Tomorrow Might Be Too Late, with Andrei Mincov

to be paid for that. And so he called the radio station and said, You guys can take my music and use it as you please. And they told them that they were making him even more famous, and that he's you should just sit down and shut up. And, you know, if you knew my dad, he'd know, very quickly, that this was the wrong way for them to handle it. And so he said, Okay, great. I'll see you in court. And that was 1996, when Russia has just transitioned from the Soviet laws toward more or less free

market was around IP. And so there weren't really a lot of lawyers who knew how this work, there were no case law, there's nothing. And so he said, he came to me and said, Can you can you take this case, and go against the radio station, like you're supposed to know the law, and I used to sing this song with them on like, hundreds of concerts when I was a kid growing up, right? So it was personal. And I saw what it was doing to him

because he was pissed. And I knew nothing about copyright. I knew nothing about what you do in the courtroom when I said, Sure, let's figure it out. And so I took them to court first hearing, you know, I'm there with my long hair and a ponytail. And there's this other lawyer, and I ripped them apart is over, they somehow got the postponement next time that for lawyers aside, the judge made the decision that was not in our favor. I was sitting in my room reading that decision that made

zero sense. And my dad came into the room and said, Well, what are you going to do now I did all the right things. I said all the right words. And I don't know what to do. So well, if you're not going to appeal this decision, you should quit your law school and find yourself a different profession. And so I appealed that velocity appeal. At that point, I figured out what to do later. So we appealed it even higher, basically, as high as it gets to the second highest court in the nation. And

we won. And in the process, I got really, really passionate about, you know, helping people who created something that only exists because they created it, to help them protect what's

theirs, and ensure that that doesn't get stolen from them. So my dad was my first and favorite client, as I like to put it, then, you know, I had a big career in Russia as copyright lawyer with the biggest international law firm in the world doing work for JK Rowling, Apple, my personal dream, whatever you can think of a big business, I've probably done something for them. And then in oh seven, I realized that I had enough of Russia, and I moved to Canada, just to start everything

from scratch. IP that has a lot more similarities than many other areas of wall because so much of it is done in accordance with international treaties that allow you know, IP owners to protect their stuff in different countries. And so when I went back to the to Canadian law school, I said to myself, You know what, this is a good opportunity for you to try other areas of lawyers and see if you like them. Maybe you fell in love with IP, just because of your dad. Maybe there's

something else. And the only other area of law that I enjoyed, you're gonna love it was Insurance Law. Oh, wow. Because it was so technical and so logical, and really was less about emotion, but more about how can we do what's right, but I never went into insurance law I kept with IP because I realized that, you know, it's the one thing that I'm really passionate about. And so I finished my Canadian law school, the top of my class got exactly zero offers from Canadian law

schools. It felt a little bit like you remember Rambo one when he's uh, he is at the store. And he says, back in Vietnam, they trusted me with million dollar equipment. And in here I can find a job parking cars. That's pretty much how I felt with my years of experience my PhD in law, my top of the class thing and like nobody would trust me to review a $500 contract. And so I started my company, still the only firm in the world that offers trademark registration services with a guaranteed

result for guaranteed budget. Really what we do now is we help entrepreneurs whether they're zero figure entrepreneurs are there 5, 6, 7, 8 figures protect what they think will become their legacy. That's really what big brands are, you're building something that goes beyond you, the founder, and you build a brand that if you're lucky, 1000s and millions of people are going to law remember and love and trust to me, really

trademarks. Yeah, there's there's some money part to it, that the increases your valuation does believe different things. But it also builds that legacy that that allows you to build something that you'll be remembered.

same thing or something similar to you. But that word phrase or image that you want to be your brand does not really become your brand, until you can legally stop others from popping you right. And the only way to do that is by getting that trademark. If you get a LLC or corporation registered, that doesn't protect your brand, if you set up a website or get a domain name that doesn't do that, if you set up a social

media profile that doesn't do it. If you put a TM symbol next to your brand, all it does is it tells the well I wanted this as my brand. But really you can't do very much with it. Once you file the trademark once it goes through, that's when you have that legal paper that says that's my and that's really what a trademark is what it's not, it doesn't protect the idea of your business, or even copy my business model. But the name the Logos, the tagline is daswell trademarks protect.

