355: Getting a Trademark and Transitioning to Cats with Jay Pattiz
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Summary
Have you thought about trademarking your business? Getting a trademark is a great way to protect your business and gain credibility. Jay Pattiz, owner of Pampered Pet Sitting and Cat Sitting at Home, joins the show to share what it took to gain a registered trademark for his business. Jay started the process when he was thinking of expanding, but has found many other benefits for him. Jay gives advice on how to plan for multiple month long pet care visits, and why having guest blogging is so powerful.
Main topics:
Working towards retirement
Long term care
Guest blogging
Getting a registered trademark
Main takeaway: Only trademark if you absolutely love your name and logo.
About our guest:
Grew up in the St.Louis area. US Air Force shortly after high school return to St. Louis after enlistment attended Community College, transferred the University of Central Missouri got Bachelors Degree. Worked in the Financial Service Industry for over 20 years including Accounting, Insurance, Tax Examiner, and Certified Financial & Credit Counselor. Started our Pet Sitting business on May 1, 1997. Married to Jill for 40 years, have a son Brian who is a staff member at the University of Denver. My interests outside pet sitting include Pickleball, Tennis, Bicycling, and fitness. A passionate fan of Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, and St Louis Blues. I love listening to music and Queen is my favorite band.
Links:
Previously on: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/129
Jay’s website: https://www.warrensburgpetsitting.com
Cat’s at Home Pet Sitters: https://www.warrensburgpetsitting.com/cats-at-home-pet-sitters/
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
cat, trademark, pet, people, business, clients, called, logo, home, day, blog, trademark attorney, pet sitters, weeks, years, long, website, thought, money, link
SPEAKERS
Collin, Jay P.
Collin 00:01
Hello and welcome back to pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters. Have you ever thought about trademarking your business? Getting a trademark is a great way to protect your business and gain credibility with clients. Jay Paris, owner of pampered pet sitting and cat sitting at home, joins the show again to share what it took to gain a registered trademark for his business. Jay started the process when he was thinking of expanding but as found many other benefits for his business and himself. Jay also gives advice on how to plan for multiple month long pet care visits, and why having guest blogging for your business is so powerful. Let's get started.
Jay P. 00:46
I live in Warrensburg, Missouri, which is 50 miles southeast of Kansas City about an hour's drive away. And we are in this small town atmosphere. We're near Whiteman Air Force Base where they had to be to Baumer. And we have University of Central Missouri in town as well. And 25 years ago, we started pampered pets in May of 97. And then a few years back, we also started a special cat's brand called cats at home pet sitting. And as you can tell, we've been petting for over 25 years now. And I kind of started kind of late my life on the pet sitting. So I'm in already in my mid 70s. And pretty much consider myself part time petsitting though there are times when I'm doing a full time petsitting schedule, I also get involved with doing some my home investing, and some trading of stocks and so forth. So it's me busy.
Collin 01:47
And when we last spoke, I know you were kind of talking about you were looking to transition towards and had your eye kind of on on retirement. And so I was curious how that process has been has been going for you and what kind of things you've been implementing since then.
Jay P. 02:04
It's worked out really good. Matter of fact, I kind of almost feel like I'm almost retired. And then I don't know, my sister always who's seven years younger than me always wondered when I'm going to retire. And I don't know when it's totally retired. But I kind of consider myself almost semi retired. I basically except for just a couple people I'm doing only cat sitting in cancer still, you know, an important part of pet setting. And there isn't a lot involved in it. But they're not near what the dog sitting is. So my schedule is a lot more wide open, I'm able to, for example, I play pickleball a couple of times every week, and I walk a lot and I'm able to get involved in civic things, all types of things I couldn't do before them when I was doing a full petsitting schedule. So I feel like we're really at the cat transition point. Right now personally, I'm doing over 90% of pet sending I'm doing is Cat sending. And for the business, we're up close to 80%. Wow.
Collin 03:17
I know you mentioned that you live in a small town and you're actually the closest person I've ever interviewed. You're kind of just down the road from us. So it's definitely a small town atmosphere. And you're in a small town and now you are you're specializing into cats even more so and I know many people may think that that kind of thing isn't isn't possible if you live in a small area. So how how have you made that kind of transition work?
