It is that time of year again. When the excitement—both good and bad—of growing a business catches up with us. Combine that with heading into the holiday season, where our thoughts naturally become reflective.

During a meeting with my brilliant mastermind yesterday, we answered the question: What will you be working on for the rest of 2022 to set yourself up for success in 2023?

A story for you.

In the beginning, there were wages. It came in the form of a salary from a job.

Then, after I picked up my expertise and took it home with me, in came in the form of fees from clients.

Success was equaling, then exceeding, my salary.

It isn’t impossible to fix mistakes. Very few are fatal. But it is almost always more expensive to fix a mistake than to take the extra time to do it right in the first place.

You know I like to say that “IP is everywhere.” I mean this in the legal sense. It’s on your website, in your LinkedIn posts and newsletters, part of client deliverables, the essence of the work you and your employees do.

For fellow quick starts like me, you know where else it is. In the physical sense—everywhere.

The ideas come fast and furiously. In the middle of night. While driving and listening to a podcast. After a meet and greet call.

How many times have you heard the refrain: "Work Smarter, Not Harder." Sign me up, right? 🙋🏽‍♀️

But what does this really mean?

I know what I think it means—which I will share shortly—but I realized that I had never actually read a definition. So here’s what Sir Google had to say.

There is the productivity definition from the engineer credited with coining the term, meaning “a work simplification program to increase productivity using less effort.”

An unexpected overwhelm of work has me writing this at 10pm.

So I figured that while we are on the topic of the “who, what, and why” of copyrights, I am re-publishing (cheat #1) an intellectual property ownership cheat sheet (cheat #2) for those of you who are newer to my work, or who just appreciate a good cheat sheet!

Yes, I’m going to the mat.

Making understandable the distinction between products and intellectual property is the hill I will die on.

Products and IP are not the same thing. IP does not equal passive income. You can have IP without products. You can use IP without owning it.

A formal but tremendously illustrative definition:

Thinking about turning your expertise into a licensing program, but concerned that it isn’t a fit for your highly customized, non-recurring professional services? If so, you are correct. The type of licensing program I’ve been writing and speaking about isn’t the right fit for your business.