🎙️ Happy New Year! Let’s hit the ground running with a framework for turning your expertise into scalable revenue streams. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this is a must-listen for anyone looking to maximize their intellectual property.

Erin takes us through a three-step process to transform your intellectual property into valuable assets that generate repeatable scalable revenue: Audit, Protect, and Leverage.

1. Audit Your Business Assets: Identify the valuable resources in your business, from assessment tools to deliverables, and understand who owns or controls them. This forms the foundation of creating scalable IP-based revenue.

2. Protect Your Assets: Learn the importance of copyright registration and solid contracts to safeguard your most valuable assets. Copyrighted materials and effective contracts are essential for preserving your expertise.

3. Leverage for Profitability: Discover how to increase revenue and efficiency without inflating time and costs. By decoupling income from your time and leveraging copyrighted materials, you can create offers–both services and products–that are scalable and profitable.

Tune in to the full episode for more insights on creating a scalable, expertise-based business! Link to the episode in the comments. #HourlyToExit #IntellectualProperty #RevenueStreams #BusinessGrowth 🚀

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, welcome to this week's

edition of the hourly to

exit podcast and to h2e 2024.

Hope you had a wonderful

holiday and ready to get

going in the new year.

So in April, I will

be celebrating.

The third year of the hourly

to exit podcast, I'm in a bit

of a shock, but I have been

doing this since April, 2022.

And when I started, I thought

I had a pretty clear plan.

I was working with someone

to help me plan out an entire

season of topics and guests.

And well, you know what they

say about the best laid plans.

Turns out that there is

a lot of ground to cover

between hourly and exit.

And so it seemed like a

really good idea at the time.

I mean, how else am I

going to have a ton of

stuff to talk about?

want to have a very broad.

Universe of topics.

And of course that

encourages lots of

different guests as well.

And I absolutely have loved

the amazing women and one

man that I've had as guests

over the past two years, but

I found that I was having

a hard time kind of getting

a thread like a unified

thread running through

the in 2023, about midway

through the year, I started

recording solo episodes.

I think that's when I went

weekly to try to remember.

and so more solos, I

was a little afraid.

I don't think I did any

solos the first year.

I was a little afraid of the

solos and, talking about.

Contracts and copyrights,

my two favorite subjects,

and I will tell you,

I really love it.

Like my solo episodes

are my favorite episodes.

but even though I was

talking about contracts and

copyrights, that's still

a pretty broad topics.

And so I still felt

like I needed a little

more, structure to what

I'll be talking about.

And so, you know, I

don't need to talk about.

Yeah.

Everything 1, because, I don't

know everything I'm trying,

but I don't know everything.

And 2, you don't need

to know everything.

there is specifically what you

come to me for is because you

want to turn your expertise

into intellectual property

that so you can create

scalable revenue streams.

That's why you're here.

And so with that in mind,

I have, found a framework.

We love our frameworks in

order to kind of be really

clear about how I can best

help you, and that is what

I will focus on during

the podcast this year.

So it is a three step process,

use IP to turn your expertise

into scalable revenue streams.

So the three parts are

audit, protect, and scale.

So first audit.

First step is that you need

to audit the assets that you

already have in your business.

And yes, you do already have

assets in your business.

So in layman's term,

what is an asset?

An asset is a useful

or valuable thing,

person, or quality.

And more specifically in

business terms, an asset is

any resource that a business.

Owns or controls that can be

sold or licensed for money.

So what are the assets

in your business?

What do you sell

to your clients?

maybe you're selling your

time, which is valuable.

Maybe you even charge a lot

for it, but it is limited.

How else do you provide

value to your clients?

So it is with your expertise.

And without being flippant,

I mean, we're here because,

we have an expertise based

business, a professional

services business, and

we sell our expertise,

but a lot of or services

providers do not treat

their expertise as assets.

They're still just selling it

as time, but it is an asset if

we properly take care of it.

So first, if we go back

to making sure we are

auditing our businesses.

To identify the assets

that we currently

have in our business.

here are a few examples of

assets, the assessment tool

that you use, even in the

proposal stage, this is before

you even deliver something.

You may have something that

you're using internally that

helps you, determine your

proposals, how you're going

to charge for what you're

going to charge what the

deliverables will be that

assessment tool is an asset.

When you have a deliverable,

let's say you deliver

strategic plans, that

strategic plan, even if you

are assigning all rights to

your client, the elements

that go into it are an asset.