Jay P. 03:43
It's possible. Can you believe we've already done 52 Cat clients already this year? That's a lot worse bird. So it's less than 20,000 population? Yeah. So yeah, that's how the 70 clients overall. And I have two other people working with us who would mostly do all the other dogs and do they themselves do cat clients as well. So it's just a matter of back in 2016 we decide to focus on cats as a means to transition towards semi retirement where I feel like I am today. So it took five years. So you gotta be willing to go steadily at it. You got to be willing to say no. To people call you all the time when you do dog sitting and you just say no. You know, I'm not playing. But that frees you up to have the time to focus on recruiting cat clients and doing even a better job of doing the cat setting. But what I found really interesting and was hoping would be the case when you give up the dog sitting more in half the time for your cat Clients, you can't clients use you more. Oh, there were probably all those years where we weren't serving our cat clients as well as we could have been, and passing up opportunities to serve them more. Now we've been part of cat clubs, we've gone to Cat shows. And we have four cats of our own. And they've always been our passion. So it kind of shows I think,
Collin 05:28
well, I just You said you kind of had created that off brand or offshoot of pampered pet sitting of cats at home. As a way of, I think what that does is it helps message to people who are interested of just how seriously, you're taking that. And then I also appreciate how you mentioned that it wasn't an overnight kind of thing of this was a kind of a dream that you had and a focus you want it to go into. And there was patiently putting in the work and waiting for it to turn out.
Jay P. 05:57
Yeah, I think that's the case. And I think our cats at home brand cats at home petsitting have a separate website as a separate logo, you know, a different name. I think that helped a lot too, as well. So, you know, it just shows how serious you are on the CAD end of it. So now that's what we've done. And that's, that's really, that's really neat
Collin 06:20
to see that you've been able to specialize into that. And especially as you start matching up with, you know, what you want your life to look like as you go towards retirement and what you want the business to look like, and kind of making sure that those are going forward in tandem with one another.
Jay P. 06:35
Yeah, I think so too. You know, it's just where we always shot for it. I'm excited that we're there. This is my first Christmas, that we won't have any dog sitting. Nobody, even neither of our other pet sitters either have any dogs sitting and most pet SIRs would be kind of upset with that, but I'm thrilled. Well, because
Collin 07:03
there's just so much that goes into that. And they know, the three day for a day visits or for vacation clients for dogs, it really does weigh on you it's a lot of work and a lot of stress and strain. And it's not something that a lot of people do they feel like they have to do it. And I'll say that and might not know other options or other ways of running an operating a business
Jay P. 07:29
may have fat. I've said this a lot. I found not only is the scheduling better for cat sitting? And is there less competition for cat sitting, I found cat sitting is more profitable. Because cat clients generally only need you once a day. There's some in nature twice a day, especially with medicine or shots. So therefore the cost of them isn't that big a deal. You can charge more,
Collin 07:58
and with the way the economy has been going and it might look like moving forward. Those are definitely thoughts and as we look at our businesses, how they've run and gone, what services were the most profitable and I love that idea of going okay, was maybe we just call it a drop in like it was it a dog drop in or a cat drop in? And what were my profits for that client for that day, given how many times I was going over the drive time, the wear and tear, the mileage, all that stuff? And then really putting those on paper and going is this setting me? Is this setting me up for success?
Jay P. 08:30
Right? No, that's when the reasons five years ago, we decided they were going to focus on that and be our transition to semi retirement. It's just one of those reasons. There's no doubt about it. And you know, because you can schedule, you know, I think we're going to go that I'm positive, somewhere between nine or 10 different homes for cats this Christmas day. But we'll be able to go the multiple homes within the short distance of each other. So that by itself means not as much drive time as much expense. Now, IRS doesn't pay you 62 and a half cents a mile for grins. That's what it really costs to operate your vehicle. So therefore, you're saving a lot of money and making more profits that way.
Collin 09:24
Now when you do more long term care, I think I saw that you were you've been doing care for clients for uh, for multiple weeks at a time. Are those I'm assuming those are cat clients or how are you making those ers
Jay P. 09:38
clients? Yeah, they just happen to be the last couple ones which I just finished one for five weeks. He was he's in the Air Force. He's a pilot at Whiteman Air Force Base, and he went away to Alabama for a special training school when he was able to take his wife with him. And, and we took care of his home in his cats for five weeks? Well, there's things that come up, that you're not used to, you know, there's things like he has regular drop shipments said to his home, every two or three weeks, they come on a certain time. So you have to make sure you're around the take them, you know, when I'm sitting overnight all night long, someone can come by and take them. So, you know, you have to schedule accordingly. And you know, you just have little things that can tend to change their feeding schedule. The litterbox situation was quite a challenge initially. But it all worked out. And we figured out and one of the things I always do is, I always get home and say, you know, you're gonna be gone a long time, how are we going to communicate. And you know, and I want to know a lot more about the home, since there's a better chance something might happen. And we had another person that was calling for eight weeks, and he scheduled home maintenance while he was gone. So I had to coordinate with his contractors as well. So these were just regular clients who we had done before, who now had to go for long periods of time for training, both of them be two pilots. So and then I had three clients have all been with us a long time, all decide this year that they were going to go to Europe are about three weeks at a time. So you have to be concerned about the time difference. You know, England and Scotland and Italy and France. So you can't just call them up. And it's, you know what to in the morning, cuz it's, you know, six o'clock here. So you end up texting a lot, and some of them you can't even tax because their plan doesn't allow for extra data. So you can't even do that. So you have to ask them ahead of time. You know, what about this what, you know, extra precautionary things, you know, this, and one person, she's in a home based business, you know, ecommerce business, she got, she had 22 packages delivered while she was gone during those three weeks. Or more heavy. So I figured out I had to carry a back brace with me and a little left to bring them in sometimes, wow, you had to go in and shut the cats to the side. So they can't run out the door, you know? So these are just little things that you just have to think about. And talk to them about before you do it. Yeah, it makes you even more valuable to them. Right?
