Secrets of Safeguarding Intellectual Property | Kary Oberbrunner

I'm really surprised about what's involved and, and just how frequently people are out to do things. I've even heard stories of people who have published, let's say, a book and there's, there's folks on Amazon who will literally go and they'll completely reprint that entire book so they can sell it on their own Amazon channel and keep all the profits. And they, you don't even know. And so I couldn't even fathom that that was possible. But it's true that these sorts of things happen.

Welcome back to Innovate and Overcome.

In today's episode, I'm joined with an incredible guest, someone who is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best selling author of more than a dozen books. He's the CEO of Igniting Souls and Blockchain Life, good friend of mine, someone who I'm so excited to have us to share his journey and his path of entrepreneurialship and that is Kerry Oberbrunner. Kerry, welcome to the program. Thanks for being with us today.

It's great to be here, Richard.

Now, as part of our conversation, one of the things that we always like to uncover and start to take a little bit of a, a walk down, let's call it memory lane is to give our viewer a bit of an understanding as to what are some of the challenges that you've had to overcome in your life. And before we hit go on the cameras, you know, you were, you were quick to kind of jump at a particular area of your life going back to your youth that really set the stage for fundamentally almost everything that you've done from that point forward in your life. So maybe walk us through what happened at an early age that almost led you down the path of becoming an entrepreneur.

Absolutely. So first of all, thanks for being here, everybody. Listen, my goal today is to ignite souls. That's why I exist. And part of the reason why is because I did struggle with depression and self injury and even you would call it today mental health as a young child. And it really emerged from a standard of perfectionism. Stuttering came about as a young child and it wasn't because, oh, I couldn't speak or I didn't know the words, but it was honestly that I had to get my words out perfectly. And I just have always been an achiever and I've always felt like I didn't measure up. And so sure enough, you have two choices with that. You can either try harder or you can buy into self hatred. And that's what happened from a young age. I Just began to be frustrated at myself for not being perfect. And I remember, Richard, it started at the age of 10, believe it or not, through biting. So, you know, I think back and I'm like, wow, I don't even consciously remember that. But I do remember going to my first counselor at the age of 10. My parents took me there. They thought I was a depressed young child. I was struggling with some things. I had to fill out a form and it said, have you ever thought about suicide? I remember asking my dad, what is suicide? I don't even know at the age of 10, he said, it's where you wanted to kill yourself. And I remember lying at the age of 10 and saying, no, I didn't struggle with that. But even at the age of 10, that was a reality. And the cutting and self injury, it wasn't every day. I wasn't like one of these people who cut and wanted attention. In fact, nobody knew about it. It was something that was a private addiction. This was before the Internet. I really didn't have the wherewithal to Google it to search for it. There was no such thing back then. And so it was just a silent struggle. And Richard, what really was the breakthrough later on in life was writing. So that's actually one of the ways that I overcame self injury was through being very transparent with my journals.

Wow. Very interesting. So the writing started from a journal standpoint. And at what point would you say, you know, you're kind of taking us back to age 10 and now we've progressed along in the timeline a bit. Where did you realize or come? I mean, you probably began writing at some point, but then there's the, there's the writing component and then there's the realization component.

Yeah.

Where did you make the glue connection about the effect and the value of the journaling and what it was, how it was showing up for you?

So basically in grad school, I was studying to be a pastor. So I didn't even have entrepreneurship in my brain. It was really, hey, I want to serve other people. My dad was a pastor, a minister. And so I remember being in class and it was like a counseling practicum class. And again, always wanted A's, always tried to achieve. Well, my advisors came to me and said, we don't think you're going to pass the class. And I said, what do you mean?

My grades are.

