In our latest episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with the incredibly insightful Pamela Slim, an expert in creating impactful certification programs for service-based businesses. We covered a wide array of topics, from legal considerations to the ethics of leveraging intellectual property (IP). It’s jam-packed with wisdom for any entrepreneur looking to scale their business or safeguard their creative assets.

Key Takeaways:

• Crafting Certification: Discover the power of developing certification programs that expand upon your unique skills to ensure reliable outcomes for your clients and add a new revenue stream to your business.
• IP Essentials: Understand the significance of trademarks, and the delicate balance of creating competitors through certification programs, especially in the B2B space.
• Community Impact: Learn from Pam's hands-on approach to economic empowerment in Arizona, preventing gentrification and supporting BIPOC entrepreneurs during challenging times.

Don't miss these invaluable insights! Tune in to "Hourly to Exit" now and equip yourself with the tools needed to transform your intellectual property into a lasting legacy.

Resources Mentioned: 

Let's put Thumbprint, renamed "Productize Your Service Business"

https://maven.com/pamelaslim/discover-your-thumbprint-method

More About Our Guest:

Pamela Slim is an award-winner author, speaker, and agency owner who has spent three decades helping business owners scale their businesses and IP. Pam’s agency specializes in the design and development of certification and licensing programs. Pam is the author of Escape from Cubicle Nation (Penguin Portfolio, 2009), Body of Work (Penguin Portfolio, 2014) and The Widest Net (McGraw Hill, November, 2021, winner of Best Sales and Marketing Book of 2021 from Porchlight Books). Pam and her husband Darryl co-founded the K’é Community Lab in Mesa, Arizona, where they host scores of BIPOC entrepreneurs and contribute to the local social, health and economic development of their community.

Connect with Pamela:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Charity Mentioned: https://railcdc.org/

Connect with Erin to learn how to use intellectual property to increase your income and impact. hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Team Dklutr production

Hello, ladies.

Welcome to this week's episode of the hourly to exit podcast.

I am extremely excited about this week's guest, Pam slim, Pam.

Welcome to the hourly

exit

podcast.

I'm so happy to be here.

Well, we have lots to talk about, this audience loves to

talk about, scaling their expertise based business, and that fits right

in with what you do, but before we get started, would you introduce yourself to

the audience?

For sure.

So I am Pam slim or Pamela slim, depending upon I'm in trouble or not.

And I am a author and a agency owner of a certification agency.

So we build certification programs for thought leaders.

And this really evolves out of many years of being a business coach and

advisor for service based businesses.

Fantastic.

Well, it's no surprise to my audience that I frequently have business coaches

on the podcast because, working with you is a great synergy between, the

business coach, helping businesses create scale in their businesses and

intellectual property lawyer, of course, but Special one, because I have not

before had a business coach who has the specific expertise in creating

licensing and certification programs.

So I'm really looking forward to digging in on that.

Now, while of course, I am a huge fan of licensing programs.

Obviously you are, but not always a solution for everyone.

Although some people think they are, so we're gonna dig into,

when, certification or licensing may be appropriate for a business.

But, before we get started, I'd love for you to give an overview

of the types of licensing and certification programs that you see.

For sure.

You probably get more questions than I do.

given your profession, I find a lot of people might throw around terms.

about what licensing and certification is.

So please check me if you feel like legally my definitions are accurate.

The basic way that I describe it for folks is when you think about building IP in

your business, intellectual property, that can be methods and models and frameworks,

approaches that you have to work.

There can be situations where you might, have a licensing agreement.

In my, layperson's terms, I will say it just spells out who exactly can use what

type of IP for how much and how long.

And so, there can be certain situations where a, entity, a company, an

organization could be licensing IP.

Without them needing to go through a certification process, a certification

process is a specific learning experience that you set up in certain

cases to make sure that those who are licensed to use your IP have all the

skills, resources, information tools they need to be good stewards of the

material and so that you can also predict more of a consistent output.

of people who are certified to use the methods.

So you can have a licensing program without a certification learning

experience tied to it, but you can never have a certification

program without licensing because when you're teaching people stuff,

they need to have that agreement.

The one example that I use in, with Susan Cain who wrote the book Quiet

about the power of introverts.

I worked with her for about 18 months of launching what she

called the Quiet Revolution.

So we had built a number of programs.

One of the licensing deals that she did was with the office furniture maker

Steelcase It created what are called quiet spaces that were office furniture

specifically designed for introverts.

So in this case, they were using a lot of the thoughts, the IP design

principles from her book, quiet.

In a licensing agreement that had nothing to do with a certification, but typically

people think about certifications like coaching certifications are being

certified in a particular method.

