Caleb Roche Featured On The Inventive Journey Podcast

“Definitely get everything in order right away. It kind of falls back on the worst business decision I made. Getting everything set up to where you have contracts that are in place. And you have a legal framework you can work off of to give you accountability. Then also give your clients accountability. The thing I wished I had done a little bit differently was I viewed my business in the very beginning as I needed to be a cheap as possible. And just kind of survive. Where I wish I had been I am going to invest all my resources into creating a great contract, getting invoicing set up to where it's reoccurring. Clients can save credit cards. Different processes that I did not do just because I did not want to spend the money that now I am having to spend the money and wish I had done it before.”


View A Transcript of the Podcast Episode here

Caleb Roche: Definitely get everything in order right away. And like it kind of falls back on the worst business decision I made. Getting everything set up to where you have contracts set into place, and you kind of have like a legal framework that you can work off of to give you accountability, but then also give your clients accountability. And so, the thing that I wish I had done a little bit differently was I viewed my business in the very beginning because I didn't make a bunch of money in the beginning as I need to be as cheap as possible, and really just kind of survive. While I wish I had been I’m going to invest all my resources into creating a great contract, getting invoicing set up to where its reoccurring clients can save credit cards. Different processes that I didn't do, just because I didn't want to spend the money that now I'm happy to spend the money and wish I did it before.

Devin Miller: Hey everyone, this is Devin Miller here with another episode of the Inventive Journey. I'm your host, Devin Miller. The serial entrepreneur that has grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses, as well as the founder and CEO of Miller IP Law, where I help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks. If you ever need help with yours, just go to www.strategymeeting.com, we're always here to help. Now, today we have another great guest on the podcast, Caleb Roche. And to give you a quick introduction into Caleb. So he was homeschooled and in his words, was a weird nerdy kid, but he graduated from college at 19 with the Bachelors of Marketing. Went into marketing but had always kind of had dreams or aspirations of being a lawyer and actually worked with an attorney that did some work on the Oklahoma City bombing. While he was doing that, found out he hated the Law so, he finished up with the marketing. I think during that period of time, did a little bit of studies overseas in Europe, graduated, got a job offer with the Inspire Brands. Also was doing a side hustle while working there. Then part of his responsibilities was marketing, was doing taste testing and research for restaurants, which sounded like a fun time. Then during COVID, started working from home, found that he liked working from home and wanted to turn the side hustle into a full-time gig and that started making more money. Finished up an MBA as well and started in the world of small businesses. So with that much as a quick introduction, welcome to the podcast, Caleb.

Caleb Roche: Thanks, Devin. Appreciate the great introduction.

Devin Miller: Absolutely. So I just gave the 30 second run through of a much longer journey. So maybe take us a bit back in time to starting out being homeschooled and how your journey started from there.

Caleb Roche: Yeah. So as you well put, I was an already a homeschooled kid that, not a lot of people wanted to talk to, but, I’ve gotten to become a little bit more social, so that's been a good thing. So when I was homeschooled, I was able to take concurrent classes and so, I was able to actually graduate, like you said, college a little early. And so I went to college and as you said, I really wanted to be a lawyer. And so my sister-in-law was an attorney, I had a couple other attorney friends and the one thing they said would be really good for my resume would be studying abroad. And so I actually studied abroad in Manchester, England, in hopes that it would help my resume for Law School and it actually turned out to be a great experience, just in general. And obviously I'm not a lawyer. So, I assume it's probably not going to help my resume for Law School, since I won't be applying. But those were great experiences. And so, I always thought I wanted to get into law. I worked for a criminal law defense attorney and just realized it probably wasn't for me. All the researching that you probably have to do every day, I don't know if I could do it. And so I transitioned into marketing and, went to college for it, kind of did on the side and, really enjoyed kind of working with small businesses when I was in college. And obviously I didn't make very much money because I was just starting out. So, I kind have felt like I couldn't charge them a bunch of money. So, that was always a struggle as I was in college, was how do I monetize this and actually make this a career. It's not like Law where I can go in and start charging an hourly rates just based on my education. And so, college was a great opportunity for me to go in and kind of start building my client base.

