Intellectual Property — What do you know?

Intellectual property is the least focused on investment strategy with the lowest barrier to entry.

When you hear the word “investing” do you immediately think of placing money in the stock market or real estate? While both of these can be great places to invest, the most cost-efficient and least risky investment in your own knowledge. You may be thinking, but with those other investments, I can gain compounding interest or market appreciation. If that is the case, what makes you think your intellect doesn’t?

Intellectual property is the most elusive when it comes to market value. It is easier to focus on investments you can view on a chart, or one you where you can look up the estimated selling price on a website.

Why is intellectual property hardest to invest in when it takes the least capital? It’s hardest because it requires the most personal discipline. But in our developing knowledge economy, cultivating a foundation to invest in oneself will result in increasing knowledge that appreciates over time.

What is Intellectual Property?

More traditionally intellectual property is considered a work or invention that is the result of creativity that someone has rights for and therefore may apply for a patent, trademark, copyright, etc. It is easy to think this type of property is limited to businesses buying expensive trademarks or inventors filing for complex patents. But what about copyright? Have you ever considered how easy it is to mark your work as yours? Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and “fixed in a tangible form”.

It is not just owning information it is gaining knowledge through your lens of experience. To buy stocks you need money to purchase them, to own real estate property you need money to purchase it, to own knowledge, well you just need time. Time to build information and time to gain experience. You can increase your intelligence on almost anything through free resources or a very small amount of money. There has never been a time with more information at our fingertips. If you want to increase your value you must increase your knowledge.

Books are intellectual property.

Newsletters are intellectual property.

Artwork is intellectual property.

YouTube videos are intellectual property.

Podcasts are intellectual property.

Why you should care about intellectual property?

This is the form of investing you have the most control over.

The value of the capital you put in does not depend on how solid a CEO’s decisions are, or if a physical location is gaining traction and appeal to more people. It requires the least amount of money. Your time and focus can bring big results over in the long run.

Have you ever considered how often you pay people for their expertise? Next time you have to call a plumber or electrician remember what you are actually paying for. Your response might be “parts and labor,” but have you considered the “labor” is really just knowledge. It is easier for the human mind to wrap their head around paying for time so we pay for labor, but really you are paying someone to know how to fix what you can not. You are paying for their specific knowledge.

How do you produce intellectual property? You must first invest in yourself.

Invest In Yourself.

Building knowledge has a direct correlation to time. You need to carve out time to grow and learn through study, and you need your own experiences and results (over time) to make this applied knowledge.

You can not develop intellectual property(IP) if you have not cultivated the intellect which becomes the foundation of your IP. If you pour time and energy into increasing the value of your intellect, then you will see your value rise. This compounding intelligence starts by building layers of knowledge and then expands as you build a network of supporting information.

Warren Buffet spends most of his day reading and studying, When it is time to make decisions he is able to pull from a massive network of knowledge in order to make what he thinks are the most prudent moves with money. There is a lot of fanfare around “the hustle,” but little celebration over the quiet intellect turning their mind into a more and more valuable asset.

“Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.” -Naval Ravikan

Test the value.

How do you put a value on what you know? You may think that what you know is the same as what everybody else knows. But that simply isn’t true. What you have learned and experienced is different than anyone else in the world. You may have similar thoughts, but your path to knowledge is unique. Knowledge isn’t simply crystallized intelligence, its knowing by studying and by doing.

You never really know the value of a house or a stock until you go to sell it. After you have invested your time into increasing your own knowledge, you should validate it.

You see what you can demand from the free market. This could be looking for a new job at a high salary or this could be putting together an online course or an ebook.

Intellect vs. Intellectual Property. Sell it at scale.

If you think this is limited to the academics and inventors of the world think again. Jenny Doan was in her 50s when she started recording her YouTube videos about quilting. Hundreds of videos later she is now the owner of a multi-million dollar business, Missouri Star Quilt Company. She had decades worth knowledge and her own personal experience and finally put it on a platform to share it with the world.

This is how does the hard-earned knowledge earns you money in your sleep.

Once you have determined that your intellectual property has value, start thinking about how to package it and sell it at scale. Take what you know, put it into a digital form through text, audio, or video (or all three), and put a price on it. Marketing is an entire other article, but the bottom line is now you have intellectual property. You are no longer trading time for money, instead, you’re scaling.

The digital world has made it easier than ever to leverage what you know. There are thousands of examples, but one of my favorites is Paul Jarvis. He has built his “Company of One” using his own hard earned knowledge and experience. He writes software, teaches online courses, and send a nice newsletter every Sunday. And he has been doing it for a decade.

Your knowledge has to become a business. The knowledge economy is the new economy, start deciding how you will capitalize on it.