Your New Title: Owner
It appears that the 12th time is the charm. 😅
In case you haven’t heard, Eli Manning has a new title: Team Owner. It took this announcement to finally get me thinking about the parallels between these athletes and our expertise-based businesses.
No doubt, these athletes make a boat ton of money. Income from services; income from endorsements; income from appearances. But what did they own? What did they have that would create long-term, generational wealth?
That, my friends, requires ownership.
You’ve probably noticed the same trend with entertainers. Make-up. Fashion. Tequila.
Musicians owning the rights to their music is a massive wealth builder. See music catalog sales by David Bowie’s estate, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, and Neal Young.
Shockingly, many musicians do not own their music. Their label owns it in exchange for an advance and royalties. Even Taylor Swift, who writes her own music, is battling for control of her songs.
Tyler Perry could have taken a cash fee plus a piece of the “backend” for writing and directing his films. Instead, he has built an empire by retaining the full copyright.
All examples of graduating from income producer to wealth builder. And I’m here for it.
Our expertise-based businesses can be very good income producers--so long as we keep churning out services, the equivalent of musicians needing to tour for their supper.
Our goal is to turn our income generators into generational wealth builders. That means creating and owning our body of work. This is foundational.
Intellectual property is created every time you use your intellect (or pay someone to use theirs) for your clients or for yourself. Every time this is done without being mindful of the ownership of that IP, in other words, without using contracts, is a lost opportunity. That’s one less song in your catalog.
I’m working on a training which covers how to effectively use master services agreements, project agreements, and subcontractor agreements to build and protect your body of work.
Interested? Hit reply, and I’ll add you to my beta testers.