My grades are perfect. What do you mean? They said, look, when you're counseling people, in our observation, you're not letting people get close to you're not Getting close to other people's pain. Why is that? And I was definitely not going to share with them because I was uncomfortable with my own pain. I mean, I don't even know if I processed that together, but I remember walking away being like, crud. How am I going to pass this class? So I actually went to them and confessed. And I was like, listen, you know, maybe some of the reason is. And this was at the age of 22, I said, maybe it's because I struggle with self injury. And I remember telling my advisor and Richard, rather than my advisor being like, hey, thanks for sharing, you know, let's work on some healing. I actually went to my student mailbox two days later and it said, you failed. You're not fit to be a counselor. And I was like, dang. So like my first public admission of my struggle was rejection and failure. And so thankfully I knew the vice president of the school. He said, look, they can't fail you unless they get my permission. We'll get you help and healing. And I went into counseling. And that's where the journaling then started and that. And things always get worse before they get better. So that was where things really began to like kind of hit the fan, as they say. Went down kind of like a dark journey of healing. But, but I emerged, Richard, with authenticity. And I was no longer held captive by my secrets. And I have a strong faith, but I, you know, I believe that God led me to the right people. I went through a healing process and that essentially moved me out of the, the self injury. But I had yet to disclose this publicly. In fact, I began to write books. Book one, two, three. And then I felt like my book four was supposed to be the, the book, your secret name that I wrote, where I actually share everything. And that was definitely scary. But I did. In 2010, I wrote a book about my journey. This was probably, I don't know when I was, I don't know how old I was, but in my 30s. So I had gone past. And that's when really I began to be the entrepreneur because there were no longer any secrets.

Wow. So the, the, the act of getting counseling led to the writing really expanded and fundamentally it's through creating books almost as a self healing process, but also as a way, you know, fundamentally the reason you wanted to go into that was to be of service originally. So I suspect there's a part of you that realized through the effort of your writing, even though there's, there's self interest, there's the interest to serve others. Kind of connected together. It's a way where you were able to have both kind of like have your cake and eat it too, I guess, would be a way to describe it. And, you know, so in the releasing of the, you know, your first book, and you said it really wasn't until your. Your fourth book where you were being able to tell that story, what did you begin to learn about the process of books, about releasing a book, writing a book? There's a lot of things that were discovered over that timeframe. So maybe expand on that a bit.

I emerged with this quote. The area of your deepest wound is often the area of your greatest contribution. And that really is the entrepreneurial journey. I mean, that's what entrepreneurs do. They solve problems, problems. And usually the problem they solved was their own. And now they actually can help monetize that and scale that solution. So that was my journey. It was. Man, I struggle with masks. I struggle with being, you know, inauthentic. And I had emerged through that whole journey and now I can spot fakes really easy because I was one. You know, I can spot somebody who's bound by fear, somebody who's hiding, somebody who's playing small. And you know, that today I'm a publisher and also a protector of ip. We'll get into that later. But as a reality, I can totally sniff out unbelief in an entrepreneur, and I could just go after it and really inject belief in that person.

You went through this process. I mean, this is over a number of years. You know, again, we're talking about the span of almost two decades, from the age of 10 to, you know, pursuing this, the release of, you know, unveiling the secrets, as it were, there. You know, I think it's well known in, in. In the aspect of counseling and so forth that it's important to be able to share with others a little bit about what's going on. That, that's. That's part of the cathartic process, from what I understand. And I certainly won't, Won't speak to it from anyone who's an expert by any, any shape or means, but I really recognize how the risk. There's a component of bearing all, sharing all in that way, that openness, that there's a great deal of fear and risk in there, because there's a risk of much like what happened to you in the experience of being in that program when you shared with your first person, you actually received rejection. And I think fundamentally people have that fear of rejection. It's kind of the fight or flight response, it's always there. It's part of the innateness in us. And. And we're always finding ways to try to overcome that to some degree. What advice would you give for someone who's watching us right now about what's something that they can do, one tactical thing that they can do to be able to move past that, that piece of fear?

I would say that most of us who are stuck in our own story, people might not want to hear this, but it's actually selfish. So everybody's watching this show probably is like, I want to serve other people, and I totally agree that they do. But when we are scared to share our story, we're actually letting pride hold us back. So I wanted to impact the world, but I wasn't willing to take off the mask, you know what I'm saying? And by taking off the mask, you actually do serve the world. And we've seen this to be so true with Hollywood people or whatever, celebrities. I mean, there was a Cleveland Cavs basketball player, Kevin something. I can't remember his name. My son's into basketball, but he shared a few years ago, I struggle with mental health and the amount of people who just, you know, wrapped around that guy and was like, oh, my gosh, you're an NBA athlete and yet you're honest. Like, that's actually what made him more attractive. Not, hey, I can bounce the ball and make baskets. So I think it's true, though, in, in the entrepreneurial journey, too. As we begin to get courage, then people are able to be attracted to us. And that's kind of the catch 22. Are you willing to drop the mask?

