don't have the trademark for that.
That's why you've seen four Seasons, the really fancy hotel, but there's also a four Seasons garden shop. Because the fancy hotel four Seasons does not own the trademark for garden shop. That's why having an attorney help you with that is really important. But yeah, ask questions, see if you can get lump some fees, because that will save you a lot of money and they'll save you a lot of stress.
And honestly, I'm not gonna lie. You need to get cool with your attorney.
Some of y'all like get cool with them because I can ask Tony like sidebar questions. I have a friend that every time they even like say the word attorney, their attorney sends them like one hundred and fifty dollars bill.
You know.
But I can be like Tony real quick is this my or I can have Tony look over. I had totally look over everything, Sorry, did my book agent. She's listening to the girl, but you already know what it is. That Like, although she negotiates my contract, my book agent, I always have Tony look I'm like, is there something that maybe was missed? Because Tony is my last eyes
on things like that. So I'm telling you like having an attorney, you know, and making room for even if you can't traditionally afford overall for those things that could literally break your business, scrape up the coin and saved them, and to pay for that service.
Yeah, from my perspective, the only attorney that I've had to hire is to pursue my trademark. And the reason I hired an attorney is because I found out that there was already an application for my trademark Mandy Money out there and it was a financial like a financial planner, and we have different businesses, but anyway, she had trademarks and he was even Mandy with a y, and I like, naively thought, well, minds me with an eye and it's different,
you know. But my trademark attorney and her, yes, her firm specialized as an intellectual property. I did not know her before I hired her, but I was referred to her through another influencer, like Delian Barrows from Delian the Money Coach work with her, and I wasn't sure if I needed an attorney because I, again, I know how
to do a trademark. I filed we did broad Ambitions trademark before we did with Tony, like I was looking into doing it anyhow, but it was during that first consultation when she was like click click click, and then she's like, oh, there's this Mandy. Money is actually going to be an issue because there's I forget all the legal leads that she used, but it's confusion in the marketplace like they were. She's like, I can promise you
they're never going to approve this. So I did engage her, and to Tiffany's point about like hourly fees, there's like four people on her staff and she basically gave me the rundown of here's my hourly rate. Of course hers was the highest because she's like the boss. And then she has like a senior attorney and then an associate, then a paralegal, and you go down the line and she's like we will assign casework to the appropriate person, but always you know, striving to do it most economically.
So it was helpful to have that hourly breakdown. But it wasn't even an hourly breakdown. It was like every six minutes. It's like a build every six minutes, something like that.
I know.
But she came up with a retainer. It was five thousand dollars, So basically I put five thousand dollars on hold with her because to do like A to do A it's kind of like an unknown process. Either you're going to be waging war trying to prove that you were the first person to use your trademark that another person has applied for. She just wasn't sure how much
work it was going to take. It has not ultimately cost all those five thousand dollars, and I have a good update this week is that they were able to get in touch with the other Mandy Money's attorneys and they've agreed to consent a consent order I had to do to ye, yeah, which basically means we can both play and we can both be Mandy Money, and we
acknowledge the other exists and it's fine. So it looks like I'll be spending a lot less than that, But this was too much work for me to do on my own, So for me, it was worth the it was worth the money. And because her firm only does IP stuff, I felt really like I was in good hands. Other than that, I feel like, honestly, the most important person on the money team for a business is like your accountant and your bookkeeper, you know, like that's where I would focus on first.
And like I said, these are one off you know, like you're not gonna need attorney all the time all the time, like and sometimes there are people who do both, like I have my my spokesperson agent, Ellie, Like that's one person that I don't have Tony look at those contracts because Ellie does such a thorough job of like she's not an attorney, but she is a master spokesperson negotiator, so.
She does all the contracts.
So she negotiates and looks at the contract and redlines it, so you know, there you might just know that, Like to Mandy's point, you know, if something is really important, like Mandy money is her name, it is critically important, so she knew if it's going to cost it's gonna cost it's worth the money, you know, and then something lightly you're like, oh, you know, it's like I might talk got myself, you know, So yeah, just keep that
in mind. But like I said, one of the tricks for me to keeping those things down is negotiating not every attorney's going to go for it, but negotiating a flat rate or fee for certain things so I can set a budget and say I know it won't go over this, or if it is an hourly thing. Setting an hourly thing was like, but it's not going to go over this.
You know. That just helped me and I've been able to negotiate that.
Big girl stuff. It's not fun. It's not fun sholling out five d's, but I'm trying to look at the long term. I want this business to last for a while. I'm kind of gonna need my name.
