Entrepreneurs face many challenges and libraries are filled with books describing these hurdles in great detail. One of the most critical challenges any new concept or product must address very quickly is how to effectively communicate your value proposition to the marketplace.

While this may seem like a ‘no brainer,’ the fact of the matter is many entrepreneurs and small business owners miss this completely. Often times, the entrepreneur is the parent of the great idea…the person who ‘gave birth’ to the product or service. This gives them a unique advantage since they know their product better than anyone else. However, this also creates the potential for a BIG BLIND SPOT.

Entrepreneurs who are undaunted by the challenges in running a company, often miss the simple fact that the marketplace does not care how much we love our idea, service or product.  The market only cares about the value proposition. Your business will only succeed IF (and this is a BIG IF) you can communicate clearly, efficiently and directly to the end user who is willing to exchange their money for your product.

There are many strategies to sell a product or service. Frequently the entrepreneur or owner becomes the company’s first sales person and may even eventually lead a sales team. This plan can work, but usually isn’t the best use of the owner’s strengths. If the business model will support a sales team, you may want to consider the impact of a high performance, professional sales team. Coupled with an effective marketing plan, a strong sales team can communicate very effectively with your prospective customers.

One of the many benefits of a high octane group focused on sales is your ability as the owner to focus on market segmentation, value added services to your product, territorial growth and most importantly — profit. Remember the adage, “no margin…no mission?”

Have you ever considered engaging a strong sales team?

If not, this may be a great time to do so. The rapid changes in the economy dictate we focus on our core strengths AND profit. There are top tier sales professionals looking for options. Think about how you might be able to create a win-win relationship with a sales team. Having a great sales team can expand your opportunities, open up new markets, create jobs, and most importantly…. grow your profits to keep you expanding while your competition is wondering how to survive.

Over the last few months, many of you have gotten to know our Chief Strategy Officer, Andrei Podell. He has been an integral part of our ‘Ask the Experts’ teleconference series and developing the ‘My IP Plan’ mini-course.

Last Monday, I had a long conversation with Andrei about several new strategic initiatives and new intellectual property concepts. At 3am on Tuesday, Andrei sent me an email about an idea for a new Stratworx member perk to build lifestyle support for the entrepreneur with regard to optimum brain power and optimum energy. He closed his email with, “To all of our good health.”

Unfortunately, after Andrei went to sleep, he never woke up. At present, the medical examiner hasn’t been able to determine the cause of death, but there wasn’t any foul play and we know Andrei’s state of mind was one of excitement and enthusiasm for the future.

Today , August 15th, Andrei would have turned 37. While we are deeply saddened by his passing, we are excited to have known Andrei. He was a passionate man with a deep commitment to entrepreneurs and powerfully driven to help Stratworx change the way business is conducted worldwide.

I would encourage you to go to http://www.AndreiPodell.com and read the blog. Several folks including Andrei’s mom, Marcelle, brother Stefan, girlfriend Melissa and me have made posts which you can comment on to share your thoughts.

You’ll also read a heartwarming story of his dog Luckie and what the future holds for her. His family have asked that all donations be made to Luckie’s medical fund.

At Stratworx, we build businesses, grow friendships and support one another in good times and challenging times. Thanks for reading. Please go to http://www.AndreiPodell.com and let his family know how Andrei impacted your life. We will miss him terribly.

Blessings to you and yours,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder & CEO
STRATWORX LLC
http://www.STRATWORX.com

What’s a practical way to leverage face-to-face services into new income streams?

Suppose one offers consulting, training or education programs in a specific field of expertise. Typically, as these type of service offerings are delivered over time, the target market narrows toward the most profitable and enjoyable work as defined by the person presenting the program. This invariably leads to many missed opportunities.

Have you ever heard the expression, “I can’t see the forest for the trees?” In this case, one can be staring directly at the trees, which is the primary market. However, there is a forest of business available all around which can lead to tremendous new income streams.

The problem is though, the new income streams are not readily available in a traditional fashion. In other words, if securing new business requires more of the consultant or trainer’s time, this may be a show stopper. What if the schedule is already full? Perhaps the consultant would actually rather spend quality time at home rather than adding a new client to the mix. Maybe the other prospects won’t pay the preferred rates.

In some cases, the forest may represent a need to decentralize focus which presents its own set of challenges. Attempting to serve too many markets can be problematic.

