How to Use Blockchain to Instantly Protect Your Most Valuable Ideas with Kary Oberbrunner – EP 218

Justin Donald: What's up, Kary? So good to have you on the show.

Kary Oberbrunner: Hey, it is great to be with you. I think 2020 was when all the magic happened and lots of good stuff since then.

Justin Donald: Yeah, you better believe it. Well, you've been along the ride, along the journey with me, and I appreciate that. You've been very helpful. And in many ways, I'm excited to kind of unpack the story so people know more about you and the ways that we've collaborated over the years. And then I'm also really excited because you've spoken to the Lifestyle Investor Mastermind and you've given all kinds of nuggets, all kinds of like behind the scenes like professional information, discounts, giveaways. You've hooked us up. And so, I'm excited to kind of open this up to the broader network and not just keep this as a special secret here just for our Lifestyle Investor community.

Kary Oberbrunner: Well, you've blown up a lot since 2020. I know when we first met, it was, hey, you were going to publish a book. And this thing was brand spanking new. We got the manuscript. It was already fantastic but then we put Kirstin on it and Dave and our whole team. And I remember coming down to Austin and I remember you kind of having this big dream about Lifestyle Investor and now look at you. And I'm telling you, when I go places, you are one of the success stories on my shortlist. I mean, we've published Peter Diamandis. We're on his third book. We've published Dan Sullivan. A lot of people would know Abundance and Strategic Coach. We just EOS people, Kolbe people. But bottom line, when I talk about people who have practiced the 18 streams of income, I literally show Justin Donald's face.

Justin Donald: I love it. Well, thank you. It's fun to kind of be introduced into this world because this was totally foreign to me. So, without good mentors, without great coaches and consultants and partners, I couldn't have done anything that I was able to do. And so, for me, I kind of look at track record. When I vet a deal, for example, I want to know what is your experience, how long have you been in the industry, how many times have you messed up, how have you learned from it. But I want to know that you have a whole bunch of successful deals in the past that have gone full cycle. And so, when I'm vetting vendors, partners, groups that I work with, it's the same thing.

So, for you, you're a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. You've written 14 books. We're definitely going to talk about your newest book because it's incredible. But when I saw that as your track record, I was like, "Well, I want this person helping me." And combined with our team, your team, and we had another team that was really helpful in this as well, we were able to hit number one Wall Street Journal bestseller and USA Today bestseller. So, thank you.

Kary Oberbrunner: Oh, man. I'm so happy for you.

Justin Donald: I mean, I've referred countless people to you at this point. I mean, 10s, 20s, 30s, I don't even know how many, but everyone raves about you, so I'm glad that you can help all my friends.

Kary Oberbrunner: Well, and I think the cool thing about our relationship, too, is if anything ever, I mean, you're going to have bumps in relationships meaning when people are service providers. So, we had one not too long ago and I was so glad that we both hopped on. We're like, "This doesn't sound like Kary. This doesn't sound like Justin. Let's fix it," and boom, we had that thing fixed. And, yeah, over the last 20 years, Justin, we are at 1,100 authors that we've published.

Justin Donald: Wow. That's incredible. Well, I'm honored and I feel so privileged and blessed to have you guys to have Igniting Souls as a co-publisher. And for those of you that are unfamiliar, I can still, basically, you can go to these big publishing houses and they're hard to get deals with. And when you do get a deal, generally, it's not really good for you, right? Or you can self-publish. Or there's kind of this medium road where it's like you can still retain the rights for self-publishing. So, you own everything, which is what I do, and then utilize the co-publisher and get all the benefits and perks there. So, I love that we were able to do that.

But what I want to dive into, and for anyone that is looking to publish a book or has an idea or thinks they might want to do this, I'm going to encourage them to reach out to you, Kary. Your team's incredible and I would do it no other way. But for this call, it's actually, or for this podcast, I want to do less about the publishing of a book, and I actually want to focus more on what I think is the most relevant topic to listeners in today's world, which is intellectual property. And your new book talks all about this.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yes. I should have mailed you one, by the way, but I think I sent it to you on audio so we're okay.

Justin Donald: Yeah. You sent it to me on Audible and I should get a hard copy because I want to put it on my bookshelf behind me.

