I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Ritzheimer, host of The Secrets of the High Demand Coach Podcast. It was a rollicking fast-paced interview that I think you will really like and Scott kindly allowed me to share it here with you.

A little about Scott: He has helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and, with his business partner, started and led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth), all before he turned 35.

Here are a few key takeaways from our conversation together:

• The importance of owning and controlling intellectual property as a prerequisite for scaling expertise-based businesses. Whether it's a book, a course, or workshop, these assets are copyrightable and can be sold as part of the business. 
• The consequences of failing to build a business that can run without the founder. 
• Adapting to changing market forces and building multiple revenue streams is crucial in decoupling income from time. 
• While AI may be a trendy topic, I argue that it cannot replace the unique value that human expertise and personal touch bring to businesses. Thought leadership and unparalleled services are the keys to staying ahead in the market.

Overall, this episode delved into the fascinating world of building and protecting saleable assets in female-founded expertise-based businesses.

Tune in to the full episode to dive deeper into this enlightening conversation. You can find the episode on your favorite podcast platform.

#HourlyToExit #PodcastEpisode #BusinessGrowth #IPProtection #ScaleYourBusiness #ThoughtLeadership

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 recently had the pleasure

of being interviewed

by Scott Ritzheimer.

He's the host of the secrets

of the high demand coach

podcast, and it was such.

A fun, fast paced interview.

It was almost like

whiplash, but so much

good stuff in there.

As soon as we finished

recording, I immediately told

Stacey, I want to release this

as an episode of the hourly,

the exit podcast as well.

So enjoy.

Thanks.

Hello.

Hello and welcome.

Welcome once again to

the secrets of the high

demand coach podcast.

And I'm here with high

demand coach, which she's

actually an attorney and

a strategic consultant.

This is the one and

the only Erin Austin.

She's a graduate of Harvard

law school, and she uses her

25 plus years of practicing

law to help female founders

of expertise based firms to

build and protect saleable.

Assets so that the business

is ready to sell when the

founder is ready to exit.

And Aaron's experience as a

lawyer and as an executive

at the intersection of

business and law informs the

elevated legal and strategic

business advice that she

provides to her clients.

Her expertise includes roles

as COO and general counsel

for, MGM Teaching Strategies

and M3 USA Corporation.

Well, Aaron.

this feels like it's been

forever and coming, but I'm

so excited that you're here

with us now on the show.

before we get into how

you're helping particularly

female entrepreneurs,

I'd love to just hear a

little bit of your story.

What were you doing

before helping, founders

build saleable and

scalable businesses?

And why did you

ultimately make the leap?

Yeah,

well, I thank you

for having me, Scott.

So I've spent a career

helping big businesses

get bigger, frankly.

And, that's probably way

a lot of lawyers start.

We come out, we go to

big firms, we end up in

house at big companies.

And, obviously, you it's.

It's a great way to make a

living, of course, but there

came a time when one, as

my career matured and I was

looking for something just

a that was more, a little

bit more aligned with my

personal goals, as I have a

son who's getting older, I'm

about to be an empty nester.

and have a little

more time on my hand.

And I'm like, well, what can

I do that has more impact?

I think all of us kind of get

there eventually about how

we can, use our expertise to

have greater impact and trying

to figure out like how to.

Translate my big company

experience into working

with a different population.

And it took me a bit to

figure it out, frankly.

And then I realized, you

know, a lot of my big clients,

they are in the IP space

and I work on, protecting

their intellectual property.

And a lot of it

is with services.

And so I'm like,

well, wait, there's.

Other populations who

have service based

businesses that they have

intellectual property

that they need to protect

and that I can translate.

It's not, the same scale,

but also use my IP based

experience working with

service based businesses

to help them protect their

IP and in particular,

with respect to women.

I mean, it's no secret.

I don't think that wealth,

Has a voice in this country

and in order to kind of,

spread some of the wealth,

spread some of the influence

that comes with it, to more

people to work with, women

in particular, I believe

that wealth in the hands of

women can change the world.

And so helping them turn

their businesses, not just

into income, providers,

but also wealth builders.

So that's how I got

here.

I love that.

I love that.

And, I was telling you

before we hit record here

that I have no idea how to

get all the questions that

I have for you down into

about a 20 minute block.

So we're going to try and

do this as best we can.

but, I just want to

start off and say.

Head over to Aaron's site.