And those are usually the areas that I operate in with our agency.

yeah, that is a cool example with, regarding the introverts, because,

you we definitely generally think about it certainly in the space that I work

in with experts who work with corporate clients that we only think in terms of

very large programs that are, kind of.

Serving lots of different clients, and it can be something that's

just a 1 on 1 relationship, right?

It doesn't need to be a whole program.

the end of the day, whenever we have our pre existing materials

that we bring to a client, because, there's a reason that client.

Engages us instead of the next guy.

It's because there's something that we have some asset in

our business that they value.

And when we are, including it in the deliverable for their internal use,

that is a license in and of itself.

It's just a 1 on 1 license between you and your client.

But licensing is everywhere.

So, you know, is everywhere, but licensing is everywhere to when you are working

with clients and you have deliverables.

So,

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I totally appreciate that because it is something that mystifies people.

And I laugh with clients sometimes because either they think it's.

Too complicated to ever get involved with.

So they learn more and they're like, Oh my gosh, it's not that complicated.

Or they don't realize, especially if they're building a certification

program that in order to do it effectively, there actually are a

number of pieces to put in place.

Or I think as you and I will talk about a little bit later.

There is a certain stage or maturity of business in which it's a good

idea to be investing in building it.

But just other piece of our approach to what we build when we think about

different types of certifications, we look at it in four different levels that really

have to do with a user's experience.

And that's what we're Interaction and use of the material.

So a level one, a certificate program, think about it like a skill that could

be a self directed kind of training experience you could have where you're

learning something that you would be proud to put on your LinkedIn profile.

So it could be, I'm certified to use Excel pivot tables and you go

through self directed training.

You might take an online exam and a certificate is generally information

that is used by an end user.

Typically in a professional development setting that really is just to up level

their specific skills a level two, which is a practitioner certification is

where you are certifying practitioners.

To be utilizing your IP, so your methods and your frameworks, with their clients.

This is typically in that area where you have a coaching certification

for a particular method or approach.

So you would be certified as a practitioner to be using those

methods with your clients.

The licensing agreement will usually spell out very clearly.

can you share the worksheets and how do you share them and so forth.

And that's a really common thing for a lot of coaches or consultants.

The level three is a trainer certification.

And so that often is where you are certified not only to be utilizing tools

as a practitioner, but also teaching the method to others and other end users.

A lot of folks are familiar with Brene Brown's.

Certifications that she did during greatly, it was a big part of her

business kind of pre COVID, but in that particular certification, people, were

learning how to be teaching workshops.

So they could lead, dare to lead workshops.

They had access to materials, coaches, social workers, therapist.

use some of those materials with their end clients as well.

And so you can see that it's like at each level you have another

wrapper of usage on top of it.

The final level, level four, train the trainer is often for a situation where.

Particularly in B2B business to business sales, you, for example, have an amazing

workshop that your client loves and they say every single leader in our

thousands of people organization should, experience this method, but usually for

you as the one delivering that there, you don't want to be flying around

on planes or training 5, 000 people.

So in that case, you could train inside the company.

Trainers who were certified to train other trainers that would

be in the organization rolling out the workshops to the end users.

These types of agreements usually have a larger licensing agreement

for the number of end users impacted.

We like those for our clients because they're often bigger

checks, as we say, right?

you can be, go from maybe a train that it's pricing is all relative.

It's a whole other topic, but somebody could be getting a trainer

certification and pay, I don't know, 15, 000 in order to get that to teach

your workshop for a train, the trainer licensing agreement that could be.

000.

So those are ways to think about it.

and so as you look at what you're trying to do with your own method,

part of it is realizing for a lot of people, you could start smaller.

You could start with a practitioner, then maybe could build a trainer component.

And then if you really get a lot of interest, you could

build the train, the trainer.

Yeah, I love

that.

and there are lots of different ways to, dissect it.

And 1 of the things I like to emphasize that a license, you know, it is

a contractual really arrangement and you can make it, if it is a 1

on 1, 1, negotiated with whatever terms make sense for both parties.

So there's not kind of some standard license out there.

It is relationship between the parties.

And so you can make it work for everybody and negotiate it.

So.

One thing I love about your experience from our conversation

before is you have been inside the B2B world of really negotiating

on behalf of large companies.

And I know for a lot of my clients, they get very freaked out.

It's very unnerving.

Maybe you're a smaller shop.

you're not used to negotiating with a, huge company that might

have a whole team of lawyers.

And so I find that experience to be so important that you have where you

know how to navigate and, I'm imagining that you're pushing a little bit of the

assumptions people have, but maybe just saying, I have to just accept anything

that that big company says, if they were, I imagine you're like, and no, you don't.

Exactly.

Oh, I like to say that, I have looked at many, many, many, commercial,

transaction agreements, B2B agreements.

