Settle on Your Business Idea, Then Seek Help to Develop It

Q: I am interested in starting my own business and would like to know if there are consultants that help you decide the right kind of business for you. I graduated from college and jumped straight into my present job. Even though it’s only been about two years since I started working here, I am ready to pursue my dream. Can you point me in the direction of an expert who can offer guidance and advice in this area?

--Michelle Montanez, Burbank

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A: There is no consultant and there is no magic that will help you discover the right business for you. You are the magic. What you decide to do must come from you, because you will live with the results and being an entrepreneur is not easy.

However, there are programs that will help you shape your dream, determine if it can be transformed into a business and assess whether you have what it takes to be the transformer. One of them is the American Woman’s Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to help both women and men start and grow their own businesses.

We offer a two-hour workshop called “Look Before You Leap.” It encourages you to look at what makes a good business, including marketing, competition, risk, financial options, planning and personal determination. LBYL does not reject any business idea, but helps you to see how to mold and develop it. About 60% of those who take LBYL decide not to go forward immediately.

Most of the remainder enroll in an entrepreneur training course like our “Start Your Own Business” class, which engages students in longer-term training to answer the questions raised in the introductory class. Other programs throughout Southern California do the same.

Call us at (310) 983-3747 or the Los Angeles Community Development Department at (213) 485-2952 to find a suitable program near you.

--Philip Borden

Executive director,

California AWED, Long Beach

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Q: I developed and patented a system that enables a credit card holder to designate a percentage of the interest he is paying on credit card debt to the charitable organizations of his choice. I am searching for a bank that would be interested in putting this system (I call it the BAX system) into operation. Any help you may be able to give me would be greatly appreciated.

--Henry Hovakimian, Whittier

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A: Your patented BAX system is a great idea. It will place the choice of preferred charities in the consumers’ laps without any costs to them. This should appeal to the consumer without exception.

The challenge, however, is convincing banks that BAX is in their interest. You did not say whether you conducted any market research into how banks would react to your concept. In our experience with clients, we recommend a strong market research stage, even though it may be time-consuming and may set the project back from its projected launch date. In most cases, the outcome will be key to your positioning or eventual marketing strategy.

Assuming that nothing was done, I would suggest that you get a strong coalition of charities together to develop a survey geared to bank decision-makers. The survey should net information upon which you can base your subsequent marketing strategies. Message points can be tested, as well as incentives that would motivate banks to accept your BAX system. Besides the obvious tax advantages, you might stress that your system could simplify bank administration time and cost of donations, portray the bank as socially responsible, etc.

Consumers, on the other hand, should see this as a bank value-added service by positioning the donations on their behalf--their choice. This might prompt more credit card usage within the program. Your product could also assign certain charities to certain banks--for example, Wells Fargo cards would donate to the Red Cross or BofA cards would donate to multiple sclerosis research. This might prompt consumers to utilize some cards more than others or even request new cards.

Once you have completed the research stage, you need a marketing campaign focusing on consumer, business and financial publications. Announcements of the BAX launch could be included in new bank card offers, as well as monthly statements.

--Noemi Pollack

President and CEO, Pollack PR

Marketing Group, Century City

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Q: I am a small-business owner who has recently had a logo designed. What steps must be taken to protect my logo from being copied?

--Victor McFrazier, Inglewood

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A: First off, if the logo was designed by someone other than a full-time employee of yours, working within the scope of his or her employment, you need a written agreement with the designer assigning you all the rights to the design, including the copyright.

Registering your copyright is fairly simple and costs about $20. You can obtain forms and go through the process yourself.

Secondly, you need to make some determinations about what you want to do to protect your trademark rights, which are not the same as a copyright. Be aware that getting legal protection for your logo can be costly and time-consuming. To really get good advice on your particular situation, you should meet with an attorney who specializes in trademarks and intellectual property and can make a better determination on which way you should go after actually seeing your logo.

In general, however, most companies feel it is worth the time and money to register their trademark if they have made a considerable investment in the logo design and plan to spend a lot of money using it in advertising, packaging and signage, and certainly if they are going to use it in interstate commerce. If they will use it only locally and do not plan to make a major investment in advertising or labeling, they sometimes use the logo without registering the trademark, figuring that if they get sued for infringing on someone else’s mark, they can offer to settle the suit simply by changing their logo.

Should you decide to go ahead with trademark registration, you first must find out if your design infringes somebody else’s trademark, necessitating a design search and an analysis of the results. Such a search can run from $300 to $1,000.

Once you determine that your logo does not infringe someone else’s logo, then you can register your trademark, using a trademark attorney to help you with the process. Trademark registration fees run from about $150 for a state registration to about $245 for federal registration, plus attorney’s fees.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. runs a free lawyer referral service that you can use to find an attorney by calling (213) 243-1525.

--Louise Nemschoff

Entertainment and intellectual

property attorney, Beverly Hills

If you have a question about how to start or operate a small business, please mail it to Karen E. Klein in care of the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia 91016 or e-mail it to [email protected]. Include your name and address. The column is designed to answer questions of general interest. It should not be construed as legal advice.