Collin 12:50
That part of preparing and looking at eight weeks of care day after day. I know that can be that sounds daunting. It really, really does. Did you? How did you approach getting organized for that? And really
Jay P. 13:06
hard. I mean, I've done this person for a long time. Australia why we are Air Force since people that Australia to train them. It's beyond me, but they did it 18 hours ahead. So when I would do Cohen, I would count back six hours and then say, Oh, well, min and go forward 24 hours. And then I had an idea what time it was there. It was a very next day. It was never the same day we're on you know. Yeah. But I could text them and I could email him and he will alert me. So Jay. Such in mind. landscapers got to come by and winterize my, my sprinkler system. Can you coordinate this with him? Here's his phone number in his name. Okay. Jay, by the way, the person who handles my draperies has got them on order. If they come in, can you coordinate with them install it jet by heating and cooling guys can come in and adjust the heating thing. Can you coordinate that? Yeah. Okay. You learn to do it.
Collin 14:18
And so I guess the question is, you know, eight weeks, seven days a week, that's a 56 visits or so a lot
Jay P. 14:26
of people look at that once a day visit.
Collin 14:28
So that's still it's still quite a few visits. And people may look at that. That's a big chunk of money as well.
Jay P. 14:34
It is a merge chunk of money. And, you know, like, for example, the person I just completed five weeks with they normally they fuses for a couple years on a frequent basis. And they normally not had us come twice a day for the cast. They didn't have to but they'd like it that way. They'd like to socialization, we've been bringing toys and play with them and you know, do all that So, you know, they figured out, I called him up. So you know, we're gonna have this is gonna be quite a bill. He says no, we've already know that he says we'll just go one today. I said, well, the cats aren't new someone today, how are we going to do this? So we worked on it. And I asked him about, you know, all the precautionary things. Is there a neighbor nearby in case something happens, you know, because you're gone five weeks, that's a long time. Well, I never had to deal with a neighbor. And we worked it out. And unfortunately, the catch we're not used to once a day eating and they gorge themselves in throughout the first few day. Oh, no. So yours truly was cleaning cheese. And as it turned out, see, I may not have the experience I have with cats, but aren't some of our cats will do that, too. So we feed them twice a day because of it. But what I've learned to do is you can also put dry food on top of it and mash it down, and they won't slow them down and they won't throw up. I asked him I said, I'm gonna try that. And he told me Yeah, I got the special dishes you can use, there'll be because he'd left me no balls to use the food barely, because I had to give him two cans of food versus was. Well, you know, we were able to match the food down there. And I brought in the dry food. And I use a certain dry food that I knew would work and was good nutrition. And as soon as I started doing that, this roll up stuff. So we had no problems, but he also had a litter robot. Have you seen those things?
Collin 16:49
I know there's several different varieties of them. And I tend to not like any of
Jay P. 16:56
its problems too. So here I had to look up on my phone, what each of the different lights met. flashing light red flashlight yellow flashing light. No, and then take care of it. I said, you know, I called him up I said, I because then I if I leave an extra litter pan, I always carry an extra letter. I don't know about you. But since early on in our career, I've learned that people don't always have what you need to I carry everything imaginable in my truck or car that we would ever need. Right? So I always have lecture leather pants and extra letter sidebar and litter pan leather. And we just brought it in. And the cats actually liked the litter pan better than the little robot.
Collin 17:44
Well, it's less stressing strange,
Jay P. 17:47
little robot. So these are just little things you learn to do. You know,
Collin 17:56
have you heard of time to pet krisann from raining cats and dogs has this to say
18:01
becoming a time to pet clients has been a game changer for us. We can give our pet services clients real time, cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing. Time to pet is responsive to my requests for new features and modifications to existing one.
Collin 18:26
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show can save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional. Yeah, and they're things like you know, just having some of the supplies on hand. Have you know, are you going to use them for every visit? No. But whenever you need them, you need them. And especially for these long term care clients where you going? Five weeks, eight weeks, anything can happen. And we really do have to be we the it's the onus is on us to be thinking through all of those possibilities and be prepared for it.