Any secondary research that

you're using, maybe you have

a whole catalog of secondary

research that you lean on when

you're doing your analysis.

Not all of it's

going to be primary.

So it'll be secondary.

Those are assets.

If you have created an

original training program,

of course, that is an asset.

Those worksheets that

you, Acquired during your

certification program,

those are assets,

you may not own them.

You're probably

given permission, i.

e.

a license to use them,

but things that are in our

business that we access to

legally are still assets.

So the web design

of your website.

That's an asset.

And so these are all

assets in your business.

And the only difference among

those bullets is who owns it.

Some of those you clearly

own the original training

materials that you created,

web design that you had

someone make for you subject

to something we're going

to talk about a minute.

and some of those you

don't own, but you control

such as things that you

have a license to use.

what's important is.

Figuring out this is what

your audit process is 1 what

the assets in your business

are and 2 who owns it and

or controls it because

this is the foundation

of creating scalable.

IP based revenue ownership

or control of assets.

So we're going to make sure

that you understand the assets

that are flowing through

your business that make sure

that you can create revenue

generating assets that you

understand the depth and

the breadth of your assets.

So you don't miss

leverage opportunities.

And that you can take

advantage of any third

party assets that you

have without fear of

copyright infringement.

Think back to those

worksheets that you got in

your certification program.

You have the legal right to

use those in your business.

Do you have a right to

create other revenue

generating assets with it?

That's what we want to

find out as well during

our audit process.

let's imagine a clothing store

and that it has just a jumble

of garments in the back room.

They've never done

an inventory of it.

Like, how would they

know what they have?

How would they know if

the sales associates are

walking out the door with it?

How would they know what is

required to make a profit?

How long have they been

holding it in their

inventory without selling it?

Same thing with the assets

in your business, unless

you are inventorying it

and auditing it, then you

won't know what you have,

what's valuable, what's

not valuable, what's being

wasted, what's Walking out

the door with subcontractors.

This is all part of

the audit process.

when you are an expertise

based business, the other

thing is, if you don't know

what you have, and you're

using it in a way that

is in breach of perhaps

a client agreement, maybe

you have a deliverable

that you thought you could

reuse with another client.

But you gave all those rights

to client A, you can't use

it again with client B.

Let's make sure that you

own what you think you own.

And if you don't, then

let's clean it up.

The second step is protect.

So there are two forms

of protection of our

assets, copyright

registration and contracts.

Why copyright

registration instead of

trademark registration?

Well, remember that

list of assets I said, I

mentioned above it was.

Assessment, strategic

plans, research, training

programs, worksheets,

websites, all those things.

Are copyrightable materials.

unlike physical assets like

the clothes, anyone can access

your intangible assets like

anyone who has access to them

can copy them take them over.

So the way that we protect

people from just taking our

materials is we register them

with the copyright office.

So the way we really protect

our, most valuable assets,

the things that our clients

remember assets are the things

that people you sell and to

people and say, we don't sell

our trademarks to people.

We sell the copyrighted

materials or the fruits

of our expertise in

the form of copyrighted

materials to our clients.

That is what our clients

are paying us for.

Here is a brief example

to illustrate that point.

So you have a consultancy, an

HR consultancy, the name of it

is Diversity Talent Solutions,

and you have a registered

trademark on that name, and

it provides DEI training

to its corporate clients.

So you have two types

of intellectual property

in this business.

You have your

trademark on diversity.

Talent solutions, and you have

your copyright protections

on your training materials,

which could be videos, slides,

workbooks, other types of

guides, and any product that

you provide to your clients.

what does your client pay for?

of those two buckets provides

value to your client?

It is the copyrighted

material, right?

That's why it is so

important to make sure we

are registering our money

making copyrighted revenue

generating materials.

There'll be lots of materials

in our business, like,

LinkedIn posts and social

media, things like that.

Maybe our newsletters that

aren't directly revenue

generating, but the things

that people are actually

paying us money for.

We want to make sure those

things are registered

with the copyright office.

The 2nd, part of

protection is contracts.

know, people generally

don't have people ripping.

with ill intent, ripping

off your copyrights.

It happens.

We all have heard the

stories of people just

taking over someone's website

and all their content and

selling it as their own.

But that really is the

exception and not the rule.

The number 1 way we lose

control of our most valuable

assets are our contracts.

Or I should say our failure

to use contracts or our

failure to understand what we

are signing when the client

presents their contract to us.

when we think

about intellectual

property, generally.

