How to build IP that allows your business to scale with Pamela Slim Transcript

Erin Austin: Hello, ladies. Welcome to this week's episode of the hourly to exit podcast. I am extremely excited about this week's guest, Pam slim, Pam. Welcome to the hourly

exit

Pamela Slim: podcast. I'm so happy to be here.

Erin Austin: Well, we have lots to talk about, this audience loves to talk about, scaling their expertise based business, and that fits right in with what you do, but before we get started, would you introduce yourself to

Pamela Slim: the audience?

Pamela Slim: For sure. So I am Pam slim or Pamela slim, depending upon I'm in trouble or not. And I am a author and a agency owner of a certification agency. So we build certification programs for thought leaders. And this really evolves out of many years of being a business coach and advisor for service based businesses.

Erin Austin: Fantastic. Well, it's no surprise to my audience that I frequently have business coaches on the podcast because, working with you is a great synergy between, the business coach, helping businesses create scale in their businesses and intellectual property lawyer, of course, but Special one, because I have not before had a business coach who has the specific expertise in creating licensing and certification programs.

Erin Austin: So I'm really looking forward to digging in on that. Now, while of course, I am a huge fan of licensing programs. Obviously you are, but not always a solution for everyone. Although some people think they are, so we're gonna dig into, when, certification or licensing may be appropriate for a business.

Erin Austin: But, before we get started, I'd love for you to give an overview of the types of licensing and certification programs that you see.

Pamela Slim: For sure. You probably get more questions than I do. given your profession, I find a lot of people might throw around terms. about what licensing and certification is.

Pamela Slim: So please check me if you feel like legally my definitions are accurate. The basic way that I describe it for folks is when you think about building IP in your business, intellectual property, that can be methods and models and frameworks, approaches that you have to work. There can be situations where you might, have a licensing agreement.

Pamela Slim: In my, layperson's terms, I will say it just spells out who exactly can use what type of IP for how much and how long. And so, there can be certain situations where a, entity, a company, an organization could be licensing IP. Without them needing to go through a certification process, a certification process is a specific learning experience that you set up in certain cases to make sure that those who are licensed to use your IP have all the skills, resources, information tools they need to be good stewards of the material and so that you can also predict more of a consistent output.

Pamela Slim: of people who are certified to use the methods. So you can have a licensing program without a certification learning experience tied to it, but you can never have a certification program without licensing because when you're teaching people stuff, they need to have that agreement. The one example that I use in, with Susan Cain who wrote the book Quiet about the power of introverts.

Pamela Slim: I worked with her for about 18 months of launching what she called the Quiet Revolution. So we had built a number of programs. One of the licensing deals that she did was with the office furniture maker Steelcase It created what are called quiet spaces that were office furniture specifically designed for introverts.

Pamela Slim: So in this case, they were using a lot of the thoughts, the IP design principles from her book, quiet. In a licensing agreement that had nothing to do with a certification, but typically people think about certifications like coaching certifications are being certified in a particular method. And those are usually the areas that I operate in with our agency.

Erin Austin: yeah, that is a cool example with, regarding the introverts, because, you we definitely generally think about it certainly in the space that I work in with experts who work with corporate clients that we only think in terms of very large programs that are, kind of. Serving lots of different clients, and it can be something that's just a 1 on 1 relationship, right?

Erin Austin: It doesn't need to be a whole program. the end of the day, whenever we have our pre existing materials that we bring to a client, because, there's a reason that client. Engages us instead of the next guy. It's because there's something that we have some asset in our business that they value.

Erin Austin: And when we are, including it in the deliverable for their internal use, that is a license in and of itself. It's just a 1 on 1 license between you and your client. But licensing is everywhere. So, you know, is everywhere, but licensing is everywhere to when you are working with clients and you have deliverables.

Erin Austin: So,

Pamela Slim: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I totally appreciate that because it is something that mystifies people. And I laugh with clients sometimes because either they think it's. Too complicated to ever get involved with. So they learn more and they're like, Oh my gosh, it's not that complicated. Or they don't realize, especially if they're building a certification program that in order to do it effectively, there actually are a number of pieces to put in place.

Pamela Slim: Or I think as you and I will talk about a little bit later. There is a certain stage or maturity of business in which it's a good idea to be investing in building it. But just other piece of our approach to what we build when we think about different types of certifications, we look at it in four different levels that really have to do with a user's experience.

Pamela Slim: And that's what we're Interaction and use of the material. So a level one, a certificate program, think about it like a skill that could be a self directed kind of training experience you could have where you're learning something that you would be proud to put on your LinkedIn profile. So it could be, I'm certified to use Excel pivot tables and you go through self directed training.

