Did you know that trade secrets are intellectual property, just like copyrights and trademarks, and patents?

We think of trade secrets as being confidential information, but we don't think about them as being intellectual property. This is probably because, unlike copyrights and trademarks and patents, we protect them not by registering them – there is no registration process for trade secrets -- but by keeping them secret.

By the time most expertise-based service providers strike out on their own, they have achieved mastery of their subject matter. This mastery is more than the moving pieces that make up the subject, it also includes the years of trial and error, repeated exposure, and range of contexts in which the services are provided.

To wrap up this year of many changes and experiments along with assorted hits and misses, I am heading into a month of deep work to focus on what I’ve learned, what I still need to learn and how best to use both to serve you.

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.”