Kary Oberbrunner: I'd totally send you one.

Justin Donald: I love showcasing books of my friends. And actually the books behind me, these are books I read. So, it's important to me if I'm going to showcase it that I've actually read it. Now, here's what I think is so important that when you think about IP, when you talk about IP, most people think, "Oh, yeah, these big companies have IP."

Kary Oberbrunner: Tesla.

Justin Donald: Right.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yeah. Apple. Right, right.

Justin Donald: But you have a different story and a different message in that everyone has IP. Your brand, your name, your image and likeness, now that we have NIL, right? Like, you have the ability to capitalize on all this stuff and you've helped me to patent darn near a hundred different items, 100 different patents through your company, Instant IP. So, talk a little bit about that because I think this is incredible. Like, why do people want, like, why should they consider doing it and how do they do it?

Kary Oberbrunner: So, this is super relevant, especially for today, and you factor AI. AI does not care who it's taking information from. Justin, this is crazy but I found out as I was putting the finishing touches on my book and I was just citing one of my TEDx Talks, an article popped up, and it said Abracadabra Blockchain. I looked at it. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, this sounds like my TEDx Talk." And then I looked and I'm like, "Who wrote this thing? This isn't even me." And I found out it was a filmmaker in Georgia, like the country of Georgia.

Justin Donald: And by the way, I've been to the country of Georgia.

Kary Oberbrunner: Have you? Okay.

Justin Donald: It's incredible. I went there last fall and it was an...

Kary Oberbrunner: Oh, my gosh.

Justin Donald: Epic trip.

Kary Oberbrunner: Was it cool? Okay. So, this guy was like a filmmaker. He's big stuff over there. And so, I kindly recommend if anybody thinks anyone's infringed upon their IP, screenshot it. First step, screenshot it because you don't know the moment you contact them, is it a good guy? Bad guy? Good actor? Bad actor? Anyway, you don't know if they're going to take it down. You don't know what they're going to do. So, screenshot it first. So, I screenshotted it and then I basically reached out to him and said, "Hey, listen..." You always, always assume a good motive, okay? This is hard for people because they feel like they literally had their baby stolen from them. But I co-wrote it with Katie Caldwell of Caldwell. I'm sorry. Katie Rubino of Caldwell IP. Caldwell was the fastest-growing law firm in America five years in a row. And Katie Rubino is fantastic. But anyway, there's...

Justin Donald: By the way, shout out to Keegan Caldwell. He's a friend of both of ours.

Kary Oberbrunner: Absolutely. Keegan's the one who...

Justin Donald: Brilliant man. He's the founder.

Kary Oberbrunner: He's huge, man. They are amazing. They just opened up in Tokyo. They're in London, they're in California, you name it, Boston. But basically, when you feel like somebody has infringed upon you, it's a soft cease and desist. It's assuming like, "Hey, you probably don't know this, but we're going to send this." And there are people like Strategic Coach and EOS who literally send out 8 to 10 cease and desist letters a week.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, I want people to realize like this is a thing. And you might think, "Well, I don't have really anything special." You absolutely do. Anyway, I reached out to the guy. He massively apologized, said he just hired a team to write articles on AI. And they used AI and it had scraped my TEDx talk, stole the whole thing, didn't quote anything. And essentially, now I'm in a position where I'm so glad I had protected that on Instant IP. Justin, all intellectual property is based on one thing, timing. This is why I don't own the golden arches. This is why you don't own the Nike swoosh. You weren't there first. So, we live in a world right now where, essentially, who got there first?

Well, the beauty of blockchain, as I wrote about it about three years ago, I started to see this trend and I started to see all of our authors as literally intellectual property creators. Now, we do think of big companies as IP. Basically, the S&P 500, which I know you know that world a lot more than me, but the S&P 500 in 1975, 83% of the S&P 500 was tangible. Okay, tangible. We're talking brick, mortar, cash, buildings, equipment, land.

Justin Donald: Product. Yeah.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yes, absolutely. 17% was IP. Along comes the Internet. And at 2020, we crossed the 90% threshold. 90% of the S&P 500 is IP.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: Is that crazy? Conservatively.