And in my career, there is only one company and we could probably lay odds

on being able to guess which one it is.

That said, absolutely no, take it or leave it.

so long as you are asking for something that's fair that, it makes sense.

That is, you're protecting your intellectual property or, making sure

that you're preserving the profitability of the deal, People will absolutely

consider reasonable requests for changes.

So, yeah, and it is, intimidating to get, oftentimes these corporate clients

have their own master services agreement that applies, whether you're doing

consulting or doing, market research or doing, some, web design, they still

have the same MSA for all their vendors.

And it's.

50 pages and it's got a couple of exhibits on it and it can be intimidating.

But again, all things, negotiable at the end of the day.

And I do, and I'm not just saying it because I'm talking

to you, I say it to all my clients.

It's why many people will come and say, do you just have a

copy of a licensing agreement?

And I just say, I actually don't, I'm not an IP attorney.

Always work with an attorney when you're doing that final agreement because

you can really miss a lot of things.

You can leave things on the table and as you said, you may not realize

the kind of leverage that you have.

So just in general, I think when you're finalizing a contract, try to

prepare our clients to put together the recommendations for the attorney when

we really help The client understand exactly how they want to be operating.

People have very different expectations, levels of risk, desire for control.

And so that's again, why some people are, they want to basically have

a lawyer on retainer to be sending cease and desist letters all the time.

Other people are like, whatever you paid me for it, like what you will.

but when it comes to the final legal agreement, Please talk to an attorney.

Yeah, I'm going to

just ask, regarding the whatever person versus

the, lawyer on retainer.

Do you see any gender differences in that type of just because

this is a mostly female audience?

Do you see?

No.

Okay.

All right.

Good.

I'm glad

to hear.

Yeah, I do not.

I do not.

See it in that it is a cool example of an affective characteristic that

I think there are certain areas of socialization that I totally noticed

that have gender relations and then to be intersectional about it.

It also depends, I think, on somebody's like identity and

background and so forth that there can be a little different experience.

and so level of privilege, expectations that one can have, like me as a white

woman, how much am I sitting back, like worried or wondering if I'm

going to be screwed over versus if I'm a black woman or indigenous woman.

It's like interesting when you sometimes have things in place that are related

to needing to have legal grounds where you know that you can't assume that you

will be treated fairly in the system.

So there's some interesting things there.

I do find from a gender perspective that Women are less likely to think

about building in, things like certifications or IP protection in

order to eventually sell the company.

That that can be a little bit more related to men, but I've seen across

the board, in a couple of cases of, some men I know that have certification

programs that have been very successful who were like, there's a flat fee and

then I really have no control over it.

Like go and do what you will.

Where.

Just taking maybe more of the stereotypical gender, behavior that

we might attribute is where a man might be wanting to just milk every

single penny out of a transaction.

I realize it's a bit of a stereotype, but I haven't really seen it play out.

and just the experience I've had working with people.

Awesome.

Well, thank you for sharing that.

All right.

So I thought we would do something that lawyers love to

do, which is issue spotting.

I'm going to provide a couple of scenarios of experts who are coming and they want

to, have a licensing and or certification program and we can talk through whether

or not It would be right for them.

And if it's not like what they would need to do to get ready for one.

All right.

So my first example is a marketing consultant who provides one

on one services to businesses.

They have fished out their referral pond and the pipeline is empty and they

don't have a robust marketing engine.

They want to add licensing, a certification.

To other consultants to other practitioners as an additional

revenue stream to boost their income.

So they want to add because they have run out of 1 on 1 income

and they think, oh, let me.

What do we think about

this?

you sort of softball this to me, but this is such a good one because I

totally get the feeling it is a natural reaction that you might have as a

business owner to think, Oh my gosh, like things aren't working for me.

I need a new offer.

And I've heard that licensing and certification eventually leads to

that mythological passive revenue.

The issue in this one.

is around market fit, where you're generally ready for a certification

where you actually have overwhelming market demand for your materials.

There are lots and lots people who are aware of what you're doing.

They're aware that, you have great work.

There is high demand.

You're exhausted from jumping on planes because you're delivering or

your team is delivering yourself.

That is often the market position where you've really found that market fit.

That people want your stuff.

And in particular, when you look at, if you're going to be certifying individual

consultants, say on your marketing method, generally when we do certifications, it's

because we say, Oh my gosh, we know that person has it all dialed in because look

at how they've grown their own practice.

It seems like.

Very often, there can be somebody who literally has the best IP in the world.

Maybe this marketing consultant, their actually works anybody.

have to get the market fit first in order to be driving the sales.

And it's actually harder in my experience to be driving certification sales.

If you don't have overwhelming marketing demand, then it is

just to land individual clients.

