This episode is for those in Phase 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™
This Episode is Great For:
Resources Mentioned: April Beach on LinkedIn
SweetLife Podcast™ Love:
Need faster business growth?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Full Show Transcript:
261 (235)
[00:00:00] Hi you guys and welcome to the Sweet Life Entrepreneur Podcast. I’m April Beach, your host, and I am so glad you’re here. You have tapped into one of our “Best of Episodes”. These episodes are cherry picked from our most popular episodes with the most downloads with the most comments. So these are the ones where whether it’s in a speaking engagement, or whether it’s by writing to us or sending us messages on social media where you guys have reached out and said, Hey, listen, this episode you did was really powerful for me. Thank you so much.
[00:00:30] And they’re also the other episodes that we believe are the most important as we move into the next year for the online business landscape that we are going into for coaches and consultants and experts and speakers and authors. And so this episode is absolutely amazing, though it’s previously recorded, all of the resources can be found by clicking on sweetlifeco.com.
[00:00:54] You can visit us online and just very simply select the podcast and you’ll find all of the show notes in there for you with up to date links, making sure that you’re getting to the right place. If you’re looking for a resource. Now special message to those of you guys that have been
[00:01:12] waiting for this show to come back. I am so excited to announce that the next generation of the Sweet Life Entrepreneur podcast is dropping the week after Christmas, before New Year’s as we roll into the new year, going from 22 to 23, and I can’t thank you guys enough. If you are a new listener to the show, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about but after five years of faithfully dropping a business training, a recording, a strategy for you every single week, and winning awards for this show, I needed to step back and take a break.
[00:01:46] And you guys have been so gracious in actually encouraging me to do that. What turned out to be one month off, turned out to be about a year off of recording this show, but the reality is, is that we have been producing so many business trainings, hundreds and hundreds of them for five years, that entrepreneurs have relied on.
[00:02:06] I needed to take a step back and get a perspective of what you guys really needed for the next generation of the show. How should this show actually help you to continue to grow your businesses? And many of your businesses have significantly grown since we first started this show. And you are growing and we’re growing and what does that actually look like?
[00:02:27] So I have had the gift of spending almost a year to build the entire next generation of the SweetLife Podcast for you and I can’t wait for you guys to hear it. I’m so excited. So the wait is almost over and I wanted to send you a message about it. Thank you for the emails and the comments on social media encouraging me to enjoy my time off.
[00:02:46] But April, please come back. I need your show to grow my business. You guys are amazing and you have really been the fuel to the fire. That has helped me see clearly, clearly of where this show is gonna go in the next gen. It’s gonna sound a little bit different, but it will continue to be the place where you can come to for true, proven business trainings that are transformational.
[00:03:09] For your company, that is business coaching that isn’t pulled out of thin air, from experts delivered to you in such a way that you can implement it. That’s why this show has been so popular over the years, and that’s what we will continue to do for you. I can’t wait for you to hear what we have planned.
[00:03:27] The first series we’re kicking off is called Becoming Known in the Experts. So we have in here that are teaching you these proven business trainings. Without a hook to sell you something, they’re just coming in here to pour into you are absolutely epic. I can’t wait. So if you haven’t yet, subscribe to the show, please click subscribe.
[00:03:45] Please share this with your friends. Please resubscribe in case that you were unsubscribed during my little hiatus, and I just, Love you guys so much, and I’m so excited to be back here. I can’t wait to drop the whole entire NextGen of the show and the episodes coming for you and in the meantime, enjoy this best of, it is very powerful and it’s been chosen for you for a reason.
[00:04:08] I’ll talk to you guys soon.
[00:04:13] You’re listening to the Sweet Life Entrepreneur podcast, Simplified strategies to grow your service business, and launch a life you love faster with business, mentor and entrepreneur activator April Beach.
[00:04:32] Hey guys, and welcome to episode number 235. This one is really juicy. It is jam packed with the secrets to how I grew my first business consulting firm to over seven figures. So I’m super excited to share this with you and all the resources that we have here available for you on the show can be found by visiting sweetlifeco.com. And this is episode number 235.
[00:05:00] Welcome to the Sweet Life Entrepreneur and Business Podcast of your new my name’s April Beach. I am the host here of this show. I am a business consultant and strategist that works with entrepreneurs and experts to design, launch, and scale your business in today’s episode is literally a secret weapon.
[00:05:18] If you are listening to this, if you’re a regular subscriber or you just happen to land here, this is something that nobody’s talking about and I’m so excited to share it with you on today’s show. We’re talking about how to license your content to scale your business and increase profit.