Well, we're going to be willing to drop more of that mask when we come back after these incredible messages.

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Welcome back. We're here with Carrie and we're going to dive into exactly how, through this journey of learning how to publish books, you Actually discovered an incredible way where you could create multiple streams of income through the process of writing a book. And fundamentally, you found yourself now in the publishing business. So tell us how we got from A to Z, Carrie. At what point do we realize that there's something that you can do more here and that you can actually serve in a way that you didn't even know was possible?

Absolutely. So it is tough to get a book deal. And I did get a book deal, actually 1, 2, and then 3. It was not easy. I did not get a lot of money at all. These publishers basically gave me a super small advance. And it was traditional book publishing. That's what it's called, where you essentially get paid to write a book. You. You get a small amount of money, or maybe a large amount. If you're a big celebrity, it's called an advance. You write the book, and then essentially you don't make another dime until you pay back your advance with royalty sales. Very few authors ever pay back the advance. And then you give away your intellectual property, so you give away all your ip, you take an advance. But then when you go buy your books for your own speaking engagements, then they upsell you. You think you're getting a 50% off discount, but really they're pocketing about five bucks every book. So that whole model, as I went through it for my fourth time, I'm like, you know what? I don't know. I don't know if I want to keep doing this model because I had to do all the marketing and all the work, but they owned it all. So I began to think about, you know what, my next book, I just might publish it myself. And the market calls that self publishing, but I thought, there's got to be.

This way out there.

And this was like 2014. So it was not what it is today. But I thought, there's got to be a model out there where I can get just as good of distribution. I can get in all the bookstores, I can get all my IP and keep it, and I can get my books at print cost. And why could that not exist? Because I had began to take this book, your secret name, and I had begun to speak on it. I began to create a course on it. I created a community around it. And when I stopped to count all the ways, I had created 18 streams of income from the book. And so that was just the plan. Richard, I never said, you know what, and I'm going to start a business where I do that. Not at all. I would encourage people right now, watching this, if at least three people have asked you how to do something, there's probably a business right there, and here's why. Number one, they see you as someone who is successful in that area. They wouldn't be asking you for your advice otherwise. Number two, it states a need. Somebody asking for it says that there's a need out there, too. So you're a perceived expert. There's a need in the marketplace. There's a business model there. But, Richard, I didn't realize that until the third person asked me. And then I finally said, you know what? They're not just being kind. Maybe they're literally wanting to know this. So in 2014, I had a. I had about 50 people that had kind of come along and started following how I was doing this and saying, how is this interesting? Then I said, you know what? On a webinar, I said, look, you're all here. What if I create this model for you and teach you how to do everything and publish your book? And I said, you know what? Truth be told, nothing's created. But if 25 people say yes, over the next six to 12 months, I'll leave my job, I'll kind of change my life, and. And I'll start this publishing company. And that night, Richard, all 25 people paid up front, and it changed my life. Wow. I mean, that wasn't like the exact moment that I then quit my job. I'd actually kind of, like, got enough confidence prior to that. But I was going to shift my business model to be all about Carrie's books and 18 streams of income because I had left the pastorate two years prior to. And I was going to focus on literally serving other people in their publishing journey. So after the 25 people stepped up and paid, I was like, all right, we're in. We're a publishing company. And then you figure it out. And I tell people, the entrepreneurial journey is that you market before you manufacture. This is how Disney sold his thing. This is how Elon sells his stuff. An entrepreneur literally has to cast vision. In the usa. We call it John JFK with the man on the moon. He said, by the end of the decade, we're going to put a man on the moon. And then in his speech, he said, we don't even have the right rockets, the right fuel, but we're going to do it. And I feel like that. Is that not pie in the sky? But it's that galvanizing purpose that if a. If a visionary is truly set on casting a vision, Napoleon Hill calls it your definite purpose. You have to cut out other things really quick, Richard. You have to decide. The word decide comes from a Latin word, cadare. It means to cut off or kill. All right, so decide. Suicide, pesticide, insecticide, genocide, it all ends with a suffix that is to kill off. And making a decision is to cut off the other opportunities. And so it's very important that an entrepreneur does not keep all their options open. If you keep all your options open, you're like a tree that is leaking your SAP power into too many branches. What does the tree person do? They cut off the branches so that the SAP can go in only a few branches. That's what I did.

