Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be.

Welcome to Boutique Chat, where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek.

We'll hear from product-based businesses of all types, retailers, e-commerce and wholesale brands,

along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry.

I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the boutique hub, and I can't wait to chat.

Hi, it's you and me, five minute Friday.

This is going to be so short and sweet and hopefully

you are like, okay, girl, I've got this. I've done this already. But if not, I wanted to mention

it to you. Have you trademarked your business yet? Have you done it? It should be one of the very

first things that you do if you are serious about building a business that lasts. Now, there's a lot

of confusion around trademarking.

What does it mean? We could get into the weeds. It's also a very quick Google search.

Essentially, it is this. If you protect your name, your business name, your logo, your slogan,

whatever, someone down the street can't come in and name their business name the exact same as

yours, claim it across social media

and pretend that they're you or even pretend they're not you, but just create a ton of confusion

with your customers. So trademarking is a really important first step to your business. Now,

when you get into the process of trademarking, a couple quick things that you should do,

maybe an order of priority here. First is, I want to

make sure when you've chosen your business name, or even if you've been in business for a while,

you do a great detailed Google search on who else has a business name similar to you. If you are,

I'll say the flossy peach, my friend Macy's business, and you start Googling and there's already

...