Business Tip of the Month: Own your Content

When I first started in business I discovered I had two choices – I could either sell MY expertise/products or sell that of OTHERS. There are many advantages to selling other people’s stuff and lots of money to be made but I think with any business, you need to also invest heavily into developing your own IP.

Your Own IP

Having full control of your own IP is very important – if you succeed, you eventually become a brand and then attract others to sell your stuff! It’s very difficult to develop your own IP and brand, which is why most people DON’T do this. Why design your own product when it’s easier with less investment in time and resources to sell that of somebody else already made? The problem with this approach is you end-up being a “me-too” company where your competition drives down your prices unless you are able to successfully create enough differentiation in the marketplace that people are willing to buy your stuff for MORE. For instance, Dell and Apple are both PC manufacturers, same RAM, processors and if you buy a Linux machine, similar OS! Why does Apple command more than any other PC manufacturer in terms of price for usually less powerful machines? Marketing is one and the second, IP. It OWNS its OS, Dell is like HP, Acer etc… they are a dime a dozen and have to compete for virtually the same configurations and market share as they all run off Microsoft’s Windows OS.

Build your Content

It took me two years of designing STRAIGHT, working as few hours in Korea teaching English (15-20 hours a week) so that I could devote every waking hour I could towards building CNCKing.com. I sacrificed a lot but still got out sometimes… unless you are willing to set aside your LIFE for at least a year to achieve a larger goal… I still give a lot of my time towards this exclusive pursuit – you will have a lot of trouble doing this alone like I did. Staff and key partnerships is a quick workaround but you need leverage and authority that’s hard to build unless you’ve put your skin in the game in a serious way. Simply opening a shop and hiring staff to quickly scale without a proven track record is a fantastic way to become a millionare – if you started with 10 million, expect to have a million at the end of the year!

Books: Share your knowledge

I’d say the biggest part of owning your content and developing your IP putting it all on paper in the form of a book – either digital or physical. It takes an incredible amount of time if done right but well worth it. Again, the more effort you put into differentiating yourself in the market, the more the market rewards you! I wrote 1-2 books a year over the past few and it doesn’t get any easier. If you want to build authority in the content you are offering, build it yourself and publish it! Writing and publishing have never been this easy – yet so few people even bother to try it much less invest in getting it done!

For each of my books – I’ve tried to put as much information as I knew of at the time to do – my first volume isn’t anything special but it shows how much I learned between that and my second volume. The third volume was similar to the second but now that I’m onto my fourth with experience on three CNC machines – and designing for each of them – the amount of information I have to share is hard to contain making the book bigger and broader. My newest book has exponentially more content than all my previous design books combined along with great insight from interviews and project templates across a variety of CNC machine types. I’ve had to delay launch a few time – not from lack of passion but because I had new insights to make it even better!

Give more than you take

People ask me what software I use, what e-commerce program I use and I even add Facebook links to designers who want in their profile on CNCKing.com – why? I believe in elevating others around me by not withholding information from them. Designing is difficult, publishing is difficult – if my sharing of knowledge saves them years off their life then I’m more than happy to help them – knowing full well that the odds that they actually follow-though on my advice is slim as it takes lots of effort.

Opportunities abound

When you develop your own material – books and designs in my case – it becomes very exciting for other to join in on the fun – you’ve proven yourself, built authority in the industry you have pursued for a few years and the opportunities begin to show themselves.