Ep. 190 Creating your own IP

*Resources mentioned during the episode*

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Creating your own IP

Hello, hello there, I have a good one for you today. It’s a new one. And it’s a good one,

I promise. They’re all good. But this one is, in particular, very powerful and useful and wonderful and valuable in every way. So talking about creating your own IP, I know sounds fancy your intellectual property. What do I mean? Well, first of all, it’s obviously not okay to steal to copy other people’s materials. Now, by all means, and we’re all inspired by others. The classic reality, I suppose, is that everything has to some extent been inspired by something else, right. And there are frameworks that we can share and use and build on. But if we do that, first of all, ask permission, if possible. And secondly, certainly give credit without exception. So even if you’re adding your own spin, so for example, I use the ikigai framework a lot. And I’ve used that in my Business Academy course that I finalized recently. I think recently, now, by the time you listen, it’s been awhile. So my Business Academy course. And in all my materials, I talk about iki guy, I’ve managed to track down kind of the original source, although even there, there’s a Spanish guy who’s talked about it, there’s someone else who kind of added purpose, there’s down button, or who talks about the Blue Zones and iki guy, there are books on iki. Guy, it’s very unclear, and in fact, even originally came from somebody else, etc, etc, right, but do your best to credit. And certainly, if you’ve actually taken it from somewhere, you need to at least, you know, give credit to that, right. And in fact, as an aside, it doesn’t matter so much. B

ut I believe Instagram has recently announced that they are really putting more emphasis on original content.

So if you’re literally just sharing other people’s posts, that’s not going to do you any good, actually. But again, it’s not okay to steal and copy other people’s materials, it’s illegal, it’s not cool. It’s also not very powerful for you as an individual. Now, when you’re starting out, you might think as well that things are quite original, when I started sharing things, I did my coach training 2015, I think I graduated, and as many other coaches that came out talking about my values and your values, rather, and limiting beliefs, and so on. Now, this is something that all coaches talk about, because it’s something we’ve learned about they’re super powerful things, and concepts. But it’s not that I’ve come up with this, right? So really important that you I mean, and if I don’t say that, then I apologize. But those are not my unique frameworks, right? I’m sharing, either ubiquitous very broadly available, everybody knows about them, everybody does them, or, you know, specific things that I’m sharing and saying this is from this person, and so on, right? So again, even if you’re adding your own spin, state that you’re inspired by, you’re adapting from a particular thoughts. But as I said, it’s illegal. It’s not good. It’s not cool to copy. But more interestingly, it’s not going to build your brand and business, if you’re only teaching what other people do. Now, I guess, and this is a bit controversial. This is part of the reason why I’m not so into the whole. What’s it called? Is it LM LM, I can’t even think of what it’s called. Now, that sort of period and marketing, but when you’re becoming almost an associate to have of someone else’s brand, as a Brand Builder, marketer myself, I love creating my own things, that sort of my zone of genius, but certainly what I enjoy doing, I love coming up with frameworks and strategies and so on. And, you know, just taking someone else’s brand and executing is not particularly interesting for me. And so, you know, that’s a personal preference, MLM. I’m sure it’s called MLM isn’t it? membership level marketing or something like that. Also, you know, you can become a certified consultant, or minion, or whatever, and apologies for being a bit demeaning.

It’s, a great model for some people, of someone else’s framework. In fact, maybe maybe I shouldn’t say this, maybe in the future, I’ll have a certification program, where people can learn my five pillars, and my three eyes and three E’s and my five hours and so on, and they can go forth and teach my proprietary models, right, maybe that is a model. Again, for me. And for you, when you’re starting out as a solopreneur, freelancer, service based business owner. It’s far more powerful to create your own frameworks, we talked about, we’ve been talking about building a personal brand, creating content, and standing out of the classes market, this is what’s going to help you stand out.

Number one, it’s going to crystallize your thinking.