And.

And because I did that, I showed up, filled up. That's the name of one of my books. But I showed up, filled up, and put all my power into those few things. And that's where the businesses began to grow.

What I love about this story, Carrie, is a number of things. And not only there's a degree of perseverance attached to it, there's a high degree of faith. Faith not only in your own ability, faith in the idea, faith in the vision as you identify. I love the Latin breakdown of the word decided. Never heard that before. Absolutely fascinating. And what I think is interesting is there's also the faith of others in you. So there's some validation that's there. And, you know, the idea. Dan Sullivan teaches us to find out who the check writers are. You don't need to start and build everything until you know if the thing that you want is actually what other people want. And you just so happened to really, in the moment, say, I don't know if this will work or not, but I'll throw it out there. And if the response is good, we basically have validated. We verify that this is the direction that we need to go. And so that may have not been. You know, there's a degree of that that might be natural for you. Maybe it goes to your Colby instincts, I'm not sure. But there was something that compelled you. You were compelled ultimately to do that, and by the virtue of it, what the end result is. Not only do you have a publishing company, how many books to this point have you published through your publishing company?

1100.

I mean, that's. That's an astonishing number. That means. And probably for most of those people, maybe there's a few multiple authors in there, but the bulk of that is probably 1100 authors that weren't authors before. And, you know, I'm excited about the Fact that, you know, at the time of this recording, we're, we're set apart to release another book. Through your amazing organization, we're super pumped about Don't Spread the Wealth. Of course, the title of that book originally was something Else. Through some great conversation, great idea exchange, we were able to flush that out. And really you crafted the message of what this book is really all about. And I'm so pumped for it. But the reason I bring that up is to just identify what is the expanse of your own potential. And for our viewer to consider there's an idea within you that's locked away, that you, you already have a natural gift. The thing, something that you do value to give, value to provide. People want it. You just may not know that they want it because you haven't asked enough questions. And Carrie has basically shown us through his own experience that by the simple act of asking, he was able to create not just a business for himself, but a degree and a level of prosperity that now expands to 1100 authors.

Wow. Yeah, it's mind blowing. And you know, I'm a faith person, so I gotta give God the credit because think about it, back as a 10 year old, I was ready to take my life. I mean, I was like, you know, forget it. What, what value do I have? You get stuck in your old story and, and I feel like there's a lot of people watching this today that they may be stuck in their story. They may have gone through a relationship crash or a financial ending and they think, what's the point? But I'll just tell you that, like in my belief, you're here for a reason and you are here to be a blessing to other people. So as you push through your own pain, that is actually the path. And I'm a big fan of Ryan Holiday, the obstacle is the way or Marcus Aurelius. What stands in the way becomes the way. I truly believe that your dark night of the soul right now is actually the raw material. Dan Sullivan calls it, that our obstacles are the raw material for us achieving our goal. So just start celebrating the obstacles and the resistance because there is a path after that.

Wow. Incredible. Amazing. And speaking of the path that is after that, we're going to talk a lot more about some of the additional things that you've created. Now, before we go to our commercial break, Carrie, I'd like to get maybe a final thought from you around what would you say the impact has been about your experience at 10 years old turning into a publishing company and what does it mean to you to know that there's 1100 authors that are now in the world that weren't there before and how many more there might be into the future. What does that mean for you?

I'll tell you what, man, it's humbling, and it takes a good team. I have a really good team around me, and that's a whole process, because I won't get into the story here, but, I mean, there was some times of betrayal, there was some times of, you know, theft. And I mean, it's, you know, entrepreneurship is not an easy game, but it's a very rewarding game. So the same amount of highs that I have, I've had the same amount of lows. And I've learned, like, you can't camp on the praise or the, you know, complaints because you'll get cocky or you'll get depressed.

Well, with that in mind, we'll be back with Carrie, and we're going to talk about where he's innovating into the future. And you're going to want to stay tuned and join us after these incredible messages.

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We are back in the saddle with Carrie, and we've learned all about this incredible publishing company that was created really all based on a recovery mechanism, really going through and writing down trauma and then developing that into basically an entire business model that's now impacting people really, all over the globe, not just the authors producing content, but the people who are blessed to read it. And so in that process, Carrie, you know, before we went to the break, you'd identified something about, you know, intellectual property and just the real importance of that and why you kind of left the traditional publisher model to create something a little bit different that you wanted to forge ahead on. So what is the importance of intellectual property? And maybe just give our viewers an understanding. A lot of people have an idea of what intellectual Property is, but maybe they don't really understand the scope of it. So maybe give us your thoughts on that.