So I mean, I had to one of my maid I probably I don't know first out of the NDA, so I won't say, but one of my major companies. I had to do that as someone else applied for the name, and although I was using it like definitely years before you know, they got CSC. But we just basically agreed it's not that serious. We'll just play both play in this space. So I have a contract that just say is you can use it. I can use it because it's totally different. They're using it for a
blog and I'm using it for something else. So you know that's always out there too. But you should at the very least, there's I think it's called te let me tell you what it is with trademark look up, So at the very least you should be looking up anything you're potentially wanted to trademark. But there's like a like a lookup search so us PTO. It's called the tests account right so USPTO dot gov. And you'll see search trademark database and so you'll be able to like,
you know, a word search. I usually I just do word and I just type it in the Budgeonista, Like if you were to type into Buganista. You know you should see you should see to me, like you should see me budget cause I'd be crazy.
I'm like, wait it, what was not me?
Yes, Budgenisa, there is a there's a word and a mark, you know, and so if you see actually in here one of them says did so dead is because I told you it.
Got canceled, girl resurrector.
I mean, so what the cancel lation day was twenty seventeen. Can you imagine?
But it said like, you know, like it's a you know, like it's so now it's live, so you know, thank go on.
So even even if you want to actually, matter of fact, this is a good practice for you.
You will see December third, twenty thirteen, I actually trademarked the dollar sign B that bitcoin uses before bitcoin came out, I had a trademark and if you go in and you look up Budgenista, you will see the dollar sign B. That was my logo. I don't know what to do about it. I just keep it now because I'm just like whatever, maybe one'll be catch it for ye so like and so yeah, so now you know I still own Buncheista, thank god. But like, yeah, i'd let it
expire in two thousand. If you look, I let expire twenty seventeen, got it back twenty eighteen.
But during that whole time, I was like, oh, we don't do fingers crossed. So yeah, great question.
We'll take a quick break, y'all and be right back with another juicy question from the baqa. Oh right, I guess I'll take this one or I'll read this one. This comes from Nile the Nile. All right, Nile says, I'm a new listener to your podcast. I found you through Delian Barrows's Diversifying Podcasts. Shout out to Delian, and I've been hooked ever since. I got a tip from a coworker that one of our sister locations had their marketing manager put in their two weeks notice, and I
want to apply for the job. This would be me essentially jumping ahead to presitions positions. The problem is I have very little experience in marketing. In fact, my major was cinema studies with a minor in criminal psychology. I worked alongside marketing events and social media teams, but not enough to be a manager. I'd essentially be starting from scratch.
The last person was paid around one hundred K, but I was wondering if it would be smart to ask for eighty K, knowing that I barely have one year of experience in that field to get the job. My company encourages upward mobility, and my boss is on board with me following my bliss, so I thankfully have no roadblocks in that respect, I want to apply regardless. That way, I can at least be told what I need to
be a good candidate in the future. But with shooting lower better my chance to getting the job in general, then maybe I could work my way up to that six figure paycheck. Any advice you financially fabulous aunties can provide would be so helpful, even if I have to have a glass of wine in a notebook beside me while I listen. Sincerely, nile ooh man, I thought you were Auntie.
No, don't do that, which twenty five year old self.
Only I'm actually thirty, so I could be here, Auntie.
I have to see it.
I don't is that financially fabulous rich.
I'll tell you the girl. I'll be honest because I'm a real Auntie in real life. So whatnot.
I've been called first. It is interesting only twenty five jumping to positions. I mean, I think it's great that you even understand that you know when the last person was paid. I think that tells me that you're like asking questions. I wouldn't actually give them a number. This is like an internal move for you. It's at the same company, so I would just go through the interview process and see what kind of offer they give you.
I would not give them a number, and I'm going to assume you know, for you it'd probably be a big jump to one hundred K. I wouldn't expect one hundred k given your level of experience. And also, you don't really know the story. Or maybe you do, but we don't know the story of that person who's in that role before, how long they were in it, Maybe they were poached by another company. Maybe they told you it was one hundred k, but that was like nine with a ten percent bonus and total comp was one
hundred k. Like, I don't know. I wouldn't put so much store in getting to that hundred K number exactly. You kind of have to chart your own journey here, although it's good to note certainly what to strive for at the end of the day. If the workload is going to be the same, they should be paying you
in the same ballpark. But because they know what you're currently making, you are at a bit of a disadvantage there because they may not They may have certain policies or you know, processes in place to not give someone like as huge as a jump as that maybe I
don't know what you're currently making. You didn't say, but yeah, I would say strategically, do not give them a number, go through the hiring process, make them really excited to hire you, and use it as a learning opportunity, like you said, and then see what their offer is, and then when you get their offer, don't be shy about countering it. I just had this wonderful success story from one of my Mandy money makers. Her name's Dana, and
she was working. She was working internally at this company for years, and then they gave her they put her on a rotation like a contract like six months, and it's into a manager position where she had to like hire five people a manage team of five, and they didn't give her a raise. And six months turned into nine, turned into twelve. Then finally eighteen months later, she's still working as a manager, no raise, insight. Finally they were like, it's time, we have a job that we're going to
offer you and we can make this official. And she went to she had a one on one with me for coaching advice, and I was like, she almost didn't want to counter because she thought it wasn't going to happen all this time. She's like, it's not going to happen. I'm grateful it's happening. And I was like, you have to counter, and you have to counter. And she ended up getting twenty percent more than what she was currently making internally, and so you can counter internally at your company.