As I’ve been developing the course that I keep talking about, I’ve been consolidating clarify my models and frameworks. And now I’m crystal clear on my methods. So I’m teaching the five pillars of building a life outside the nine to five, which I’ve been talking about for a couple of years at least. I’ve also been even if I didn’t have it sort of would that name is something that has evolved since I started 2015 2016. And within that course, I’ve had to you know, I’ve got five modules for the five pillars. It’s not each module has four steps. So for your definition of success, I through your vision, your values, your purpose and your balance in life, for your business model, we look at your criteria, we look at your clients, your products and services, your ecosystem. So I’ve had two, and that’s taken, honestly months, I was going back and forth. And I was working as a graphic designer last year to really put those steps in place, and I kept tweaking things. Now I’ve consolidated, it’s crystallized, I can share that with you here, it rolls off my tongue. And I’m super confident and have the conviction now that I can walk you through these five pillars, these are the things we can see where the gaps are. That’s so so powerful. So again, I’ve crystallize my thinking, through developing my own IP in the form of a course. But also in the models. I’ve even done little graphics myself, and so on, which hopefully a graphic designer will sort out for me eventually. Secondly, it demonstrates your credibility and positions you as an authority. So if I can say, Hey, these are the five things you need to build a business and a life outside the nine to five, you know, you I must know something about it. Because I’m bringing some really concrete tangible guidance, I’ve put the thinking into it, you can see my thinking, right, and I become an authority on building that life outside the nine to five, if I share, and it was published in a psychologies magazine article, my five L’s model, you need to be balancing looking at your goals in live love, learn and lead laugh, you know, I know what I’m talking about. I have a model, I’ve again, obviously put the thinking in, I’m sharing my expertise with you just like if I’ve written a book or if I’m running a podcast, suddenly, you’re sort of inherently inheriting what’s the word sort of, well, winning, earning,

I guess, a label a credible label of being an expert, because if they’ve written a book, even if it’s not a great book, you know, you’ve written a book, obviously know something about it, you’ve written a podcast, you have this framework.

So it demonstrates your credibility and positions you as an authority, and again, standing on a test market. Number three, it gives you something unique that no one else offers. If I’m a coach, and I’m only teaching you, the values are limited, or teaching isn’t even what coach does, right? By the way, I should catch myself there. But if I’m only using other people’s frameworks, that’s a great start. And as a non coach trained person, you will see huge value in that those are really powerful frameworks. But as you grow and experience and confidence, developing your own thinking of it on what you’re doing is going to give you something unique, right? You’re no longer just doing what every other coach is going Do you have a unique spin, it’s not better, that’s really important to say, it could be better, it can be worse for different people, but it’s different. And by the way, it also provides you really rich content for your website for your marketing, for your paid programs for a book for a podcast. So for me, for example, I cycle through these five pillars, and I have done for a couple of years. So I at the moment do two months on each pillow. I’ve been doing personal brand now June July in 2022. That’s the fourth pillar, I do then specific topics every week, I have created this course, as I said, if you go to one step outside.com forward slash course, you can see actually go through those modules on that page. If you scroll down, I’ve talked through the sort of four steps under each of the five modules, I literally now have a course on the five pillars, I use those five pillars also more loosely in the business accelerator. And I am now hopefully I’ve made a lot of progress since I first started talking about this, and you’re listening to this, I am writing my outside the nine to five book, which is again on those five pillars. And of course, I’m here talking to you on the podcast about the five pillars, so you know, hugely rich source of content for all my content.

So, crystallize your thinking demonstrates your credibility, it gives you something unique, and it gives you really rich content for your website for your marketing for your programs, etc.

So how can you start doing this? Well, first of all, look at what you’re currently doing. So whether you’re doing one to one service, or you’re doing a group already, if it’s bespoke, if it’s standardized, what are the steps you take people through, I was lucky enough in the coach training I did so it was with International Coach Academy, instead of just taking on models like the ground model and so on, which you might be familiar with, from coaching or from from even the corporate world because I landed at Procter and Gamble, actually, we were encouraged, we were obliged, in fact, for our graduation for us to vacation, to develop our own frameworks, we had to develop a power tool so mine was growth versus comfort, hence this whole thing about one step outside your comfort zone. We also had to write a What’s the call day What did they call it a research paper I think I’m gonna call it or they called it a rather which was on a blended consulting, which again, is what I do, I blend business mentoring with broader life coaching. And I had a model I can’t now remember what those steps were and they were relatively similar to grow but it was something like setting your goals, working on your mindset coming up with strategies and taking action right that’s pretty standard by I did put my own spin on it.

