Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Aaron Austin. Aaron. You help consultants and coaches turn their expertise into new, scalable revenue streams by creating, protecting, and licensing intellectual property.

Speaker 1 00:01:18 This is a topic I am a big fan of. You are also the founder of Think Beyond IP and that's your website. Think beyond ip.com. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:01:30 Very excited. Thank you Josh.

Speaker 1 00:01:32 Yeah. Well give us an overview of your work who you serve and what you do.

Speaker 2 00:01:37 Yeah. So I love working with experts, especially those with corporate clients, to help them decouple their income from their time. I mean, when we're experts, you know, we a lot of us start off by selling our time. But you get to a point where there's only one so much time, you have so much you can bill per hour. And if you want to continue to grow without working more, you have to figure out a way to sell something other than your time. And when we are experts, what assets do we have? Well, our assets are is our intellect. And how do we make assets out of our intellect, intellectual property. And so that is what I help people turn their expertise into intellectual property.

Speaker 2 00:02:20 So they have something to sell other than their time.

Speaker 1 00:02:23 That's fascinating. If I could, if I may, I'd love to maybe talk about generally what I do and see, you know, help me brainstorm on this idea and I hope I proxy to a friend that's listening, may hear some great ideas. So, you know, as an agency or a consultancy, you know, we're really kind of focused on the revenue of a, you know, B2B coach, consultant, agency owner or service provider. And we really kind of help focus on driving a lot of introductions. And we do that through a platform that we've developed. But maybe we haven't been thinking, you know, in regards to you know, obviously we've gotten copyright. You know, we've trademarked our brand and so forth. But I don't know that we've necessarily like, patented our processes, so to speak. can you maybe walk me through this or I don't know what questions you would typically ask in a conversation, but I am all ears right now.

Speaker 2 00:03:16 Yes, absolutely. Honestly, a lot of people have the same question. They understand, like the trademarks. If they have a trademark for their name, they have their website and they understand the those things, the content that they're creating that that's intellectual property, but they're not thinking about the intellectual property that they create all the time when they are providing services. Like if you're using your intellect, you're creating intellectual property. If you're creating a marketing plan for someone that's intellectual property, if you're doing strategy for somebody, that's intellectual property, all these things are intellectual property. The question is whether or not you own it or the client owns it. So let's say I am, I do marketing strategies and maybe I'm just doing 100% custom work. You know, I talk to my client, they tell me they want something big, bold and exciting. I start from the drawing board and I create something brand new. I sign an agreement. They own 100% of it. That was intellectual property that I created, but I sold 100% of it to the client.

Speaker 2 00:04:17 And I have nothing left other than my time. Right? Yeah. Or I can go, you know, I have, you know, been working with doctor's offices and I've noticed that they all have similar issues reaching clients of patients. I'm making this up. And so but I know from working with them that they all need, you know, this type of outreach. They need these types of assets. They need to show up in these places. And instead of just starting from scratch with every client, I've created a whole framework around how I'm going to help them, you know, reach people. And now I've created an asset that I can leverage over and over again. Either it can be me. I can take that asset and I plug in this client information in it. But I have the leverage of starting from my framework. So I'm providing the same value. So presumably I'm charging as much or more. But look how much more efficient I am. That is a form of leverage to increase my profitability.

Speaker 2 00:05:22 Or maybe I don't want to do it myself anymore, but I put this whole process in place so I can hire somebody else who's obviously the owner, and now I have leverage that way. Or maybe I just sell it to them and say, like, here, here's my process and you implement it. These are all ways that I can use my expertise that doesn't involve me, you know, plodding along by the hour.

Speaker 3 00:05:49 Wow.

Speaker 1 00:05:51 Aaron, my mind is swimming right now we'll need to continue this conversation offline. and then again, I think you're again addressing intellectual property in a way that maybe not all of us are initially thinking about. Do you mind maybe sharing a bit of your evolution, how you discovered, you know, just how valuable this is, and maybe an example or two of of someone that you worked with and, and you were able to help them realize and, and think about their systems, processes and services and so forth as something that they can package up and actually sell the rights to it.

Speaker 1 00:06:29 It's like that. So I'm just kind of previewing my own thinking on this of like how I would do that, but, I just eager to kind of sit at your feet and learn more here.