there's a reason they came up with the trademark law. Because when the businesses were starting hundreds of years ago, I was hard for people to do. And so initially they have this what's called Common Law, right? So fastening off when if you are making shoes, and you would put a brand on them, and someone would copy you do you have some recourse to go to court and

prove this guy is trying to copy. But then when we went through industrialization, we started getting those factories and became progressively easier for people to to build something similar. They realized we need a more robust way for people who invest and spend money building that brand to protect it. And so they came up with, let's make it easy for our people who care about their brands protect them. And so let's allow them to

register it in some registry. That's going to have a list of active trademarks, they're gonna say who owns them get on now, today, things are getting even harder for brand owners because competition is fierce. What used to take years for you to build as a brand presence can now take days and you can set a website in a matter of days, you can have AI, populate all those pages. And you're out there. The question is, how do you make

sure that what you came up with stays yours? So and that's what trademarks are all about.

someone else's, you can't have it anymore. And it's usually, you know, it's it's pretty dramatic because nobody wants to hear that. They say, Well, I did my search, and I found nothing. Well, because you don't know how to do search. It's what we do. And so we found this. And so the most painful is when we tell them, You know what you said, You've been running this business for three years, this other trademark, then we found

these guys just filed it six months ago. And they're like, so if I filed my trademark seven months ago, I would have haven't. Yep, that is really the most painful news to deliver. Because it's a self inflicted one. They just waited too long. They they made their brand known to too many people. And at some point, like imagine this, imagine if Elon Musk was an idiot. And for whatever reason he chose to not trademark Tesla. And anyone, you or me could just go up there and follow that

trademark and own it. Can you imagine how much money URI would make but just by saying, you know, when Tesla, I own it, now you can't make cars and call them Tesla. Or you can just buy this trademark off of me.

within the USPTO system. And if they can prove that their brand was made known to a significant number of people across the states, they can win, it's going to cost them a lot of money, it's going to cost them a lot of time, they could have easily prevented by just filing firms, but they also have to somehow find out about you. And here's the bigger problem. If it's a lemonade stand, if it's not federal, usually what it's going to mean is that a certain ourselves is gonna say, You know

what, great, where are you selling your stuff? I don't know. Austin, Texas. Okay. So what is going to be in is that this guy who copied you will have coverage all across the US as a federal trademark. But you will have a license to continue selling your lemonade in Austin? Oh, geez. Right. And so really, like I said, the whole idea of trademark was to give brand owners who care about their brands, an easy way to protect them. And the assumption is, if you didn't do it, you probably

don't care about it very much. Because it's so easy to do use the tools that we gave you course, are not very sympathetic to entrepreneurs, who suddenly remember that their brand is worth something once someone else made a lot of money using it.

into a brand and national brand, we might as well own it. And trademarks is the only type of intellectual property that you can own forever in theory that copyrights expire, patents expire. Design, patents, everything expired. Trademarks, you can renew and renew it renew. So they've been renewing that same trademark since 1892. And I can bet that there was a lot of people out there who looked at them, and said, Why are you bothering spending money on lawyers to trademark this

stuff? It's just a drink. Now this brand is worth $80 billion, just the brand itself, not their factories, not their trucks, not their bottles, not their recipe, just the brand itself and whatever they paid their lawyers back in 1892. It's probably the best return on investment they've had ever. Right. Sure. The more recent one, which really highlights the value of getting it done right. An early there's this startup called

Bird, the electric scooters. Right you see the map freeware, they were back in 2021, recognized as the fastest company to grow to a billion dollar valuation. They knew a

thing or two about building a successful business. So what they did is they started the company, and 13 days later, after their they started the company, they filed their trademark before they launched before they had their first cooter made before they like I don't know if they had an office back in the day or not 13 This again, because they asked themselves the question, will the brand be important to us if

we are to become successful? And the answer to that was, of course, because if anyone can put his scooter and put the same brand on it, we can't have a viable business model, because people are going to be confused, and they can't operate like this. So they said, Yeah, brand is going to be important. We want to build it into something that will become big. And so they that they went on trademark, and now it's part of the billion dollar valuation.

