What if your company could create value for clients without depending on you to deliver it personally? Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explore why Strategic Coach® is an invention-producing enterprise, how intellectual property creates lasting value, and how entrepreneurs can turn their unique knowledge into capabilities that grow beyond themselves.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How patents changed Dan’s thinking about Strategic Coach’s position in the marketplace.
• Some of the tests the U.S. Patent Bureau applies before awarding a patent.
• How and why Strategic Coach members are creating their own invention-producing enterprises.
• The steps to take before seeking a patent for a new idea.

Show Notes:

Strategic Coach has thousands of copyrights, hundreds of trademarks, and 85 patents.

Strategic Coach isn’t just a coaching company; it’s an invention-producing enterprise that creates new thinking tools for entrepreneurs.

Many coaching companies build their reputation through marketing and networking, while Strategic Coach’s intellectual property provides an additional source of marketplace credibility.

The U.S. Patent Bureau takes an adversarial approach, searching for reasons an invention may not qualify for a patent.

To receive a patent for a thinking tool, you must show that it’s unique, useful, non-obvious, and capable of producing consistent results.

Start by creating a product or service, then build the customer experience, create intellectual property, and turn it into intellectual capital that others can use.

Members experience Strategic Coach as an invention-producing enterprise through its thinking tools, teamwork, workshops, and the details of the overall experience.

Strategic Coach’s tools are tested with thousands of entrepreneurs and produce consistent results, even when taught by different coaches.

When your ideas become intellectual property, the value you create is no longer dependent on your being there personally.

Personality-based companies can grow only as far as the founder can show up, perform, and deliver the experience.

A system-based company gives other people the ability to create and deliver value using a proven method.

Ask yourself: For your company to have 10x the impact without clients ever interacting with you, how would your knowledge and capabilities have to be packaged?

Naming, documenting, and protecting your Unique Process™ is a practical first step toward making your company less dependent on you.

Resources:

What Is A Self-Managing Company®?

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

Casting Your 4 x 4 Company by Dan Sullivan