Justin Donald: That's huge.

Kary Oberbrunner: Conservatively, 2024, 2025 it's more like 96%, but we still say 90%. So, that means that my Apple phone here, 10% is the product but 90% is the IP. So, basically, this gentleman apologized. He took it down immediately. But the beauty of this, Justin, is that I had used blockchain. Blockchain is what Instant IP is based on. Patents are going to cost you 30K and take 1 to 3 years. So, I want everyone to realize like, "Hey, listen, if I want to go patent something, there's an 86% rejection rate. The average patent takes 2.6 times to get it approved. And each time is 30K." So, you're a guy who has like, we did a harvest on your book.

And for people who don't know what that means, that means we went through Justin's book meticulously and said there's at least I think it was 105, 106 IP expressions because you have Ten Commandments that you wrote about, right? You have these kickers and these deals and your book's fantastic. And you literally created a new world, just like C.S. Lewis created Narnia, Tolkien created Lord of the Rings. Your people that are listening to this, they are literally creators. So, they have a choice. They can either say, "Ah, it's not worth it. I'm not going to protect it or it's too much money." Or you know what, this happened, Justin, to one of our clients. One of our clients said, and again, he's in fireplace. He's one of the top people. He's literally done fireplaces of celebrities. I can't even name them. He said, "Look, I know we created this technology. It's a certain technology. It protects babies from getting burned."

He says, "I know my competitors steal it. But you know what? I'm not going to protect it because I just want to be a giver. I just want to, you know, I'm not going to care." A lady turned to him in one of our coaching workshops and said, "Listen, I know that you're generous, but let's be honest. If your competitor rushed to protect your IP and then locked you out, how fast would you be out of business?" And his face turned white. And he said, "Man, we would shut this whole business down in 1 to 6 months, the whole thing." And that's how powerful IP is. It's not just you protecting it so that you have it. It's protecting your rivals, your competitors from locking you out of your own ideas.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: What do you think about that?

Justin Donald: Yeah, that's powerful. And it's such a great example for everyone to think about, like in their industry. Who could put you out of business? How could they put you out of business? How can you protect against that? And by the way, doing what you're talking about is very inexpensive. You talked about like 30,000 for a patent, but...

Kary Oberbrunner: This is $97. $97 a smart contract. In fact, we have an enterprise-level, Justin, where we get people 25 smart contracts around $80 each. And it's essentially an enterprise level. And again, I came on wanting to give value so we're going to give people a code. The code is literally 'Justin' and we want them to use it because they're going to get a percentage off but Justin's also going to get a small little kick here. But here's the point, Justin. Everybody who joins we're giving a $2,000 course for free.

Justin Donald: That's cool.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, what this course says, Justin, is it's 12 steps. It's 12 steps on how to build your company into an IP company. And, Justin, if anybody's listening and they say, "You know what? We don't have any IP," I would say and I wouldn't tell them this, this is pretty rude, but I'd say, "You're lying," because you're either lying, you're ignorant, or you're unaware. Every company has to have IP. Otherwise, there's no differentiation in the marketplace. And then price is the only differentiator. Is this true?

Justin Donald: Yeah. And people may truly believe that they don't have IP, but that's where they're wrong, right? Like, some of the stuff that you pointed out, that is my IP, I was like, "Oh, I never even thought of that being IP." Like, to me, this is just normal stuff, things that I knew or something that I came up with. And you said, "No, we for sure want to get this in the blockchain right away just to make sure that you're the first to timestamp your brand, your thought process, your content, even your mode of the way that you vet deals, etcetera, even the way you negotiate deals." And I thought that was brilliant.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yeah. And people today, they hear of people like Taylor Swift. And I ask people, I say, "What is Taylor Swift?" And they're like, "Singer, entertainer." I'm like, "Nope. She's an IP company." And they're like, "What are you talking about?" I said, "She has 300 patents."

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: Sorry. Trademarks. 300 trademarks. She's trademarked her cats. She's trademarked Fearless. Okay. So, Taylor Swift, and here's the lie, Justin, that everyone believes. Everyone believes, "Well, she's Taylor Swift so, of course, she protect her IP." Here's the lie. You don't protect your IP when you're big. You become big by protecting your IP.

