Monetizing Your Expertise: Strategies for Licensing Intellectual Property with Janet Alexandersson

#290 - How do you turn your unique methods and processes into licensed products? How do you even know if you have a process or product to license? Our guest today is Janet Alexandersson, a lawyer with two decades of experience, who is here to answer those very questions. Janet helps professionals add revenue streams through licensing by offering a unique combination of business advisory and legal services. She is celebrating 20 years as a lawyer and loves to chat about business opportunities, licensing, and negotiations.

Learn how you can identify and monetize proprietary knowledge within your operations—be it guides, checklists, or courses—to create new revenue streams. Janet offers practical examples and encourages you to recognize and capitalize on your unique assets.

We also delve into the promising world of licensing intellectual property to universities and other organizations. Janet explains the benefits of generating passive income, repurposing content for different markets, and the importance of aligning licensing strategies with your business goals. Understand the challenges of negotiating with larger entities and the patience required to close deals. Check out this special freebie exclusively for our listeners.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:09

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show.

Speaker 1 0:40

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Organized Chaos. So I have a special guest today. Her name is Janet Alexanderson and she helps professionals add revenue streams through licensing by offering a unique combination of business advisory and legal services. She is celebrating 20 years as a lawyer and loves to chat about business opportunities, licensing and negotiations. She founded the boutique law firm Anderson Law back in 2007. She spends her time advising professionals who have created courses, systems, frameworks and much more on all things licensing, and worldwide. So if you have a business and you have a special process or a method or a framework, janet is going to answer all the questions that you have about this. So welcome to the show, janet.

Speaker 2 1:29

Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:30

Thank you so much for having me, yeah, of course. So I'm really excited about this, because when we have our own business and everything, we have our special or unique way of doing certain things, and sometimes that's really what makes us stand out from the competition. But most of the time people don't really know if they actually have something special or a special method that actually requires licensing. So that's what you're going to be here to talk about and share with the audience today, but before we get to that, I would really love to know a little bit more about you. If you could please share how you got to where you are today. But before we get to that, I would really love to know a little bit more about you. If you could please share how you got to where you are today.

Speaker 2 2:10

Yeah, so I was an eager teenager wanting to do human rights, going way back, but that's kind of how I got into law school. I wanted to save the world, essentially, and realizing that the world didn't need saving from me after a while so late 2000s I decided to start my own law firm instead of tracking down ways to practice in other ways. So I started out with general business law anything, contracts, anything, international, anything where I got to interact with entrepreneurs, essentially because I really like people who have ideas and are curious about things and create solutions. And over the years it's become more and more focused on licensing. And the reason was because I got an opportunity to license my own legal templates about six years ago and friends started asking me but how do you do that? I wish I could do that. I wish I could make money without doing anything extra and just sell what I already have. So I started explaining and I got more and more clients that were doing that in their own way, with their own assets.

Speaker 2 3:16

And I know you mentioned people doing it with the methods and frameworks that they had created, but they can also do it with really tiny things that aren't even the core of their business idea. Everyone has an ops system in their business that is working for them. That could be something they could package. So to me it's really exciting to work with people who have big ideas but also are executors and doers and are usually quite organized. I really like that. So to me it's become essentially honing in on who is my favorite client, which I know is kind of a weird way of doing business, but it's become that way. So these are my favorite people. Even if they weren't my clients, I would love to hang out with them. They're really interesting and they do interesting things.

Speaker 1 4:02

Yeah, I love that. And we go into sometimes like not really knowing what to do or like what to start off with, and I think that sometimes we come into it where we're like fearful, because it feels like there's so much that you need to learn and do and I think that, like you said, there's a particular thing that you might be doing in your business, even if it's like operational, that you wouldn't think would be something that you could license right. So let's dive into that. First, how can someone identify if they have intellectual property and or like a brand strong enough to even license?

Speaker 2 4:43

Yeah. So I think the first part is do you have some sort of proprietary knowledge? So that can be that you have very deep expertise, or that you have cross industry expertise that no one else has, or that you have new to the market knowledge. So explaining those they're quite a little bit different. So deep expertise means that you have a solution no one else has because you know more, or know more than most people in that industry or about that industry. And then the next one would be that you maybe worked on the edges of two industries and you have like a combined solution.