Jay P. 19:01
Yeah, and that's, that's what we've done. And I've done. We've done our longest flavor now is 10 weeks. Now still never forget that what we know lady went to visit or her father in Florida for two to three weeks. And while she was there, her father had a massive heart attack. And she ended up staying down there to help them through his recovery. He was there 10 weeks, and she ran a worldwide nonprofit for Morrisburg of all places. And she she didn't have a computer with her. He had a laptop and she had the stuff on on her desktop that she needed to run her. Her business you know her nonprofit. She literally would contact me and ask me to turn on a computer and by remote she would do stuff on the computer You just never know what's going to happen. You know, she wasn't prepared to I had to go through her bills. She compared utility bills, and then I would take pictures of her bills. You know, she see, and then she go online, and Pam didn't think she would be gone at mine says he never made arrangements for Amen. Right? Things happen?
Collin 20:25
How do you how do you have discussions around prices? When those kinds of things happen? And have frankly,
Jay P. 20:32
I don't? I don't talk about their meaning they know how much it is. And honestly, I've hardly ever had any problems with prices, over 25 years, we've had a few, but hardly any. So, you know, they know how much it is per day. And you know, sometimes I just give them a longer period of payment back or just make a partial payment, make another payment, you know, things like that. And I'll, you know, the brings me to the personal finance thing that I told you about, if you if you have your personal finances and all your business finances are, you can let something like that go for low longer, you know, that's how you make long term clients. My view,
Collin 21:20
would you say in order? What does that mean?
Jay P. 21:24
You know that you have money in savings, you have money in me know, you have reserved money that you could go a couple of months without making much money, you know, and they you could pay your bills for 234. They say minimum of three months, most, most financial advisors will pay you six months, ideally a year, is asking a lot for a year. Yeah, I mean, we're way past it. But there, I can remember days when we were first married, we couldn't even go a month. So I understand that for people, you know. But that's what I mean, by your financial aid you hate, you know, when your bills are due, and you have money to pay them. You know, and you can space them out, if you can, things like that. In today's world, it's pretty easy to do it. All the creditor, most creditors will allow you select your due dates and things like that. I checked my bank account every day. There's people I've run into pet sitters who haven't looked at it a month. So that's what I mean by that.
Collin 22:44
And just having a general I think it starts with just having that general awareness of of what's coming in and what's going out. Right, that's just bare minimum. Yeah. And then
Jay P. 22:53
really good record keeping box, we use QuickBooks for our business. But also keep them really good. Personal books as well. You know, know how much is in your different accounts, where you have your money, and what what's your monthly budget? You know, when blood is your electric bill, your gas bill, your policy bill, you know, all those things listed groceries cost emailed the whole bit? Yeah. Well, yeah, it was it costs you less. And then we're all your business expenses are, you know, I look at it every day. But I'm probably a fanatic about.
Collin 23:34
Well, when you when you know that kind of information, you know, what kind of investments you can make in your personal life of, hey, what class can I take what? Or if it's in your business, what new equipment can I buy? Or maybe I need to buy some more lock boxes? Or maybe I can upgrade my software? I know, I don't one of the investments that you've made, actually was in it wasn't a trademark. And I think this is really interesting, Jay, because I don't know many other people who have done this with their business. So what why was it important for you to have a trademark for your for your business?
Jay P. 24:10
I've been very, very fortunate to have two people who do petsitting for us. One lives in knock NASA which is know about but most people don't. So little town 10 miles in here right next to Whiteman Air Force Base. And she does her petsitting for us since 2006. And then I have this other lady who has been helping us with petsitting since 2002. And she's here on more ensberg with a lady to tell more stories than working at the University and her husband was there at the University of Central Missouri is a professor and he retired and they thought when he retired, they would move back to Pennsylvania where they're from near Penn near Philadelphia, and she was wanting to start her own pet sitting business. And she mostly wanted to do cat And she's also she's really was big in horses and stuff. But she didn't want to do a lot of dogs but she would. So she was one of the reasons we looked at starting cat at home pet tuning. And, and I thought well, and she wanted to be tied into us still. So I thought, well, you know, if I start here, Tom Petty and we also have a branch in Philadelphia area. You know, I had had Susan Gibbs, who's tremendous lady to work with, do our cat at home pet tuning logo, and it turned out nice. Hopefully you liked it, but we did anyway.
Collin 25:45
Yeah, it's it's very nice.