Intellectual property is something that most people think they don't have, and yet intellectual property is essentially your entire business. So I was sitting next to an animation person at a strategic coach workshop recently and Dan Sullivan was talking about ip. And I turned to the person next to me and I say, hey, what kind of IP do you have in your business? And the guy said, we don't have any ip. We have some cool clients like Disney and Lego. They have ip, but we just animate. And I'm like, okay, hold on. Do you have any unique onboarding process when you get a new client? Do you have anything unique? He's like, oh yeah, we have like a seven step process that essentially takes our clients through a whole onboarding process. I said, okay, that's ip. I said, what's your website name? He took me to his website. I said, that logo in the top left hand corner, that's ip. I said, okay, tell me your tagline right here, is that unique? He's like, no, we created it. I said, that's ip. Like I just started to go through and the guy didn't realize that he's literally first an IP company who does animation.

Okay?

So I would challenge everybody who's here. Like, you are an IP company. So I don't care if you have a saw sharpening business. The way you sharpen your saws, the packages you've created, the gold, silver, bronze, the low high medium offer, perhaps the way you lay out your equipment, perhaps the way you clean your blades, I mean, we could go on and on and on, but that is why nobody else can copy you. And if you don't protect your iPad, then you run a risk of other people essentially putting you out of business. You and I both know a gentleman, or I know Jason does for sure, named Chris Maxson of Accucraft fires and they build fireplaces. And he was telling us that they developed this. He's like, I don't want to protect my ip. And we said, okay, no worries. We said, what kind of IP do you have? He said, why? We have this baby touch glass. And we're like, wow, what's a baby touch glass? He said, well, listen, our fireplaces are very hot and we've developed this glass that actually a baby could lick it and not get burned. And we're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing.

That's not a recommendation, by the way, for anybody watching.

That's Right, don't do that. But he said, no, we've developed this. And we're like, wow, so that's your ip? He's like, yeah, but, you know, I don't care if people use it. Like, whatever. And we said, okay, hold on. What if your competitor uses your baby touch glass and then patents it and locks you out of using it? It's like, we. We'd be shut down. We'd be shut down instantly. We're like, that's another reason why you need to protect your ip. So I say all that to say that we have this thing in the US called the S&P 500, and it's the 500 most valuable brands on the planet. In 1975, 83% of the assets in the 500 most valuable companies in the world, 83% was tangible. What that means is, like, buildings, cash, inventory, like, things like hard assets. Only 17% was IP. You fast forward now to 19 to 2020. In 2020, it's now 90% of the S&P 500 is intellectual property. Only 10% is hard assets. That means, like my iPhone, okay, that I have right here, 90% of the value is in the IP, only 10% is in the parts and pieces. And in 2024, it's actually up 6%. But I'm just. I'm conservative. I'm like, hey, we'll just go with 90. So my point is this, that everybody is an IP company and everybody needs to protect their IP because the most valuable part of their their business is their IP. But here's the point. Protecting your IP's value. Very expensive. So, people, the average patent today in America costs $20,000 and takes one to three years. So, Richard, I began to see this whole IP journey. And I know we might just get into part of it, this segment, but I woke up one day and Google Alerts told me your secret name. It's something you can sign up for. You can pick like three terms free, and then it sends you anytime those terms are mentioned on the Internet. So I put my name, I put sometimes my book names because I want to know, like, is it good news or bad news? Well, it back years and years ago, it said your secret name. And then I looked, and it was a pastor who had stolen my concepts. And he basically said he created your secret name. And he was doing a speaking tour. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. And remember, that was the journey of my own struggles. So that got me aware that intellectual property could be stolen.

Wow.

So you actually have A Google Alert that tells you something is amiss. And that really created a whole. It opened up an entire platform of discovery for you about the world of IP and just how simple or how easy it could be for something that you would anticipate. Well, hey, this is my story. This is my journey. This is my book. Like, why would anybody, you know, take this on? I mean, it's clear.

It's.

It's Carrie's thing. Like, why would anyone do that? And yet you find that that's exactly what's transpired. I mean, yeah, I shot.

