How to Multiply Your Business Value with IP Assets with JiNan Glasgow George: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to multiply your business value with IP assets. And to drop these value bombs, I brought to Janan, Glasgow, George, and EO Fire Studios. Janan has built her career from engineering patent law and investment by transforming ideas and assets and connecting innovators to the resources they need to make positive impact. And today we talk about how almost everyone has a trademark to register a copyright or patent, and you can make the most valuable asset in your business from your ideas and transform that into intellectual property, but you have to know how to use it in your industry and oh so much more.

0:44And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Janan and our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you love stories that entertain and educate, you've got to grab the book, The Dealmaker's Will by Walker Thrash. It reads like a novel, but teaches like a masterclass packed with timeless lessons on power, leverage, and negotiation. Whether you're raising capital or closing deals, this book will change how you play the game. Get it now on Amazon. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:19Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Janann, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. All right. What's up, Fire Nation? Hope you're fired up today. One of the things I believe about becoming successful that maybe a lot of people disagree with is that God gives us all the power to create, but most people don't use it. imagination and ideas. I think they're truly an unlimited resource for solving problems and creating positive impact in the world.

2:05But most people don't pay attention to their own ideas and don't tap into that power. I believe that successful people are always creating solutions and positive impact by thinking about their ideas, documenting them, and also the ideas of other people. Great message in Fire Nation. Today, we're talking about how to multiply your business value with IP assets. And I want to start with a bang with why. Why does IP, intellectual property, multiply your business value? Break that down for us. Sure. If you think about the basics of business and where your value comes from, it comes from your revenue or your valuation, if you will, your revenue and your profit, your assets, right?

2:55Intellectual property are a form of intangible assets. If you don't have them, really all you have is what everyone else has. Maybe you also have a first mover advantage, but that doesn't last forever. So IP assets can have a multiplier effect on everything else because they're connected with what makes you unique, your unique value proposition, and they tend to go above and beyond just what your company does. For example, if you ultimately exit and you're acquired, the valuation is going to be higher if you have IP because the IP assets have greater value the bigger the company because they keep others out of this space.

3:38So the bigger your footprint, the bigger the value, the bigger the multiplier. So let's use maybe one specific example of where you've seen this really be of value to a person, to a company, to a business over the years. What did that look like? Great example. One of my longtime clients started out, serial entrepreneurs, but started out with another company that's in technology and hardware plus software. And when he first came to me, he said, I'd like to file a patent. We kind of looked at it and put a strategy and some data around it, it looked more like maybe it was 12 patents. At first he said, wait, that's going to be really expensive.

4:16We walked through the budget, it looked like it wasn't. But the effect, the impact, the multiplier that it had on his business was first of all, valuation. When he sought to raise capital, he was able to get a reasonable valuation even with no revenue, even just as an early stage company because he had these IP assets. He was able to further use them as the business was growing to attract good talent, right? Because patents are evidence of innovation. He was able to attract key board members because of the intellectual property position and the exclusive rights they had. They really stood out over competition.

4:55Also, when they needed growth capital, they leveraged just the IP assets to get a line of credit over$15 million that was just backed by the patents. And then ultimately for exit, that was the multiplier that gave them the business valuation that their revenue and profits couldn't do. So instead of merely getting a multiple on your industry, whatever that standard is, the IP went with them from startup, raising capital, attracting people, board members, getting key contracts that didn't have to be bid out because they were exclusive source and ultimately to exit at a higher valuation. So Fire Nation, we are entrepreneurs, we're small business owners, we're side hustlers.

5:40How would we actually use IP, intellectual property, in our businesses? Do you have a website? Do you have an app? Most companies have these things. Many companies have inventive solutions to problems. So everybody's got a trademark to register, copyrights, and maybe patterns. So even it applies to contracts that you have with people, right? If you're hiring somebody to develop your app, you're hiring somebody to build your website. You are hiring people to work in your company. You've got a client list, a customer list. Those are trade secrets potentially. So everybody has IP. It's just that you may not know it or you may not have leveraged it yet.

6:27So every company, even these side hustles, You've got something. You need to be aware of it. Now, you did just say that IP makes sense for everybody. Let's go a little deeper there. Is there ever a case that it doesn't make sense? And if not, let's kind of continue just to dive deeper into how IP does make sense for essentially anybody who's going to be running a business, has a website, has a brand, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. I mean, if you think about IP generally, they are exclusive rights. They keep other people out. So it's sort of like fencing your property, right? If you have a property, how do you keep competitors from trespassing on it, from being there?

7:06You've got to have intellectual property to do that. You can't just stay ahead of them. So the number one thing about IP is that you use it to keep others out, every form of it. So trademark registration, I'll give you an example. I just talked to a group of software CEOs that were all funded and the managing partner and the partners of the fund that backed them. About 15 to 20 of them on the web meeting. Only one of them had taken the step to register their trademark. It was really shocking, right? None of them had patents, although some of them could. So really the first step is to look into what makes your company unique.

7:46What do you have that's a competitive advantage? And then from there, you can decide what type of IP asset to create. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense to me. Anything else you want to add? Yeah, I would say even as you're starting up a company, it's good to sort of inventory what you think you're going to create and put some data around that. I would say like this is important. Most of the time, companies sort of overestimate what they might have exclusive rights for. So how do you answer where's the limit? How do you keep others out of your property? You've got to research what else is there.

8:22So whether you're filing a trademark application or choosing your first company name or your app name or choosing your domain, you want to be sure that you can own it. So research can be done online. Some of that you can do yourself. But most of the time, you need to engage with an IP attorney to ensure that you're creating valuable assets. Fire Nation, I want to talk about the top mistakes that people make with IP. We'll talk about where do you even start when you want to create these assets and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Imagine a story so gripping you can't put it down, yet every chapter quietly levels up your business mindset.