And if we kind of take a

common sense approach to who

owns something, unfortunately,

the intellectual property

laws generally don't,

match up with what your

common sense, understanding

of what property, means.

So, when we want to make

sure that we're owning and

controlling the copyrights

that flow through our

business, we have to

start with our contracts.

So we need contracts with

our clients so that we are

1 reserving the rights in

our pre existing materials.

So we're not giving

rights to them to own it.

And when we.

give them permission to use

our preexisting materials.

We want to make sure we limit

that license so they can't

do all the things that we

can do as copyright owner.

I frequently see license

provisions like, yep, we

reserve the rights in the

preexisting material, but

then we go on to grant

a license to the client.

That is so broad that

they can literally

literally will state.

All the copyrights in there

that I licensed you the

right to make copies and

make derivatives and sub

license it and transfer

to do all these things.

The same rights that we

have as a copyright owner.

And so we don't

want to do that.

So that is a major, threat

if we aren't understanding

our contracts and essentially

it'll permits our client

to continue legally.

Without breaching our

rights, infringing our

rights to legally continue

to use our materials

without paying us forward

or without our permission.

And the other thing, you

know, I love to harp about

non competes on a non

compete hater because non

competitors, a group of

competitors is a niche.

Right?

And so we want to make

sure we were able to work

with competing companies.

And that Provides even

more value to them,

frankly, as your expertise

grows in that niche.

And then we also need to

have contracts with our

contractors back to that kind

of common sense understanding

of how property should work

in intellectual property.

The default is that the

human being who created it.

Owns it unless there's

something in writing signed

by the creator that would

give it to you as the client.

So when you're the client,

you also want to make

sure that you're using

agreements that are signed.

If the intent is for you

to own the deliverable,

if you don't have it,

something signed, you

don't own the deliverable.

You have a right to use

it, but you do not own it.

this is the kind of thing also

that we would find out during

the audit stage as well.

Like, do you have deliverables

that you thought you own,

but you don't because

you didn't have your

contractor sign agreements.

The final, leg of our, IP

to scalable and, revenue

generating assets is leverage.

so leverage means

increasing profitability.

It's not just about

increasing revenue, but

increasing the profitability.

So we have leverage in

our business when we can

increase revenue and do that

without increasing costs,

or we can decrease costs

without also decreasing our

revenue, preferably both.

We can increase revenue

while decreasing costs.

is the ultimate

leverage, right?

So we can have

leveraged services.

People think it

has to be products.

We'll talk about that

in a minute, but we can

have leveraged services.

So even one on one services,

even high tech services, if

we have systematized them

and or productized them.

We can increase the efficiency

in delivery, and when we

become more efficient in

delivery, we decrease the

cost, even though we are

charging the same, maybe

even more because the more

dependable are are, the more.

The happier clients we

have and the more we

could charge for them.

Remember that you are

the most expensive

resource in your business.

So anything that you can

do to decrease your time

spent in delivery, whether

it's through systems or

technology or, less expensive

humans, then you are.

Increasing profitability,

and you've added leverage

to your business and then

also increasing revenue

per sale would be another

example without, increasing

the cost of the sale.

So, let's say you bundle

2 offers together, then,

you get the benefit of the.

Increased revenue from

that 2nd offer, but the

still the same resources

expended to get to the sale.

So that has become more

profitable, more revenue

without increasing the,

cost of the sale and then.

There is just the

complete decoupling of

income from your time.

We do this through one

to several offers or

one to many offers.

And you know, what is the

basis of every single, and

I'm not being extreme here,

literally the basis of

every single one to several

or one too many offer.

copyrighted materials

that's why I am banging

the drums on copyrights.

examples.

Your products, courses,

books, anything that you

are providing a subscription

to such as software or a

database, all copyrighted

materials and then services

that are, one to several

or one to many like

trainings or, memberships,

the foundation of those is

all copyrighted materials.

So before you can legally.

Offer a one to several or

a one too many service or

product, you must own and

control the underlying

intellectual property.

That is vitally important.

back to that audit

stage and our contracts.

So, that's what you can

look forward to in 2024.

And beyond, I would love

to have you come back every

week to find out more easy

to digest content will be

content will be trainings and

some products that are created

specifically for experts

with corporate clients that

fit into these three areas.

pillars of creating a scalable

expertise based business.

Remember they are audit,

protect and leverage.

And I look forward

to the next year.

Thanks friends.