I shot the pastor a quick message and just said, hey, this is the author of your secret name just reaching out. I see you're. I see you're doing some speaking on it. You know, would you like to have a conversation? And then I didn't hear anything, but I went back to the website and it was all pulled down. So I think he knew that. And I wasn't a jerk, but I wanted to change lives. But, I mean, I at least wanted my story to be my story. So the point is this. Hanging out with Strategic Coach and Dan Sullivan. I didn't do anything way back then, but once I started to become part of Strategic Coach, Dan sees the world as ip. So I began to think, you know what? I don't publish books. Actually publish ip, because that's what books are. I mean, you look at these books behind me, it's literally intellectual property. And there's some of these books, like one of our friends, Justin Donald, I think you know him, we published him. So we turned. He turned this book into millions and millions of dollars a year based around his ip. You and you and Jason have turned your books into. Into incredible avenues of ip. So unless you take your IP seriously, nobody else will. And I tell this quick story about a playground, and there were two first grade classes that were sent to a busy city. One playground had a fence and one playground didn't. And then they watched what the kids did with the playground that had no fence. The kids were so scared. This was first graders. They all huddled around the teacher and didn't play all. They were nervous about the busy city. But in the playground with the fence, the kids enjoyed and went all the way to the edges, went up and down the slides, up and down the swings, had a blast. The point is this. The fence matters. And the fence is IP protection. If you don't have a fence around your ip, you will be scared. You will not be abundant and sharing. You will hide your ip. You will hide your branding and your marketing, because you don't want people to steal it if you have IP protection. And we can talk later on about what types of IP protection, how it's actually affordable, but then you will be bold, creative, innovative, you'll take risks because, you know, you have that IP protection.

That's interesting. And you know, with the work that I've done with the Nelson Nash Institute, as an authorized infinite banking practitioner, of course, the idea of IP and intellectual property is very important to me. My mentor, AR Nelson Nash, he created this thing called the infinite banking concept. And that's really important to me to make sure that that aspect of his legacy is continued forward, even though he's no longer with us. And so they do have, you know, trademarks and registration and all those things. But, but protecting it is actually something that I've learned a little bit more about in the last number of years. And I'm really surprised about what's involved in and just how frequently people are out to do things. I've even heard stories of, you know, people who have published, let's say, a book and there's, there's folks on Amazon who will literally go and they'll completely re print that entire book so they can sell it on their own Amazon channel and keep all the profits. And they, you don't even know. And so I couldn't even fathom that that was possible. But it's true that these sorts of things happen. And it almost, it almost finds me thinking about just how important it is that you have ability to search those things, how much you need awareness, how much you need a good team of people who can keep an eye on it. The idea of Google Alerts being able to know what's going on and so you've seen things like that happen and transpire. Obviously getting the IP protected is one thing, but then do you have maybe a final thought for us on what someone can do around honoring that protection? What can they do to make sure that, that it's being managed and being looked after appropriately?

IP protection to me is creating a case. Okay, so what, what, what we can get into after our next break is we can get into how do you present a case that actually creates a defensive and offensive strategy? Because that's what you want. You want to be defense and offense. And, and there are certain companies out there, like if I say Disney, people are like, oh, don't mess with Disney. Why? If I say Eos or Strategic Coach, people say don't mess with their IP because they know that they have developed A brand awareness that they take their IP seriously. And if you infringe upon it, there's repercussions. But there's other companies out there that have no IP protection. Maybe they probably stole their IP from somebody else and as a result, they don't have any value. Their company literally doesn't have any value. And when they go to sell their company or even attract investments, people don't, people don't want to invest because they know there's nothing unique.

And on that note, we'll be right back to discover how you can protect your IP after these messages.

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Now, before our last break, we were getting into the, the depth of how you can protect and understand what IP is yours coming up and getting clear on what it is and, and then making sure that you're honoring that so that you can, you can feel confident in your ability to share that is the things that you've come up with and something really interesting. You know, we were going over some of the stuff for our new book coming out, Don't Spread the Wealth. And something I really love to see in there, Carrie, that you do in your platform is, you know, for us, you have it set up where we're actually going to have protection of that IP through a service that you've created. And in fact, there's, you know, in the back we have, you know, as part of the book marketing platform, you have these things called back ads so you can promote our other books in the one book and, you know, really cool designs and everything. So I was looking at one of these and there's this whole page dedicated to how this particular book is protected and its IP is protected. And I thought, wow, that is so cool. To see inside of a book that we're launching. But more importantly, how many other people are going to have that in their books? How many other people can leverage this incredible service? And I've been following you and watching your journey, understanding and learning about blockchain technology. It's an area that you've really delved deep into. So share with everyone a little bit about what it is that you've created and you've innovated in the space to really help people maximize the protection of their ip. We talked about offense and defense, so let's get into that.

