IAM1212 – Content Creator Focuses on Highlighting Small Businesses in Her Local Area

Christina Baucom is an attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Headquartered in Alexandria, VA, the USPTO is the federal agency responsible for granting U.S. patents and registering trademarks. Throughout her education and career, Ms. Calloway has sought to merge her personal passion for the arts and professional pursuits in public service. She is a Board member of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association and was recently appointed to the City’s Commission for the Arts. She frequently speaks and/or volunteers to educate small business owners and creatives about their intellectual property. She is the digital content creator of sharpandsound.com focusing on local lifestyle and style inspiration.

• CEO Story: Atty. Christina Baucom shares that her purpose is to highlight small businesses in the local area. She does speaking engagements voluntarily in the community about registration of their business trademarks and Intellectual Property – how it's so important in their legacy and how they can protect it.
• Secret Sauce: Just be yourself and break those doubts and mental obstacles.
• CEO Hack: Being Organised. Make sure you are prepared. Using notepad or note apps, and calendar. Making the flow in your life more seamless.
• CEO Nugget: Give yourself grace, give others grace.
• CEO Defined: Being given a special assignment for leadership, being able to connect with certain people and help uplift their gifts and assignments.

Website: https://www.sharpandsound.com

Instagram: sharpandsoundstyle
Linkedin: christinacalloway

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Transcription

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00:12 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, value your time, and are ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:40 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Christina Balcom of sharpandsound.com dot. Christina, it's great to have you on the show.

00:50 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Hi. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here. Thank you so much.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on. Before we jumped into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Christina so you could hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Christina is an attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. The USPTO is the federal agency responsible for granting us patents and registering trademarks. Throughout her education and career, Christina has sought to merge her personal passion for the arts with professional pursuits and public service. She is a board member of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association and was recently appointed to the city's Commission for the Arts. She frequently speaks and or volunteers to educate small business owners and creatives about their intellectual property, and she is the digital content creator of Sharpens, focusing on local lifestyle and style inspiration. Christina, super excited to have you on, for all you do in the community to help out business owners, and of course appreciate you taking some time out. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:48 – Atty. Christina Baucom

I definitely am. Thank you.

01:50 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:58 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Definitely. I think I have. I know you normally are speaking with CEO's of businesses and small businesses. I have a little bit of a different story because like so many people during the pandemic, I decided to tap into my passion. We had more time, we were at home, maybe not working as much or in a different type of way pivoting. I got an opportunity to just kind of delve into putting more effort into my passion, which for me was really making sure that I use what I've learned as an attorney in intellectual property and also assisting people in helping them learn about intellectual property for their businesses, especially during the pandemic. Pandemic but otherwise, as well as for creatives who were creating so much during that time that we were definitely looking at and seeing and hearing during that particular time.

So it was really an opportunity for me to delve into that passion, to speak more on that, and to also start creating through sharpandsound.com, where I basically was able to explore the city that I moved to, Alexandria, Virginia. I'm not a native like so many of us in the DMV area, to go around and really explore my city, connect with small business owners about their experience, and highlight different businesses that are often frequented. The great thing about living in this area. When there are small businesses, you can meet the owners, you can interact with them. That's kind of my story. I came here, I worked for the government like so many people in this area as the trademark attorney at the patent trademark office and then kind of delving into a side of oh, I want to create something on my own, possibly start my own small business and what am I going to do? Find my passion and niche for that. That turned out to be sharpandsound.com for me.

03:40 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. I appreciate you so much and sharing your story. I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about what we can find there. Could you take us through what you're doing to serve your clients and how you're making that impact there?

03:51 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Basically, I'm focusing on Northern Virginia's kind of local lifestyle and style inspiration. So it just gives me an opportunity to highlight small businesses, whether I'm telling people the best places to go, eat brunch in this particular area, some great date night restaurants where you can go, or providing a gift guide during the holidays or any type of holidays, places where you can find these things so that we can support and put things back into our local economy. You don't always have to go to Amazon to find something. You don't always have to go to a big-name brand, which is, that is great. Not knocking that, but there are so many great things probably right in your neighborhood that you may not know about. I kind of feel like it's my purpose to kind of tell people about these places and highlight small businesses and the area.