Speaker 2 5:23

The example that I always give is how the pit stop workers for the ferrari or the formula one races help surgeons develop their routines, and most people know that story. That's a cross-pollination of knowledge. So if you have something like that and you can make a proprietary checklist, as they did together, for how to better keep hygiene and refraining from making mistakes in surgery, that's a great cross pollination. And then the final one, the new to market, can be something as simple as now Anyone who's first in their industry with some sort of repeatable process for how to include AI as an add-on in an already existing process. That's a way to do something like that. So those are kind of the three buckets, but we can talk more practical things as well.

Speaker 1 6:13

If you want to have more examples, yeah, that would be great if you could go into that.

Speaker 2 6:17

Yeah, yeah. So I think a lot of us think mostly about like, what do I do? What do I offer? So if you already have guides, checklists, courses, even if they haven't really worked for your market because maybe you don't have big enough of an audience, it's more of the quality of what you have. So is it something that someone else can tag on to, um, an internal system? Maybe employee performance could be increased if they have a system for how to process emails that's really efficient that you use. Or maybe there's something in your business where you teach people something in your craft? Is that something that they could use internally or, even better, their audience externally that they could resell?

Speaker 2 7:00

So it's more, if you're feeling like you're like a small fish in a big pond, that's a good opportunity for licensing, because other people already have audiences and customers and they could sell what you're offering. And you also talked about the brand being strong. Sometimes you don't have to license them to sell your brand. You can also license for them to white label, and that's sometimes something they prefer more and they can pay more for that. So you don't really have to worry about your own name recognition. You only have to worry about knowing your thing and being good at it and having it put into a system that is repeatable and delivers results. So, yeah, it's really taking stock of what do I have, what could, what could be interesting, what have I created, what do I use in my own practice and what do people see that they think?

Speaker 1 7:55

is clever that I made. Yeah, that is so interesting. I would have never thought of that. And even when you talked about like the cross pollination, like who would think that you know pit stop, like the process that goes along with that, which is amazing if you've ever seen that happen, where it's like it's seconds, where it would be so easy to make mistakes, but also you know, with surgery and like how you have to be so delicate and so precise because it could be catastrophic if you make a mistake, but how those two can actually go together when it comes to a process. That is so interesting to me. And you mentioned something about like how, if you have something that you can pass on to another company that would use that, how does that actually work when it comes to actually receiving revenue from that?

Licensing for Business Growth

Speaker 2 8:49

Yeah. So the way that most of my clients come to me is that they have already something, a process or a product that they have gotten interest from a company. But some people come earlier but that's kind of why they're starting to think about it and they have been asked if they can resell that's essentially the language that we hear or be an affiliate or if they can purchase it from them. So the licensing part is essentially you come into agreement that they can use it, maybe for a year, and then they can renew, or they can license for longer, meaning that they can use it in a specific way or sell it for a specific price or whatever price that they want, maybe to a specific set of people or in a specific area geographically. I'm not going to get into much to the legal side, but it's essentially just having a contract saying you're allowed to depending on how, what you want to release to them, depending on what you want to release to them use this brand that I made for this product and sell it and make revenue in this way. Or you can put your own brand on the thing and I'll support you in delivering this experience and sometimes you can also tag on consulting on it. So they want you to be more present because they value your expertise. So even if licensing is not the only thing you want to do and you want to become more known as an advisor or an expert, that's also a way to go.

Speaker 2 10:11

So a lot of my clients are licensed to universities for courses or for processes in the university, so they're also doing some things in-house. Some of them not everyone wants to. Some people just like to earn money and be on the beach, but some of them want to be more hands-on and make a name for themselves. So they go in and teach like a core thing in the program and then the university does the rest. So some people sell a curriculum, so it's more of a structured system. And some people deliver the entire experience, so it's more really tailoring a document to make sure that you keep your IP, because you don't want to sell the IP. They're just renting your knowledge. That's how I like to put it.