[00:05:35] And this particular episode is a best for you, it’s most appropriate for you if you are in phases three, four, or five. Of my entrepreneur roadmap. What that means is that you have to be in a specific phase to be ready for this level of business, scalability and this level of growth. And so if you’re in phases three, four, or five, this is a great episode for you to listen to.
[00:06:00] If you don’t know what phase of business design, growth, scale, and impact you are in. Take a second pause here and cruise over to sweetlifeco.com/quiz and you can take a really short quiz and I’ll tell you exactly where you are in your business and what you should be working on right now. You can also text the word quiz to the number 8 0 5 2 5 4 0 8 8 0.
[00:06:32] So here’s what we have in today’s show. It’s really great for those of you guys who are established entrepreneurs and you’re interested in learning how to scale your business exponentially through licensing your content course or program. If you have a proven program, course or content, and you are looking to see even the greater impact that you can make.
[00:06:55] You’re trying to find even more ways to make more money and to create the impact that you know that your program can, than this episode is for you. And so at the end of this episode, you are gonna know what licensing is and how to make money doing it. You are gonna know the business model of licensing and be able to have insight on whether or not this is even right for you, and you’re gonna know the prerequisites that you need to have in place in order to license your content.
[00:07:24] And there is a super special bonus with today’s episode. If you wanna know more about this, you do not want to miss this bonus. I am giving you a completely free one hour licensing your content, Quick Start video training, and you really don’t wanna miss it. It’s one hour training on the quick start guide of how to prepare and license your content, and you can find that totally free by visiting licensetoscale.com.
[00:07:58] It’s the word license. The number two and then the word scale.com, and I’ll make sure that that is in the show notes for you. So that’s another resource for you to grab here. I love giving you guys awesome very highly valuable stuff here for free that other businesses charge you thousands for. So definitely go grab that.
[00:08:18] Okay, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. This is episode number 235, and so all the show notes can be found by visiting sweetlifeco.com number 235 under podcast.
[00:08:41] Okay, so let’s start out by answering the question. What is licensing? Licensing is creating content for other companies to use. Think of it as renting your content, renting your course, renting your program, so it’s creating content for other companies to use, and they rent it from you and it’s called licensing so that they can grow faster or so that they can make more money or so that they can provide better services or training or support for their people, whoever their people happen to be. And now let me read you the legal definition of licensing. But just so you know, I wanted to make sure I gave you the, the April entrepreneur regular person’s definition of it too. So the legal definition of licensing is content licensing is a legal agreement between two parties known as a licensee and a licensure.
[00:09:38] Licensees can purchase the rights to republish content from a licensor. Licensing is extremely versatile and allows for brands to repackage content in a variety of forms across desktop and mobile platforms. And that official definition came from news cred. So let’s go ahead and dive in a little bit more.
[00:09:59] You have a program or you have a course and you wanna make more money, you want to go from what I call in our business, where we take our clients from scale to amplify. There is a difference between scaling your business and amplifying your business. And this my friends, is how you do it. So the benefits of licensing are really important to think about as you’re considering whether or not you wanna license your program to other companies.
[00:10:28] Here are some of the benefits that you can flow through your mind as I’m saying these to you, and really hold each one up and see if it fits you right. The first one is if you wanna demonstrate thought leadership in your space. If you wanna become a thought leader in your particular niche, your particular area of expertise, then licensing is a benefit in that area.
[00:10:53] Number two, licensing increases credibility across your own audience. So even though you’re creating content that’s used by other companies, when your audience knows that other companies are buying your content, all of a sudden they are really confident in your ability to get them direct results.
[00:11:14] Number three, licensing enables for what I call exponential scalability. So let’s talk about scale for a second. Scale in most cases, as we talk about here on the podcast, and most entrepreneurs and online businesses are familiar with it. In that case, we’re talking about taking a one-on-one service or a one-on-one program and turning it into one on group. We’re creating different business models so that you can reach more people and increase your profit usually in the same amount of time.
[00:11:46] Scaling is a precursor to licensing. Licensing is where you still create that one piece of content and then you’ve tested it in the scale capacity and now you are willing to rent it or allow other companies to borrow it from you called licensing it for them to distribute. So we have gone from scaling you to literally exploding so fast your reach with your content through licens. And then another benefit of licensing is for those of you, if you’re listening to this and you wanna figure out how to go from B to C, so you have a consulting firm or a coaching firm, or you’re a speaker or an author, and you are used to serving one particular client that gets direct results from you and you wanna transition, you wanna start coaching other businesses.