Devin Miller: Now, let me just dive in one question on that. So you went in thinking you were going to be an attorney. I know plenty of attorneys. It's interesting. I ended up getting four degrees and one of them was a law degree and the other was an MBA. So I kind of might have been two different routes but I know plenty of attorneys that go all the way through law school, get out of law school and decide, hey, I don't want to be an attorney or this isn't what I thought it'd be. It's not always fun and exciting where as it is on TV, where you have a court case. The next day you're in court and by the end of the week you've won the case. It's not quite that way, but for you, what was the thing that kind of drove you to say, okay, maybe Law isn't what I'm excited about and isn't what I want to do. When you made that determination, what kind of drove you towards marketing?

Caleb Roche: So yeah. It was probably a two year decision that I had. So, when I started, it was great because I kind of got to see the fun parts of Law. Get to go to, like you said, cases and go to trials and actually see the fun part where we're actually arguing in front of people. So that had been my initial exposure. And then, when I moved down to Oklahoma City, I was working with an oil and gas litigation firm, and that's a lot of paperwork. It was a great opportunity, but I realized that there was a lot of paperwork to that. And so as I started kind of networking in the attorney community, I get some really great people that I kind of viewed as mentors. So I would try to take them to coffee and just kind of pick their brain on, what are the favorite things about your job? What did you hate? Are you glad you went to law school? Are you glad you went into debt for law? All of these types of things. And so, I’ve kind of grown away from it, but I was very risk-adverse at the time. And so I kind of started to put the money towards, if I go to law school, go into X amount of debt, can I actually pay this off in a reasonable amount of time? And it seems like, unless you were really good at managing both a family, if you have a family and kind of managing that relationship and the business side of Law, it seems pretty tough unless you can be kind of a self-starter And so as I'm going through my degree and kind of learning these marketing classes and diving into kind of more of the consumer behavior piece. Because you know, college, you start off English 101, calculus, you, you kind of hate it and you're like, why am I in college. I don't know if you feel this with law, but the more you dive in and kind of see the different aspects of the kind of get like, oh, this is kind of cool. The consumer behavior, it's not just, putting out an ad, it's, looking at how the consumers react to this. And so kind of a combination of holy cow, that's a lot of money to go into debt for and, it seems like it depends on who you talk to, but it seems like the career field is kind of getting a little bit harder to get into as it progresses. And so I kind of weighed that with, I kind of want to have a good family life, I don't want to work a hundred hours and here I am, start with a small business, probably working the same amount as a lawyer, making way less, probably than a lawyer too. So, I don't know if it was a wise decision, but you know, that's kind of what brought me to it.

Devin Miller: No, it definitely makes sense. And there is a lot that goes into a lawyer. If you're great at it and you can pay off the loans, great. And depending on the type of why. It's interesting, I think everybody has an idea that lawyers just make tons of money and some of them do. And some of them, depending on the type of law, you can make a fairly small amount and you're into debt for quite a long time. So I think that, having all of that balance of do I want to do a lot of paperwork? Is it going to be worth the investment? Do I really like it? And all that definitely makes sense as to why you pivot it into marketing. So you do marketing while you're in school, you started to kind of get an understanding of a build up a little bit of client base and he graduated and then he went and worked for a different business, right, or for a marketing firm.

