A friend approached me a few months back with a good idea that would require a license agreement. She didn't know where to start. She had an idea for a new product to bring to retail in conjunction with a celebrity slogan. She hit a wall.

I laughed. Why do people make this so hard? Why do we throw up mental barriers, and fabricate obstacles that don't exist? I picked up the phone and called the agency that represented the celebrity. Within a day, I had her on the phone with the president of that agency. Within three/four days, the concept was approved by the celebrity, and was moving forward towards contracting. All I did for her was make the phone call she didn't think she could make on her own. I gave her a boost over the wall. She did the rest.

She came to my office yesterday, exuberant. She had the signed license agreement in hand, and was moving forward with first production of her product in Asia.

There's no magic to this, folks. I was 100% guaranteed a return call from this guy's agent. Why? I called and offered him money. I offered to manufacture money for this celebrity. 100% of the people on the receiving end of that call are receptive to that. If I called you today, and offered you money for doing nothing, would you call me back? Her next target is Donald Trump... and she now has not only a template to follow, but instant credibility as she has her first deal under her belt that she can show to the Donald as an example. Everyone is accessible when demonstrate an ability to manufacture money for them.

I've done license deals with NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr., the brand Akai, the brand Nakamichi, and a few others.

Main takeaway from this experience? Make the phone call. Action fakers sit with ideas and action paralysis. Action takers... pick up the phone and make shit happen. The person on the other end of the phone --- NASCAR, Donald Trump or whoever --- are ALWAYS interested in how you can make them money.

I would be happy to field any questions about licensing that I can. I am not the world's greatest licensor, but there's a myth that this is harder than it is. Using someone else's household brand name is a short circuit towards the Fastlane where you can capitalize on someone else's equity, someone else's years of business development, and someone else's existing revenue stream.

Need - businesses that solve needs win. As long as your product fits this criteria, a license deal meets the commandment of need.

Entry - license deals may be the ultimate in difficulty of entry, from the standpoint that once you have the license agreement, nobody else can do what you do. You will have no direct competition, and you will capture a controlled market. You still have outside competitors, but nobody else can bring your product --- with your license --- to market.

Control - depends on your license agreement. Is it perpetual if you meet performance requirements? The brand is not yours, but you have an element of control. This may be the weakest fastlane commandment to follow in the licensing arena. The commandment of control can easily be violated with the wrong partner, wrong brand or wrong terms. Definitely something to look out for in the early phases. Awareness of this vulnerability can help you look at this weakness and shore it up.

Scale - The whole point of a license agreement is to ride in on the coat tails of something that has massive scale. When we did NASCAR, we gained access to NASCAR's estimated 75,000,000 fans. Our product wasn't limited to JUST NASCAR fans, but we had a built in base of people that would buy our product. We also inherited existing distributors, and retailers that would buy NASCAR branded product that would not have bought the identical merchandise without the NASCAR logo on it. We short circuited the entire sales process.

Time - Licensing eliminates almost 100% of the traditional time required to develop a brand and bring a product to market. You still need to build a platform that can run without you... the commandment of time is mindful of using automation and systems designed so that you can extract yourself from the requirements of day to day management. So, the license agreement itself will NOT solve the fastlane commandment of time consumption. You still need to integrate time extraction into your business model. Using existing brand distributors is one way to do that.