We'll put the link in the

show notes, and we'll talk a

little bit about it at the end

here, but there's so much good

stuff on there, so go check

that out, you're not going to

regret it, but I'd love for

you to just unpack a couple

things for me, you make some

pretty profound statements

on your site, I'm going to

read them back to you, and

then I want to hear your

thoughts on them, so One of

them is owning and controlling

intellectual property is the

prerequisite to scaling your

B2B expertise based business.

There's not a lot of people

saying that right now.

So tell us what

you mean by that.

Yeah,

that makes me insane.

That a lot of the day, if

we want to stop selling

our time, as an expert,

so to speak, and, instead

sell our expertise, then

we have to have an asset

there, either we're selling

our time or we're selling.

An asset.

And so if we want to build

assets, when we're experts,

it's not something that's

patentable, like a, you know,

a car or pharmaceutical, it's

not something that's like a

trade secret, like Coca Cola.

Our expertise is saleable

in the form of copyrightable

intellectual property.

And so if it's a book or a

course or the, workshops that

you provide, the trainings

you provide your clients.

All those things are

copyrightable assets and we

can't copyright something

if we don't own it.

And so I keep kind of

like, people like, well,

I get lots of questions

about, registering stuff,

like, well, do you own it?

just because you worked

on something doesn't mean

you own it just because

you created something

doesn't mean you own it.

so we have to be aware

of the whole life cycle

of, from creation.

Ownership, utilization,

registration of our IP assets.

And so you don't want to

create, a course using, stuff

that you got off the internet

or materials that you got

from a certification program

or something that you took

from your corporate job.

you can't create

courses out of that.

So you need to make sure

you own your own assets

in order to do that.

Yeah.

Oh, that's so good.

you made another

statement here.

It's a little bit

longer, but again, I

want to read it because

I think it's fascinating.

And that is that the biggest

threat to your expertise

based business isn't AI.

AI might be able to

write a cookbook, but

it can never be a chef.

The bigger threat, is failing

to build a business that can

run without you failing to

build your business so that

your income is decoupled

from your time and failing

to adapt to the changing

market forces, such as low

cost competitors or micro

learning, learning on demand.

In other words, you

need to build a business

with multiple revenue

streams that can scale.

so, some people, especially

with how trendy AI is

know, that's probably

pretty drawing for them.

So.

Again, what do you

kind of mean by that?

And what can we

actually do about it?

Yeah.

I mean, obviously AI is at

the top of everyone's, mind

and I do get a fair amount of

inquiries about it, but the

end of the day, AI is just

another way of accumulating.

Already known information

and so, it's just a better

version of Google, frankly,

if you have your intellectual

property, your expertise,

your, publishing it.

you should be publishing it.

So you're developing

your thought leadership.

Every single human with

an Internet has access,

whether they use chat, GBT

or whatever other AI, they

have access to it right now.

They can go on Google and get

it right now and copy it right

now and steal it right now.

Right.

So that's not going to change.

and someone can, you know,

does it make it easier for

them to take your materials

and stick it in the AI

and change it enough.

But at the end of the day, you

can't stop copycats because

we can't protect ideas.

So the way we protect our

position in the marketplace

is through our expertise by

providing the Michelin, level

service to your clients,

becoming the go to person

in your space, becoming the

leader, the thought leader.

And so.

That's how you combat,

whether it's Google or

AI or other bad actors.

It's not, by somehow keeping

everything secret because

it's not going to help you.

You can't keep it.

If you keep your stuff secret,

you're going to stay secret.

Right.

but if you want to scale,

on the other hand, if all

you're doing is kind of,

selling your time, doing

custom work that you don't

own, you're not developing

processes, you're not

developing your own solutions.

You're not, Creating assets

that you can use to put

leverage into your business.

you will obviously top out.

That's why you're here.

You that's going to be the

end of, you know, that's it.

That's all you want then.

But if you want to grow your

business, then you have to

be creating assets and you

can't be obsessing about AI.

That

some of

the advice that I'll give,

especially to those in

the coaching profession.

and so I want to

have a fun little

conversation around this.

I think that, for a lot of

coaches, maybe not as much

writing a book, but creating

courses or other kind of

lower market engagements is

oftentimes a distraction.

here's, why I think one of the

things that happens if we're

not careful, we do it for

the value of leverage, right?

Because it doesn't take

my time, but it takes

a long time to do it.

And we do it so clumsily

that it actually takes

more time for the value

that we get back out of it.

Right.

And so for me, I've always

encouraged folks to go after

the thing that provides

the highest value for time.