Speaker 2 00:06:39 Yeah, yeah. So my evolution is I was in-house at big companies and all IP driven companies and IP was all day, every day. And so when I, you know, got to a point where I'm like, I would like to work with a different population and this is population of experts. and I started talking to them about intellectual property. Most of them are like, what? And so there's been a lot of education to help them understand that their expertise is intellectual property. And so it was, you know, coming from big corporate to kind of really understanding how much value there is in IP and that we just have to learn how to control it. And so, you know, my experience with commercial contracts and with intellectual property kind of was packaged into helping this, this demographic to, to help grow their businesses.

Speaker 2 00:07:29 So that's that's how I got here.

Speaker 4 00:07:32 Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:07:33 so who, who have you worked with lately or, you know, in the past or maybe there's a, you know, story of I just I want to hear some more stories about this.

Speaker 2 00:07:42 Yeah. I get, you know, my clients are typically that that learning and development expert. I will say not all of them, but this is the most common. And they have been providing one on one services to their clients. They have very happy corporate clients, mostly corporate clients, and they are doing all the delivery themselves. And they either they most of them, they want to bring on maybe a facilitator to help them, deliver so they don't have to travel so much, even though now people can do it remotely, but still, to be able to serve more than one client at a time, they want to bring on a facilitator. So what happens there? They know they want to do this, but they don't know how to protect their IP from the facilitator.

Speaker 2 00:08:24 They don't know, you know, how they, protect their client relationships from the new person. They want to make sure that, you know, how do I get what I know? Because so much, you know, when we're experts, sometimes we just get up there and just perform, right. We don't always have a system in place, but we just use our our genius, I'll call it to get we get in front of the client. We just know what to do. We just because we've done it, you know. But when they want to bring on a facilitator or create something that they can license to a third party. That means they have to sit down and actually, codify their process. They have to really think through it and create, you know, worksheets, workbooks, guides, you know, things that they can then use to train somebody else or to license to somebody else. So when I work with them, first we look at, you know, what is the thing that you use to create value for your clients, whatever that thing is that you use, that is your intellectual property.

Speaker 2 00:09:23 And that's the thing that we want to capture into an IP asset. So one, do you own everything that you're using? When we work one on one with clients, we might use stuff that we don't own. We might use stuff that we got from a former employer, from the internet, from a certification program. you know, generally we don't get into too much trouble when we're one on one, but if we're starting to license it or have more people exposed to it. We want to make sure we own everything that we're using to create value for our clients. So that would be step one. Then we want to make sure we're protecting it. Once we know that we own everything we're using, we protect it one. We register it in the Copyright Office to make sure we have the protections there. And then we make sure we're using, contracts appropriately with our clients. You know, people worry about people stealing their work. But guess what? We give it away all the time when we sign clients, agreements with our clients that give them all the rights that they can reuse it, repurpose it, use it with their subsidiaries, use it with new cohorts.

Speaker 2 00:10:29 If you don't limit that, they can do whatever they want to. I've seen people sign agreements with clients that said, we can repurpose it and resell what you've taught them that you know, it's hard to make a business if you're giving away all of your work. Yeah. And and if you are bringing in, you know, other facilitators or contractors making sure that, let's say they create some, a module for you who owns it, making sure you own that. They have relationships. They now have direct relationship with their clients. How do you make sure you control that relationship? Right. So these are the, the, the contracts we put in place to protect your expertise. And then if, let's say you want to license it to your clients instead of you delivering it, you're going to let them use it. Maybe they have an internal resource to to lead these cohorts. You're licensing it to that client. Then we have the agreements in place to govern that relationship. So that's kind of the lifecycle of of the typical person who'll come to me when they want to grow past just doing one on one custom work.

Speaker 1 00:11:31 Yeah. You know, and you mentioned just this a little bit, but you know, in terms of like creating, you know, more value in your company and, you know, being able to exit, you know, if everything is I mean, this is again, just, I think kind of like a next level. E-myth, you know evolution here that we're talking about, which is fascinating. And I want to talk about how you work with clients. And I, and I wanted to mention as well that you have, a newsletter, on LinkedIn. It's called the Think Beyond IP newsletter. And you recently, launched your or published your 100th episode of the Hourly to Exit podcast. Can you tell us a little bit more about these resources? And, you know, to our friend that's listening. I think very easily you could just search in your podcast app right now for hourly to exit, and you'll find the podcast hit subscribe and keep listening.

Speaker 2 00:12:27 Yeah, yeah, the Hourly Exit podcast is about the journey from what I call the unsustainable hourly, business model to one that is scalable, that has some independence from the owner, and that is, you know, more profitable and hopefully someday building a business that you can sell and so that is the hourly to exit journey I talk about.