So I would send them on a path to really be looking more deeply.

If they were interested eventually in building more the certification path,

they would be doing a lot more events in what I call new watering holes.

places where they would have ideal clients that would be interested in their work.

And then probably they'd be cranking up their own practice to try to figure out

and solve the issue as to why they're not getting clients for their stuff.

The other thing that can be interesting, and I do see this sometimes, is

sometimes you can build market fit and the engines for that, or in

some ways you can buy or sell that.

And what I mean is Maybe you do find somebody who's in your ecosystem who knows

that your stuff is the most amazing thing.

They are amazing at really dialing in the marketing and sales side of

it, where they can generate demand.

So that could be a where they could do a straight, purchase of your stuff, or you

could have some kind of marketing or sales relationship where they're, pulling it in.

But if you're doing it yourself.

It's a big red flag.

Oh.

So in your, in this later example, then the marketing consultant is not

creating that marketing engine that they are licensing it to someone

who already has the ability to reach

that audience.

Like that's right.

Cause I've seen, there's some people who just got it.

I get so jealous cause I'm more of a connector, a connector Maven,

but we've probably all seen that.

Sometimes there are people who just have it dialed in.

They really know how to sell and market.

And so that's another Avenue.

yeah, that is interesting.

Yeah.

I'm a lawyer, not a business consultant, but people think licensing agreements

and then they will come directly to me for the licensing agreement.

so they've self diagnosed that they need a licensing agreement,

and they want to do this, to train other practitioners in what they do.

And the conversation that we have basically what you said,

but that, you know how to.

fish or hunt with your corporate clients and though you have great

results like this is a new market.

To fish with other practitioners, like, even though if you're well respected,

but it's still a whole different engine.

And so are you ready to create a new business?

Basically, side by

side.

yes, it's really, really different, especially if you're selling into 1, like,

you're selling into corporate clients and then you want to be developing a

more B to C reaching out for individuals.

It's a whole different marketing model.

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome.

All right.

Example number 2.

Okay.

I feel like I'm on like a game show or something.

It's like a game show and shark tank like together.

I love it.

All right.

So we have a growth consultant who provides one on one services to businesses

and they've successfully incorporated the value builders assessment and

their other tools to create a waiting list of clients that they can serve.

And they want to license their to other growth consultants.

Well, what I know is that value builder is John Warlow's product

who wrote built to sell the art of selling your business, a lot of other great books.

And so my issue spotting here would be.

Maybe you use ValueBuilder in your own business, but you do not

own and you cannot license other people's intellectual property.

So either John would feel super generous and he would say, sure,

take my proprietary software and sell it as your own, unlikely.

Or you would really have to find the thing that is uniquely yours.

Again, in packaging what you do.

because I know John really well, and I know a lot of the ways that his model

works, it could actually be interesting where you could be a certified value

builder consultant, which is a whole path that he's done with his methods where

the consultants are using that software.

so maybe you have that where you are utilizing those tools and that brand

recognition, but then there's some of your own IP that you could use.

Maybe it's supplemental.

Maybe it's vertical specific where you're the salesforce person that knows how to

apply value builder into a new system.

And therefore.

Um, that's probably one of the things that you and I do a lot of sifting

through where it's like, okay, when I start to look at the big picture of

somebody's materials and they're like, oh, yeah, I remember in 1984, like

I grabbed this model from somebody.

And that's where we have to go through and really scrub it and make sure that

what you have is yours, or you have legal permission to be using somebody else's IP.

Yeah,

absolutely.

Yeah.

I like to call it, with increased visibility, there's increased scrutiny.

You may have rights to do for your one on one clients.

You may not have the rights to do for a larger audience.

And so, we look at, the legal foundation, like, let's say that

your one on one services is a one story building and having a licensing

program is a two story building.

Well, you need a different foundation for two story building than you

need for a one story building.

And so we need to go back and make sure that we have.

The right legal foundation to build that 2nd story on.

So, yeah.

That is definitely one of people, and then I get the question, well,

I'm influenced by so many people.

We listen to blah.

I mean, listen to podcasts.

We read blogs.

We read books and say we're influenced by so many people and, you know,

where's the dividing line between being influenced and creating something that's

derivative that you need rights for.

And of course, there's no easy answer for that.

but we do need to make sure that we are looking at.

Yeah.

the materials that you're going to be licensing to new licensees and

make sure that you do have the rights

in those.

So, yeah.

I have very strong opinions about this and it's a really just, I think terrible

practices that we have in general.

Some of it is fueled by the, memes, the internet sharing things where

we see very deliberately sometimes like a quote, somebody might

originally have a quote, that is.

Attributed to whoever it is that actually said it, and then somebody lifts it

because it's really inspirational and they share it on Instagram.