So what’s the solution?

When one begins to look at consulting knowledge, skill sets and educational programs objectively, they can be seen as assets. These assets are intellectual property. Why not convert these tangible assets into a form that can be delivered to the ‘forest’ using technology? Find a way to share knowledge with those who want the information but may not be able to avail themselves due to cost, proximity or timing.

Automation allows us to market, sell and deliver digital products and services including e-workbooks, videos, audios, recorded webinars, etc. This means with a good IP plan and a robust online marketing platform, many more trees in the forest can access high quality intellectual property at lower prices than personal consulting or training. The advantage to the IP owner is the ability to control their intellectual assets and sell them to a broader audience.

There are many ways to ‘productize’ consulting, training and educational services. With a strong IP Plan including market research, competitive intelligence, product design as well as strong online marketing, sales and delivery tools, intellectual property can expeditiously create new income streams.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

Why would someone pay me for my information?

As I speak with people about the value of their ideas and experience, I’ve found most people think of intellectual property in a legal sense or don’t really know what it means. I’m often amazed at how many people don’t think they actually have intellectual property. If you’ve been reading Income, Profit and Equity for a while, you know intellectual property is defined by American Heritage Dictionary as “a product of the intellect that has commercial value.” What is a product of the intellect? In my opinion it’s any idea, skill, system, process or other knowledge that is of value to any other person or business.

One question that often comes up is, “If I search online, I can find almost any information I want. Why would someone pay me for my information?” Good question.

While you can find virtually anything online, there are a few challenges. First of all, the value of your time. Time is our most valuable commodity. What is your time worth? Do you have hours to search, validate, assemble and find the precise information you need?

You’d be amazed at how much time you can waste searching down rabbit trails and still not get what you need. Given the option, if I have the choice of paying someone who’s done the work for me and presented what I need in an easy to use format, if the price is right, I’ll buy it.

Secondly, people often think IP is just content, but it can also be a skill set; i.e. how you do something. We focus on three primary categories of IP. The first is content and the second and third categories are skill based areas.

1. Content - Here are a few examples: specific information about how to do improve your sales, research about an industry or topic, or location of best romantic hotels, etc. While these are simple examples, the possibilities are limitless…

2. Marketing & Sales - Content is only valuable if someone will pay for it. No kidding. Here’s what I mean. Your primary intellectual property may actually be connecting buyers of content with sellers of content. In other words, if you love to connect people (natural networkers) your highest and best use may be to focus on creating income, profit and equity by facilitating sales of products and services by end users. Marketing & sales can be very valuable IP.

3. Delivery of content - We’ve found that while some folks are great at creating content and others are excellent at marketing and sales, there is a very important third area of valuable IP. That is actually delivering the content that has been purchased by the end user. This may be counter-intuitive because if you are a good content creator, you might also be good at selling and delivering your own stuff. However, imagine having a marketing and sales network representing your products and a qualified team delivering, fulfilling, training, coaching, consulting on your materials. It doesn’t matter if you have online or offline content, you could get a lot more done if you didn’t have to do all this yourself.

Certainly there are companies who do all three areas well. However, in today’s world staying flexible and maintaining low overhead requires new thinking. Technology is simply a way to get things done faster or more efficiently. In today’s economy, technology allows us to create new business models that enhance our capabilities and fuel our ability to focus on our strengths, passions and most valuable intellectual property.

Think about which of these three areas is your most potent intellectual property.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

Greetings!

If you have already opted into our newsletter or visited www.MyBusinessStrategy.com, you’ve begun to work on the 7 Steps to turn your ideas into business reality. If you’re new to Stratworx’s community, 3 to 4 times a month we host an “Ask the Experts” teleconference to support our members’ goals by interviewing our team, community members, and experts who specialize in topics such as sales, marketing, product design, operations, CRM/automation, finance, and legal issues, etc.

On today’s call, Steve Olds, the CEO of Stratworx, and Andrei Podell, Stratworx’s Chief Strategy Officer, focused on steps four through seven for creating a stunningly successful company

If you haven’t heard last week’s call on Steps 1 through 3, please just scroll down to the post from June 18th and you can get up to speed by listening to the audio playback and by downloading the notes.

So turning to today’s call - We focused on connecting how each step fits into the Stratworx IP Wealth System and how you can apply it personally. And as a reminder, as always, we drew examples from the questions our members submitted before the call.