So I would I would encourage you to do that, but don't give them a number first.
Yeah, And honestly, I'm all for like because there's a statistic, which of course I want to mess up.
I should been looking it up.
But basically, it's like, in order for a man to apply for a job something like, he has to feel like he has like twenty or thirty percent of the skill set in order for a woman, it's like she has to feel like she has like eighty or ninety percent.
It's something in that ball park, and you know, I love that.
You're like, girl, I'm about to jump with this twenty thirty percent because why not?
You know.
I actually was like talking to someone today who's in the finance space and she's a big influencer, and she was like, Hey, this organization wants me to speak how much you know, I don't do a ton of speaking, although she's like really popular, but by how much should I charge them? And I told her, I said, well, I'll share my rates with you because currently my keynote, because she's doing a keynote, my keynote is one hundred thousand.
I said, but.
That's just recently because I went from when Netflix came out. I raised my keynote from fifty to one hundred because I said.
Why not?
Because whenever I do something that solidifies that I'm one of one, my price has to reflect that because it's always like you could either get me or go get more money because you're not gonna find a match here.
You know I have.
I have set myself aside to be a one of one. So I was just telling her that and she was like, what, I don't know they're gonna be able to pay. I said, not only they're going to pay. I work for that company. They paid me fifty And she was like, wait what I said exactly. So here you are saying like, oh my god, you know I'm afraid because they said they're looking at other people and they just want to see all my prices. I said, the girls got it. The girls got it. They paid me fifty, and I said,
it was this year and guess what they paid me fifty? Well, the year before they paid me thirty because that's what my raith were the year before, And the next year I went from thirty to fifty and they paid it without pushback. I said, it's you that's holding yourself back. So you just sometimes you tell yourself someone is not
going to they're not going to see the value. They're not gonna and so last I checked, she says she's going to She's going to ask for like, you know, like at least above fifty, which I was like, great, you know, but I will say this that it is important for me anyway that if I'm asking for fifty to one hundred, I have to feel confident in my ability to deliver, you know, like we're not just making up numbers here, because I see that a lot in
all of these entrepreneurs spaces that the girls will tell you, hey, girl, you need to do a high ticket item. Is the item though worth the high ticket? You know, you're telling a fifty thousand dollars you know, tai ticket item to what you know, but for what really? So for me, you know, I'm like, I know after fifteen years of speaking and then ten years before that being a teacher, which is a speaker, that I will deliver two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of a worth of value.
So I feel very confident in saying one hundred. I had one huge, huge, huge, huge, multi global, well not multi globe because only one globe, but like huge global company come to me when I told them fifty, and they balked it and like, ooh, not you black girl.
I mean, did I say that a load? And so I was like, yeah, that's what it is.
And so when they didn't want to pay it, thankfully it was a sister on the other end.
I was like, girl, don't let them do me like that.
That's what I basically. I was like, for real, don't let them do me like that. I said, you see my list of credentials. If I was a white man, you would pay it. Don't let them do me. So I am bold in her, and she went back was like, don't you do my girl like that. They paid the fifty. I over delivered and guess what. Afterward, Literally, the executive person that was in charge of was like, Tiffany, you were worth more than that, and I'm sorry that we even questioned it.
So that's what I mean.
It's not just enough that you're going to ask for more twenty five girl, niece, since we aunties niece, make sure that you're going to turn up and turn.
Out when it comes to that job.
If you're not already turning up and turning out like where you currently work, you ought to be. So that way they're like, damn, you know that eighty were paying her. She's worth way more. So just keep that in mind that, like you know, you get to set your value, but to make sure that you're bringing value and you know if you are.
Wise words from Tiffany Boss Budgeonista. All right, NC Nile, so much for your question. Like that, NC Nile, thank you for your question. If you guys want to be on the BAQA, you know what you gotta do. Hit us up. We are Brown and Mission Podcast on Instagram. You can also email us to our website Brandnemission podcast dot com. If you want to be live in the studio or the stew as Tip says, the youths are saying it, then send us a voice note on IG
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