Client Spotlight: Maureen Carruthers is a team development and systems coach for middle managers in tech. The founder of Nonviolent Leadership, she partners with organizations to debug team roadblocks without burning people out. A member of Writing Practice, she wrote "How to Hold People Accountable Without Losing Your Compassion," which calls for pairing empathy with accountability.

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Once something we write is published online, we have very little control over how others interpret, share, or use it. If someone wants to pop our articles and frameworks into their generative AI of choice to use however they see fit, nothing is stopping them.

For those of us who make our living through our intellectual property, this sounds terrifying.

How do we protect our IP? How do we stop this?

We don't.

*Gulp*

Stay with me.

I promise it's not all doom and gloom.

Our intellectual property is only valuable if we share it. Once we share it, we no longer have any control over how it is interpreted, modified, or used.

We never really have.

Sure, we used to be able to hoard our intellectual property and require people to purchase it to access it. But even then, once someone acquired that access, they could interpret, modify, share, or use our intellectual property however they wished, so long as they didn't claim it as their own.

With the advent of the internet, it became easier to share our intellectual property with a larger audience and easier for that larger audience to find our intellectual property. Over time, we got used to sharing our intellectual property as a way to demonstrate our expertise and build our authority.

Writing and speaking about our areas of expertise doesn't just spread the word about our work. It is part of how we serve our audiences, even those with whom we never work directly. When our audiences take what they learn from us and put it to work for them, our work makes a bigger impact.

Search engines like Google made it easier for our audiences to find our intellectual property. Generative AI makes it easier not only for our audiences to find our intellectual property but also to implement it.

And that scales our impact even further.

So, while we cannot control how others interpret, share, or use our articles and frameworks, we can become known for the ideas behind those articles and frameworks. Knowing that others might use AI to implement our ideas gives us the opportunity to create an AI tool that we develop, test, and refine so it delivers more valuable results than can be achieved through a simple prompt.

Last month I published How to Develop a Cohesive Body of Work, a piece I started a year before and published only after I clarified my thinking on the process. Not long after sending out the newsletter with this article, I got an email from Bill Welter. Bill shared that he had popped that article into ChatGPT and used my article to assess his prompts from the last 18 months and define his body of work. He also shared the response.

That got me thinking.

I've already used Gemini to develop, test, refine, and release a custom AI fact-checking expert to my clients. I am now in the process of developing, testing, and refining a custom AI to delineate an individual's body of work. It's still a little clunky, but it's getting closer.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What concerns do you have about AI and your intellectual property? What do you think I'm missing? How are you grappling with the idea of others popping one of your frameworks into AI and using it to help them address one of the challenges you help your clients navigate?

Let's talk!

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Join the Conversation

Repetition Builds Your Reputation.

If you ever feel like you are saying the same damn thing over and over again, you aren't alone. When your area of expertise is narrow but deep, you often have to revisit the basics. Here are a few tips to help you find new ways to talk about the same old ideas. Join the conversation.

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Recommended Resource

Defining Your Body of Work

Your body of work is an organizational framework for your intellectual property. It ensures that everything you put out into your professional world works together to tell the story of who you are, what you do, and how you think. An effective body of work is an interconnected and cohesive system, like a forest. This infographic provides an overview of the four elements that define your body of work. Download the infographic.

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Upcoming Events

The Authority Lab 

Interested in learning how to build your authority by writing for your newsletter, blog, or a high-visibility publication? Join me on Wednesday, March 11, at 11:55 AM Eastern for a mini-training on identifying the business goals your writing can help you achieve, followed by a Q+A. I host this free event every month. Register here.

Master Class: How to Write for High-Visibility Publications

In this free 60-minute master class, I will share the SILVA Method™ and walk you step-by-step through the process I use to help my clients secure bylines in publications like Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and TD Magazine. Join me for a master class on Tuesday, February 24, at 1:30 PM Eastern. Register here.

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If you have any questions or would like to explore working together, drop me an email or book a call. I'd love to learn more about you and your business and how I might be of service.

Take good care,

Ready to Invest in Building Your Authority?

If you're ready to invest in building your authority through writing, there are three ways we might work together:

1. Writing Practice: A community that offers monthly writing, peer editing, and skill-building workshops. Membership is $150 a month. Write on!
2. Pathway to Publication: A high-touch, personalized accelerator for consultants ready to build their authority by writing for high-visibility publications. Tuition is $1,000 a month. Apply today.
3. Authority Development: One-to-one services that help you create and implement an authority development strategy. Learn more.

AI Disclosure Statement: I used LanguageTool, an AI-based grammar checker, to review this newsletter. To learn more about how (and when) I use AI, review my AI Usage Policy.