Pamela Slim: You might take an online exam and a certificate is generally information that is used by an end user. Typically in a professional development setting that really is just to up level their specific skills a level two, which is a practitioner certification is where you are certifying practitioners. To be utilizing your IP, so your methods and your frameworks, with their clients.

Pamela Slim: This is typically in that area where you have a coaching certification for a particular method or approach. So you would be certified as a practitioner to be using those methods with your clients. The licensing agreement will usually spell out very clearly. What, can you share the worksheets and how do you share them and so forth.

Pamela Slim: And that's a really common thing for a lot of coaches or consultants. The level three is a trainer certification. And so that often is where you are certified not only to be utilizing tools as a practitioner, but also teaching the method to others and other end users. A lot of folks are familiar with Brene Brown's.

Pamela Slim: Certifications that she did during greatly, it was a big part of her business kind of pre COVID, but in that particular certification, people, were learning how to be teaching workshops. So they could lead, dare to lead workshops. They had access to materials, coaches, social workers, therapist.

Pamela Slim: use some of those materials with their end clients as well. And so you can see that it's like at each level you have another wrapper of usage on top of it. The final level, level four, train the trainer is often for a situation where. Particularly in B2B business to business sales, you, for example, have an amazing workshop that your client loves and they say every single leader in our thousands of people organization should, experience this method, but usually for you as the one delivering that there, you don't want to be flying around on planes or training 5, 000 people.

Pamela Slim: So in that case, you could train inside the company. Trainers who were certified to train other trainers that would be in the organization rolling out the workshops to the end users. These types of agreements usually have a larger licensing agreement for the number of end users impacted. We like those for our clients because they're often bigger checks, as we say, right?

Pamela Slim: you can be, go from maybe a train that it's pricing is all relative. It's a whole other topic, but somebody could be getting a trainer certification and pay, I don't know, 15, 000 in order to get that to teach your workshop for a train, the trainer licensing agreement that could be. 000.

Pamela Slim: So those are ways to think about it. and so as you look at what you're trying to do with your own method, part of it is realizing for a lot of people, you could start smaller. You could start with a practitioner, then maybe could build a trainer component. And then if you really get a lot of interest, you could build the train, the trainer.

Pamela Slim: Yeah, I love

Erin Austin: that. and there are lots of different ways to, dissect it. And 1 of the things I like to emphasize that a license, you know, it is a contractual really arrangement and you can make it, if it is a 1 on 1, 1, negotiated with whatever terms make sense for both parties.

Erin Austin: So there's not kind of some standard license out there. It is relationship between the parties. And so you can make it work for everybody and negotiate it. So.

Pamela Slim: One thing I love about your experience from our conversation before is you have been inside the B2B world of really negotiating on behalf of large companies.

Pamela Slim: And I know for a lot of my clients, they get very freaked out. It's very unnerving. Maybe you're a smaller shop. you're not used to negotiating with a, huge company that might have a whole team of lawyers. And so I find that experience to be so important that you have where you know how to navigate and, I'm imagining that you're pushing a little bit of the assumptions people have, but maybe just saying, I have to just accept anything that that big company says, if they were, I imagine you're like, and no, you don't.

Erin Austin: Exactly. Oh, I like to say that, I have looked at many, many, many, commercial, transaction agreements, B2B agreements. And in my career, there is only one company and we could probably lay odds on being able to guess which one it is. That said, absolutely no, like, take it or leave it.

Erin Austin: so long as you are asking for something that's fair that, it makes sense. That is, you're protecting your intellectual property or, making sure that you're preserving the profitability of the deal, People will absolutely consider reasonable requests for changes.

Erin Austin: So, yeah, and it is, intimidating to get, oftentimes these corporate clients have their own master services agreement that applies, whether you're doing consulting or doing, market research or doing, some, web design, they still have the same MSA for all their vendors.

Erin Austin: And it's. 50 pages and it's got a couple of exhibits on it and it can be intimidating. But again, all things, negotiable at the end of the day.

Pamela Slim: And I do, and I'm not just saying it because I'm talking to you, I say it to all my clients. It's why many people will come and say, do you just have a copy of a licensing agreement?

Pamela Slim: And I just say, I actually don't, I'm not an IP attorney. Always work with an attorney when you're doing that final agreement because you can really miss a lot of things. You can leave things on the table and as you said, you may not realize the kind of leverage that you have. So just in general, I think when you're finalizing a contract, try to prepare our clients to put together the recommendations for the attorney when we really help The client understand exactly how they want to be operating.

Pamela Slim: People have very different expectations, levels of risk, desire for control. And so that's again, why some people are, they want to basically have a lawyer on retainer to be sending cease and desist letters all the time. Other people are like, whatever you paid me for it, like do what you will. So, but when it comes to the final legal agreement, Please talk to an attorney.