Jay P. 25:48
And so I thought, you know, she's in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And then, in a moment of passion, I thought, well, maybe we'll end up another states and talents as well. Well, I've since learned that it's not practical for me, where that didn't come out. And it turned out the lady never moved to Philadelphia, and thankfully not she's been with us now. 20 years. And now, as it turns out, she's going to retire from University of Missouri, and she will be available much more to do petsitting for us here, morons. Bird. Okay. But I thought, well, maybe we should get a trademark for it, but won't do any good. Just to get one here, Missouri, or Kansas? You know. So I thought, Well, I'll try for your United States Patent and Trademark Office. I knew about that. So I being a bit naive to use Legal Zoom. I've used them before personally. Well, it was not easy. Oh, no. They have extensive. It seemed like 1012 pages of questionnaire. And I understand why. Because we're Coca Cola comes out with a new brand. This is what they go with. Well, here's Jay trying to go with this on his own little business with cactus Holmes testing logo that had the name with it. So you're actually trademarking not only the logo, but you are the name as well. So at any rate, I, I was lucky to people at LegalZoom had really good customer service. And they pretty much in helped me some. And I what I did was I ended up just saving as I went through the questionnaire to me days to go through it, I would just say where I was at, and then I keep bothering for questions. And then one time, this guy says, you know, we have this network of attorneys who specialize in trademarks. And all you have to do is pay for a couple months of it, and then you could just get three phone consoles with them. So I said, Oh, I didn't know that. Well, I was pretty naive, you know? Yeah. Which is pretty bad considering that was only five years ago. Well, actually six years ago. But anyway, so this was in August 2016. And so I got I set up a couple of those conferences, and boom, those guys were great. They literally explained to me they explain little things like don't put down that you want to get petsitting as part of your trademark, but because there's hundreds or 1000s of people that use petsitting you'll never get a trademark. Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah. And so instead put down pet sitting referral service. And I got that nobody else had that. So and so they did go through a period of time, where then they run these extensive researches Legal Zoom Doesn't your trademark attorney does. And then they find out. It comes back with like a dozen people that have similar names. Nobody has similar design obviously. And so from there, I talked to a trademark attorney and we made a couple of changes. And then you have to come up with a word description of your logo. Oh, God was our heart. A cat with a heart in the middle of it right with a cat's face. And you have to describe the colors of it what color it is, what the how the whistle The line so with a bi oh my god, it was unbelievable. So the best thing you do is you don't go with any color. So therefore, you're more likely to get the trademark because somebody else doesn't have a color with the same color with a cat and their trademark. So I'm choosing Susan Gibbs was kind enough to do this special gray shading that you're allowed to do. And the trademark attorney talked me through all this while Long story short, I still made some errors. Description, you learn. I had that description somewhere. Oh, no, I have it right here. I still have my trademark plaque in front of me because I was so unbelievable. I'll read it to your mind. It's only a few sentences. It says the mark consists of worrying cats at home passing with a drawing of a house with a chimney on the left, a heart cut out the near middle of the home, and a drawing of a cat laying in front in the home. With a large face facing forward. The cat face has sparkly eyes, long whiskers and a smiley mouth. We catch bodies outline in its pale goes to the left and upward curls down in the middle of the cat's tail makes up the left side and the heart and the left part of the heart. The entire house, the heart and the cat are thickly outlined. No claim is made to the exclusive right the use of following mark is shown petsitting hey
Collin 31:43
that's wild. You worked as the the attorneys through through that process or or how did you end up landing on that
Jay P. 31:52
kind of description? I was lucky. Yeah, I would. I would ride it up. I drove Susan Gibbs nuts. Me we try writing up everything I would say Susan, what were those I say look sparkling to me. You think there's sparkly be you those whiskers will call you think we should say it's whiskered wall, you know, and all that. And then I really have to tourney a little bit that the attorney now buyer would just keep calling legal suit and most people were very understanding. And you know, but what really helped me was how I was lucky. Believe it or not, I left out the words. And marking should consist of the word and cats at home petsitting. I didn't put any of that in my description. And the examiner for United States Patent and Trademark Office called me she says, Don't you want those words? cats at home? petsitting the be part of this as well, Gods for sure. For you. I saw Oh, thank you log. In you know, this took almost a year. Okay, it didn't get registered to July 11 2017. And it wasn't approved until like, April 4. I think it was in 2017. Because all the back and forth. I had gone back and forth and stuff. It took all over about two months before Legal Zoom or maybe it's three months before Legal Zoom actually sent in our application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. And, you know, but then see, we were able then start using it with the collar. But the patent and trademark or trade model I'll send you they actually I think I have a copy of it with the way it looks. I know I do, I can actually send that to you. So you'll see what it looks like with it without the colors, because I didn't trademark it with the colors. So but that allowed us to use any colors we want. If we wanted to change the colors down the road, we could there's quite a deal.
Collin 34:22
So again, that gave you a trademark over the logo and the name.
Jay P. 34:29
Right? Well, because the names part of the logo, right? That was the key. I didn't trademark the name separately. I trademark the logo and the name together. Nobody can do that. From here on the United States. You know what? I ain't gonna sue nobody if they do it. Nobody's going to do it either, I'm sure. But I was worried about that back then.
