My first deal as a “licensing agent”

Two things I learned from Travis about structuring licensing deals…

1. you can come about it from a thousand and one ways, and

2. you can make up your own rules as long as everyone agrees

This is a little breakdown of what I did as a licensing agent, or “connector hat” as I sometimes call ‘em, to put my first deal together.

BTW this is by no means a perfect example. Far from it.

But thought I’d share to show how one country bumpkin from Arkansas was able to still make it happen using what Travis teaches in this group.

I took on the licensing agent role because I like being a connector. Don’t really have my own proven IP. And really enjoy uncovering NEERs for distribution opportunities.

🔑 So here’s the key points...

Originally I reached out to a guy on twitter to see if had the value bombs he was doling out freely over there packaged up into a course. If he did I wanted to license it out.

He didn’t.

But I remembered Travis’ sheik and luxury car dealership story and what he said to do if you’re just starting out -

** Get control of distribution first. Then it’s easier to source a product fit. **

The aforementioned value 💣's the guy shares is about driving traffic to his ecomm stores. He’s shared numbers before so I knew it was a safe bet he gets a good amount of traffic and customers.

So I asked him if he ever wanted a digital product to offer his customers I could probably source something through my network (network being all you peeps in this group).

He replied back a yes to that with the name of one his store brands that he could use a digital product for (see the msg pic1 attached).

This brand sells handheld hidden camera detectors.

We hopped on a call to explore what digital IP would make a good fit. One of the ideas that came out of that call was a security guide for travelers pdf. Preferably by a security authority figure.

Funny enough although I made a post here in the group to source a product and received some great ideas, I actually stumbled on an IP partner through happenstance.

My buddy had posted a meme or something on facebook, and I noticed a guy commented on it something security related.

Looked him up and found he was a 20-year security installations company owner.

DM sent. I asked if he had, or knew someone, that had something similar to what I was looking for (part of this msg is pic2 attached)

Turns out he has tons of content he could repurpose, and was willing to develop a custom guide.

So he and I hopped on a call, discussed the ecomm store owner’s distribution I had lined up, and we came to a verbal partnership agreement to split any profits 50/50.

Then I go back to store brand owner to discuss deets on his side, get another verbal agreement, and work out logistics of delivering the guide to his customers.

Here’s where I hit a major little hurdle - delivery 🚚

After researching a few options, I landed on one I thought would fit our needs.

Docusend would have been perfect but that I would have to pay their highest monthly subscription fee to use the one function I really needed it for…

Delivering a unique code for the customer to use along with their email address to login and access the pdf.

It was more than I was willing to pay to test an unproven product (the digital IP).

Thank the heavens for Upwork!

I hired a developer who built me a custom delivery system that I now own and control,

...for a total cost of what I would have paid for one month using Docusend!

Score!

And now that I think about it, this custom delivery system is now IP I own. Might be I can rent it out for use in other ecomm stores that want to upsell digital products - theirs or ones I source.

Double score!

So once the delivery system was ironed out, those verbal agreements turned into signed written agreements on both sides.

In my agreement with security biz owner, he’s the lincensor and I’m set up as the licensee with sub-licensor rights for 1 year.

In my agreement with the store owner, I’m the sub-licensor and he’s the sub-licensee.

We also included a 2 month test period for him since it’s an unproven product. If that goes well it rolls into 1 year.

Ecomm store owner is placing it into his upsell store funnel after a customer purchases the detector.

He’ll also plug it into his post-purchase email follow up, and will probably offer it to his past customer list too.

We’re all doing an even 3-way royalty split - between ecomm store owner (distribution), me (licensing agent / connector hat), and security biz owner (IP content owner).

And since the delivery system collects every customer’s email address for login access, security biz owner and I will get those yummy buyer lead royalties too (which ecomm store owner is way cool with) 👊

I expect we’ll probably launch this within days. Keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes smooth lol.

And if you liked reading about this deal, let me know in the comments. I’ll keep you posted any results.

To rockin’ those royalties,

Adam

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EDIT: Gonna link any UPDATES down below...

UPDATE 1: My first deal as a “licensing agent”

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