Justin Donald: That's good.

Kary Oberbrunner: And it's so important. This is what Dr. Pepper did. Dr. Pepper is now the second-largest soft drink on the planet. Keurig bought them and they are in the billions. Krispy Kreme. Okay. We're talking Magnolia, Chip and Joanna Gaines, Waco, Texas, I know, where you are, right?

Justin Donald: Yeah.

Kary Oberbrunner: They are serious about their IP and even people like EOS who say, "You know what, we're going to give away all of our thinking tools." That's fine. They've absolutely protected their IP. And then what they do is they say, "If you want to be a franchisee who can charge money for using those thinking tools, now essentially, that's IP protection." So, Justin, when people hear of IP protection, it's very ethereal. It's very abstract. A lot of people don't get it. But I want people to realize Play-Doh has trademarked their scent.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: John Deere has trademarked their color. Tiffany has trademarked their boxes. And you might say, "Well, why?" Because you don't want to buy a box, that special blue, and be confused. Brand confusion actually hurts everybody. And the average annual pirated goods, according to the USPTO, is $1.7 trillion to $4.5 trillion.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, this is going to happen to you. And the best thing I can do, Justin, is I can explain IP protection as a fence.

Justin Donald: Yeah, please do.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yeah. So, I have a TEDx talk that it's nice. It has a million views, but people realize that, "Oh, my gosh, I get it now," because property, we all know what property is. But if you have a MacBook Pro lying out on the yard and there's no fence, someone's going to walk in. They're going to see that. They're going to be like, "I'm taking that." But if you have a fence and a security camera and a dog and a sign that says, "Protected by ADT," literally, if you interview thieves, they say it takes too much work. The thieves respect the fence. And what we've done, Justin, in this course that we're giving to all your people, they just literally go to InstantIP.today/bonuses. Enter their email. There's no upsell. They get the course. Boom. $2,000 value just because they're a listener.

But here's the cool thing. That fence that we put around is, like you said, it's with the blockchain. And if people think blockchain is confusing, "What are you talking about?" Here's what it is. It's a public digital distributed ledger. So, all it is, essentially, it's a ledger that says we're going to show transactions that take place on any device and nobody in the world can change anything, not even the owner. So, literally, when you create a blockchain with a smart contract, which is what we do, we take your idea whether it's a logo, whether it's a video, whether it's a course, whether it's a file, we put that on the blockchain and then a new block is created and you can never go back and say, "I want to change something." And so, what that does then is it tells the world you were there first and it creates a fence around your property.

Justin Donald: I love that. And by the way, part of the reason that bitcoin has become the monstrosity of an asset that it has, and you have Michael Saylor and companies like MicroStrategy that are buying it up in large billion-dollar swaths here, is because the foundation of it is built off of a blockchain. It's built off of a public ledger that can prove everything out.

Kary Oberbrunner: It's called a trustless technology. When I first heard that, I'm like, "What? Trustless?" And all it saying is that you don't need to insert trust for it to work. And what's beautiful about blockchain is it's the rails. It's like the railroad, okay, that crypto runs on, that Instant IP runs on. And so, it's incredibly safe but it's cryptographic. Cryptographic means it's hidden in plain sight. So, here's a cool thing, Justin. You can use Instant IP for trade secrets. You don't have to put your idea on and make it public. You can actually put it on and we have a toggle switch for the enterprise users that they just click hidden and now that is locked and nobody on the planet can see it. We don't even have Instant IP in the App Store. People said, "Ah, you're going to lose some traffic." We're like, "You know what, we don't want the App Store to have your IP."