Collin 35:00
Well, that's, that's what I was. So I was interested in is, is is asking now like you've gone through this entire process? Is this? Is this something you think more businesses should do? Or who knows this right for No,
Jay P. 35:13
no. Only one sec should do it, I think it's not a bad idea to do it. If you love your your name, and you love your logo, I think it's not a bad idea to do it with your State. The states are a lot easier from what I've been told. Especially if you're multiple towns, like yourself. Okay, but only if you love your name and your love your logo. I mean, super love it. And you're willing to actually go after somebody if somebody tries to copy you. I mean, if it's really really, really important. Sure. It does. The reason though, if you notice on the logo, I sent that to you, you see the our next thing means you're a registered trademark. And when I first did this, I had Susan do and are they don't add dollar for you that little are in the circle? So you add it yourself on? Oh, you know, however you use it. So I am I, we just had a little our n straight up and down vertical logos. And if it really didn't show up, I had coming in for a renewal I decided no, we should use a horizontal because that's what's on the trademark, and it looks better on the website. And when as a bigger are. And I think it really helps our reputation. Credibility, and I think the registered trademark helps our credibility overall. And, you know, as well.
Collin 36:59
You mentioned you you're going through the renewal process. How often do you have to do that? And what all does that involve?
Jay P. 37:07
Well, after you first trademark that, you have to renew it after five years and before six years. We had we had to renew it after July 11 2017. before July 11 of two, I mean 2022 before July 11 2023. And you have to show how you use it. And I remember how big of a damage difficult this thing was going through it on basically on my own with a little bit of help. What happens is when you trademark is every trademark firm and there's probably hundreds of 1000s of trademark attorney firms in the United States. They know that you have this trademark. So a lot of them send you mailings or emails or phone call you offering to help you Oh no.
Collin 38:10
Oh, yeah. Geez.
Jay P. 38:15
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's how right but it turned out good. Because I got a, I don't know, maybe four or five, six dozen of them, email me. And this one guy had a flat fee. And I went and read his reviews and looked up some of the renewals that he had done. And it looked like he specialized in nothing, renewals. And he's out of San Francisco. And I contacted him and say, Can I have a chat with you? And he gave me on November 31. I had chat with him and I could tell he was good. And I knew going through this I knew the questions I would need to know see part of your trademark processes you have to show them how five different specimens and how you're going to use the logo. With the you know, trademark you have to prove how you're using it in commerce. So I already had those set out because I've used it for five years. So that was easy. So I went with him on December 2. Within two days, we had everything done. It's already the renewals already applied for and the odds are very good, they'll be approved.
Collin 39:40
And that's kind of why you said only go down this road if you really love your name and logo because they're going to ask you it sounds like to prove that you are continually using exactly right.
Jay P. 39:51
All he did was make a copy of the cash at home petsitting website was easy because you The logo was on the very top header with a beach bar on it. But I have all kinds of other options. And I told sent them some of the other ones. He has them in case the examiner wants to see something else. He says normally that should be sufficient. By the way, the class I have is class 35 is called petsitter referral services.
Collin 40:23
And as you mentioned, again, there's the there's the more local the state level, and then there's that federal level where it goes across multiple states. So I guess you kind of can match with your ambitions as a company and where you want to get in and how you're incorporating, you know, what is your vision for what you want to do and kind of go from there? Right?
Jay P. 40:45
Exactly. I honestly think you know, a few your logos, great, your names great, and you want to get in, but you have a lot of competition, we have some competition that you want to distinguish yourself from, I think a trademark will help you.
Collin 41:01
And as you mentioned, gaining that credibility of people look, they they know it, as I said, it's kind of like a verified, okay, this company is not just they recognize what that trademark symbol is, but they also go okay, well, that means this person is pretty serious about this.
Jay P. 41:18
Exactly. So that's what I think.
Collin 41:23
Well, I again, I think that's fascinating, because I know, nobody else who has that and is, is using,
Jay P. 41:31
once I got it, I was thrilled that that as you might expect after the difficulty we had. So I promoted it in the petsitter groups, and there were several that have went this route. And I think some God, but they went through even more trouble than I did. And they really cost them a lot. I think it costs us less than $500 to do all that. It's not in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't a lot of money. Yeah.
Collin 42:01
Yeah. And if it's something that you've especially if it's something that you've maybe you've gone through a big rebrand, and you've spent a lot of money, several hundreds or 1000s of dollars on a big rebrand at that point. Yeah, it does to protect that and that investment that you've put into,
Jay P. 42:17
for sure, that's when you should view rebrand. You spent 1000s and 1000s of dollars to rebrand. I think so. And we were kind of rebranding because we may have a specialized logo for cat. Right. So that's kind of what we were doing too. So that's what happened. I did it don't get me wrong, it was difficult. I'm very happy. I did.