Caleb Roche: Yeah. So what really got me going was I think it was the first Friday of January, I was working for a small business and they came to me and, basically let me go on the spot. So here I am, me and my wife had just gotten married. We had just bought our first house, not even graduated from college and obviously we had some savings set up, but we're not 50 year old millionaires. And so, my wife looks at me and is like, all right, what are we going to do? And so, that was the point of when I actually started kind of viewing it as a business. So for four months, until I graduated, I knew I couldn't make really any money, working for a business until I got the official degree because that's what companies want. And so, we kind of along with what my business that I thought was really successful at the time, which wasn't. So I got connected with one of my professors my last semester of school; Christina McCloskey is her name. She's over the market research in Sonic Drive-In and she came and spoke to the class. I ended up getting connected with her after she came and visited. Went in for a job interview and actually got a job working for Sonic Drive-In in their Product Research Department or Consumer Insights Department, they eventually got bought out. Around the time that I joined, they were getting bought out by Inspire Brands. So then my job basically moved over from Sonic to Inspire helping all the other brands kind of build consumer validation, which was a really great experience. Like we talked about earlier, learning the big budget side of things with a corporation, there's a lot to it that small businesses don't see. And so it was great exposure for me to get, to see all the different agencies that play as they're kind of working together to build products and kind of the in-depth research that goes into products before they actually get launched. That was so incredible.

Devin Miller: Now, just as a little bit of an aside. Was it as fun to taste test all the new products as it sounds because that just sounds like fun. You get to hear all the crazy creations they come up with and all the different ways they're doing it. Was that fun and exciting, or was it over glamorized kind of like being an attorney?

Caleb Roche: It was a little bit of both. So a lot of what we did, we had to taste the product before it went on to taste test. But what's funny is everyone, when I say taste testing, they thought it was just me sitting eating a burger, a double cheeseburger, with this and giving my opinion. But the cool part was, we would go into different markets and work with vendors to actually like have consumers that we picked test the product. And so while we got to eat the product, we actually got to program surveys and kind of see what they thought and use different ways to kind of understand how they felt about a product. And so, that was the fun part about seeing and kind of felt cool, cause you're in front of this one way mirror, so you can watch them eat while they're filling out the computer. And you got to feel like a private investigator, I guess, or I don't know what you would feel like. But then the other part is I probably gained about 20 pounds because we were eating. And when you have such good products, because it's handmade by chefs, not just at the location. So the quality is just so much better that you just can't say no. And so by the end of my tenure, my face kind of blew out a little bit and definitely had to hit the gym after I kind of stopped working there. So, it was a little bit of both- it was pretty awesome, but at the same time it kind of got tiring at times.

Devin Miller: Makes sense on all fronts. So, now you're doing that and it sounds like, you're enjoying the job, get some fulfillment, you get to have some fun experiences but how did the kind of starting the side hustle, what prompted that and how did that turn into a full-time hustle?

Caleb Roche: So it was kind of a mixture from the transition from the side hustle to a full-time. Me and my wife had been married for maybe eight months at the time and we ended up finding out we were pregnant. Right before COVID last year, I guess almost two years ago, in the winter I started kind of pushing hard into my job. And so it ended up being a lot of travel. At that same point, my wife and I had just had our first son. And so, trying to balance traveling, leaving the airport at 6:00am, going to somewhere getting to a hotel and then at the same time trying to grow my business. So I'm up until midnight, 2:00am kind of building strategic plans, catching up on emails. It was very overwhelming. And then by the time I get home, my wife's basically exhausted because she's been with the baby all day. So I'm not going to use the excuse of, oh, I was working because being a mom or taking care of a kid is a lot harder than work, in my opinion sometimes. And so, I really wanted to be a good father, but at the same time, it was so hard because I was always gone. And so that's where I kind of had this, I wouldn't call it like a light bulb moment because I'd always wanted to grow my business into a full-time thing, but I guess it kind of expedited my timeframe of, I don't like this life, I want something different. And so that's when, with COVID between the time of the winter before COVID and during COVID, I kind of had this new inspiration of, okay, I've got to turn this into a real business. I've got to get everything structured the right way and actually create pricing. I've gotten a little bit of experience kind of building referrals. And so now I can kind of take this serious. And so during COVID when we got locked down and I worked from home for a year, it allowed me a lot more flexibility after work and before work that I could wake up and I'm not driving now, I'm not flying. And so I have a lot more time to really grow my business outside of the normal business hours that I had to. That I could really build my client base while dedicating all the time I needed to for my full-time job. And then December of 2020, I came to my wife and said, all right, we've made more than I've made on my salary. I'm ready to go. And so we kind of set a benchmark of, hey, let's do a couple more months of this. And if that happens, let's get my two weeks and let's go full-time. And that's when I really knew that I could turn this into a real business and not just like a side hustle.