And all of a sudden you lose the attribution to that.

and then all the way through, as you said, to looking at methods

and models that, people use that really are other people's stuff.

I look through the world with a lot of lens of power dynamics and, sociology.

And it was funny just the other day I was talking with one of my clients.

It's about the internet marketing world.

Some of these original models that were created by a lot of the internet marketers

have just specific ways in which you might sell or like types and structures you

have for mastermind programs and stuff.

And we were working it backwards and I am not a lawyer.

I'm using an example for anybody's.

lawyers who are listening, but somebody was saying, like, it works

back a lot through, we look at the Dan Kennedy's, like Tony Robbins

originally, like creating some materials.

And I was like, I bet there was a woman who originally created it by Jody Robbins

or I should, you know, TR, , if any lawyers are listening, and they were

like, yeah, actually that was the case that there was maybe somebody on the

team that was originally creating it, and it's like, it's so, It's why we always

need to know history in our schools and in our businesses because when often we

begin to move backwards and notice the original, creators of things, and this

can get super deep when it comes to, especially people who are in the healing.

Spiritual worlds.

I have, my husband is a Navajo traditional healer.

You wouldn't believe the kind of things I see sometimes of just people who might,

sit for a weekend and ceremony, take some of the ideas that are coming from

that teaching and not just from him, from people, from many different practices, and

then create programs that is quote, their IP that are coming from those worlds.

So it's like, it is an area that can be really deeply problematic.

and at the same time, I do understand as we are experiencing

ideas that by definition, we are influenced by things, right?

we sometimes don't even know there's certain models or ways of

thinking that feels like original thought that we may not realize.

But I think if we take a little bit more time and put in place the practice, first

of all, of acknowledging our teachers.

Of making sure that we're tying back any kind of models or methods

to maybe published, academic frameworks or things like that.

It can help us to remember that we need to be giving attribution and then on a

really tactical side for the materials that we're building in our own business.

That's where I always recommend.

let's say, for example, on an off site meeting, you might be excited to be

using a tool, you know, an assessment or something from somebody else, but in terms

of your core method, try to really just build in your own IP and your frameworks

so that it becomes easier to disseminate and eventually create something.

Like a certification program.

I went on maybe what a minute 30, three hour rant as we start

to, as we start to talk about it.

Cause this definitely comes down to gender and gender and identity.

When we start to look at whose IP has been, stolen and who is benefiting

and profiting from many of the ideas.

Okay,

we can definitely do.

Yes, we definitely have a conversation about that.

But one of the things I did want to follow up on is when you do have

something like, say, a value builders or some other, third party materials

that, the benefits of creating a niche it makes it easier kind of to.

Find your own layer on top of that.

So, say you have an issue work, do leadership development

for hospital systems.

you'd layer that, like, those issues on top of these general materials that you

may get from or from, PMP or whatever.

You may have some of these certifications, but you layer on top of it.

Well, I know this client super well, and I know what their issues are.

And create your own IP on top of that, that's specific to

your niche and their problem.

So that's right.

What my friend Phil Jones, who I interviewed on my podcast,

not that long ago, he used the metaphor for his own certification.

It's exactly what to say.

So he has a very specific sales methodology that's based on a book.

And he uses metaphor of Tabasco sauce.

It's like Tabasco sauce can go in just about any dish on eggs, you know, pasta,

I guess if you wanted it to, right.

I put it on spaghetti.

but he specifically designed his certification to be able

to go really well with others.

So it can be, as you said, this like addition that won't be conflicting.

And I think sometimes We think about certifications as needing to be these

huge, complex processes where we have to be certifying people and everything

about, how to be a coach and how to use a method and all of that, where

there are really powerful use cases.

When, as you said, you have a very specific, maybe set of tools that

would actually be highly complimentary.

And there are people, I always tease my business partner, Darren

Padilla, who I love so dearly that.

One of the reasons I love working with him besides him being a genius at what he

does is he loves certification programs.

The man has more letters by his name.

I'm like, what are you not certified in?

And there's a certain type of person that is the end user for some of

the programs we built that gets so excited to be learning new things.

And so, it doesn't have to be something that's terribly deep.

There can be really specific.

Types of, like I said before, certificates, maybe that would just

give somebody an edge and, bless those never ending learner kind of people

that just get so excited when they hear of a new certification program coming.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

And just the one last thing before I wanted to cover before we left

that third party materials is don't forget your prior employers.

If you're coming from corporate and you brought some stuff, even if you

created it there, let's say you wrote the employee handbook at your old

employer and you brought it with you.

That's not yours.

That is your old employers.

And so make sure you have permission to use that.

that is a whole thing.

Again, you probably have specific advice around that.

When I did so many years of early stage entrepreneur coaching for escape from

cubicle nation, that was my first book.

