Irony... And intellectual property

Today, I am going to teach you all a lesson on Irony... And Intellectual Property.

I was at work yesterday scanning a pile of documents into the computer to upload them to their online document database. The documents happened to be all Intellectual Property documents, meaning copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc. (But mostly copyrights). The sister company to Super Book Deals, called Trader’s Library, publishes works on stock trading. The documents I was scanning were all deals made with authors and companies about works to be published, and were about who had the rights to said works.

I noticed some interesting things when I was reading through these documents. The international documents were fascinating to me, although probably extensively boring to the average eyes. The most fascinating documents were the publishing contracts, which brings me to my second lesson for you.

Lesson #2, When you can’t find product, make product.

The start of the publishing company came about when the company was just buying and selling books geared towards stock traders. The traders were asking about topics that just weren’t published anywhere. The company then saw an opportunity. If you can’t find the product, make the product. They started publishing books, of course, but this is not the most fascinating part. The company holds events, which are also geared towards stock traders. They invite traders to come and listen to talks by experts. The company files all of these copyright documents because the speakers sign over the rights to the recordings of their sessions, which are sold on DVD after the conference. In the end they make more on the DVDs than they do on the seminars!

Lesson is: When you see a niche that needs to be filled, fill it with your own product or service, than come up with unique ways to market it. The point of the events is not to gain publicity, it’s to have people speak and sell their speeches.

Of course, after scanning all of the documents into the computer, I went to class and we talked for three hours about Intellectual Property. So...

Lesson #3, pay attention in life, you might learn something in class.

Rule Number 1

Welcome to the work world. My name is Courtney, and I will be teaching this class. Now, you probably don't know that I was lucky enough to be the proud recipient of the Caplan scholarship through Howard Community College.

(Courtney, what is the Caplan Scholarship?) Glad you should ask. It's a wonderful program in memorial to Scott E Caplan who died tragically in a car accident in 2006. Through this program, entrepreneurial students can get the chance to do actual hands on work instead of sitting behind a boring desk.

(What does this mean?) Good question! You have been chosen to follow my Journey as I find that out myself. My first day started today at Super Book Deals! After meeting everyone at the company and finding out all about the structure, the first question asked of me was "How do you prefer your feedback?" After the initial shock, I managed to muster up my answer of "Umm." After impressing my employers with my sense of words, It occurred to me that I didn't really know; I had never received feedback before from anywhere I had worked. I  knew this was going to be awesome.

After working for several hours on a project of punching in numbers and copying and pasting files on the computer, and not being completely sure why I was doing it or what it meant, It was time to start licking the envelopes. I was perfectly content doing this, because it was work and this is what I do on a normal day at my house. Here comes lesson number one...

LESSON #1, "You don't live to lick envelopes!"

This was my first feedback ever at a job. If you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it... ASK. Even if it's stupid little things like punching numbers or licking envelopes, it means something to someone and is important somehow to the company. The reason I was licking the envelopes was to send out checks, and as it turns out, for every $1.00 that I sent out, the company was making a profit for the services paid for by the checks. (OOOH!) As the day goes on, I find myself putting stickers on envelopes. They tell me the reason I am putting these stickers on the envelopes is because the company recently changed their office, and instead of ordering new envelopes, they tried to save $$ money $$ by re sticking the return address label on the envelopes with the new address. I'm starting to get it now!

After that, I find myself cutting corners off of the big man's business cards. Then a thought occurred to me...ASK.

"So exactly WHY am I cutting the corners off of these business cards?" Well, turns out, that the name of the Company that owns Super Book Deals is called Far Corner. I was cutting off the corners to be poetic, so that the design on the card would draw you to the missing "far corner" of the business cards. Of course the only reason I  was cutting them was so that the company could save $$ money $$ on having the printer cut the cards.

Big lesson of the day, there is no such thing as grunt work! From three seemingly small and tedious activities today, I learned three important things about the business. No matter what task you are doing it is important to someone somewhere and you need to look into it and ask yourself what the bigger meaning is behind the licking of the envelope.