Devin Miller: So yeah. I mean, that's definitely interesting. Now backing up just a little bit, just because I had a couple of questions. When you originally started the side hustle, was it because you're working from home or was it more of, hey, I always wanted to do this. What prompted the side hustle initially as you were getting going?

Caleb Roche: I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset. I've always thought I wanted to get into real estate, real estate investing; all the different things that you would think of to be an entrepreneur. And so from the very beginning, when I was a young kid, I've always wanted to own my own business. No matter if I was working for a corporation, I always knew that I did not want to work for someone my whole life. And so it was kind of an idea of my wife of, hey, you could make some extra money and kind of get some good experience of getting to work with business owners, kind of build a network while you're young. And then my initial plan was work for five to 10 years, get some really good experience and then jump on my own and obviously that was expedited. But, it was kind of this idea of I can kind of control my own schedule and kind of do things on my own, at a young age. So I can kind of prepare my life. And so that's what originally got me going was if I can start this now and kind of grow, in the next five years, when maybe people would be at a longer life stage than maybe me at the time. I'd have a lot better life in the future for what I wanted.

Devin Miller: No, I think that problems a lot of people have of hey, I want to control my own destiny. I want to do my own thing. I want to be able to choose the hours. Now, the ironic thing is half the time you get into your own business, you end up working as many or more hours. The old joke always goes, the best thing about being an entrepreneur is you get to choose which 10 hours you work a day type of a thing. So it's not that your hours are reduced, but you do have a little bit more control. But now as you dive into that, you make the transition, you start out as a side hustle, you work from home, have a bit more time to work on it. Also start to make more money with it. And you dive in, as you've been now doing that, building that for a year, a year and a half now. How has it gone as a band gratifying, loved it, great decision, wish you could go back to the other business somewhere in between or how's it gone for you?

Caleb Roche: Oh, I haven't looked back and don't ever want to look back ever again. So it's like you said, it's that common phrase of, I think it's the quote goes that you work 80 hours a week just so you can avoid working 40 hours for someone. So obviously I'm still working on the timeframe just because we've grown so much. But it has been such a great transition. It was very stressful in the beginning because I hadn't set up proper infrastructure for client billing. And so I was kind of still working on that when I made the adjustment. I wish I had gotten that a little bit more under control because those first couple months, you're waiting on a client to pay an invoice and you're like, all right, this is my mortgage payment. I hope this comes through. But as we built cash and continue to build up our client load, it became much more relaxed. And it allowed me to kind of invest more into my clients instead of stressing on my own business. And so it's been so gratifying, we've actually grown. We do a lot of obviously online advertising for ourselves. But a majority, our client acquisition has just been based off of referrals because we think referrals are such a great way to do business because you already have the trust built up with someone. And so if they're referring you to that person, they have personal experiences and there's less selling that goes on. Which, obviously as a small business, you have to sell. But one of the worst things that I hate doing is selling. I really love it, but at the same time, I hate feeling slimy or I never want to. And so that combination of how do I sell someone and make money, but at the same time make sure it benefits them. It's just a weird concept. And so, we've really focused on customer experience and building out kind of great client experiences. And so that way we can foster referrals. And so we've gotten referrals from small businesses. We've gotten a couple of big international clients, which has been something that I would've never imagined in this first couple of years. So it's been a great, great experience. There's a lot of learning as I'm probably sure, you know, with starting a business and your extensive experience, there's always the days that you wake up and you wonder why you started it. And then the next day you wake up and you say, man, I don't even know I had that thought.