Pamela Slim: Yeah, I'm going to

Erin Austin: just ask, regarding the kind of the whatever person versus the, lawyer on retainer. Do you see any kind of gender differences in that type of just because this is a mostly female audience? Do you see? No. Okay. All right. Good. I'm glad

Pamela Slim: to hear. Yeah, I do not. I do not. See it in that it is a cool example of an affective characteristic that I think there are certain areas of socialization that I totally noticed that have gender relations and then to be intersectional about it.

Pamela Slim: It also depends, I think, on somebody's like identity and background and so forth that there can be a little different experience. and so level of privilege, expectations that one can have, like me as a white woman, how much am I sitting back, like worried or wondering if I'm going to be screwed over versus if I'm a black woman or indigenous woman.

Pamela Slim: It's like interesting when you sometimes have things in place that are related to needing to have legal grounds where you know that you can't assume that you will be treated fairly in the system. So there's some interesting things there. I do find from a gender perspective that Women are less likely to think about building in, things like certifications or IP protection in order to eventually sell the company.

Pamela Slim: That that can be a little bit more related to men, but I've seen across the board, in a couple of cases of, some men I know that have certification programs that have been very successful who were like, there's a flat fee and then I really have like no control over it. Like go and do what you will.

Pamela Slim: Where. Just taking maybe more of the stereotypical gender, behavior that we might attribute is where a man might be wanting to just milk every single penny out of a transaction. I realize it's a bit of a stereotype, but I haven't really seen it play out. and just the experience I've had working with people.

Erin Austin: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. All right. So I thought we would do something that lawyers love to do, which is issue spotting. And so we're going to, I'm going to provide a couple of scenarios of experts who are coming and they want to, have a licensing and or certification program and we can talk through whether or not It would be right for them.

Erin Austin: And if it's not like what they would need to do to get ready for one. All right. So my first example is a marketing consultant who provides one on one services to businesses. They have fished out their referral pond and the pipeline is empty and they don't have a robust marketing engine. They want to add licensing, a certification.

Erin Austin: To other consultants to other practitioners as an additional revenue stream to boost their income. So they want to add because they have run out of 1 on 1 income and they think, oh, let me. What do we think about

Pamela Slim: this? you sort of softball this to me, but this is such a good one because I totally get the feeling it is a natural reaction that you might have as a business owner to think, Oh my gosh, like things aren't working for me.

Pamela Slim: I need a new offer. And I've heard that licensing and certification eventually leads to that mythological passive revenue. The issue in this one. is around market fit, where you're generally ready for a certification where you actually have overwhelming market demand for your materials. There are lots and lots people who are aware of what you're doing.

Pamela Slim: They're aware that, you have great work. There is high demand. You're exhausted from jumping on planes because you're delivering or your team is delivering yourself. That is often the market position where you've really found that market fit. That people want your stuff. And in particular, when you look at, if you're going to be certifying individual consultants, say on your marketing method, generally when we do certifications, it's because we say, Oh my gosh, we know that person has it all dialed in because look at how they've grown their own practice.

Pamela Slim: It seems like. Very often, there can be somebody who literally has the best IP in the world. Maybe this marketing consultant, their staff actually works better than anybody. You have to get the market fit first in order to be driving the sales. And it's actually harder in my experience to be driving certification sales.

Pamela Slim: If you don't have overwhelming marketing demand, then it is just to land individual clients. So I would send them on a path to really be looking more deeply. If they were interested eventually in building more the certification path, they would be doing a lot more events in what I call new watering holes.

Pamela Slim: places where they would have ideal clients that would be interested in their work. And then probably they'd be cranking up their own practice to try to figure out and solve the issue as to why they're not getting clients for their stuff. The other thing that can be interesting, and I do see this sometimes, is sometimes you can build market fit and the engines for that, or in some ways you can buy or sell that.

Pamela Slim: And what I mean is Maybe you do find somebody who's in your ecosystem who knows that your stuff is the most amazing thing. They are amazing at really dialing in the marketing and sales side of it, where they can generate demand. So that could be a case where they could do a straight, purchase of your stuff, or you could have some kind of marketing or sales relationship where they're, pulling it in.

Pamela Slim: But if you're doing it yourself. It's a big red flag.

Erin Austin: Oh. So in your, in this later example, then the marketing consultant is not creating that marketing engine that they are licensing it to someone who already has the ability to reach

Pamela Slim: that audience. Like that's right. Cause I've seen, there's some people who just got it.

Pamela Slim: I get so jealous cause I'm more of a connector, a connector Maven, but you've, we've probably all seen that. Sometimes there are people who just have it dialed in. They really know how to sell and market. And so that's another Avenue.

Erin Austin: yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. I'm a lawyer, not a business consultant, but people think licensing agreements and then they will come directly to me for the licensing agreement.

