At the height of the Great Depression, a small-town teacher wrote a book and started teaching training courses based on his book. He taught his classes at the YMCA, local community centers, and even extra rooms in restaurants. When his book became a megahit (it outsold every book except the Bible), demand for his training courses skyrocketed. But he had a big problem. Because he taught the training courses himself, he could only be in one place at one time. He had to figure out how to duplicate himself and offer his training courses to more people in more locations simultaneously.
His name was Dale Carnegie. In the middle of the depression, he had limited financial resources, so he decided to put his training courses (i.e., Intellectual property) to work. He began licensing territories in exchange for a percentage of revenues, and five years later, the Dale Carnegie Course had 15,000 students attending 300 classes in 168 cities. And today, the Dale Carnegie organization is one of the largest training companies globally, with hundreds of licensees around the world training millions of students annually.
Licensing is one of the best ways to expand your training course business. Through licensing, you control the conditions and use of your training course IP. Unlike selling, licensing removes the time and geographical limitations and allows your training courses to be delivered simultaneously in many places and times. It eliminates the time and location limitations (and expenses) of providing the courses yourself.
Why would a company want to license your training courses? One of the biggest reasons is it’s not easy to create training courses that are effective and sell. Plus, the time and money required to develop and test can take months or years.
Market-proven training courses provide a fast way for someone to offer new products. It gives them a way to set themselves apart from the competition and instant credibility, especially if your training course is popular with lots of customer testimonials.
Another reason is breaking into a new market is a time-consuming and costly venture. Licensing a market-ready training course is a low-risk strategy to tap a new market—for example, a training course on financial empowerment for women.
The trick is to package it as a complete, turnkey training course program that’s ready to go. Include everything your licensing partner needs to learn, market, and deliver your training courses. These include “How-to” training guides, student materials, training course scripts, promotion templates, and more. The critical point is it must be turnkey.
As Dale did, you can use licensing as a shortcut to expanding your market and increasing revenues from your training courses. Licensing removes your time and geographic limitations. You control how your training courses are used and delivered. It only requires getting your licensee up to speed with your training courses.
They offer your training courses to many different markets simultaneously and pay you a royalty on every training course they deliver. You focus on finding more partners in other markets, ensuring your licensees provide the training course quality, and developing new training courses to expand your licensing program.