Devin Miller: Absolutely. Sometimes, you sit within the same hour of the same day. You're oh, this is great. I love it. And then you get a client that calls you and gets mad at you and tells you all the things that you've done wrong and why you should change all these things. And it's a horrible day. And then you wait till later and you're like, oh, I still love it. So there's, there's kind of all those feelings. So I definitely agree with you and get that. So well now, as we've kind of taken a bit to where you started all the way up until where you're at today. Great Transition to go over the last two questions I always ask at the end of each podcast. We'll jump to those now. So the first question I always ask is along your journey, what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it?

Caleb Roche: All right. This is going to be a good one. So the worst business decision that I made was being too lenient on client payments. So obviously when I first started and we've started transitioning to a different model, but when we first started, I was barely charging anything for business owners. And so not only am I barely charging anything or getting any money, really didn't have a set contract set up. I mean, I had contracts set up, but I didn't follow them 100% on the payment side. Small businesses, it gets personal. And so if you know someone's really financially struggling, there's a lot that we put into our business that goes into our clients and so we have overhead. And so what I would do is, oh, you can't pay this month. That's fine. Just pay whenever. Obviously you can't be too much of a stickler and not build client experiences, but you have to get paid. And so one of the worst business decisions that I made was like letting them get behind to where I'm not making any money and it's hurting my family. And not being fully upfront about that with those clients of, hey, you're struggling and I get, but now you're causing me to struggle because I'm holding back all these payments. And so it led for a world of hurt on my side of a lot of regret of oh man, I wish I had done something different but obviously you can't go back.

Devin Miller: On the one hand, it's an easy mistake to make. That's why I didn't make that mistake, but it was after watching other people make that mistake. So it was kind of along those lines. Because I worked for a firm that. They would split their payments half and half. In other words, you'd pay half to get going and then half when you get to file. But it just created so much of a hassle that halftime you get to the end, then they don't want to file or they're having money problems. And then you're trying to work it out and it was collections and it was creating contentious relationship. So when I started Miller IP law, it was just much more of, hey, we're just going to do flat fee. We know it's going to be a reasonable price. You paid up front, we don't have to do collections. We don't have to chase them. It doesn't create that tension. And if they don't want to do it, you have to understand, but it's always one of those. I think that learn how to do billing and do it right. Because otherwise you get into that one, you're having to chase a thing you're never knowing when you're going to get paid and now creates that tension in the relationship of it's no longer, hey, you're providing a service, you're running people down to get paid and nobody likes that experience. So I definitely understand that mistake.

Caleb Roche: Well, it's one of those things. It's really hard as you get started. And I don't know if it's just because I started with maybe not as much experience as most people do, but I had this, I guess, feeling that I didn't feel like I was worth it maybe. Even though I wasn't charging that much. And so there was that, like, I feel like I'm maybe not providing as big of a service if they can't make the money. So there was a hard part of like understanding my worth and knowing that I'm providing them as much as I can for my service and I'm giving them as much dedication as possible. And so it's kind of a mutual respect thing that I didn't understand it that way, but that's how I've kind of learned it recently. It's kind of a respect thing. They're agreeing to terms. You're not trying to trap people and if you're doing it the right way, it really shouldn't be a problem. And so that's kind of how I've reframed the way that I think about these things. Obviously I'm charging these people, but they're getting a service by me. And so they should be paying on time.

Devin Miller: Absolutely. But it's always one that you have to learn because you're like, oh, if I do a great job, people just want to pay me and they'll be successful. Sometimes it does happen, but other times, other times you have to say, nope, I have to treat it like a business. And if I'm not making money, I can’t provide the service for those that can pay. And so it is one where you have to make that line in the sand. So I definitely get it. So now going to the second question, if you're talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or small business, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them?