Erin Austin: And so they've self diagnosed that they need a licensing agreement, and they want to do this, to train other practitioners in what they do. And the conversation that we have basically what you said, but that, you know how to. fish or hunt with your corporate clients and though you have great results like you, this is a new market.

Erin Austin: To fish with other practitioners, like, even though if you're well respected, but it's still a whole different engine. And so are you ready to create a new business? Basically, side by

Pamela Slim: side. So, yes, it's really, really different, especially if you're selling into 1, like, you're selling into corporate clients and then you want to be developing a more B to C reaching out for individuals.

Pamela Slim: It's a whole different marketing model. Yeah.

Erin Austin: Okay. Awesome. All right. Example number 2. Okay. I feel like I'm on like a game show or something.

Pamela Slim: It's like a game show and shark tank like together. I love it.

Erin Austin: All right. So we have a growth consultant who provides one on one services to businesses and they've successfully incorporated the value builders assessment and their other tools to create a waiting list of clients that they can serve.

Erin Austin: And they want to license their to other growth consultants.

Pamela Slim: Well, what I know is that value builder is John Warlow's product who wrote built to sell the art of selling your business, a lot of other great books. And so my issue spotting here would be. Maybe you use ValueBuilder in your own business, but you do not own and you cannot license other people's intellectual property.

Pamela Slim: So either John would feel super generous and he would say, sure, take my proprietary software and sell it as your own, unlikely. Or you would really have to find the thing that is uniquely yours. Again, in packaging what you do. You could find that you have a, and because I know John really well, and I know a lot of the ways that his model works, it could actually be interesting where you could be a certified value builder consultant, which is a whole path that he's done with his methods where the consultants are using that software.

Pamela Slim: so maybe you have that where you are utilizing those tools and that brand recognition, but then there's some of your own IP that you could use. Maybe it's supplemental. Maybe it's vertical specific where you're the salesforce person that knows how to apply value builder into a new system.

Pamela Slim: And therefore. Um, that's probably one of the things that you and I do a lot of sifting through where it's like, okay, when I start to look at the big picture of somebody's materials and they're like, oh, yeah, I remember in 1984, like this, I grabbed this model from somebody. And that's where we have to go through and really scrub it and make sure that what you have is yours, or you have legal permission to be using somebody else's IP.

Pamela Slim: Yeah,

Erin Austin: absolutely. Yeah. I like to call it, with increased visibility, there's increased scrutiny. And so, like, what. You may have rights to do for your one on one clients. You may not have the rights to do for a larger audience. And so, we look at, the legal foundation, when we put a, like, let's say that your one on one services is a one story building and having a licensing program is a two story building.

Erin Austin: Well, you need a different foundation for two story building than you need for a one story building. And so we need to go back and make sure that we have. The right legal foundation to build that 2nd story on. So, yeah. That is definitely one of people, and then I get the question, well, I'm influenced by so many people.

Erin Austin: We listen to blah. I mean, listen to podcasts. We read blogs. We read books and say we're influenced by so many people and, you know, where's the dividing line between being influenced and creating something that's derivative that you need rights for. And of course, there's no easy answer for that. but we do need to make sure that we are looking at.

Erin Austin: Yeah. the materials that you're going to be licensing to new licensees and make sure that you do have the rights

Pamela Slim: in those. So, yeah. I have very strong opinions about this and it's a really just, I think terrible practices that we have in general. Some of it is fueled by the, memes, the internet sharing things where we see very deliberately sometimes like a quote, somebody might originally have a quote, that is.

Pamela Slim: Attributed to whoever it is that actually said it, and then somebody lifts it because it's really inspirational and they share it on Instagram. And all of a sudden you lose the attribution to that. and then all the way through, as you said, to looking at methods and models that, people use that really are other people's stuff.

Pamela Slim: I look through the world with a lot of lens of power dynamics and, sociology. And it was funny just the other day I was talking with one of my clients. It's about the internet marketing world. Some of these original models that were created by a lot of the internet marketers have just specific ways in which you might sell or like types and structures you have for mastermind programs and stuff.

Pamela Slim: And we were working it backwards and I am not a lawyer. I am just, I'm using an example for anybody's. lawyers who are listening, but somebody was saying, like, it works back a lot through, we look at the Dan Kennedy's, like Tony Robbins originally, like creating some materials. And I was like, I bet there was a woman who originally created it by Jody Robbins or I should, you know, TR, , if any lawyers are listening, and they were like, yeah, actually that was the case that there was maybe somebody on the team that was originally creating it, and it's like, it's so, It's why we always need to know history in our schools and in our businesses because when often we begin to move backwards and notice the original, creators of things, and this can get super deep when it comes to, especially people who are in the healing.