I always, one of the first things that I encourage people before they

start their side hustle is to read very carefully their employment

agreement, because especially some of the bigger tech companies that

people might work for, you could be a.

Software engineer, and you could write a cookbook, but in some agreements,

like literally everything, anything that you create while employed can

be the property of that employer.

So before you even start to mess around with it, read that agreement

and figure out the particular parameters of what you can use.

Right.

Absolutely.

All right.

Our third, example here.

So we have a leadership consultant who walks into a room, feels

the vibe and instinctively knows just what needs to be done.

Big co client wants her to work her magic with every manager and all

the offices throughout the country.

So rather than do it all herself, she wants to train a big co personnel

to provide that transformation.

So this would be a case where I would say I am walking around

what we call our thumbprint method.

which has three pieces.

One of them is market fit that we talked about.

Will it sell?

Do you have the marketing and sales engine to be supporting this?

The second component, your method, will it work is that method anywhere

outside the amazing, beautiful brain of said leadership consultant.

And I use magic a lot as a metaphor for.

Literally what happens when you are a service provider, that's one of the

biggest highs I know that I feel I could be here at our community lab doing

an all day intensive with a client.

And sometimes like, I'm shocked myself at what comes out of

my pen on the whiteboard.

Like, where did that model come from?

So there is magic that can happen based on your own unique

set of skills and experience.

Everything about building a certification program is taking out

the frameworks, the methods so that they do not have to be fueled by you.

You're the person, the human, the individual, your skills.

And then there are two ways to address.

How you can make sure that you're certified, leaders are building magic

with their clients, either that you are spelling out maybe some specific magic.

So in some cases, like somebody's magic can be that in addition to.

Leading strategic planning retreats, for example, that they have an amazing

way of creating and holding space.

They're very deliberate about it.

They're very thoughtful for how they, , layout expectations.

Maybe they light a candle.

Maybe there's all these specific things that actually contribute systemically to

the types of conversations that happen.

That could be something that you would be codifying as part of that method.

If that is part of the magic that you want people to be executing, otherwise.

It's, it's in your prerequisites of how it is that you have selected

your, certification candidates.

And that's where I say, you don't have to put everything

in that certification program.

You could say before somebody goes through my program, they already

are an experienced certified coach.

Maybe they have demonstrated experience of working successfully

with executives at a high level, right?

So therefore you're not teaching them how to do that.

And your thing, they're bringing it with them.

Oh, yes.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

I had a woman, it's been a couple of years now and she is a business

coach and she is in, I don't know if the word is empath or intuitive.

And so she kind of reads her clients and.

makes her recommendations based on, how she reads her clients.

And I'm like, well, how do you teach anybody else how to do that?

I mean, that's an interesting one, extremely valuable if you have happy

clients, but how would you ever not be the center of that service

Well, and I've had some clients through the

years, more on advising side who

And there can be certain things that somebody might say, depending upon

where they're coming from and what space they work in, if it's more of

like a spiritual inclination versus a particular approach or a process.

I have seen it where part of a training somebody can have is, what

are you tuning and listening to?

And there are certain things that can actually be taught and codified,

but other things definitely are just related to the individual.

And so that can be wonderful for you to have that skill.

The way to be thinking about materials you have for a certification is by definition,

you get excited about the fact that other very different people can take it and

run with it and make their unique magic.

But the part that you want to be designing for is that.

There is some kind of a rigor maybe for the use of the tools or the approach

so that you can have a little bit more predictable outcomes for your clients.

So it just won't be like a wild swing in one certified practitioners

results versus the other.

you can't control all of it, so sometimes you do your best job, but.

Yeah, really look in it and it is kind of surprising I think through the years and

it has been really fun as we've really dug in deep now for building certifications.

It is really amazing of how it is that you can draw out of somebody things

that they just thought were completely intuitive to them and it's often the

power of working with outside partners.

Is where you can hear and see things that they may not realize.

And it's funny, a typical response people have, well, doesn't everybody know that?

Like, what's so deep about that?

that's not valuable.

And we're like, literally, that is the most valuable thing that

you have in this whole process.

Yeah.

I

will say I've been surprised since I've been, basically educating.

The expert space, I spent a career inside of large intellectual

property driven organizations.

And so I P was literally just part of everyday conversation.

It and obviously it's the most valuable asset.

It's of course, you know, and the number of people, once I started,

with posting and blogging and things about intellectual property with,

small business owners, and how many of them It was like an other thing.

It was Microsoft and, Tesla, but has nothing to do with what I do.

I'm a services writer was like, wow, I was so accustomed to it

being just kind of common knowledge.

Doesn't everybody know?

Like, it's.

The 21st century, everybody knows about intellectual property.