Speaker 1 10:55

Oh, wow, that's so interesting. So how do you think this licensing can impact your business model?

Speaker 2 11:02

So from what I've seen with the people that I work with and I own, it gives you freedom. If you do it right and if you get licensees, it's usually very low impact on you when it comes to adding things to your plate. So you will free up your time to do more because now you have the leverage of having more money for your time. So it doesn't really add a lot of admin, unless you design it to add a lot of admin or a lot of extra responsibilities. But it's just a nice way of getting as you said, it's not really like real estate money, but for your knowledge. So you earn that on the side and then you can go on to do what you want to do with your business and develop it at your own pace, which I think is the most important part. So a lot of us feel the pressure to like I have to earn this much money and I have to like do more time and do more time and find more people and like.

Speaker 2 11:52

It's a never-ending sort of cycle and with licensing there's usually quite high numbers, for if you're licensing to larger corporations, so even one licensing deal could be almost all you need to earn for that year yeah the urgency of like having more and more and more well, like you might get addicted to the licensing model, but you don't really have to trade your time as urgently, which is nice, yeah that's what I was going to ask, because would you call this more like creating passive income?

Speaker 1 12:21

yes, actually, I would.

Speaker 2 12:23

Yeah, I know that's like almost like a dirty word at this point there's so many scams. But yeah, you can set it up to be mostly passive on your part.

Speaker 1 12:31

Do you have clients who you know started off in one industry and then found that they can license something and then actually created multiple different licenses for multiple different industries?

Speaker 2 12:48

Yeah. So some things really translate well, especially if you're in like the ops or things that are add-ons, so any like AI component that could be added on to. I'm saying AI now, but there's so many things that can be add-ons to a system. So when you figure out and this is kind of the thing you need to switch your thinking from serving your clients to how can this be useful in general? So, instead of having something that's maybe really in depth and delivers this specific result, how can it be a little bit more broad and still deliver a result, but not as specific? And then you can sort of broaden yourself to more industries. So I think it's both industries and geographies, because sometimes you're very tied to like this is my market in this area or in this language, but a lot of things translate really well.

Speaker 2 13:36

So say that you've made a course teaching marketers how to use canva. Yeah, but they don't have to be marketers, right, because it's probably not marketing material specific. You might have a module that is marketing material specific, but what if you remove that and just has had a module on like quickly getting up to speed on using canva? That is now an in-house employee upgrade for any company, university organization, or it could be something that someone is a marketer and they want their customers to be able to themselves edit what they have gotten, or graphic designer, so they can also sell it. So thinking of all the ways that what you have can be repackaged for someone else to sell or use if you remove the specificity. So if you remove that, that is for your industry and your niche and for your specific use case when you're selling it, it can apply quite broadly.

Speaker 1 14:29

Okay, so you know what steps should someone take to determine if licensing is really right to or like, the right path for them?

Speaker 2 14:40

Yeah, I think they need to understand what type of business they want to do. If they really like the one-on-one interaction with people and like seeing someone achieve and seeing them getting the results from what you've made. Licensing is probably not for you unless you want to see it on a broad scale but not be in personal contact with those people. Yeah, sure you want to think big. You can still see an impact in some way, like if you create a course and the university sells it, you're going to see some impact but you might not see it as personal. So that's one.

Speaker 2 15:15

And then I think some people find that it's sometimes scary to stretch a little bit from working with smaller contracts or working with organizations that are sort of on par with their own to working with really big organizations that are sometimes of on par with their own to working with really big organizations that are sometimes quite intimidating in their negotiation because they are very rigid or they try to appear rigid or they have a lengthy process. So that's another thing to consider that you have to up your confidence a little bit to get after that. And then also, the bigger the organization you go for, the lengthier the process is to land the contracts because they have so many people who have to have a say. So the smaller you work with, the faster you can close the deal.

Speaker 2 16:00

But if you want money fast, licensing is usually not the game you want to play you have to be patient yeah, and I'm not saying like it's going to take years, it's more like it's not going to happen this week, maybe like this quarter.