Pamela Slim: Spiritual worlds. I have, my husband is a Navajo traditional healer. You wouldn't believe the kind of things I see sometimes of just people who might, sit for a weekend and ceremony, take some of the ideas that are coming from that teaching and not just from him, from people, from many different practices, and then create programs that is quote, their IP that are coming from those worlds.

Pamela Slim: So it's like, it is an area that can be really deeply problematic. and at the same time, I do understand as we are experiencing ideas that by definition, we are influenced by things, right? we sometimes don't even know there's like certain models or ways of thinking that feels like original thought that we may not realize.

Pamela Slim: But I think if we take a little bit more time and put in, in place the practice, first of all, of acknowledging our teachers. Of making sure that we're tying back any kind of models or methods to maybe published, academic frameworks or things like that. It can help us to remember that we need to be giving attribution and then on a really tactical side for the materials that we're building in our own business.

Pamela Slim: That's where I always recommend. let's say, for example, on an off site meeting, you might be excited to be using a tool, you know, an assessment or something from somebody else, but in terms of your core method, try to really just build in your own IP and your frameworks so that it becomes easier to disseminate and eventually create something.

Pamela Slim: Like a certification program. I went on maybe what a minute 30, three hour rant as we start to, as we start to talk about it. Cause this definitely comes down to gender and gender and identity. When we start to look at whose IP has been, stolen and who is benefiting and profiting from many of the ideas.

Pamela Slim: Okay,

Erin Austin: we can definitely do. Yes, we definitely have a conversation about that. But one of the things I did want to follow up on is when you do have something like, say, a value builders or some other, third party materials that, the benefits of creating a niche are that you it makes it easier kind of to.

Erin Austin: Find your own layer on top of that. So, say you have an issue work, do leadership development for hospital systems. So that would, you'd layer that, like, those issues on top of these general materials that you may get from or from, PMP or whatever. You may have some of these certifications, but you layer on top of it.

Erin Austin: Well, I know this client super well, and I know what their issues are. And create your own IP on top of that, that's specific to your niche and their problem.

Pamela Slim: So that's right. What my friend Phil Jones, who I interviewed on my podcast, not that long ago, he used the metaphor for his own certification.

Pamela Slim: It's exactly what to say. So he has a very specific sales methodology that's based on a book. And he uses metaphor of Tabasco sauce. It's like Tabasco sauce can go in just about any dish on eggs, you know, pasta, I guess if you wanted it to, right. I put it on spaghetti. but he specifically designed his certification to be able to go really well with others.

Pamela Slim: So it can be, as you said, this like addition that won't be conflicting. And I think sometimes We think about certifications as needing to be these huge, complex processes where we have to be certifying people and everything about, how to be a coach and how to use a method and all of that, where there are really powerful use cases.

Pamela Slim: When, as you said, you have a very specific, maybe set of tools that would actually be highly complimentary. And there are people, I always tease my business partner, Darren Padilla, who I love so dearly that. One of the reasons I love working with him besides him being a genius at what he does is he loves certification programs.

Pamela Slim: The man has more letters by his name. I'm like, what are you not certified in? And there's a certain type of person that is the end user for some of the programs we built that gets so excited to be learning new things. And so, it doesn't have to be something that's terribly deep. There can be really specific.

Pamela Slim: Types of, like I said before, certificates, maybe that would just give somebody an edge and, bless those like never ending learner kind of people that just get so excited when they hear of a new certification program coming. That's awesome.

Erin Austin: Yeah. And just the one last thing before I wanted to cover before we left that third party materials is don't forget your prior employers.

Erin Austin: If you're coming from corporate and you brought some stuff, even if you created it there, let's say you wrote the employee handbook at your old employer and you brought it with you. That's not yours. That is your old employers. And so make sure you have permission to use that.

Pamela Slim: that is a whole thing.

Pamela Slim: Again, you probably have specific advice around that. When I did so many years of early stage entrepreneur coaching for escape from cubicle nation, that was my first book. I always, one of the first things that I encourage people before they start their side hustle is to read very carefully their employment agreement, because especially some of the bigger tech companies that people might work for, you could be a.

Pamela Slim: Software engineer, and you could write a cookbook, but in some agreements, like literally everything, anything that you create while employed can be the property of that employer. So before you even start to mess around with it, read that agreement and figure out the particular parameters of what you can use.

Pamela Slim: Right. Absolutely.

Erin Austin: All right. Our third, example here. So we have a leadership consultant who walks into a room, feels the vibe and instinctively knows just what needs to be done. Big co client wants her to work her magic with every manager and all the offices throughout the country. So rather than do it all herself, she wants to train a big co personnel to provide that transformation.