It's 95 percent of our gross national product.

How could you not know?

we do get in our bowels and think, and don't realize how much value we

can bring with our kind of skills that we have that we use every day.

I agree, I'd say 95 percent of people don't know what you

think about intellectual property.

So good for you.

Well, there's

endless number of topics to I've discovered.

So it has been fun to do that.

Honestly.

All right.

So our last example here.

Web designer has a killer trademark for her company name.

As a result, sometimes she gets clients simply because people remember the name

of her business when asked for a referral to web designers, she does have a good

system ties, work process, but the work itself isn't terribly differentiated

because of the strength of her trademark.

She wants to create a certification program for other web designers.

so this could be where it is more around, being very sticky and,

having a sticky model, a sticky name just, you can't really discount the catchiness

of something when you, I mean, a name like value builder that we were talking

about earlier is to me, an example of just like a great name where we're often

like, Oh, why didn't I think about that?

That can help just by definition, when you think about the model and

be something that other people want.

It's great that model.

Is protected.

So to have that trademark on it, I think is a unique opportunity.

I always think about it in the bigger picture in terms of, thinking about that

audience, maybe of other web designers and also the nature of that person's business

where you're choosing to be certifying in this case, maybe practitioners.

Of other designers that are using that method that is sticky and you

built that brand and protected it.

Are you in some ways creating your own competitors if you're not ready

to be giving up your regular business?

So that's the thing to.

Be careful of and it often again is a stage of maturity in business

to where you say, I'm actually not interested anymore in doing most of the

work myself that it makes me excited to take this method to have it as a

tool to make it easier for others.

And then your main focus becomes being the mentor, the capacity

builder for people who can take it and run with it to have impact.

it's always the market audience conversation that we have with people

initially where they might, it is common that you can have a method or an approach

that could be applicable for independent practitioners and for large companies.

And so in that case, it really is about what is.

Your vision for your own business model in the market dynamics.

And some people don't realize, yeah.

You I mean, there's amazing, smart people out there and you

could train and certify others.

And let's say, for example, they have better sales and marketing

mojo than you have inadvertently.

You can end up creating a competitor.

If you don't have any way of Financially benefiting from that you could be

excited and proud that your name is out there, but you may not be

an as strong a financial position.

Yeah.

in this example, the trademark is the business name As opposed to, say,

the process name, and so licensing the business name, obviously, would

be very tricky unless you were going to get out of the business yourself.

Yeah.

maybe you switching it over to a process, trademark The trademark applying to the

process, but, I am kind of ambivalent about trademarks and mostly because

I work in the, the B to B world.

And so we have experts, who come to me and they, like, they have

this trademark and they're very passionate about their trademark and.

I'll say, what kind of transformation do you pride for your client?

No, do this and that we, you know, what does that have to do with the trademark?

well, nothing it's, so do you think the client wouldn't work with you?

If you had a different trademark?

Like, well, no, it's still like, so, like, it's not that they're unimportant.

Yeah, and this is again, I'm talking about the B2B B2C world.

They're obviously important in the B2C, but for people to be overly invested in

their trademarks, as if that's some sort of magic bullet in getting corporate

clients, because, corporate clients, don't really care about your trademark.

Honestly, they care about the value you provide the transformation you provide.

And that is, with your methods and your trainings and the things that we copyright

and not with the things that we trademark.

but, there's certainly value.

Like, you have a trademark that is throughout.

the industry here, you we have a web designer who everyone knows

who she is because she's got the coolest business name and there's

something to trade on that.

So this is a harder 1, but just, you know, cause I'm definitely, I

go back and forth on trademarks.

So,

which is why we always seem to have lawyers

involved in the conversation.

That's right.

Well, I think that was a great conversation.

Thank you for indulging me with a little issue spotting there.

So, as you know, this is a very meta podcast.

It is for female founders of expertise businesses who want to create

scalable and saleable businesses.

And so I am wondering, are you thinking about building a

scalable and saleable business?

How do you think about your business?

Yeah.

At this stage, I've been in business 28 years, believe it or not.

So I get great joy of classically been somebody like who's creative and

interested in doing different things.

I named myself an author practitioner where I often write

books around the things that I'm working with my clients on.

And it's actually been.

Since the last couple of years or so, where we really started to lean

in to have an agency around building certifications and just really digging

into the codification that I am getting more excited and we're practicing

more within our own business and I do.

Love the idea, especially with a kid in college and another one on the way of

thinking about building that value in.

I'm not, immune to not really having it be part of the way that

I was thinking about, businesses.