And now of course, I have the five pillars, which is more specific, because at the time I wasn’t quite in this kind of building your business escaping the nine to five zone back in 2015. So coming back to you, what are you currently doing? If you’re delivering work, have a look at you know, even if you’re just starting out, you know, what is it? What are the steps you’re taking people through? What are the things people are always asking you for? It could be global steps, like I have the five pillars, I’ve got Valentina who has the eight leadership principles, what else I have, you know, you might have the three steps, the three pillars is great, I think because kind of things that sit on it, you’ve got the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, of course, from Stephen Covey, so you’ve got the big picture, framework and steps. But you’ve also got the smaller thing. So you may have noticed if you’ve been paying attention, the last few episodes, and if you’ve joined the course, the Business Academy, you’ll see this too, I’ve started actually crystallizing some more sort of smaller scale models. So I’ve talked about the three eyes, I’ve talked about the three E’s, the three P’s, I love the three, the three P’s, I’ve got shared my personal brand framework, I’ve got a sort of three circles for your personal brand, sharing what people see etc, etc. You know, so big global process methodology, your proprietary framework, and then little specific things again, you can use things you know, in I teach a time management webinar, where we use the urgent important matrix, which is called the Eisenhower matrix. I think, again, it comes from Stephen Covey, possibly, again, the source is always a bit tricky. But if you can come up with your own two by two matrix, or a Venn diagram, or a star, or a self perpetuating virtuous circle, right, potentially briefer designer, but I wouldn’t get too concerned about that you can in Canva, choose one of the templates there already, but start developing your own little frameworks and visualize them.

And it could be a pyramid, again, it could be a box, it could be whatever circles, I use a lot of circles because my brand, if you look at my logo, it’s one step outside and in my new graphic look and feel is a lot of circles, right? And it’s the comfort zone, it’s it’s that that’s the kind of thing we’ve gone with. Now, finally, it’s not necessary, but you can look into registering the trademark, right, that’s something I’ve started considering. I think, you know, I’m less kind of about the validity of that. But of course, you do want to protect yourself. So I believe what you can do is put TM on any framework that you’re sort of intending to register. And of course, once it’s registered, you can put an if it’s super critical, that of course, by all means, but generally, if you’ve got the domain name, if you’re sharing it, if you can prove, then I think, you know, no legal advice coming from me here. But I think if you have that content, and so on, I think you’re relatively okay. And most importantly, you’re going to keep evolving, you’re thinking so I’m not too precious about these things, I never think I can share too much.

As I’ve said, before, you know, I’m, I’m constantly coming up with new things. So I’m not too worried about people kind of being inspired by as they say, but stealing the stuff I’m creating, I hope I’m not being naive. So creating your own IP. Remember, it’s not okay to steal to copy. And beyond the legal issue. It’s not effective for you and your business and your brand. And as you create your own frameworks, it’ll crystallize your thinking. It’ll demonstrate your credibility, it’ll give you something unique that no one else offers. And it will provide you really rich content, for your marketing and your programs and so on. So look, what we’re currently doing, look into visualizing it, perhaps look into registering the trademark, but don’t be too worried about that, especially early on, because your thinking might evolve if I’d gone to trademark the stuff I had early on, you know, that might not be relevant anymore. So I hope that’s inspired you to begin even if you’re just starting out by the way, this is not something you should be doing when you’re, you know, a massive guru, you need to be starting to do it now. And I’ll really give you an edge and you’ll find that it’s really powerful will give you confidence as well as you start teaching because you’ll have such clarity on on what you’re providing what you’re sharing the value you can bring. So I hope you found that interesting, and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now

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