Caleb Roche: Definitely get everything in order right away. And it kind of falls back on the worst business decision I made. Getting everything set up to where you have contracts into place and you kind of have like a legal framework that you can work off of to give you accountability, but then also give your clients accountability. And so the thing that I wish I had done a little bit was I viewed my business in the very beginning because I didn't make a bunch of money in the beginning as I need to be as cheap as possible and really just kind of survive. While I wish I had been, I'm going to invest all my resources into creating a great contract, getting invoicing set up to where it's reoccurring, clients can save credit cards, different processes that I didn't do, just because I didn't want to spend the money that now I'm happy to spend the money and wish I'd done it before. I had been using template contracts and recently I hired a local attorney here to do contracts. It has been such a game changer. My two-page contracts went to about 14 pages and there's a lot of protections in there that I didn't even think about. And having those conversations with them, I'm sure you have these conversations with business owners, they did research. It's like, okay, you could get sued by X or based on this. And it's like, why never thought about that. And so thankfully I've been, I've been lucky enough to never have those situations where I've had to worry about that, but having the protection, even having business insurance, that's something I did two years ago that I'm so grateful for having that. If I ever got sued that I would have insurance to help cover my bills. Those big things are huge. And so I wish I hadn't had such a scarcity mindset towards business and kind of work towards building from the very beginning and building the systems to where now I don't have to worry about it.

Devin Miller: No and I agree with it. I know to give startup small businesses, slack, there's always more things to spend money on than you have money to spend as a startup. And so, oftentimes there's kind of a bit of an evolution to where as you're getting going, you try and do everything as much as it can on the cheap. Do it DIY. Do it yourself. Use online templates and online forms. And I get it. And there's probably a place for that because you're saying it until I get the business up and going and actually making money, I can't put as much money into those things as I probably should because the money's not there. But then as you start to get traction, you're saying there are a lot of things I really should be doing and doing better and you better get them taken care of. And a lot of times I think that having that roadmap or that kind of plan in place that, hey, I have to do it this way because I don't have the money. But as soon as I hit this milestone, here are the things I should get taken care of. Maybe I should get those contracts updated, or I should get that business insurance. And I can't do that when I'm only making $10 a month on the side hustle but when I making $5,000 a month, then I should starting to reinvest. So I think that that's definitely a great takeaway.

 Well, just as a reminder to the listeners, we are going to do the bonus question where we talk a little bit about intellectual property. So if you want to hear a little bit more about that, stay tuned for after we wrap up the episode. But otherwise as people are wanting to reach out to you, they want to be a customer, hey want to be a client, they want to be an employee, hey want to be an investor, they want to be your next best friend, any or all of the above. What's the best way to reach out to you to contact you, to find out more?

Caleb Roche: Best way for me is either through my website www.cRocheconsulting.com Consulting com. It's cRocheonsulting.com. It's spelled differently than the bug. Or they can email me at caleb@croachconsulting.com. Again that's www.cRocheconsulting.com. ,those are the best methods for me, just because we offer free consultations, kind of like what you do as well, of kind of helping business owners before they actually get sold. Anything kind of understand whether it's something that they would actually need. And so there's a calendly link on there that they can actually sync up with my calendar, like you have and kind of determine the best time before we go back and forth about, oh, well, Tuesday at two doesn't work for me, but that works for me. So, we make it pretty easy for people.

Devin Miller: Yeah. I love, I love calendar scheduling. I'm an evangelist of it just because it makes it easy for people to align schedules without having to go back and forth and alleviates that frustration. That's great that you offer that and I definitely encourage people to reach out.

Well, thank you again for coming on, the podcast. It has been a fun, it's been a pleasure. Now for all of you listeners, if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast, feel free to go to www.inventiveguests.com and apply to be on the show. Two more things as listeners. One, make sure to click subscribe in your podcast player, so you know when all of our awesome episodes, come out and do leave us a review so everybody else can find out about all of our awesome episodes. Last but not least, if you ever need help with your patents, trademarks or anything else, go to www.strategy meeting.com. Grab some time with us to chat. Well, now that we've wrapped up the normal part of the episode. It's always kind of fun to shift gears a bit. And now I get to talk a little bit about one of the topics that is obviously close to my heart, and I love talking about it, which is intellectual property. So with that, I'll turn it over to you to ask you you're a number one intellectual property question.

Caleb Roche: Yes. This might, I don't know if this is too big to unpack, but it was on my mind recently. So as a marketing consulting firm, we're creating assets for our clients, we're running these campaigns. How can businesses protect their marketing and their assets with intellectual property? For every asset, do you create a trademark? Like what would you suggest from that standpoint?