Highlight places you may not know about in the area you could possibly live here and not know about certain parks and things like that. Even going further and deeper into those things about highlighting black-owned businesses, LGBTQ-plus businesses, and owned businesses. When we have a certain month, Hispanic Heritage Month actually ends today. Orlando ended yesterday by highlighting places that are owned by Latinx people, something that you may not even know are places that you may not even know and that you want to support and grow and bring back those dollars into our local community. So I kind of focus on that. I focus on travel guides and ideas as well as gift guides and ideas as well as just-style information, if you're into style or personal style, and even finding places where you can shop here locally in the area.

Again, not have to always go to those brand-name stores where you can find different and unique things. So that's what I focus on. On sharpandsound.com dot in general, as a trademark attorney, of course, I work for the federal government. We're the office that is responsible for trademark registration. So I'm reviewing applications on a daily basis and going through the process so that people can get registrations for their trademarks. Then I also use the expertise to speak out in the community where I'm invited, volunteering, doing clinics where I can speak about trademarks, intellectual property, and how that is so important to your legacy, whether you're running a business, whether yourself personally is the business, how you can protect those things and really think about what you need to do to go through that process.

06:12 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. I appreciate you so much and giving your gifts and your passions in so many different ways. And, of course, you mentioned being able to kind of highlight those organizations, those businesses that are kind of local to the area so that they, you can kind of delve in and hear the stories, hear the why, hear what they're doing. Sometimes we don't get that human connection that it sounds like you're highlighting on your site.

06:35 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Definitely. Definitely. Exactly.

06:38 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Awesome. Then two, you being able to, again, take and highlight other organizations and entrepreneurs and their passions within what it is you do, I think so many times. One of the most, I guess, frustrating things is understanding how you're going to protect that. So you being able to kind of have those talks and provide that information that people may not know about that when they do have those passions, get they're doing really awesome things, they're able to kind of protect it. Huge. It's something that's huge as well.

07:05 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Yes, definitely. I think it's important so many people start businesses, and that's great. Entrepreneurship is great. I think a lot of times people go in and with, like, I have to have so much money to be able to do these things. Sometimes protecting your intellectual property goes by the wayside. I always tell people that anything that is worth protecting or worth having, somebody is going to look at it. If people are buying your product or consuming your services, then somebody is seeing that somebody is watching it and they can sometimes see the value before that you can because you're assuming, oh, it's just a small business, it's just me, or it's just me and my wife or my friend working on a business out of our garage.

I always tell people, that Apple was a small business. You have to really think about that and invest in yourself to protect that because that is something that lives longer than your name or your brand can live longer than you do physically. So that's something that you want to invest in, in your business. So I think it's always important to highlight that. I also try to just stress, like the legacy of that. You can pass that down through your family, your family name, your children, your community, or anything that you want to highlight. It's very important to you with the things that you're building. Don't just always think of yourself as, oh, I'm small, it's just me. Even if you're getting larger and bigger, you should really invest in that because someone could possibly steal it and then you're either buying it back or you're changing your name or changing those, the names of those products and services because you weren't thinking about that.

08:31 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Then I'm glad you used the word, you know, invest because I think so many times you can think of it as another cost or another bill or another thing that you have to do. But when you frame it the way you did, you start thinking about the investment and investment not just for yourself, but for your loved ones, those that you love and you care about. You start to see that you are building that legacy, building that opportunity to nothing. Just pour your, you know, your blood, sweat, and tears, which often happen, but also something that you are building, for lack of a better term, a foundation, it sounds like, to success for yourself and potentially for those that you love and care about.

09:01 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Yes, definitely. And that's just the important part of entrepreneurship that you have to think about. I see that every day. I see large corporations come in and get there. I mean, they will come in for March before they even start using them because they understand the value and work. That's what I like to bring out in the community even if you're a small entrepreneur, if you're an artist or creative, you're thinking about that as well.

09:24 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself or the site or a combination of everything that you do, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

09:33 – Atty. Christina Baucom

I think the secret sauce is just being yourself. Like, you talked a little bit about imposter syndrome and a lot of times, I think when we want to start anything, we kind of. Sometimes those doubts creep in about, why is my voice important. There are so many other people doing the same thing. What is going to make me different? I think that what makes you different, is yourself not trying to be anyone else. You'll find your community. You'll find people who are interested in your voice what you're saying and the things that you're highlighting. So I think that's the secret sauce, is that you kind of have to look inside of yourself and kind of let those, you know, break through those doubts and those mind obstacles that you may have. Even from the start. I think those things always creep in because we're always thinking, I'm an attorney who's talking about intellectual property.