[00:12:39] Licensing is also a really great benefit for you. So there are multiple benefits to licensing your content, if any of those fit into what aligns with your strategic objectives for your life and your brand.
[00:12:53] So really the question that we need to dive into here before I share anything else is, is licensing right for you? But not only that, are you ready to license? I have so many people. Literally, we have a waiting list of entrepreneurs who really want to learn how to license their materials, but they aren’t ready yet. So let’s talk about what is a prerequisite for being. To join my masterclass called License to Scale. To learn how to do this, the prerequisite is that you have to have a proven course or program or content that’s gotten people transformational results in the past.
[00:13:39] So this means if you have never created a course before, or if you do not have a membership community with curriculum, if you have not developed transformational curriculum or a transformational program and you have not tested that, you are not ready for licensing. And so at this point in time, if that is you, of course you’re welcome to sit here and hang out with me for the rest of this episode, but I would put it on pause because we have a program to teach you how to do that.
[00:14:07] You can find that program by visiting signatureoffer.com. And so the process we take companies through is first we help businesses launch, and then the second phase is scale, where entrepreneurs join our transformational program Design masterclass. Again, you can find that at signatureoffer.com if this is where you are.
[00:14:26] And then you can go onto licensing your material. So the prerequisite is you have to have a proven program course or content that’s gotten people results in the past. If you don’t have that, you’re not quite ready for that yet, and that’s okay. This is a very cool episode to know what is the potential for you is in the future.
[00:14:44] So I’m gonna give you guys a peek behind the scenes. I’m pulling back the curtains, and I’m gonna share with you two case studies out of five different case studies in which I have licensed my content for over 12 years, because I want you to get your wheels spinning about what you have or what you can do with your business.
[00:15:02] All five case studies and they’re all different. All five case studies are available by going to licensetoscale.com and joining that licensing 101 webinar. But I’m just for the sake of time and to get your wheels spinning. I’m gonna share with you two here. Okay, so the first case study I wanna share is the fact that I had a collection of courses, a collection of online courses back in 2009.
[00:15:29] I’ve been doing online courses before they were even a thing. You listen to the show, you know that, right? So I had a collection of eight full online courses and there were eight different courses that were for a very specific niche. They were totaled 198 slides, 13 hours of recorded classes, and they came with teacher guides and supplemental worksheets and even project plans.
[00:15:53] I licensed. That collection of courses and I have licensed these collection of eight courses that is currently still to this day, licensed in over 13 countries to other businesses. They included business coaching videos, swipe files, and we licensed it in different formats so that the business could use it in even co-brand it.
[00:16:15] So that is case study number one. So I had a collection of courses that served a specific audience. And people line up, people literally join my waiting list to license my courses. I only release them once a year in the month of November, and they join a waiting list to license my courses once a year.
[00:16:36] And I have been doing that since the beginning of 2009. And so that’s one way. So if you have a collection of courses, not just one. Think about all of the material you have created, all of the mini videos, all the things that you’ve done, that we can package together into a complete package. And I promise you, when it’s done correctly, they will line up to license that from you.
[00:17:01] So I’ve done this for years and I’m still doing this today. So that’s case study number one. And then case study number two is that I have a full coaching program that includes the courses, but it also includes consulting for corporations and content that that corporation can distribute to all of.
[00:17:21] People, in this case it’s a corporate program, and so they wanna take my content and my courses and use my consulting. And that’s another case study. And I first started doing this back in 2010. So these are two case studies and again, I have five some smaller ones for those of you guys that are just getting started.
[00:17:39] And you can see all five by going to the license to scale.com and you can join that information webinar. So hopefully that gets your wheels spinning a little bit about what you already have. We want to dive into your assets, dive into your method, dive into your process and what you’ve already created, and then have a conversation about who can this really benefit so it’ll benefit your business and it’ll benefit their corporation and their company as well.
[00:18:09] The next thing I wanna kind of transition here because I know that for many of you, this is a new conversation. This is a new topic, is sharing with you that there are three primary ways to license your content, and each one of these ways is going to equal the branding and the future goals for you that you have for your.
[00:18:32] So the first way you can license your content is straight as it is with your branding, your logo all over it. So that would be somebody borrows or quote unquote licenses, rents your course or your class, and they plug it into their lms. They plug it into their system or wherever they’re distributing it, but it’s your logo all over it.
[00:18:54] That’s way number. Way number two is co-branded, where you allow for your them to add their name and logo to it. It could be co-presented by, co-branded by, and that’s a really great way for you to retain the ownership and the authority of that content, but also to really help your licensee level up as well.