So I know that patents are amazing. I mean, we both have a mutual friend. Keegan, Caldwell and Caldwell. IP is the fastest growing IP law firm in the country. I'm impressed by ip, But I also know that the bar of entry is really high. You know, we talked about the time and the money involved and I don't know about you, Richard, but actually I do. You are creating ideas all day long.

So am I.

So if we need to take every idea to a patent, oh my gosh, we're going to be spending a lot of time and a lot of money. So I thought, you know what, there's got to be a better way because who has, who has one to three years and 20k every time they come.

Up with an idea?

So I ran across this term called blockchain a few years ago and I thought, you know what, I don't even know what blockchain is. I don't even like, what the heck are we talking about?

I don't even know.

But like anything, when I don't know the answer, I write a book. So I wrote a book called Blockchain Life. And I literally went deep into this journey and I wrote it for my 70 plus year old parents who are like, what are you even talking about? So I really broke it down into simple things, but the concept blew my mind because here's really the concept. There's another book on blockchain called the Truth Machine.

Okay?

Blockchain allows the deep fake world that we live in to be eradicated. Why? Because of something called transparency. Blockchain is simply a ledger that's global and digital and distributed. Meaning that anyone on any device in the world can pull up their smartphone, their tablet, or their computer and see every transaction that happened. And not only do they see it, but once a blockchain is secure, the next block is made of information and the next block is made. And that's literally all the blockchain is. It's blocks of information that are proven and validated and verified and then redistributed across the world, so that if you go back and try to change some of the information, it's literally impossible unless you hacked 51% of the computers in the world. So, like, it's more secure than any bank, it's more secure than any database, because those databases can be manipulated by the insiders. This one is called decentralized, and there's a term in the world called defi. Decentralized finance. But it really gives power back to the people. So when we began to think about ip, I said, whoa, hold on. There's a thing called a smart contract. And when you put something on the blockchain, it creates a timestamp, and that timestamp is literally immutable, which means that nobody can ever change it. Nobody can ever say, hey, I had that first, or I uploaded mine first, or, I'm going to put yours out further. It was the timestamp there. So I thought, oh, my gosh, intellectual property is based on timing. This is why I don't own the Golden Arches. This is why I don't, you know, own Toyota or whatever, because I didn't come up with that idea in that time. So I thought, what if we could take an idea and not wait 1 to 3 years, not pay 20k, but pay way less and literally instantly come up with the idea and protect the idea in real time. Have it go to the blockchain. Anyone can see it on any device, or you can hide it with one click and only produce it in the court of law if somebody infringes upon your idea. I thought, is this even possible? And so it pushed me down a path where I actually invented something called Easy ip, which isn't that amazing. But what it does is it takes this technology and this one and this one, just like Uber. All Uber's doing is taking payment plus gps, plus a platform of a driver and somebody who needs a ride puts it together, and that's the ip. So that is really what IP is. It's combining unique technologies together. So we did that. And what we do then is exactly what you said. We put that QR code in the back of books. And what people do when they scan that, they go right to the blockchain and see that, hey, Richard and Jason actually really wrote this book. Don't spread the. Well, you don't want to mess with them. It's a smart contract. Nobody can ever change it. And if we do infringe upon it, they're probably going to go to war with us. So, like, that's the security. And we're not talking 20k, we're talking like less than a hundred bucks.

The power of that isn't just in, obviously that it exists and that we can do it for an inexpensive cost. It's, it's the, you know, so maybe we don't have the official, let's say, patent or all those other things, but now if anyone wanted to challenge it because of that immutable timestamp you've created almost, almost like ammunition. It's, it's, it's the best defense that allows you to now strategically mount an offense if necessary.