Today’s highlights included:

• Assessing the key business elements you must consider:
• IP Development (including legal issues)
• Marketing (demographics, psychographics, positioning, etc)
• Communication Processes and Systems
• Automation as a Means to help you Grow
• Collaboration Strategy and Tactics
• Implementation Processes
• Improvement/Innovation
• Building 90-Day Plans that support your progress
• Balancing Strategic and Tactical Work
• How to Engage the Marketplace and Monetizing your Business
• Completing Phases of Development so you can move to the next Stage of Growth

There is a lot of content in this hour long call and you can hear today’s recording and ask follow-up questions here on our blog. We have a worksheet that you can use to follow along and take notes.

So download the audio and listen to the call and ask your follow-up questions right here.

Click here to download the audio file

You can also download the notes from the call by clicking on the link below:

Ask the Experts - My IP Plan - - Notes - 6.25.08

Once you have registered for the weekly call, you can always submit a new question. If you don’t submit a new question, you will still receive the pre-call notification and notes. If you aren’t registered to ask questions and hear our weekly live call; simply click here and register ====> http://www.TurningIPintoProfits.com

Now that we’ve completed 3 teleconference sessions. We look forward to diving into the topics in greater detail, focusing less on the big picture questions, and towards actionable and practical to do’s.

Thanks for joining us.

Cheers,

Andrei Podell

Stratworx, Chief Strategy Officer
www.STRATWORX.com

If you have opted into our newsletter or visited www.MyBusinessStrategy.com, you’ve already begun to experience the 7 Steps to building your own plan. On today’s Ask the Experts call, Andrei Podell (Stratworx Chief Strategy Officer) and I drilled down into the first 3 steps of the plan.

In our discussion, we spoke about where each step fits into the IP Wealth System and how you can apply it personally. We used examples based on questions our members submitted before the call. Today’s highlights included:

• How to understand your strengths and consider a direction for your IP development
• How to understand business financials in a simple way so you can use them in planning
• How to begin to discover the best way to develop your concept using a simple format that is universally appealing across most markets.

There’s a lot of content in this hour long call and you can hear today’s recording and ask follow-up questions right here on our blog. We have a worksheet that you can use to follow along and take notes. So listen to the call and ask your follow-up questions right here.

Click here and listen ====> http://www.MyExpertStrategy.com

Click here to download the notes ====>ask-expert-telecon-notes-61808.doc

Once you have registered for the weekly call, you can always submit a new question. If you don’t submit a new question, you will still receive the pre-call notification and notes. If you aren’t registered to ask questions and hear our weekly live call; simply click here and register ====> http://www.TurningIPintoProfits.com

Thanks for joining us.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

Greetings,

Just a quick comment to let you know during our Ask the Experts tele-seminar on Wednesday, June 18th, Andrei Podell and I will be digging into questions about the first 3 Steps in our mini e-course. If you are not on the access list, just go to click here and get all the info.

If you’ve not engaged in our free mini-course on building “My IP Plan”, just click here and you can start the process.

Talk to you soon.

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

Today we had a great call with Andrei Podell, Stratworx Chief Strategy Officer discussing the reasons why you need an IP Plan and the essential components of a well thought out strategy. We covered a series of questions that were submitted by our members ranging in topics from IP development to marketing and collaboration.
It was a jam-packed hour and we only scratched the surface.

If you aren’t registered to ask questions and hear our weekly live call; simply click here and register ====> http://www.TurningIPintoProfits.com

You can hear today’s recording and ask follow-up questions right here on our blog. Click here and listen

We have a worksheet that you can use to follow along and take notes. So listen to the call and ask your follow-up questions right here. Click here to download the notes.

Ask the Experts - My IP Plan - 6.11.08

Thanks for listening. We look forward to your thoughts.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

I’ve got My IP Plan; what’s yours?

Stratworx formally launched 11 months ago tomorrow, July 1st, 2007. At the time, we launched with a plan to create a world-class organization designed to help you turn your intellectual property into income, profit and equity. As I look back on our first year, there are a lot of emotions; many are exciting, some are painful and still others are hopeful. Isn’t that the case with any venture worth pursuing? I’ve got a couple questions about your business:

• Have you developed your IP plan?

• Have you executed your plan?