Collin 42:47
Yeah. And I think that's something that as we as people look at their businesses and start planning and thinking about kind of their position in the market, how they want to differentiate themselves, I think that's a definitely something very interesting to try and pursue, if that's something that they think is gonna bring value to them in their market.
Jay P. 43:06
You can get you don't have to get a registered trademark, you can get what's called TM, which is just a regular trademark, and it's not as extensive and it's difficult. But I didn't look at that. And I don't know the requirements for it. Okay, I know the state's requirements for Janessa T M, is it much usually, you get a whole new state capitol and find out or bother your state senator or representative, do I help you?
Collin 43:37
Yeah, what else do they do and right now. This year, many of us are looking for ways to stay on top of our business and ahead of everything coming at us. The National Association of Professional pet sitters 2023 conference, refresh, we think revive is just a thing. Join pet sitters from across the country for three days in March, march 3 through fifth, to learn all about running a better business, training, better staff and taking better care of yourself, Megan, and I cannot be more thrilled to be part of the conference and talking all about the life of a pet sitter. Go to pet sitters.org To register now and make sure you get your ticket to this and join pet sitters and making this year the best one Yeah. You mentioned that in that process of the renewal that you kind of the attorney that you're working for kind of copied your website and submitted that as evidence. I know on your on your website, you've been releasing and doing a lot of more a lot more blogging, but you've been bringing on guest bloggers as part of that process. And I want to know why you decided to reach out and start having guest blogging on on your website and sharing that out.
Jay P. 44:52
I didn't reach out they came to me. Wow. Yes. Well okay I don't know why they came to me but they came to me I think it's because who knows maybe has something to do with the trademark because not all most of them came to me. No, I still have two websites I still have paper petsitting which is warrants for petting, calm and then we have cats at home pet scene which is cats at home pet sitting.com. So they came mostly to our cats at home on and I think it's because we also you know, we have some cat sitters up in the can to the area that were part of cats at home pet city. So I think that's because canopies metros of major market. So maybe that's why but they came to me. And what they want to do is because you know, in SEO backlinks are real valuable, right? Yeah. So they're looking for backlinks. To more Google really, really likes when your information is on someone else's blog or someone else's website, someone else's web pages, not just yours. So this is a way for them to get backlinks. Well, what they do is they offer the right to a blog. And, and by doing that, and then they put in a link or two in there. And then but you tell them what topics you want to have covered and how. So I had some my company a couple years ago offered to do that. And I thought maybe I'll do this. I've had several where they've actually sent blogs that were not related to cat, you know, or Pezzini overall. And I would just say no. And then after a while I had someone come and take you out, you know, you tell me what you want me to write for? And I'll write it as long as you allow me to do a link to my website. I Yeah, sure. And I tell them, I want something to do with cat care, you know, in something to do with, you know, specifics on how the pet parent can do better with cat care. And they did they put their link in and I told them they could you know have their own bio in there and they did Dan with a little picture and that's how we got started. But then I got really lucky now don't all patch those don't think Jays always lucky because he's not nice to say things. Because then I had a lady come to me. I don't know, over a year ago, maybe almost two years ago, I can't remember I could go back through my emails and find out probably closer to two years ago. And she's farmer, a transportation company called East Coast hauling company. You know, like the Van Lines companies, they do nationwide moving well apparently she works with all these other moving companies around the country. And she not only offered to write it she sent them to me a blog about cat hair. And this and I learned from her because she apparently have just read a website forwards and backside and knew what we were doing. We not only sent them to me but she did links to my other blogs that had already done like three or four links. So you would go in to read the blog and you see a link you click on it and goes to Katherine home blog number one or two or you know what I mean? So I thought wow, that's an great idea. And then and then she would not only do that she showed me the images farm was the alt you know how you need to have an alt button image for your better SEO right and she would sent me captions with them. Then she sent me the meta descriptions for the story that you have to have for really good SEO and the keywords I needed and where to put a lucky kind of guy get right no I wouldn't
Collin 49:39
I know me, people let me listen to that and think well, if I was contacted by some random person over the internet, I might think it's a scam or that there's something else going on.
