My Rat Race

Brand Piracy

Effective branding, the development of a brand can help in many ways in marketing of products. As I was walking in the mall with a colleague of mine from work and came across a shop of YSL or Yves Saint-Laurent which is one of the very popular brands of designer clothing and other fashion accessories. And he told me, he said he can’t remember where he read it, but he said their prices have dropped since their products are hard to sell due to a lot of sellers of fake YSL products. And I did agree that there are a lot of fakes products of YSL since from the country where I came from and grew up, these fake products were everywhere although they may look like the real thing, there were of cheaper quality, thus sold cheaper as well. And people that bought it was mainly for the brand recognition, the prestige of having a YSL product even if it was fake. The YSL brand is known to be quite expensive and having one seemed to be like a sign of prestige, that some people even go to the extent of buying fake cheap low quality ones just to carry the prestige with them using products like a status symbol. But in some cases, I have seen a different story in playing with brands.

Brand Image Copying

I grew up in the Philippines and for orange juice, I drink Tang. Until out from nowhere, a brand called 8 o’clock comes out. Having a career that started out as a chemist, I still remember some early days of applying for jobs and one of them was at a company called SugarLand who made the product 8 o’clock. During those days the office I went to was in the territory of many Filipino-Chinese businessmen near Binondo, Manila, but where I went was slightly nearby, at Tondo. And the office I went to did not look presentable at all from the outside. Although the inside was nice and clean, it still did not look like a nice office that time.

The original packaging of 8 o’clock, as far as I remember was predominantly in orange packaging. And as I was growing up, I was starting to see it have more green in the packaging similar to Tang’s packaging. Could you say this is copying? Maybe not, maybe it is. Since people do study the effect of color on sales and experiment on it. I still remember a seminar I attended once at an expo on graphics, where one of the presenters told us that Tide the soap once tried using the color blue instead of the bright red-orange. And sales went down and decided to put it back to the original color and sales went back up.

From the last time I remember, my last look at 8 o’clock orange juice’s packaging. The colors look very much like Tang. And I see this all the time in many other products. I have also noticed this with the milk brands Anlene and Anchor. They have similar fonts and sometimes in the grocery store, you see them right beside each other and they look similar, but just differ in color where Anlene is light green and Anchor is blue. Aside from that, the rest looks very similar.

Actual examples with TopCare products

After going to the grocery store, I noticed a brand called TopCare. This is what I have previously used for my anti-dandruff shampoo since it was a bit cheaper than Head and Shoulders. They seemed to have the same active ingredient I believe but their packaging looked very similar. But after trying it out, I went back to Head and Shoulders since I believe I got more itchiness and I feel more stinging sensations when using TopCare. But in my last grocery visit, I started to take more note of each product and their differences. Check the series of photos I took and tell me if this is really some serious brand research or simply brand copying.

I know as we depart from the rat race, we are moving away from being an employee and being self-employed. And to go into the fast track, we go into owning businesses and investing. And yet here I am again, applying for a new job. I am applying for my 3rd job in the United States, after I came here in July 2004. Still to get started in getting in to the fast track, we all still need money to get by everyday. And my first job here in the US was a Web Designer / Developer from August 2004 to May 2006, where I started at $12/hour and worked my way up to $35,000/year. And I just resigned last may for another job doing the same thing for $45,000/year.

Now design and development of website can just get tiring and boring too, and the more you do it, the better you get at it, and the more you see to move into making websites all your life. The new job I am applying for is an SEO/SEM position. Although it is still work, this moves you more into a career of more consultancy and helps greatly in sales and marketing for any company and experience here will do nothing but help you grow your own business. The job offer has the same salary rate, but with more flexible time and more business related skills can be gained. A new career move but still in the direction of getting into the fast track and out of the rat race.

Own Your Own Corporation is also Rich Dad book by Rich Dad Advisor Garrett Sutton, Esq. which was the second Rich Dad book I read. I first saw Gary Sutton at Rich Dad’s Investor Workshop at the Los Angeles Convention Center last August 2005. And no matter how knowledgeable Robert Kiyosaki was, he still stressed out he does not know everything and that is why he has advisors. And everyone should do, to build up their strong team. Gary Sutton is a corporate lawyer and is very knowledgeable of the law that is used to the advantage of the rich. One of major tools in being rich that most millionaires do is owning a corporation, that mainly benefits in two ways. One is for asset protection and another is for tax benefits. The business entities that give you better protection are Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, and Limited Partnerships. The business entities that do not give you asset protection are general partnerships and sole proprietorships. When I heard about this at the investor workshop, a few months after that, I went on vacation to my home country to see my family. And my wonderful wife, saw me looking at books and it was December of 2005 then, and she decided to get two books for me as a Christmas gift.

