Why You Need To Audit Your Assets

Your online business assets are all the things you own that have commercial value and it’s your job to know where the value in your business is… so you can protect it.

You’ve probably heard those stories about people who bought something at a garage sale only to find out it was worth a heck of a lot more than the 5 dollars they spent to buy it. Obviously the person who sold it had no idea that their grandmother’s butler’s tailor’s gardener’s barber’s son’s painting was actually worth a ton of money.

The same can happen when you don’t protect the commercial value of your assets.

With an online business it can be difficult to quantify the commercial value of your assets because we’re talking about Intellectual Property versus real (tangible) property–the stuff you can hold, touch, taste, smell, snuggle up with.

But tangibility isn’t what makes an asset valuable… what makes it valuable is what it does for your business.

Online Business Owners Leave A Lot Of Money On The Table

Online Business Owners leave a lot of money on the table for several reasons:

1. They don’t keep track of their assets;
2. They don’t assign a monetary value to their assets;
3. They don’t legally protect their assets;
4. They don’t re-purpose their assets;
5. They don’t even know what their assets are!

When I work with clients, one of the first things we do is make a list of their all the company’s assets. Oftentimes, assets get lost or forgotten, but there’s money in that old content you created. With some creativity it can be repurposed into a “new and improved” version of the original work.

Next, we determine how much that asset is worth to the company and whether it’s being fully utilized.

Then we decide whether the asset’s IP is properly protected by copyright, trademark, patent, etc. So much money can be lost when this step is overlooked, especially if someone steals your content. Without the benefit of federal registration, business owners are often handcuffed because they don’t have full legal protection on which to fight against infringers.

Here’s Where To Start

Audit your assets: do a systematic review of your company’s assets.

1. Take some time (at least an hour) and make a list of everything you’ve created–include your products, services, recipes, books, memberships, etc.;
2. Make a list of the things that identify your company’s brand: name, logo, slogan, tag line, etc.;
3. Give each item on the list a numeric value between 1 and 10, taking into consideration its potential to contribute to income generation for your business (you can start by asking yourself how much time and/or money it would take for you to reproduce the item); 

Now you can make a real assessment of your business; what it’s worth; lost opportunities; new opportunities. Then you can make a plan as to how to move forward:

• do you need to trademark or copyright any assets?
• would it be worth it to revive or revamp any old products or services?
• how can you start generating income right away from the assets that you’ve left sitting there?
• should you re-do your website’s copy to reflect what you have to offer?

There’s so much information you can glean from an asset audit, and money to make by tapping into the potential of your business.