Justin Donald: That's great.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, it's super secure and it's literally being used already. You know, people say, "Well, what does the government think about this?" I encourage them to go. I actually spoke to Congress. Okay. So, is this pretty crazy? If you go to InstantIP.today/about, you can literally hear my talk to Congress. They created a report because here's what they realize. They realized with AI and the Internet, we don't want customers to be waiting 1 to 3 years for a patent and 12 to 18 months for a trademark. It's not good for anybody. And so, they realize that disruption has to occur and it has to be fast. And so, Justin, when we first came to you to demo this, we were like, "Look, it's 24 hours." Guess what? We have it down to 24 seconds.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, you go from smartphone to smart contract. So, Justin, think about you're with your Lifestyle Investor alliance, you're on the whiteboard, you're creating this amazing stuff and you're like, "Oh, this is amazing. We should protect this." You don't have to go talk to your lawyer. Not that Caldwell's bad. I actually use Caldwell. I say for your big, big ideas, use a trademark, use a patent, but that's like the Great Wall of China. You don't need that every single time. Sometimes you just need an electric fence, right?

Justin Donald: That's right.

Kary Oberbrunner: So, that's the point. You go from smartphone to smart contract. All you need to do is name it and describe it.

Justin Donald: Well, I think that’s brilliant. And one of the things I feel like some of your foundational teaching is that you publish, you protect, and you promote.

Kary Oberbrunner: That’s right.

Justin Donald: And you really need to make sure that before you promote, you’ve already protected. And by the way, I know a bunch of people that are– these are brilliant people and they’re like, well, there’s no way I want to get any sort of trademark or patent on my IP because then, everyone’s going to know about it. So, I love this hidden view, but for you, it’s publish, protect, promote, and then all those things lead to 18 Streams of Income. And I’d love for you to talk about what those are, because I’ve participated in many, most, maybe all, but definitely, most of those streams of income.

Kary Oberbrunner: Well, Justin is very coachable and that’s actually why he’s successful and that’s why I like him. Justin is a coach. And I highly encourage you, if you are realizing how valuable he is, like get coached by him, it’s worth it. And he also hires good coaches. So, I don’t know about a lot of things, but about IP, publishing, protecting, and promoting, I do feel like that is my sweet spot.

So, what we do, Justin, is we say, “Look, your book is not a business card.” And this actually goes against a lot of people. I’ve even heard people that you and I both respect and they’re like, “Yeah, your book is your business card.” Okay, let’s just take that for an example. What do you do with business cards?

Justin Donald: Well, you lose them. You throw them away.

Kary Oberbrunner: Right. Most people throw them in the trash. And so, are you telling me that this baby, this book that I wrote, blood, sweat, and tears, goes in the trash? Not at all. I know people that actually say, “This book changed my life.” I mean, I’ve had several books literally change my life, right? You have too.

Justin Donald: For sure.

Kary Oberbrunner: And so, if books are life-changing, then they should be not business cards, they should be businesses. And so, our model is that your book is a business. And so, Justin, I use your website as an example just because it’s purely about 15 of the streams of income right there. And the first four are super easy. It’s like e-book, hardcover, softcover, audiobook. But what people don’t realize is like with an audiobook, Audible has a bounty program where if people click it and they subscribe to Audible as a subscription, if they stay 61 days, you just made 70 bucks, right?

So, it’s not that these are just different ways to access your book or your content. An audiobook is a performance. I mean, you remember Dave recording you. It’s legit work. So, now, audiobooks are a completely new stream of income. E-books, you get 70% royalty, fantastic. All right, hardcovers make a big impact when you drop off that dust jacket that people are like, wow, we got to get this guy to speak.

Well, guess what? Speaking is another stream of income. There are so many people like Patrick Lencioni. Guess what? He’s doing keynote speaking on the Working Genius. So, your book actually should be a keynote. Other ways, membership sites, there’s plenty of people that have turned their book into a membership community. Okay, I’ve done this with many of my books.

You’re also talking about courses. We’re talking about transformational experiences. So, I wrote a book, Day Job to Dream Job. You’re stuck in the prison of your day job. You need to go to your Zihuatanejo, which is your dream job. Guess what? I did an event at Shawshank Prison.

So, I mean, a mastermind is another stream of income. Like, there is a lot of streams of income, J.V. affiliates, partners, launch teams that are paid that have special access. So, Justin, it is very interesting. And even now, yes, smart contracts or apps, you could turn your book into an app. And there are plenty of people who have done this as well.

Justin Donald: Yeah, Hal Elrod, one of my closest friends, this year, turned his book into an app, and the Miracle Morning app has just taken off, which is really cool.