Pamela Slim: So this would be a case where I would say I am walking around what we call our thumbprint method. which has three pieces. One of them is market fit that we talked about. Will it sell? Do you have the marketing and sales engine to be supporting this? The second component, your method, will it work is that method anywhere outside the amazing, beautiful brain of said leadership consultant.

Pamela Slim: And I use magic a lot as a metaphor for. Literally what happens when you are a service provider, that's one of the biggest highs I know that I feel I could be here at our community lab doing an all day intensive with a client. And sometimes like, I'm shocked myself at what comes out of my pen on the whiteboard.

Pamela Slim: Like, where did that model come from? So there is magic that can happen based on your own unique set of skills and experience. Everything about building a certification program is taking out the frameworks, the methods so that they do not have to be fueled by you. You're the person, the human, the individual, your skills.

Pamela Slim: And then there are two ways to address. How you can make sure that you're certified, leaders are building magic with their clients, either that you are spelling out maybe some specific magic. So in some cases, like somebody's magic can be that in addition to. Leading strategic planning retreats, for example, that they have an amazing way of creating and holding space.

Pamela Slim: They're very deliberate about it. They're very thoughtful for how they, , layout expectations. Maybe they light a candle. Maybe there's all these specific things that actually contribute systemically to the types of conversations that happen. That could be something that you would be codifying as part of that method.

Pamela Slim: If that is part of the magic that you want people to be executing, otherwise. It's, it's in your prerequisites of how it is that you have selected your, certification candidates. And that's where I say, you don't have to put everything in that certification program. You could say before somebody goes through my program, they already are an experienced certified coach.

Pamela Slim: Maybe they have demonstrated experience of working successfully with executives at a high level, right? So therefore you're not teaching them how to do that. And your thing, they're bringing it with them. Oh, yes. Oh, I like that.

Erin Austin: Yeah. Cause I, you know, I had a woman, it's been a couple of years now and she is a business coach and she is in, I don't know if the word is empath or intuitive.

Erin Austin: And so she kind of reads her clients and. makes her recommendations based on, how she reads her clients. And I'm like, well, how do you teach anybody else how to do that? I mean, that's an interesting one, extremely valuable if you have a happy clients, but how would you ever not be the center of that service

Pamela Slim: Well, and I've had some clients through the years, more on advising side who

Pamela Slim: And there can be certain things that somebody might say, depending upon where they're coming from and what space they work in, if it's more of like a spiritual inclination versus a particular approach or a process. I have seen it where part of a training somebody can have is, what are you tuning and listening to?

Pamela Slim: And there are certain things that can actually be taught and codified, but other things definitely are just related to the individual. And so that can be wonderful for you to have that skill. The way to be thinking about materials you have for a certification is by definition, you get excited about the fact that other very different people can take it and run with it and make their unique magic.

Pamela Slim: But the part that you want to be designing for is that. There is some kind of a rigor maybe for the use of the tools or the approach so that you can have a little bit more predictable outcomes for your clients. So it just won't be like a wild swing in one certified practitioners results versus the other.

Pamela Slim: you can't control all of it, so sometimes you do your best job, but. Yeah, really look at look in it and it is kind of surprising I think through the years and it has been really fun as we've really dug in deep now for building certifications. It is really amazing of how it is that you can draw out of somebody things that they just thought were completely intuitive to them and it's often the power of working with outside partners.

Pamela Slim: Is where you can hear and see things that they may not realize. And it's funny, a typical response people have, well, like, doesn't everybody know that? Like, what's so deep about that? Like, that's not valuable. And we're like, literally, that is the most valuable thing that you have in this whole process.

Pamela Slim: Yeah. I

Erin Austin: will say I've been surprised since I've been, basically educating. The expert space, I spent a career inside of large intellectual property driven organizations. And so I P was literally just part of everyday conversation. It was, and obviously it's the most valuable asset.

Erin Austin: It's of course, you know, and the number of people, once I started, with posting and blogging and things about intellectual property with, a small business owners, and how many of them I can never. It was like an other thing. It was Microsoft and, Tesla, but it's not.

Erin Austin: has nothing to do with what I do. I'm a services writer was like, wow, but you've just I was so accustomed to it being just kind of common knowledge. Doesn't everybody know? Like, it's. The 21st century, everybody knows about intellectual property. It's 95 percent of our gross national product. How could you not know?

Erin Austin: And yeah, but it is, we do get in our bowels and think, and don't realize how much value we can bring with our kind of skills that we have that we use every day.

Pamela Slim: I agree, I'd say 95 percent of people don't know what you think about intellectual property. So good for you. Well, there's

Erin Austin: endless number of topics to I've discovered.

Erin Austin: So it has been fun to do that. Honestly. All right. So our last example here. Web designer has a killer trademark for her company name. As a result, sometimes she gets clients simply because people remember the name of her business when asked for a referral to web designers, she does have a good system ties, work process, but the work itself isn't terribly differentiated because of the strength of her trademark.