I read the whole book Own Your Own Corporation, by Garrett Sutton, Esq, reading it everyday in the morning just before taking a shower preparing for work. It was very informative and has given me all the initial knowledge I needed to know to get started. In the book I have also learned about the differences in state laws and how advantageous some states can be in putting up corporations than other states. Like in Nevada which two main advantages, one is privacy protection and another is there are no state corporate taxes.

And as Robert Kiyosaki has mentioned many times in many of his books, is to invest in financial knowledge, I attended a short seminar by The Learning Annex entitled How to Incorporate Your Business without using a Lawyer or Accountant by Jerry L. Dixon, CPA. His seminar was informative and was procedural just give you all the steps you have to go through in setting up your own corporation. Being based in San Diego, he did explain all the laws of California and just did a minor story about setting up a Nevada Corporation. Mainly because he mentioned that if you have a Nevada corporation but does business in California, you will need a license to operate in California and after doing that, you will now be required to pay taxes in California, thus there is no use to put up a Nevada corporation if you do not live there. Although he did mention that it will work for mail-to-order businesses, internet web stores, and businesses that are operating in Nevada that you do not need to be in Nevada like a store franchise of McDonalds for example. His seminar was very informative that you will want to have him as your accountant, which I know is also part of hi purpose in teaching at the seminar.

That time, I was also getting in contact with Gary Sutton’s practice since I wanted his practice to handle all the legal matters with my business, and Jerry Dixon for all accounting matters. And that would be my team. Until I received an email from The Learning Annex being a member of their mailing list, on a free seminar called Tax Secrets of the Millionaires, that had Patrick James as the speaker. His seminar was one of the best so far and this is where I was able to get hold of the Tax Secrets of the Millionaires book and CD pack that if you purchase the 12 that he had brought on the day of the seminar, you will have a free seminar with the author of the book, Scott Estill. If you did not buy the product that night, you still can, but you do not get to attend the free seminar.

I really did not have much that day, but I went ahead and took one of the forms of the first 12, even if I did not have the money. I kept computing in my head, adding up all the remaining credits I have on various credit cards. Until a kind lady doctor who is in her 40’s asked me if I am going to sign up. As she did notice I was not writing on the form. I said I supposed to but I did not have enough money, she then asked if I was a Filipino and I said yes. And we then decided to split the payment, she will photocopy the book for me, and I will copy the CDs for her and we paid 50:50. As for the seminar, everyone can bring along one guest, so I still had a ticket to get to the seminar by Scott Estill.

Just after a few weeks, I then headed for the tax seminar by Scott Estill that was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles in California and most of the people present in the seminar were pretty affluent people. Many had corporations and a lot of real estate properties, and I felt out-of-place being an employee with a small web business. Scott Estill really knows the tax laws very well being a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) trial attorney for many years. When he left the IRS and decided to be a full-time tax attorney for his own practice, he was one of the sought after tax attorneys in the country. His book Tax This was named one of the top books about tax this 2006 by the Wall Street Journal.
During that time, I was about to close my deal with Gary Sutton’s practice to have them handle all legal matters and I seek accounting help from Scott Estill’s practice. But upon learning that Scott Estill is also a corporate lawyer and even if based in Colorado, they have some representation in Nevada that can handle Nevada corporations, they why not talk to one practice instead of two. So I had Scott Estill’s practice handle both legal and accounting matters.

Scott Estill’s practice is with a partner Stephanie Long where they call their pratice Estill & Long, LLC. and it was Stephanie Long that handled most of my paperwork along with their staff and after getting all of that done, after maybe 3 weeks I think, I received a call from their practice 2 days ago saying that all my paperwork is done and that my corporation is now registered with the state of Nevada and will mail out the paperwork the next day.

Now this is one major start of change in my life as a business entity. But I know there are a lot more work to do like, open my Nevada bank account. Buy stocks from myself, get a payroll company that I will pay them to handle payments to myself as I deduct my money from the corporation and pay it to myself, as the employee. I need to have two separate bank accounts and I have to clearly log down my business expense and personal expense. What property is mine, and what property is for the company. But right now, I am just excited having my business entity registered since I will start advertising in a popular local computer magazine, some of the services I offer.