Devin Miller: Yeah. And you probably started answer your own question. I mean, breaking it down, there are kind of three main aspects of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights. Patents are for inventions, if you create something that's something. Trademarks are for brands. So something that is name of company, name of a product, catchphrase logo; those types of things. And copyrights are more for the creative. So photos, pictures, videos, images, books, movies, any sculptures paintings; those types of things.

And so usually when you're getting into marketing, while there is occasional marketer that we've worked with, that's been a client that has created a new marketing system or a new software, or do something then that gets into the patent side. But generally if you're working with clients that are on the marketing side, it's usually primarily on the branding side and sometimes on the copyright side or not that the creative side. So most of the time what you're doing with marketing is you're trying to get a brand following. You're trying to get brand awareness. You're trying to get the name out there. You're trying to get people to trust it and get reviews. All of which are, things that bolster the marketing. And so most of the time you're going to fall towards the trademarks, which is, hey, if we're really focused on creating the reputation for the name of the company, you should probably get a trademark. We protect that name as you're investing all the marketing dollars to get it built up. Same thing, it may be on a product. Maybe it's not the name of the company, as much as they just have a great product. I don't know what the name of the company is for Snuggie, but I definitely remember Snuggie as a product. Right. Maybe, maybe the name of the company is Snuggie. I don't know, but that's the kind of thing. And so maybe, that a Snuggie where you're saying, hey, this is the name of a product, or is it more of Starbucks, which is, I don't know what name of their coffee or muffins or that, but I definitely remember the company. So the name of the company. So you're going to look to kind of see where the most valuable part of the brand and then you're going to want to protect it. And then sometimes you have that really great image or that great video that goes viral or the just really portrays the company or something and you'll copyright that as well. You're saying, hey, this is, typically you're not going to copyright every image and half the time they're licensed free images that you get from somewhere else. But if they have this really great brand image that they take of it, then you can do a copyright. So that's usually primarily on the trademarks. A little bit on the copyrights is usually where we're going to focus the protection on.

Caleb Roche: Very Nice. Yeah. I've always wondered about that because it, you know, you think like marketing assets and all those types of things, sometimes you create some great stuff and do I copyright it? Do I trade market? What do I do? So that's awesome.

Devin Miller: So I didn't answer, which was where I originally thought you're going and I'll just give a little bit of a teaser and probably won't answer it. The other thing you always think about with marketing is, there's a lot of data that goes along. In other words, marketing companies will do a lot of, whether its Facebook ads or Google ad words, and they'll see what works and what doesn't work and how it works. Both for the marketing company, as well as for the client, you always wondering who owns that data. In other words, if I decide to leave the company or do I bring it in house or do my own thing. Do I own that data? Do I own that account or does the marketing? And there's equal arguments you can make on both sides as to who owns it, but that's something that people should always consider on both sides. Both on the marketing company, you're saying, Hey, we've done all this work. We've figured it out. We want to be able to maintain that so we can leverage it for other clients. And the other hand, the customer saying, but I paid you to figure that out. I should be able to keep my data. So that's always just one thing to consider as a marketing company and as a client of the marketing company as to how that relationship works.

 So with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up. Great question. I always find to chat a little bit about, and again, if you or any of the listeners ever have any questions on patents, trademarks, or anything else, go to www.strategymeeting.com, grab some time with us to chat.

Thank you again for coming on the podcast, Caleb. It’s been fun. It's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey, even better than the last.

Caleb Roche: Thanks, Devin. I really appreciate it.

Caleb Roche

Located in Edmond, Oklahoma, Caleb is a Marketing Consultant that helps businesses build better marketing strategies. Combining strategy with implementation, he focuses on building long-term customers through data-driven decision-making. With experience working with both small and large companies, he has the experience to help businesses create strategic marketing plans that focus specifically on each business’s strengths, not just a one size fits all/template-based strategy.

https://www.crocheconsulting.com
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