Kary Oberbrunner: I mean, we didn’t even count Harry Potter and build a theme park around your book and some stuff like that. But I want people to realize that, like, a book is just one medium for your message. But like you said a few minutes ago, Justin, if you don’t protect that IP and first of all, you don’t even realize that it’s IP, we use it in the book, an example of how most people have hidden Rembrandts in their attic. And we got this as an example from a guy named Andrew Sherman, who talks about hidden gold bars, and I quote them in the book.

But the point is that most companies have in their attic Rembrandts, and when they go to sell their company and you know this a lot better than me, selling companies and this type of thing, when you buy a company and you find those hidden Rembrandts, no one’s going to come back and say to the owner who just sold it to them, “You know what? You had 25 Rembrandts in your attic and we want to pay another 4 million,” right?

And so, the problem with most people is they haven’t even identified their IP. And if you can’t identify your IP, you’re not going to protect your IP. So, the book is called You Are an IP Company. And Justin, the whole point of the book is I want people to have an identity shift. So, whether they’re a landscaper, whether they’re a seamstress, whether they’re in stocks, they are an IP company. And I got a lot of this coaching from Dan Sullivan.

Justin Donald: Well, this is brilliant, top-down kind of methodology and kind of world view. And I think it is so relevant. So many people have great ideas. They have things that they can be protecting. They have their side hustle and may not realize it. They have their full-blown next business that they could transition into. It’s something that I hope everyone thinks about. I mean, hopefully, even if you haven’t read the book and please read the book, but even if you haven’t, hopefully, just the name of the book itself...

Kary Oberbrunner: You Are an IP Company, yeah.

Justin Donald: ...can inspire some sort of different thinking, some sort of action taking because that’s the truth. You’re listening to this. You’re watching this. You Are an IP company. You have something that other people likely will want that should be protected. And please take advantage doing that.

But when you read the book and when you talk to Kary and when you kind of learn all these ins and outs, it becomes much more obvious. At first, it’s like, well, what should I protect? I don’t know. I don’t have anything worth protecting from the standpoint of IP. But the more you get in this world, the more you read this book, the more you realize the things that all these companies are protecting. And you ran through like a handful of these companies. We’re not even talking about some of these other powerhouse Fortune 50, Fortune 100, the Disneys, the Legos, the list goes on and on.

Kary Oberbrunner: It’s true. Yeah, Lego is very interesting. They have a ton of IP. And I just want to read, Katie came up with this list. I’m not going to read 45, but I want people to realize, like social media handles, domain names, customer loyalty, relationships, pricing, supply chain partners, trade secrets agreements, websites, brochures, booklets, webinars. I mean, it’s basically what makes you unique. And the problem, Justin, is that everyone, you’ve heard the phrase, you can’t read the label when you’re inside the jar. I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but...

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yeah, but that is the absolute truth that most companies are like, oh, that’s not IP. That’s just something we came up with 50 years ago. And Jimmy came up with it, and it’s like, actually, that’s what makes you unique. And I think part of the reason, I know we’re talking about Jaguar right now, which is hot and it’ll be next month, something else. But like, why is everyone freaking out? It’s because they feel like they’re deviating from their IP. You know what I’m saying? So, Uber...

Justin Donald: There’s an inauthenticity there. It’s you are this, you’re pivoting to this, but we don’t feel that it is in alignment with who you are, who you’ve been all this time, right?

Kary Oberbrunner: That’s right. That’s right. You’re shifting your IP on us, and we’re not coming with you, perhaps. Or maybe we are coming with you. But I want people to realize, too, that sometimes IP is combining processes. So, think about Uber. Uber blended GPS with smartphones, right, with ratings, with payment. Like, that actually is IP. IP is when you combine different pieces as well in a unique process.

So, there’s co-branded IP. You’ve seen this before where somebody comes up with a collaboration and that collaboration is new IP. And there’s a whole process about foreground IP and background IP. And when you come to a relationship, it’s almost like a prenuptial agreement, hey, we had this first. So, we’re going to not count that as new IP.

Justin Donald: Yeah, that’s good. And for people now, I’m hoping people are kind of like, oh, maybe this is IP, maybe I should find out. So, what can people do to take next steps to protect this IP? Like, where do they start?