Don't sell your time,

agree with you there,

but provide the highest

value for your time.

And so how do you

help folks navigate?

are you creating courses

just because someone told

you to create courses or

are they really a strategic

step in the right direction?

Yeah, I'm using

courses as a kind of just a

cheap example, it also apply

to productized services.

even if it's not packaged as a

productized service, if you've

systematized your services,

so you created, so you can

expand, as an agency, you need

to have processes in place.

It just can't be your genius

sitting down every day,

genius saying, and order to

improve your business, there

has to be processes in place.

So you can either,

delegate those.

Less expensive pieces so

that you can just operate

at the genius level.

And then you have less

expensive resources doing

some of the groundwork.

So can be either things that

you sell literally or assets

that use within the business

to make your business more

efficient and profitable.

Yeah.

And that

I could not agree more with.

One of the biggest things that

I've found in, in doing this

podcast and in an interviewing

near about a thousand coaches

now is the number one thing

that what I would call like

a high demand coach from

kind of your average coach

that neither of them is

a bad person, but some of

them have figured it out.

They've unlocked something

and some haven't yet.

the thing to unlock that

something is what I call

a structured offering.

And I think this is where

you and I are on exactly

the same page that if

you're just making it up as

you go, I would go so far

as to say, it's not just

that you haven't built a

scalable saleable business.

I would actually say you're,

doing a disservice to

your clients, Because it's

completely dependent on

how you show up that day.

Yes.

And you're going

to have good days.

You're going to have

bad days, right?

And so what I did love about

the way that you laid this

out and the idea of creating

these processes one, so

people can help, but I think

a bigger part of it and

what's really helpful for

a lot of coaches, because.

They want to know that

what they do matters and is

helpful is the biggest thing

that I've seen to generate

higher ROI for your clients

is to actually do what

you're talking about here.

The really cool thing that

you bring to the table

is that it's not just for

the ROI for your clients,

but that it actually can

end up being an asset

for you for the long run.

Absolutely.

And what you mentioned, it

reminds me, frankly, of the

legal industry, where we

typically build by the hour.

And so we are disincentivized

from finding really efficient

ways to deliver services.

But as a consequence,

a lot of times we are

kind of just starting

from the beginning with.

Each engagement, every time I

pick up a services agreement

to review it, I, have, and

I will confess, just kind of

read through it by my lines.

I do have to read

the whole thing.

I can't skip through it,

but I have put in place,

checklists and sample

language and things like that.

So that every time I go

through it, another, a hundred

page services agreement that

I don't miss anything because

these things can happen.

And so you take some

of the risk out for you

and your client when you

Scott Ritzheimer:

have these things.

And I think there's

something again, this

really cool that happens.

And, amazing thing about

doing this, really approaching

it this way is one.

If you just want to do your

own thing and you just want

to increase the, what you

can build per hour, right?

By increasing your value

and, optimizing your time,

this is the best thing to do.

the biggest thing that

I've seen accomplish is the

amount of time you spend

between sessions, right?

So for coaches, you don't

typically build by the

hour you build by the

session and where a lot of

coaches get really stuck.

And a lot of service

providers, just in general,

I just happen to work with

a lot of coaches, but, is.

They're not billing

for the two thirds of

their time that's not

in the session room.

And you can dramatically

reduce that with, things

like checklists and processes

and following the same

thing the whole way through.

The other really, really cool

thing about it is that it's

a very incremental step to

moving towards certification.

and allowing other

people to step into that.

So tell us a little bit

about, how does this idea

of certification plan one?

What are the IP considerations

just quickly that we

might want to consider?

And then two, how does that

play into this idea of, moving

from your hourly to exit?

Yeah, so just

quickly on the IP side,

it goes back to owning the

elements that you're using.

when we are providing one

on one services to our

clients, we may have 3rd

party materials that we're

using there and it's fine.

We have right to use it.

Say we got it from a.

Another certification

program or continuing

education or something.

We can use it with our

one on one clients.

Well, we can't license

that on to a 3rd party

certification is a license.

So that would be

a sub license.

So we had to make sure that

anything that we're proposing

to certify, we own it 100%.

and then it helps us move to

the exit because it helps us.

We take our expertise instead

of, you know, you can grow

either internally by What

Adding experts internally,

or you can grow externally

by licensing other experts

to use your expertise.

And so that's what

certification would be.

without kind of the

certification part, it could

just be a license, but the

certification part usually

comes with some kind of

training element and some

kind of proof of competency.