Make. What makes me so different than another attorney who's out speaking about intellectual property? Then I have to think about the things that do make me different, that make me myself. I'm a young woman, a black attorney. I'm walking into a room where people, where young kids may have never seen an attorney that looks like me. Right? I grew up, and the only attorney I saw who looked like me was Claire Huxtable on the Cosby show. We didn't even see her practice law. I just knew that they said that she was an attorney. Somebody seen flesh and someone full in the flesh, talking about these particular things, talking about business, and talking about protecting their legacy. That's what makes me different. There are numerous other attorneys who may be doing similar work, but I can contribute additional perspectives and diversity to the conversation, enriching it further. So I think that's the sauce, is that you kind of gotta break out of those mind obstacles that make you say, what? Why is my voice important here? Think about the things. Reverse the question and say, my voice is important here because of my perspective.

11:19 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that, you know, being able to kind of flip that and be able to kind of, you know, understand that and step into that, and I often will say, if you run your own race, you can never lose. I think so many times we forget, like, what that is. We forget to kind of lean into that and understand our passions, our gifts are those things that, while we might, quote-unquote, from a professional perspective, do something similar to somebody else, when you do it the way that you do it, when you step into your race, you step into who you are, your passions, your gifts, and all those things, nobody can kind of, you know, do that like you do that. So when you lean into that, that's when you really make that, that market, that impact for not just ourselves, but so many other people. I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

12:01 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Oh, gosh. We were just talking about it before we logged in. But I think the biggest thing for me is organization and your personal and professional life. I'm old school. I still use a notepad or a calendar. But I think one of the biggest things is making sure that you have either some app or you're using the calendar on your phone. Those notices, color coding if you need to, putting notes in, making sure that you're organized. People appreciate that because you're always prepared for what you have coming next. It also just makes the flow of your life a lot more seamless when you're organized. So it's a very basic hack, but I think one that a lot of people forget is just to be organized.

So I'm using that calendar on my phone. I'm checking it. I don't check it the first thing in the morning. That's just something that I have where I don't want to be touching my phone or looking at what's going on. But once I get myself settled and prepared for the day, making sure that I know what's going on, making sure I'm preparing for my day and using that calendar, whether that is written down or on the phone. So I know that's a very basic thing, but it's something that's accessible and that we all have and that's probably very rarely used.

13:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well, I appreciate you so much and sharing that, and I love the hacks a lot of times. I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be something you would tell a client or somebody you worked with or talked to or somebody. If you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger.

13:30 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Business self, I would say, grace. Give yourself grace. Give others grace. You're learning, especially if you become an entrepreneur, and creative. It's not going to go, even if it's your passion you feel. It's your God-given purpose. You're going to go through a journey. Things are always going to go the way that you plan. You're always going to have to pivot or try new things, learn new things. Work with people that you sometimes don't have the best working relationship with or figure out how to communicate so that you can come up with a great product or a great project or assignment or whatever or what have you.

So it's giving grace, and it's not like forgiveness. It's making sure that you have an understanding that sometimes things aren't going to go the way that they plan. So don't freak out about them. Give another person grace if they make a mistake. Give yourself grace. When you're making mistakes and you're learning, that's the biggest thing because it's a journey and it's not always going to go smoothly. There are going to be challenges and obstacles, and you have to give yourself grace to go through those things.

14:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's so powerful. And I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question. You touched on this a little bit, but it's the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping out different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Christina, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:44 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Being a CEO means being given a special assignment for leadership. Leadership is not always the number one. It's being able to connect with people in certain ways to help uplift their gifts, and their assignments so that you can work together to create whatever goal. If, even if someone is working for you in your business, they may have a goal that aligns with yours to whatever you're trying to accomplish for your business.

15:11 – Gresham Harkless

What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:21 – Atty. Christina Baucom

I just want to thank you again for having me on. This has been a really great conversation. People can find me at sharpandsound.com. if you're on any type of social media, I'm sharp and sound style on any social media outlets. I'm there. If you have any questions regarding the USPTO, you can always go to USptO dot gov dot.

15:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Christina, truly appreciate that. To make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But I appreciate you so much and kind of reminding us how important it is to give our gifts in so many different ways. Of course, you're embodying that. You're doing that in so many different ways as well too, and staying true to yourself and staying true to your passions and your gifts. So thank you so much for doing that, making that impact, and reminding us of how important it is for us to do that as well. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:09 – Atty. Christina Baucom

Thank you. You as well.

16:11 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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