There's a term, we just were in London, we verified it, that this is true of the, the eu. It's called prior art. The moment you create a smart contract, it's what's called prior art. So that if somebody goes to file a patent, you literally have your foot in the door and you say, hold on, we own prior art on that concept and you invalidate the person's patent. So it's like for less than a hundred bucks, you can be cranking out ideas and then if anyone ever tries to patent those other ideas, and by the way, you can hide them so people can't see them. But if somebody does show up and they're like, hey, we got, don't spread the wealth and here's the platform and the pattern, and it's just like Richard and Jason's. You go back and you say, hold on. Our smart contract verifies that we had this before you did. Do you want to go to war? Do you want to pay our fees? Don't want to pay your fees.

Or do you want to collaborate in.

Some way so that you can take.

What it is that you want to do and what we've already done and we can make it better to help more people.

Another option, Absolutely. You may say, hey, we'll bring the ip, you bring the millions for the marketing, and there you go.

So that's kind of like Ray Kroc. He says, you guys got the system, I'll bring some investors and we'll increase the locations. Kind of an idea for the McDonald's model, right?

Absolutely.

And that's what a free zone is. And you know, free zone is where you bring a capability, someone brings another capability, and you create a third capability that now nobody can compete because you've essentially invented something new. So this concept is fantastic. Why? Because it's what the intellectual property world needs. They're backed up. If you file a trademark today with the United States Patent Trademark Office, they will say, we'll tell, we'll talk to you in 14 months. Okay, so AI and the Internet has made it be that ideas are exploding. We need a technology to keep up to protect those ideas.

I think another piece to identify there, Carrie, is that, I mean the US Patent offices and I don't know the statistics, but you, you certainly would better than I. It is probably the number one place on planet earth where the bulk of patented things exist and, and there's more applications made on a year by year basis. That has to do with the, the free market system that's been created. This, this idea that you can build and have the American dream and so forth. But what you've created in Easy IP with the immutable timestamped aspect in the blockchain you identified earlier, it's not limited to a country's borders. You're decentralizing the capacity to now have that timestamp about your idea. So what I'd love to hear is maybe give us a little bit of a rundown, just kind of rapid fire. What are some of the ideas that you've already seen being used for this purpose and what are some of the ones that you're actually excited about people using it for?

We have one lady that I met at the Abundance360 who's created a formula. So she's in the healthcare business and this formula is something that she wants to patent someday. She wants to talk about it, but before she's talking about it to investors, she wants to show that she actually came up with that idea in case, you know, today you got to get investors, you got to talk about your idea. Sure, they might sign an NDA, but like, is that really enough? There's these types of things. We have another young, young entrepreneur who is a cross country runner in America. Most of our gloves are, contain, you know, fingers. And so when you run, you usually are running like this, I'm told, cross country people, why? Because your digits are exposed in the cold weather and you actually lose heat. So he created a new invention called Glubz. G L U B Z. You can Google him, it's Run Glubz. And this guy said, you know what, I'm a young college student, I don't have 20k to go get a patent. So instead what he did is he basically protected it with Easy ip, that QR code. Now that he has, he can put it right on the gloves rather than people saying, oh, there's A TM or a C or an R. Anybody can fake that with a Mac or a PC. Nobody knows if it's really true. So now people just scan the QR code and they're like, oh, my gosh, this is on the blockchain. It's protected. We better not mess with it because, you know, we'll have to go to court. So we have people putting it on literal products. We have people now that are actually. A songwriter named Emily just joined two weeks ago. She's friends with Evan Ryan. I don't know if I think you know, Evan in Strategic Coach. Anyway, Emily is doing songwriting, but here's the reality. She has to practice those songs if she is going to practice them with band members. Who's that guitarist? Who's that violinist? I don't know. Now she's caught. Do I get them to see my song? But they may take the writing no longer. She just simply uploads her lyrics to Easy ip. They're protected. And now when she passes out the lyric sheet, it says protected by Easy ip. And people don't mess with it.

Carrie, I'm so excited for what the future holds. An abundant world. A world of incredible ideas now at a measure of scale that can be protected so that people can only see the fruits of their labors, but the fruits of their own ideas that they generate right out of this amazing machine that we have in between our ears. I'm so thankful to have you on the show today. Thank you for bringing so much tremendous value. And for everyone else, make sure you tune in next week as we uncover more of these incredible stories and journeys of entrepreneurs who are overcoming and then innovating in big ways.