As we approach our second year, I have a renewed sense of confidence and enthusiasm for the dream and vision we’ve set out to accomplish. You may know the Stratworx dream is to ignite an entrepreneurial revival. Given the scope of global economic concerns, I can think of no more important task than to encourage you to pursue your idea, develop your business and interface with the market to incubate your intellectual property. Stratworx stands by ready to help you.

The Stratworx vision is to attract energetic, innovative, and committed members to co-create the world’s premiere intellectual property incubator. Using our unique model, we leverage conventional strategies to produce accelerated results. Technology is wonderful, but your personal and professional strengths, talents and passions are the key to a successful IP plan.

In the first eleven months of my IP plan, I’ve worked with our team to take the initial concepts and build systems and processes to yield specific results. Many of our founders and charter members have begun to experience the fruit of our collective work. We have much more to do and have some exciting plans to make our second year the breakthrough for your business and ours. After all, the only way we succeed is if we help you profitably accelerate your IP into the marketplace.

Most would agree we’ve placed a pretty tall order with our dream and vision. Some have suggested I should tone down the blue sky thinking and focus on the practical. I do agree the only way to an enormous dream and huge vision is through specific practical strategies and tactics. My IP Plan is practical, yet it’s deeply connected with my dream. As my Dad, Robert Olds says, “Dream boldly and savor the consequences.”

What will be the consequences as we grow?

How will our work together serve you?

What will the impact be on your life and those whom you seek to influence?

On June 11th, we’ll be introducing a tele-seminar program designed to help you begin to answer the question; ‘What is my IP plan?” After all, if you don’t have a plan, the odds are you’ll never turn your IP into income, never mind profit or equity. We will begin to answer your most pressing questions on how exactly to create an IP Plan that produces sustainable results.

I have a favor to ask. Would you take 30 seconds and let me know what your most pressing question is about turning your ideas into reality? We are compiling all the questions to build the framework for our June 11th call.

Just click here to ask your question ====> http://www.TurningIPintoProfits

As a thank you for your input, when you complete this one question survey, you’ll be registered for the call and get instant access via email to a one-hour interview with Stratworx IP Attorney, Mathew Latimer, PhD. Even if you can’t make our live call, we’ll make a special recording available for you to hear at your convenience. We appreciate your time and support.

Just click here to ask your question ====> http://www.TurningIPintoProfits.com

Here’s to a great second half of 2008!

Thanks for being part of our Stratworx team.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

Since there are some tremendous online sales techniques that mask the true challenges of taking your idea and accelerating it into a profitable reality, we’ll begin to address key questions you must be prepared to answer if you want to take your concept to the next level.

The first question is one that is frequently overlooked. Most people don’t even think about it because they don’t consider it relevant to the evaluation of their idea, concept or model. Question one is the cornerstone of the process.

What are your goals?

Most people simply give this short shrift or laugh when we ask this question. Why? They say the answer is obvious. I want to increase my revenue so I can grow my company, spend more time with family, retire early and all of the other pat answers to a question about what you would do with a big raise.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. A business plan executed correctly will yield a financial increase. That’s a given. In this process, you need to think smaller. Yes, smaller. Break this down into bite size chunks.

What are the specific project goals that must be accomplished to begin turning your intellectual property into income, profit and equity? If you were going to write a project plan to start the process, what would come first? What are the fundamental goals that you need to set before you should even begin?

We find most people tremendously underestimate the work involved in executing a plan to take IP in one form and translate it to a new deliverable, especially online. Here are a few examples of smaller initial goals:

- Begin and complete a market research analysis

- Determine a fair market value for my product / service

- Build a prototype and test it

- Take my proven off line product and survey existing clients to see how they may improve it or use it online

- Decide how much time can I afford to dedicate to this project and determine the opportunity cost of that time

What we find interesting is that when you set a goal like this, which is very tactical, it forces you to pay attention to details that many people overlook when they have pre-existing confidence about their IP.

The good news about your initial goal is that you can drill down and find out what’s most important to you at this point in time. Before you move on to answer the second question, you can add to your list of goals, cross some off the list or start with what you believe to be the top priority.

The key word is START. Most people with great ideas and strong IP never turn it into income, profit or equity because they never start! Setting a strong, simple first goal is enormously important. Don’t underestimate
the power of a small, clear, first goal.

I look forward to your comments and talking with you real soon.
Cheers,

Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com