So depending on the nature

of what your expertise

is, you may want to go

the certification route.

But that also helps kind

of extend your own, brand

because people like, Hey,

I was trained by, Scott and

that's why I do what I do.

So yeah.

Scott Ritzheimer:

That's awesome.

I had a guest on a few

episodes back, his name

was Mitch Russo, and he

talked about this idea

of certification as well.

But I would imagine when

you're working with, it

probably blows them away what

they're sitting on and they

don't even know they have it.

Would you agree with that?

let me say this way, would

you say that most, especially

female entrepreneurs are

sitting on more value than

they even know they have?

Yeah.

I mean,

what is it that your

clients come to you for?

you're doing something

that's providing

value to your clients.

They're choosing you instead

of choosing somebody else.

And so if they're willing to

pay you for that, outcome,

then, there's only so many

people that you can service

that there are other clients

that you couldn't service

that could have benefit from.

Whatever the transformation is

that you provide and you can,

extend that reach either, you

know, through other experts

or through some, products.

and so there's more than one

way to get, to leverage your

expertise.

Yeah.

Oh, that's so good.

so good.

So, there's a question I

like to ask all my guests.

It's this, what is the

biggest secret that you just

wish wasn't a secret at all?

What's that one thing you're

sitting there and you just

wish everyone listening,

you're watching today, new

Yeah, well,

it's going to be about IP.

So I like to say

IP is everywhere.

It's literally all day, every

day when every time we sit

down as experts sit down at

our desks, we're creating

intellectual property.

We're using our intellect.

We're creating

intellectual property.

We're talking here.

We're posting on LinkedIn.

We're, creating deliverables

for our clients.

We're training people online.

All that that's intellectual

property, people think

IP is just software and

books, you know, external

things, but it's all the

things that we create that

are the way we express our

intellectual property, way

we use our expertise, all

that stuff is intellectual

property and issue isn't.

Do you have any.

The issue is, are you

owning and controlling it.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, yeah, that's

a great point.

So, another question here.

we've talked a lot about, you

know, kind of how you help

your clients, but want to

turn things around a little

bit, take off your kind of

attorney consultant hat for

a moment, put on your, CEO

hat, kind of jumped down into

the ring with the rest of us.

What's the next stage of

growth look like for you

and your business and what

challenge will you have

to overcome to get there?

Oh, boy, well,

this has been

a tough one for me, because

as a lawyer, I do have like

confidentiality issues.

So group programs are tough.

And, if I do products,

well, can I disclaim,

liability for our products?

but nonetheless, I am

working on some group

programs regarding

copyright registration,

because people have a lot

of questions about it.

And so to be able to do that

in a group context, not just

templates, but, developing

some negotiation guides,

it's one thing if you're,

an online business, so to

speak, but when you have

corporate clients, templates

don't really help you because

your corporate clients

send you their agreements.

And so you need to know

what to do when your clients

send you their agreements.

So that's what I'm

going to help people do.

So, well,

Wow.

Fantastic.

again, love, love, love the

way that you approach this.

and it's very rare

for those listening.

It's very rare to

have an attorney who's

able to enter into the

business world like this.

It's one of the things that's

so profound about you, Aaron.

And so.

For folks who need that

legal advice, who, maybe

sitting there thinking,

Hey, I probably have

more IP than I thought.

and they want to know

what the next steps are.

They want to know

how you can help.

can they find more

out about what you do

and connect with you?

Yeah.

Well, you can find me at

my website, thinkbeyondip.

com.

And there I do have

a free assessment.

That's.

Called is your expertise,

copyrightable, and you can

take that and it can give you

an initial analysis of, kind

of what requirements are to

have copyrightable, material.

And from there, look at

the other ways that you

can work with me online and

then you can always find

me at LinkedIn as well.

I've been on there.

Forever.

So I am the only Aaron, well,

the original Aaron Austin.

I imagine there are others

that came after me, but,

just my name, Aaron Austin.

Scott Ritzheimer:

The OG Aaron Austin.

That's right.

Oh, that's so good.

So again, Aaron's,

, website is fantastic.

Think beyond ip.

com.

It's in the notes.

We'll put her LinkedIn

profile there as well.

So you can click right to

it and Aaron, thank you

so much for being here.

and it was just an

honor having you.

And for those who are watching

or listening today, you know,

your time and attention.

I hope you got as much out

of this conversation as I

know I did, and I cannot

wait to see you next time.

Take care.

Thank you.