Kary Oberbrunner: Yeah. Well, the app is literally InstantIP.app. So, InstantIP.app with preloaded, everybody who’s listening gets a free smart contract. They can try it for free and literally, they’ll enter there, like anything. They’ll enter their name and email and create a user and then they’ll essentially hit protect IP and it’ll say text, image, or file. And those are the three things that you can protect.

And for some people, Justin, who are like, you know what? I don’t have the ability to protect all kinds of stuff because I have a course. Do a screencast. Like, we have a lot of people who do a screencast where they say, you know what? I’m going to literally film my course, my website, because I want on record any smart contract with an immutable timestamp so that if anyone comes alongside and copies my course, in a court of law, I can defend and say I was there first. And so, we have people doing tutorials of their courses, their websites just because they want a record that they were there first.

Justin Donald: Yeah, and by the way, for any of you that have published anything, it’s only a matter of time. If what you have published is good, it’s only a matter of time until you have copycats. And this is something here you’ve seen happen to me with so many people that have tried to copy the Lifestyle Investor or The Ten Commandments.

Kary Oberbrunner: Yes. You get people do that.

Justin Donald: Or summary of my book. And one of the funny things is part of me is like, “Man, this is just noise and I don’t even want to waste time with this.” And then the other part of me is like, “Man, that’s wrong. You’re totally infringing upon what I built.” But it’s like the saying that copying is the greatest form of flattery or something like that, right?

But also, to a certain degree, it can help kind of– the right type of copying, when you have stuff properly documented, if you don’t want to file cease and desist letters, it can actually help boost a little more attention to what you’re doing. But you really need to protect it first because otherwise, they can swoop in and act like it’s theirs.

Kary Oberbrunner: And there’s all kinds of income potential. I mean, Katy is amazing and Caldwell at licensing. I mean, CrossFit is a prime example of a business who said, “You know what? We’re going to protect our IP and then we are going to license out the CrossFit name and the brand.” And there’s all kinds of boxes all around the country that have now CrossFit gyms and they’re totally borrowing the IP. But CrossFit loves it. They’re getting paid for it and they have CrossFit games and all kinds of branding that’s happened.

So, I get the whole, like, I don’t want to mess with that. I’m not that important. I’m not saying that you’re saying that, but a lot of your listeners might think that. Well, guess what? Yeah, The Alchemist was pirated and it was a huge growth because it was pirated, but no way did the author say, you know what? I don’t care if somebody takes my content and puts their name on it. No, like he was just saying, I want growth because people are sharing it.

But you bet, there’s a lot of companies that cease and desist is a major strategy. I mean, we see this. Justin, why can you go to Georgia? You mentioned Georgia. Why could you go to the country of Georgia? And I don’t know if they had a McDonald’s or not, but let’s just assume they do. Why could you go to Georgia and order a Big Mac and actually, you and I would never eat Big Macs. But why would they ever be the same thing, the same sesame seed bomb, the same way? Because of IP. Like, Justin, I think, once people’s brains are open IP, they’re like, my gosh, everything is IP. It really is.

Justin Donald: Well, and it’s funny, like I’ll just give an example here with Georgia because every one of my friends that I said, “Hey, I’m going to Georgia,” like, and if I left it that, they’d say, “Oh, where? Atlanta?” And then I’d say, “No, the country.” And like, 90% of my friends had no clue there was a country named Georgia.

Kary Oberbrunner: Wow.

Justin Donald: And so, when we went to the Republic of Georgia, I was blown away. By the way, beautiful country. We got a chance to kind of be in the Caucasus region, of the mountains that separate Republic of Georgia from Russia.

Kary Oberbrunner: Interesting.

Justin Donald: We got a chance to be in Tbilisi, their capital city. And we went to their wine region. Actually, we took a helicopter from...

Kary Oberbrunner: Oh, you like wine. I know you do.