Speaker 2 00:12:50 And that's, you know, not only the legal foundations that are required to do that, but also the things, you know, I have guests on that will talk about, you know, branding and things like that, and marketing and having a niche or specialization, things that help you become unique and stand out in the marketplace. And so that we can help, you know, increase the value of our business. So that is, that's been a really fun one for me.

Speaker 1 00:13:15 Yeah. What do you talk about? and tell me more about the podcast. And, you know, if, let's say someone were to, you know, over the next handful of weeks, they were to listen to like 20, 30 episodes, what would what kind of impact do you do you imagine that that would have on them?

Speaker 2 00:13:30 Well, I really consider myself an educator, you know, so I have a number of series. I have a series on there about different types of licensing programs. You know, that you don't have to have this huge audience.

Speaker 2 00:13:40 So, whether it's, you know, licensing directly to a client, licensing to an organization or, you know, doing a certification program. I have a series about copyright infringement, like how to protect against what to do if somebody infringes your copyright, and a different series about how not to be a copyright infringer. I have a series about, what the dangers signs in a client agreement. Like you need to be aware of these things, and if you're not aware of them, you can get in trouble. And some things about, you know, the defaults under copyright law aren't what we think they are who you think they might be, intuitive, but they aren't. And much more recently it's been I, I, I, I what are we going to do you know.

Speaker 1 00:14:28 Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:14:29 Yes.

Speaker 1 00:14:30 And and look I'll just chime in here and I'm sorry to to, to intercede so abruptly. but I have heard this. What is I giving you? I is only taking available content, repackaging and repurposing for you.

Speaker 1 00:14:44 So there is absolute risk to taking something. In fact, I was just talking with someone who, like like ChatGPT gave them like basically the the structure of a business plan. and it turns out it was directly lifted from one of their competitors, and the competitor found out about it. And and it was quite embarrassing. Thankfully, you know, they had a decent relationship and, you know, they were able to tweak that, but just. Yes. Be absolutely careful about this. I'm so sorry, Aaron. You're the expert on this. Just I just want to add emphasis to what you're saying. Yes. You got to be real careful with what AI is spitting out to you.

Speaker 2 00:15:24 Yes, absolutely. It is a copyright issue both on the possibility of being an infringer, like in the example that you gave that that spits out something that somebody else is somebody else's or and the other issue is that you don't own whatever comes out of it. So if you're let's say you use it to write a book, I don't, you know, which you could do but you can't own that because you can't.

Speaker 2 00:15:46 Like there's no copyright protection in what is spit out of generative AI. In order to have copyright protection, it has to be created by a human. And at this time, AI is not considered a human. And so anything that gets spit out of that is not eligible for copyright protection. Does that mean it is actually generative and not stealing somebody else's stuff? Yeah. But, so if you have, you're creating materials that you actually want to have exclusive rights to. Don't rely on AI for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 00:16:18 Aaron, what does engaging with you look like? How do you work with your clients? Like if someone saying, okay, can I hire Aaron? And if so, what does that typically look like?

Speaker 2 00:16:26 Yeah, I work with everyone on a fixed fee basis based on the what their needs are. So let's say someone you know, needs for the example that I used of the leadership development person who wanted to bring in facilitators and I would, you know, have a conversation with them and quote them for an entire package to audit their works, making sure they're registered, getting any clearances, getting any agreements in place.

Speaker 2 00:16:53 And also, you know, however they're going to work with clients, whatever the process is, are going to sell it, having those agreements in place as well. So the whole whole suite of getting from, where they are to where they want to be.

Speaker 1 00:17:09 Your website is think beyond ip.com. Aaron, when somebody goes to your website, what would you recommend they do?

Speaker 2 00:17:15 Yeah. There is a free resource that is the audit Protect and Leverage framework, and that it explains the step by step process to go from, you know, making sure you own what you think you own, that you're protecting what you do own and that you are able to leverage it. So I would love for everyone to go there and download that for free.

Speaker 1 00:17:35 And do you know what they click on or how they find.

Speaker 5 00:17:37 That.

Speaker 2 00:17:38 That is at the bottom? It's in the footer. It is. Oh got it.

Speaker 1 00:17:41 Yes Awesome, I very great. Okay. Think beyond IP Erin Austin again, you're the founder.

Speaker 1 00:17:49 Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation. We're going to talk.

Speaker 5 00:17:53 Awesome.

Speaker 2 00:17:53 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 00:18:01 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales.

Speaker 1 00:18:59 What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right, seven days a week you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur movement.