Pamela Slim: She wants to create a certification program for other web designers. so this could be where it is more around, being very sticky and, having a sticky model, a sticky name just, you can't really discount the catchiness of something when you, I mean, a name like value builder that we were talking about earlier is to me, an example of just like a great name where we're often like, Oh, why didn't I think about that?

Pamela Slim: That can help just by definition, when you think about the model and be something that other people want. It's great that model. Is protected. So it's, to have that trademark on it, I think is a unique opportunity. I always think about it in the bigger picture in terms of, thinking about that audience, maybe of other web designers and also the nature of that person's business where you're choosing to be certifying in this case, maybe practitioners.

Pamela Slim: Of other designers that are using that method that is sticky and you built that brand and protected it. Are you in some ways creating your own competitors if you're not ready to be giving up your regular business? So that's the thing to. Be careful of and it often again is a stage of maturity in business to where you say, I'm actually not interested anymore in doing most of the work myself that it makes me excited to take this method to have it as a tool to make it easier for others.

Pamela Slim: And then your main focus becomes being the mentor, the capacity builder for people who can take it and run with it to have impact. it's always the market audience conversation that we have with people initially where they might, it is common that you can have a method or an approach that could be applicable for independent practitioners and for large companies.

Pamela Slim: And so in that case, it really is about what is. Your vision for your own business model in the market dynamics. And some people don't realize, yeah. You s I mean, there's amazing, smart people out there and you could train and certify others. And let's say, for example, they have better sales and marketing mojo than you have inadvertently.

Pamela Slim: You can end up creating a competitor. If you don't have any way of tying really. Financially benefiting from that you could be excited and proud that your name is out there, but you may not be an as strong a financial position.

Erin Austin: Yeah. in this example, the trademark is the business name and so.

Erin Austin: As opposed to, say, the process name, and so licensing the business name, obviously, would be very tricky unless you were going to get out of the business yourself. Yeah. maybe you switching it over to a process, trademark so you will. The trademark applying to the process, but, I am kind of ambivalent about trademarks and mostly because I work in the, B to B world.

Erin Austin: And so we have experts, who come to me and they, like, they have this trademark and they're very passionate about their trademark and. I'll say, what kind of transformation do you pride for your client? No, do this and that we, you know, and so what does that have to do with the trademark?

Erin Austin: Like, well, nothing it's, like, so do you think the client wouldn't work with you? If you had a different trademark? Like, well, no, it's still like, so, like, it's not that they're unimportant. Yeah, and this is again, I'm talking about the B2B B2C world. They're obviously important in the B2C, but for people to be overly invested in their trademarks, as if that's some sort of magic bullet in getting corporate clients, because, corporate clients, like, don't really care about your trademark.

Erin Austin: Honestly, they care about the value you provide the transformation you provide. And that is, with your methods and your trainings and the things that we copyright and not with the things that we trademark. but, there's certainly value. Like, you have a trademark that is throughout.

Erin Austin: the industry here, you know, we have a web designer who everyone knows who she is because she's got the coolest business name and there's something to trade on that. So this is a harder 1, but I, just, you know, cause I'm definitely, I go back and forth on trademarks. So,

Pamela Slim: which is why we always seem to have lawyers involved in the conversation.

Erin Austin: That's right. Well, I think that was a great conversation. Thank you for indulging me with a little issue spotting there. So, as you know, this is a very meta podcast. It is for female founders of expertise businesses who want to create scalable and saleable businesses. And so I am wondering, are you thinking about building a scalable and saleable business?

Erin Austin: How do you think about your business?

Pamela Slim: Yeah. At this stage, I've been in business 28 years, believe it or not. So I get great joy of classically been somebody like who's creative and interested in doing different things. I named myself an author practitioner where I often write about, write books around the things that I'm working with my clients on.

Pamela Slim: And it's actually been. Since the last couple of years or so, where we really started to lean in to have an agency around building certifications and just really digging into the codification that I am getting more excited and we're practicing more within our own business and I do. Love the idea, especially with a kid in college and another one on the way of thinking about building that value in.

Pamela Slim: I'm not, immune to not really having it be part of the way that I was thinking about, businesses. So I love the idea where we end up building a really powerful, model and a powerful machine for doing certifications, for example, and down the road, me and my team could exit it. in a way that makes us all money, that would make me really happy.

Pamela Slim: it's the, in the stage where we are right now, we are very deliberate in the way that we're building it, where it is productized services, we do debriefs after every single project, we do improvements every single time, which brings me great joy as an instructional designer, but it really, I think will set us up to make it easier to do that.