factory, a wildlife was born. Because I asked myself a question, if Bill Gates goes to McDonald's and wants to water the Big Mac, are they going to charge him 10 times more just because he has more money? No. Right? They're going to charge them the exact same thing. And I realized, for business owners for entrepreneurs, a trademark is a trademark, you don't care how difficult that is for me to give it to you. All you care is did you get one? Or did you not?

university, I got to study something. And I had no idea what I wanted to do live is zero, then I remember that when I was growing up, I would always come up with some some arguments to get what I wanted to get from my parents, like, I would structure structure it in a way that they felt compelled to give me what I want. And they would say, hey, gotta be a lawyer. Right? When I was four or five years old, right? Maybe I should

become a lawyer. And, and the other part of that was, it was 1992, when I had to make the decision to go to university, that's when Russia was just collapsing. And even though my father was a famous composer, he was barely making enough money for us to eat. We were all used to a very good standard of living before that. And I saw how unreliable that was, even if you were asked, talented as he was. And so before then I was studying music and still loved music. But I realized I didn't

want to be in a position when I wouldn't be making any money. So like, what can I learn that that is an easy path to comfortable living law. And so I went to law school, really, for the first couple of years, all I cared about was girls, alcohol and parties and music rock'n'roll, but then my dad heard his music and that like changed everything so very quickly for me. So the the overall success rate with trademarks filed in the US just 51.7% means half of the trademarks filed, never make it

with trademark factories. 99.3. So we do something different from everyone else. And there was this other category of websites out there that you know, I'm sure your listeners have come across, you know, those $69 offers Whoa, we got to trademark your brand in five minutes. They're not even follow through a lawyer because they've duped a lot of entrepreneurs into using them and some train must go through even through

them. But their model is also the same and we're going to file your trademark and if it doesn't go through Well, too bad so sad. I wanted to do something different. I want to give them the the the assurance that there's someone on their side who actually gives a damn, and who wants to give them the same result.

And that's what to me legacy is about. Like with brands, we're going to, I'm going to challenge you try thinking of one successful business without thinking of its brand, you can't, because the brand is what we think about when we think of a successful brand. The brand is the thing is it it is the thing we remember the business for. And that's, that's, that's the legacy part on the personal side, I just want to be remembered for being a happy, happy father, happy husband and

a happy guy who played the drums. And it was a little crazy just to, to move from Russia, to Canada, from Canada to Dubai. And I don't know what else is gonna lie ahead of me, but who lived a happy life. And that's something that's worth remembering you by.

wasps, I want to be somebody. And then there's a section in the brain where the deputy put up do, we were just using pencils and rulers just playing that. And the one day we're like, hey, why don't we go and learn to play verticals? And so it became my big passion and like, How can I combine a disc with a drum set? And I had some ideas about this. And, and then one day, I'm like, You know what, I actually made enough money that I can make this dream a reality. I put together my

thinking cap. And I'm not much of an engineer. I'm not, you know, I don't understand physics all that well. But I wanted to figure out how can I make it work so that the surface that you write on or that you type on doesn't prevent you from using the surface of the drums. And so it has this thing that moves moves away. And you know, my biggest concern was, how do you make sure it doesn't topple over, I figured out how to do it. And so he has a fully functional double bass kit.

And if not, then you get free advice. Because one thing and if you want to learn more about trademarks, I've posted close to 1000 videos on that YouTube channel. I know there's a question about trade, which I'll probably answered more than once. So that's another way to kind of get to know us a little better. And once once you realize that, hey, there's a reason I came up with a brand for my business. Right? This is the stock that kills me right? And that's that's to your point

about mistakes. There is a reason you came up with some name, like you didn't go with just a random number or random sequence of letters. There was something going through your head there was something going through your heart and like I want this business have this name. It means it meant

something to you. There's one message that I want to finish on is that your brand, even if you haven't built it into something's huge, it's not worthless, it's worth something and if you are planning if you're hoping that one day you're going to build it into something successful something worth remembering you buy, go and get a trademark today

because tomorrow might be too late. Yeah, when you booked that call with a strategy advisor mentioned you came from the show, we're going to do something special for you. Because, you know, to me legacy means a lot. And I really appreciate you having me on the show. So as thank you to you, we're gonna pass that thank you to everyone who's gone shunned from the show, just tell your strategy advisor, were here from let's talk legacy, and they're going to do something special for you.