Jay P. 49:51
Be searched or first as I always do. Yeah, yeah. Let me she gave me her name. And and it had At East Coast hauling company.com. So there you go to what East Coast hauling company is and then looked up by new staff. And I found that she was one of the top marketing people. So I knew she wasn't a scam. So now, now in the last year, we've published 20, for the It Gets Better than that calling. Lately in this last several months, she asked me what topics I want to have, and she'll give me like five or six of them to pick firm. She's kind of learn when topics are best for us. So data writing these things I hate to say. So don't make me sound like I'm a good author as
Collin 50:55
well, I think that's a very interesting way to start building some partnerships and relationships to get content for our businesses, if people are interested in that kind of thing. And just really importantly, just vet the people who are reaching out to you to make sure that it's, it's going to work and that there's nothing, you know, nefarious, I guess, is maybe a too overblown term there. But
Jay P. 51:16
just be careful, right? Right. And I get others who come to me all the time. And most of the ones that come to me are the ones they already have a specific blog written. And now, the other reason I get it is our website, if you look at our website, they have resource pages. Yeah. And they all almost everybody wants us to put their blog on our resource page. Yeah. So they can get being part of the pet resources. So people click on them. And also, they'll get the black links that way. And I don't do that, Oh, my back and say, we do have an advocate guest blog program. But if you want us to do this, you're going to need to write an introduction to this blog, and need to give me the option to edit it. Even the one she sends me, she sends me in Word. And then she sends attachments to with the four images and then all tuna, you know, the descriptions and the keywords and all that, but I still spend an hour or two, editing her stuff as well. So it fits our template good. And I've learned to put in more links to our router website and our blog pages and she's very happy with that. We know what's really great about it. When you go read one of the blogs that she's that she's guest blogged on and you click on one of our links. Then you go oh, God, I gotta try to remember. We've had so many of them. One of them was I read recently, and she does on the even the ones that you would kind of think maybe we shouldn't be doing that. One and why you why you might not want to hire your friends as a cat sitter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Believe it or not, that's a great blog. Okay, so I'm on my thing. The last one I did was habits a cat owner should quit. Because you're not being good to your cat. What she does is she has the people who blog have a tendency to have long titles, and long sub titles, you know, that you're supposed to have on your blog? Well, those are good for SEO for us. I use Yoast SEO I own the way you can use and know that screens when you have real long URLs or too long titles or too long captions, you know, I mean, yeah, so I have to go through and shorten them, I have to make them sound work and stuff. So but I'm the last one for example, you go in there. And on the second line, you click on the link that says members of your families. So it takes you to our our blog that says adding a four legged family member. So then that's the parents guide to adding a pet to your family. Well, you read in that and within the first paragraph you click on the non link says the benefits of pets for kids. Follow what I'm saying. In other words, you keep you click on these different links and it keeps taking into different blogs and then on the right hand side of our blog. It lists six other blogs that we also have published that you might find Interesting. It's the people on a website a long time.
Collin 55:05
Yeah, well, it sounds like between the, between the guest blogging and how those are being it's not just the words being written, but the optimization that's taking place in there with the backpacking with the keywords with the SEO with all that, and the moves that you've been making to continue on with, with the trademark. And all of that sounds like you're really focusing on making sure you have a solid foundation for for years to come.
Jay P. 55:29
Yeah. You know, what's really interesting, I had thought, you know, that I might just totally retire and let someone else do this. But we had me before my wife was fired from her job, she worked in energy for over 34 years as a major manufacturing plant in Lawrenceburg. Almost almost two years ago, we met with our financial advisor, and he says, if you can keep this business going financially, it'll be to your benefit. Because you can keep contributing to your IRA, and she can contribute to a spousal IRA, they'll keep your taxes down, and they'll keep your insurance costs down. So I'll do that. Just to cap. Yeah. So that's what we're doing.
Collin 56:16
I really want to thank you for for coming and sharing all of that, and, and encouraging us to see if that trademark is going to work for our company, and to start taking some of those steps, but also to not be afraid of some partnerships with gas blogging, and how to get set up for success with those more long term care visits. I know as always, there's just there's a lot here. So how can people get in touch with you and start picking your brain on this and anything else that they want to look into?
Jay P. 56:51
Well, they can email me, I have two emails I use a lot is J Warrensburg, petsitting.com. Or Jaya CASAS home petsitting.com. They can call me in our business landline, which is 660-747-3554. Those are probably the three main things, a voicemail picks up on the fifth ring, and have them identified that there are pet sitters. So I know, you know, that's where it is. So I you know, we've been pretty fortunate with everybody else helping us. So I would love to help other pet sitters succeed.
Collin 57:32
Again, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your data to talk with us today.
Jay P. 57:37
It's been my pleasure, you know, and we've learned a lot from you guys having these podcasts as well. So I thank you for your willingness to interview all these people and make us all better pet sitters.
Collin 57:50
What strategic investments are you making in your business today, whether it's a trademark blogging, partnerships, or just nailing down the services that you want to continue to serve your clients well with, we all have decisions to make right now. And we need to remind ourselves that these decisions will impact our ability to run our business for years and years to come. That's not something we should shy away from. Instead, we should embrace that and run towards the advantages of making smart decisions today. So that 10 years, 2030 years from now, we can be running the business of our dreams. We want to thank today's sponsor, it's time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters. We hope to see you at that conference in Louisiana March 3 through fifth. Thank you so much for listening today. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. We'll be back again soon.