Speaker 1 16:14

Yeah, so let's, let's go into the legal side a little bit, because you did mention you know like it can't like, if you go the route of trying to work with, like bigger entities, like it may be kind of scary to dive into that just because of the legal aspect of it. So what are the most important? Like early legal protections someone should have in place before considering licensing their product or their brand.

Speaker 2 16:41

Yeah, I think the most important part is to have the intellectual property protected in some way. So the people that I work with have three kinds usually. So the first one would be a trademark. If they have like a logo or a license and they want their brand to be on it, it's good that that is registered, or at least that you have applied for registration, so that's in process.

Speaker 2 17:05

If it's copy, so the content you created, the course, the videos, the audios, all of that or graphics copyright is automatic but it's usually good for you if you've had it registered and witnessed so that you can point to like I did this, I created this, this is part of it. And then for the people who license know-how, which is a process or a method or a framework or even sometimes a course because that also applies know-how and the way to protect that is to treat it as a business secret. So having language in your contracts already with people who get to experience it, that is essentially non-competition or confidentiality, so that people know that they can't share it in any which way. And then having that also, in all of these key cases, carried on into the license agreement as well, so that you essentially keep being the owner of what you have made.

Speaker 1 18:02

Yeah, because that can be scary. Right To go out there and put your stuff, that you put a lot of work in and you know. Kind of speaking of that, like what are some of the pitfalls or at least maybe like the number one pitfall to avoid when considering licensing.

Speaker 2 18:20

I would never do anything. On the honor system. A lot of people are like can we just try this thing for everything? Yeah, no, but really not being sort of persuaded by the first person who approaches you, they're very likely to try to undersell you because you don't know the value of what you made yet you didn't understand how to protect it. So if someone approaches you and gives you a contract, don't ever just sign that.

Speaker 2 18:48

Have someone read over it or start thinking strategically if this is something you want to do on a larger scale beyond this one deal. So I would sort of caution you as to doing like one-offs just because they present themselves, without actually digging into what that means. And some of these contracts will have clauses that essentially makes that deal exclusive to that particular licensee or gives them sort of co-ownership over your ip or, at even worse, ownership of your ip, and it's not really going to flat out say that in the contracts because it's going to be legalese so my, yeah, the number one pitfall is really jumping in on an opportunity that someone is presenting you because it looks really good, and then you don't know how good it could have been.

Speaker 2 19:33

Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 19:34

Yeah, so probably consult a lawyer before you dive into something like that, or at least when you get information from them, to have somebody look it over to make sure that you know what you're getting into. Right, yeah, okay, so there there is something that I want to ask, and it's really around like more of a personal thing. So what do you find is like the thing that lights you up the most when it comes to your business?

Speaker 2 20:05

For me, it's all the ideas. To be honest, I've always been like an ideas person, seeing people come up with something new. I think newness is kind of the drug that I'm chasing in many ways when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's really fascinating to me to see people's inventiveness and how they also actually pursue and create something that didn't exist before. So to me, it's really appealing to see them create this thing and we get to co-create a little bit and like shaping it into something that is licensable. That is the thing that I love the most. I should probably say that I love the legal the most, but I don't. This is the thing that really is. That lights me up, and I really enjoy having those conversations about the ways that they can have an impact with their work and how they can sort of make their business work for them in many ways and also have access to more capital in their business. So, yeah, that's what lights me up.

Connecting With Janet for Legal Advice

Speaker 1 21:02

I love that, so this was wonderful. This was great information, janet. If people want to learn more about you and the things that you offer, how can they get a hold of you?

Speaker 2 21:14

They can visit alexandersonlawcom it's double S-O-N, very Scandinavian or they can just find me. Search by my name. I'm the only one in the world and you'll find my LinkedIn and some information as well, so that's one way to do it.

Speaker 1 21:30

Awesome, thank you so much. And you're also providing a freebie for the audience, which I will go ahead and put in the show notes, and I'll put all that information down so that people can connect with you and see if this is the right path for them, right? So again, thank you so much, janet, for being here. This was a great conversation.

Speaker 2 21:48

Thank you so much for having me.