So I love the idea where we end up building a really powerful, model

and a powerful machine for doing certifications, for example, and down

the road, me and my team could exit it.

in a way that makes us all money, that would make me really happy.

in the stage where we are right now, we are very deliberate in the way

that we're building it, where it is productized services, we do debriefs

after every single project, we do improvements every single time, which

brings me great joy as an instructional designer, but it really, I think will

set us up to make it easier to do that.

So that was the long answer.

The short answer is yes.

Absolutely.

I think the timeframe is a thing that will be interesting to see.

yeah, I agree.

And they're in the timeframes.

tend to be longer than we think, you know, but then sometimes people, you

hear about a, 2 year exit, who knows?

So you never quite know, but always, it's never too early to think about

creating your own intellectual property.

if you get some comfort out of 3rd party materials in order to get started, but

always be thinking about creating your own intellectual property, because that's the

only way you're going to be able to build a truly scalable and saleable business.

That's right.

Yeah, well, thank you.

So, we love to talk about, creating a society that works for more of

us and more equitable society.

I love to say wealth in the hands of women can change the world,

but it's both in the hands of more of us could change the world.

And so, is there a.

person organization that is working to create an economy that works for

everyone that you'd like to share.

Yeah.

Locally, I work with rail, which stands for retail art, innovation,

and livability, which is a local community development corporation, CDC.

And so this is an example my husband and I opened a community lab just

about eight years ago, and we're just completing the cycle of having it open.

It's a bit of self funded space, specifically focused on by entrepreneurs.

And so in the work that we've done with rail over the years, they have a

very deliberate approach to how they're working in our case with community.

We are probably similar to many other.

areas where in Arizona, anybody who's been tuned into politics know, there's

all kinds of things that are happening here in Arizona in terms of, how things

work and in our specific downtown area, we have around 70 percent folks of color,

primarily Latino, in the downtown area, but there is really not the same kind

of, Connection access to resources, even though literally it's like one street

away for what happens on main street.

So I've been super excited through the years to be building more connections

with them and watching the way that they specifically work literally on

a person to person basis with a lot of the much smaller entrepreneurs.

It can be folks who have mixed documentation households.

It can be for street vendors.

It can be for neighbors who have cottage industries coming out of their home.

But during COVID times, they were working, they go door to door.

Sometimes they'd be standing, you know, with three masks on walking through

helping people to fill out the PPP forms, to get access to resources.

And to me, it's, combining the really hands on approach with a very specific

theory of change about how they are.

Helping, renters purchase their home so they don't get pushed out with a

gentrification and to help business owners move from leasers to owners

of their commercial buildings and really strengthening neighborhoods.

So to me, it is intersectional for sure.

in general, women.

Are the powerhouses in the neighborhoods who are doing so much, and it really

is looking at entire families and neighborhoods that are working together.

So actually I'm gonna be moving my office in conjunction with them as a next

step after we move out of here in June.

And I couldn't be more excited 'cause it just fuels.

Everything about my own, like local contribution, but it's also a model.

It's like a microcosm of ways that I think about ways we can even be working

virtually with people in community.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Well, we will have the, URL for, Brill CDC in, well, I just said it

too, it'll be in the show notes as well.

And so as we wrap up, is there, something new happening in your business and offer

you'd like to share with the audience?

I have rolling probably the best way to access

more of our public classes.

I love to teach.

I love cohort based programs.

So for those who might be a little bit earlier on where you're like,

I think I have some good stuff, but it's not really codified.

We have a class called productize your service, discover your

unique thumbprint method.

And that's for people who want to work on really codifying their method.

I co teach it with my amazing.

team, Josiah Owens and Darren Padilla.

And so it's a really focused, like a two week sprint class that is very

hands on where we work with folks to be building their own methods, which

is the precursor for certification.

So we do that a couple times a year.

I think we'll have that in the show notes for the next one coming up.

And we would love to see you there.

Otherwise I highlight now, I started a few weeks ago, a newsletter

on LinkedIn called smart IP.

And so I'm writing specifically around issues related to, IP over there.

Not IP law,

although I'll feature IP and the concepts out there,

the better it is for everyone.

There you go.

I will feature people like you, but yeah, all the rest of the stuff.

Yeah.

I just discovered the LinkedIn newsletter.

we found it accidentally, honestly, cause like, it was hosting and, cause

before I think it was kind of like an article I think was kind of, yeah.

And then the newsletter and we're like, Oh, this is like growing really fast.

Like what's happening here?

cause I think they're, promoting it and pushing them out.

So yeah,

they're, great.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

had avoided it for a long time, but now it's amazing.

And you know, and like.

Yeah.

And so think it's great to, drive that interest in places where people

are looking for that information.

Perfect.

wonderful.

Well, thank you so much, Pam.

This has been such a fun episode.

I know it was extremely helpful to the audience and I can't

thank you enough for being here.

Thanks for having me.