[00:19:17] And then the third way you can license your content is completely white labeled. White labeled is where nobody even knows it’s yours. Some operations expect that to happen, so some companies will only license your content if it’s completely white labeled. Some companies only wanna license your content if it’s co-branded, and so every single one of the licensees has their own goals for licensing in your content.
[00:19:42] Now let’s like talk about for a second what is really actually good for you, those three levels. Number one, straight As is, is your trademark. Number two, co-branded, or number three, white labeled. They follow the flow of the value, which means that someone will pay you less to take it straight as your own, a little bit more to co-brand it and a little bit more to white label it, or in some cases, a significantly more amount of money to let white label your content.
[00:20:15] But let’s ask the really important question here. Is that right for you? Is it right for you to have no stake and for nobody to know that that was your genius? And out of all the companies and all the entrepreneurs that I coach to license their courses and their content, very, very few of them go with the white label, even though the end user, the licensee, will pay all the tea in China.
[00:20:43] Is that really worth it to not get recognition for your brand? And so those are some things that I just want you to be thinking about. I know this is an intro to licensing conversation, so I wanted to make sure that you knew about those three primary ways to license your content. So as you’re going through, as you’re thinking about what you have that you can license, you’re also thinking about in what capacity that that could work best for you and what you want your brand to be 2, 6, 10 years down the road.
[00:21:14] And then the last question I wanna answer for you today is, who licenses your content? Who should you license it? This is a very common question. I answer this in clubhouse rooms all the time, and I get emails very often, especially when we are leading up to opening up my license to scale masterclass and people are saying, Well, who, who wants this? Who do I sell it to? So let me give you two very clear examples of who should you license your li your content too. The first one is other companies who are not in direct competition with you. But they serve the same audience and they wanna look better or expand their reach, grow their list, increase their sales, and save time.
[00:21:57] The second opportunity for an audience for you are companies that are exactly like yours, but they’re missing something they need, and they want your expert content. They want turnkey offers, so they wanna be able to take your course and just plug it in to their system and sell it right away. And they wanna have faster, instant results.
[00:22:21] So you can license your content to a company whose audience needs it, but the company is not in direct competition with you. Or you can license your content to a company that is just like yours, but perhaps they don’t have as great of content as you do. Perhaps they need some more content to level up what they already have to shore up their offering, and they need your help to do that.
[00:22:44] So those are two general examples of audiences who you could consider licensing your content. So today we’re talking about how to license your content to scale your business and increase profit. And I talked about a lot of things. We talked about what is licensing. We talked about the benefits of licensing.
[00:23:04] We discussed whether or not you’re ready to license. I gave you two of five different case studies of when I have licensed my content. And hopefully in doing so, your wheels are spinning and you’re thinking about what you already have that you can license or how you can package together. Content courses, programs, your framework, your methodology to license to other people.
[00:23:28] We also talked about three primary ways to license your content, and we talked about who should you license your content to. So we discussed a lot, but I’ll be really honest. This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. I have so much more to share with you. So if you are interested in licensing your content or learning more about licensing your content, I highly recommend you join the licensing 1 0 1 training, and it’s totally free where I’m also gonna give you a quick start guide.
[00:24:01] To learn how to get your content licensed faster and to determine if it’s right for you, and you can grab that anytime by visiting license. And then the number two, and then the word scale, S C A L E.com Or of course, all of the show notes will be found in the episode show notes. This is episode number 235.
[00:24:25] And you can visit us at sweetlifeco.com, click on the podcast, and this is number 235. And just so you know, this is part one of a two part podcast episode I’m doing for you. Next week in episode number 236, I’m going to tell you the four types of content that companies line up to license. They will literally line up flood your list, begging for you to license your content to them.
[00:24:56] And there’s four different kinds of content that companies line up to license. We’re talking about that next week on the show. That’s gonna be episode number 236. So thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to share this. This has been my secret weapon. Many of you might not know. I own two different business consulting firms and this is how my first, very first business consulting firm really broke through that glass ceiling, and I’m so excited to share this with you. It’s been kind of a secret. I’ve been holding in my pocket for quite a few years, and I’ve had the privilege of working with so many businesses, one on one to do this, but we do have our license to scale masterclass.
[00:25:38] Visit licensetoscale.com. If you are ready to take the steps and license your content to hit that amplified level in your business. All right, you guys have an amazing night. Happy July, 2021 when I’m recording this. I hope you’re doing something super fun that you love that really fills you up. I’ll talk to you in another episode soon.