Justin Donald: The mountaintops and literally flew to the vineyards. So, it’s just this epic experience. But one of the things that blew me away is how almost everyone there has an iPhone. And this is maybe just ignorance on my part, but it is like Apple has permeated the culture of even smaller, less known countries to those of us who live here in the US. And I was just awestruck at, like, how much of a thing it is, just everywhere in the world, but even some place that’s so far off that’s small based on GDP, small based on land size, but how prevalent it is. And this just kind of goes to your point of IP and even how that’s like a worldwide thing, right?

Kary Oberbrunner: Absolutely.

Justin Donald: We got to protect what we’ve created.

Kary Oberbrunner: 100%. Really quick, I’ll close with this story. If you don’t take your IP seriously, other people won’t take you serious.

Justin Donald: That’s good.

Kary Oberbrunner: And I’ll tell you why. Because Coca-Cola had their trade secret stolen. You can Google it. This is true. And two people from Coca-Cola went to Pepsi and said, “Look, we got the formula. We will sell it to you.” And Pepsi said, “Absolutely not. We’re calling the cops. They’re coming in.” And these Coca-Cola pirates were shut down. Pepsi knew that if they actually bought off Coca Cola, even though this was the cola wars, they would have been lit up. They would have killed the whole company.

So, what I’m saying is that when you– they say good fences make good neighbors. You have to have a fence around your IP. And if you don’t, you are going to get into a lot of gray area. You’re going to get into arguments. You’ll probably damage relationships. And that’s why IP is so important. That’s why every book has a copyright.

But Justin, even more than that, your new book has at the back, protected by Instant IP. And the reason why it does is because when people scan that, they know that you just didn’t fake a C, an R, or TM. When they scan that, they literally go to the Blockchain and say, oh, my gosh, this guy takes his IP seriously. And the Blockchain, there’s a book called The Truth Machine because it’s all about Blockchain. You can’t lie, like you know that what is going on in the Blockchain, you can track it back and there is no fake news on the Blockchain.

Justin Donald: I love it. Well, since you brought up my book, I actually have an interesting fact. All right. And to those of you that don’t know that my updated and expanded edition of the Lifestyle Investor is officially out, it’s awesome, 30% more content.

Kary Oberbrunner: Amazing.

It’s the black cover instead of the white covers. That’s the newest, most updated version. But what is cool is if you are recognizing Kary’s voice and saying, I can’t place this voice, where’s this from? I’ve had several people, this has happened within the mastermind when you spoke to the mastermind is– so a bunch of lifestyle investors are like, “He sounds so familiar and I can’t place it.” So, anyone who bought my book via Audible heard someone interviewing me in between each chapter, which is you. So, even in the updated and expanded edition, we kept in that interview. So, you’re still in there.

Kary Oberbrunner: And I got to tell people, I learned so much. Like, I literally learned so much by interviewing Justin. This is why you have to get his book. You have to consider your masterclass. I love it. Like I said, on your website, is about 15 streams of income. You got the masterclass, the mastermind. You even have the podcast. You even have, like, what else? Course, as well. We did the course.

Justin Donald: Yeah, course, speaking. I mean, now, we’ve got seven or eight courses. We got the tech strategy, masterclass, and course. We’ve got the vetting deals course.

We’ve got The RV one still?

Justin Donald: We do. We have MHP, mobile park investing. I mean, we’ve got a ton. We’re actually building a venture course right now. We’re building a life insurance product right now.

Kary Oberbrunner: It’s all IP.

Justin Donald: Yeah, it totally is. And we need to keep protecting it. So, thank you for sharing your wisdom today. Where can our audience learn more about you, Kary?

Kary Oberbrunner: So, I would tell people go to InstantIP.today. The app is InstantIP.app. And again, use the Justin code because it’s a great value and you can’t afford not to protect your IP. Let me just say that.

Justin Donald: That’s good. Well, this has been awesome. Thanks for sharing, Kary. This has been just a fun session. I always learn a ton when we hang out. And the info that I’ve learned from you, I’m like, my audience has to learn this. So, thanks for sharing. I love ending every podcast episode we do with a question for our audience. So, this is directed to you if you’re watching, if you’re listening, what is one step you can take today to move towards financial freedom and move towards a life you truly desire, one that’s on your terms? So, again, not a life by default, but a life by design, and what is one thing that you can grab from Kary that can help you get there faster? Thanks, and we’ll catch you next week.