Erin Austin: So that was the long answer. The short answer is yes. Absolutely. I think the timeframe is a thing that will be interesting to see. yeah, I agree. And they're in the timeframes. tend to be longer than we think, you know, but then sometimes people, you hear about a, 2 year exit, who knows?

Erin Austin: So you never quite know, but always, it's never too early to think about creating your own intellectual property. if you get some comfort out of 3rd party materials in order to get started, but always be thinking about creating your own intellectual property, because that's the only way you're going to be able to build a truly scalable and saleable business.

Erin Austin: That's right. Yeah, well, thank you. So, we love to talk about, creating a society that works for more of us and more equitable society. I love to say wealth in the hands of women can change the world, but it's both in the hands of more of us could change the world. And so, is there a.

Erin Austin: person organization that is working to create an economy that works for everyone that you'd like to share.

Pamela Slim: Yeah. Locally, I work with rail, which stands for retail art, innovation, and livability, which is a local economic development, community development corporation, CDC. And so this is an example my husband and I opened a community lab just about eight years ago, and we're just completing the cycle of having it open.

Pamela Slim: It's a bit of self funded space, specifically focused on by entrepreneurs. And so in the work that we've done with rail over the years, they have a very deliberate approach to how they're working in our case with community. We are probably similar to many other. areas where in Arizona, anybody who's been tuned into politics know, there's all kinds of things that are happening here in Arizona in terms of, how things work and in our specific downtown area, we have around 70 percent folks of color, primarily Latino, in the downtown area, but there is really not the same kind of, Connection access to resources, even though literally it's like one street away for what happens on main street.

Pamela Slim: So I've been super excited through the years to be building more connections with them and watching the way that they specifically work literally on a person to person basis with a lot of the much smaller entrepreneurs. It can be folks who have mixed documentation households. It can be for street vendors.

Pamela Slim: It can be for neighbors who have cottage industries coming out of their home. But like during COVID times, they were working, they go door to door. Sometimes they'd be standing, you know, with three masks on walking through helping people to fill out the PPP forms, to get access to resources. And to me, it's, combining the really hands on approach with a very specific theory of change about how they are.

Pamela Slim: Helping, renters purchase their home so they don't get pushed out with a gentrification and to help business owners move from leasers to owners of their commercial buildings and really strengthening neighborhoods. So to me, it is intersectional for sure. Like in general, women. Are the powerhouses in the neighborhoods who are doing so much, and it really is looking at entire families and neighborhoods that are working together.

Pamela Slim: So actually I'm gonna be moving my office in conjunction with them as a next step after we move out of here in June. And I couldn't be more excited 'cause it just fuels. Everything about my own, like local contribution, but it's also a model. It's like a microcosm of ways that I think about ways we can even be working virtually with people in community.

Pamela Slim: Oh, that's fantastic.

Erin Austin: Well, we will have the, URL for, Brill CDC in, well, I just said it too, it'll be in the show notes as well. And so as we wrap up, is there, something happening, new happening in your business and offer you'd like to share with the audience?

Pamela Slim: I have rolling probably the best way to access more of our public classes.

Pamela Slim: I love to teach. I love cohort based programs. So for those who might be a little bit earlier on where you're like, I think I have some good stuff, but it's not really codified. We have a class called productize your service, discover your unique thumbprint method. And that's for people who want to work on really codifying their method.

Pamela Slim: I co teach it with my amazing. team, Josiah Owens and Darren Padilla. And so it's a really focused, like a two week sprint class that is very hands on where we work with folks to be building their own methods, which is the precursor for certification. So we do that a couple times a year. I think we'll have that in the show notes for the next one coming up.

Pamela Slim: And we would love to see you there. Otherwise I highlight now, I started a few weeks ago, a newsletter on LinkedIn called smart IP. And so I'm writing specifically around issues related to, IP over there. Not IP law,

Erin Austin: although I'll feature IP and the concepts out there, the better it is for everyone.

Pamela Slim: There you go. I will feature people like you, but yeah, all the rest of the stuff.

Erin Austin: Yeah. I just discovered the LinkedIn newsletter. We actually, we found it accidentally, honestly, cause like, it was hosting and, and cause before I think it was kind of like an article I think was kind of, yeah. And then the newsletter and we're like, Oh, this is like growing really fast.

Erin Austin: Like what's happening here? Like, cause I think they're, promoting it and pushing them out. So yeah,

Pamela Slim: they're, great. Yeah. It's amazing. had avoided it for a long time, but now it's amazing. And you know, and like. Yeah.

Pamela Slim: And so think it's great to, drive that interest in places where people are looking for that information.

Erin Austin: Perfect. Well, wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Pam. This has been such a fun episode. I know it was extremely helpful to the audience and I can't thank you enough for being here.

Pamela Slim: Thanks for having me.