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12:03So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High Level, join the revolution. Janine, we're back, and I want to talk about some of the mistakes you've seen over the years. Because, I mean, here's Fire Nation. You've convinced us. Like, we know we need to make this happen. But what mistakes can we avoid? do we need to avoid that you can tell us about right now? Sure. First of all, know that mistakes can be fatal to creating IP. There's no second place.

12:41It's a race to file. And you guys at Fire Nation, you're used to running that race. So be ready, get set, go, right? You have to do it in a proactive, high quality way, or you're just wasting money and time. So I'm going to say this. The ideas in your head are worth nothing. You have to transform them into assets by writing them down and speaking about them and then taking the steps to create IP. One of the top mistakes people make is doing nothing at all. Your ideas are worth nothing. You're doing nothing at all. You are letting your assets walk out the door every day because they're in your head.

13:19They're in your employees' heads, your contractors' heads. They might even be with your customers, right? So you need to be able to capture them. Another mistake people make is filing everything. You can spend a lot of money creating IP assets that themselves aren't worth anything. It's a pretty well-established statistic that maybe up to 95 % of patents make no commercial impact. Why is that? it's because they make another mistake they just file without doing this research and analysis getting data around it and differentiating from it they fail because they don't have a strategy another mistake that people make with ip that's big is waiting too late to file i just mentioned it's a race to file so you have to do it sooner rather than later a lot of times early stage companies or a side hustle that's turning into a business you think you know i'll take care of that when I make enough money.

14:21Well, then it's usually too late because you have, within the US, you have a one-year grace period from the time you have a publication or public use before you file. So you can't wait too late because you can't fix that. It's one of the few things you can't fix later. Doing it yourself, the DIY, is a huge mistake. You don't know what you're doing. First of all, you've never created IP assets. But secondly, even if you're smart and talented, you writing these and creating these are not the best, highest use of your time. You're not doing what you uniquely can do as the founder, as the CEO of the business.

14:59So hire a patent attorney or an intellectual property attorney who will be proactive, who will ask about your business and how you're going to use the asset. Unless they ask those questions or you tell them, then they're not going to create the asset that will work in your company. I'll mention this final one that's a top mistakes and I see it a lot. It's software. People think software is not patentable. That could not be farther from the truth. So it's important to understand that almost any subject matter that you have in your business, almost any way that you're doing business that's an advantage, if it's an inventive solution to a problem, you might be able to create an asset that would have that multiplier effect on your business.

15:42Okay. You've convinced us. You've really convinced us of the fact that IP makes sense for everybody. You've shared with us these top mistakes that people make and these misconceptions they have when it comes to IP. Let's start with step one. Where would we even start creating IP assets and where do we go from there? Well, you start at your center. What's at the heart of your business? What is your unique value proposition? What is the competitive advantage that you have? What do your customers, your clients like about you? Why do they prefer you over your competition, right? It's at the heart of marketing, but it's the unique thing that you've created or that you are creating that nobody else offers.

16:22Once you identify that, then you start documenting it, writing it down. What about it makes it important? Why has it never been done before? is this truly unique? You've got to kind of compare yourself to others to see whether or not that's true. Sometimes you think you're unique, but in fact, you're not. So start with yourself and work outward from there. Put context around it. And then you'll know, you'll have the path, it'll be clear. And then make a plan. You don't ever want to start building something without an architectural plan, right? So same is true for IP assets. Make the plan. Know where you're going.

16:59Know how much it'll cost. If you're talking with a lawyer, hey, negotiate. Ask for cap rates or flat rates so that you can make a budget. Only then can you assess, is it worth creating this in the first place? So start by capturing it and then compare. So you did say that word unique, and I want to dive deeper there. How exactly can we identify what's unique and valuable with our own personal IP assets? The unique aspect, obviously, is what you've originated, what you've created. If it's come from inside you, inside your company, then that's pretty unique, right? But you have to compare it and differentiate from anybody else that's around you.

17:43So you have to do some research, some analysis on that. The good news is there's tons of data out there, right? Just like you do market research on competition, you can find out within IP whether or not not anyone's had another idea that they've transformed into an asset that looks like yours. It's all documented, right? It ends up being a lot of paper or really digital online, but it's never been easier. You can search it directly in the U.S. at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, for example. USPTO.gov is a free place to go to check, to compare, and then differentiate. So I want to end with a bang here, Janan.

18:21So give us the one takeaway that you really want to make sure our listeners get from our entire conversation today? Like what is something that we just want to circle back on? Then give us, you know, hey, any call to action you have, ways to connect with you, and then we'll say goodbye. Thank you. You can make the most valuable asset in your business out of ideas. Transform them into intellectual property, into assets, but know how you're using them in your business. Great. And thanks. You can connect with me through my law firm, which is Neo IP. Our website is neoipassets.com. And I've launched a book I'd love to mention.

19:05It's called The IP Miracle, How to Transform Ideas into Assets That Multiply Your Business. And that's out now, everywhere. The IP Miracle. Check it out, Fire Nation. And you are the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with JGG and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com, type Janan in the search bar and the show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about today. That's J-I-N-A-N. Janan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

19:46Awesome. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bond content was brought to you by Janan and Fire Nation over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to order yours today and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side.

20:26Fire Nation, if you love stories that entertain and educate, you've got to grab the book, The Dealmaker's Will by Walker Thrash. It reads like a novel, but teaches like a masterclass packed with timeless lessons on power, leverage and negotiation. Whether you're raising capital or closing deals, this book will change how you play the game. Get it now on Amazon. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches and agencies? build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.