In this transformative episode, host Brendon Dennewill sits down with Tony D'Angelo, founder of Collegiate Empowerment and creator of the Intellectual Capitalist®, to explore how entrepreneurs can unlock hidden value in their businesses through intellectual property. Tony reveals that 90% of S&P 500 value now comes from intangible assets—a complete reversal from 1972 when only 10% was IP-based. For RevOps professionals and business leaders, this shift represents a massive untapped opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Tony introduces the concept of "surplus understanding"—the unique processes, frameworks, and solutions that every business develops but rarely protects or monetizes. He demonstrates how approximately 18.25% of existing revenue may already be flowing from undocumented IP assets, and walks through a practical framework for identifying, protecting, and profiting from these invisible assets. The conversation bridges the gap between traditional business operations and the emerging AI-powered economy, offering actionable strategies for turning proprietary knowledge into cash-flowing property.
This episode is essential listening for RevOps leaders, C-suite executives, technology entrepreneurs, and anyone building scalable processes who wants to transform their intellectual assets into protected, profitable property while navigating the AI revolution.
What You'll Learn
To learn how to transform your useful ideas into cash flowing assets, schedule a complimentary IP Conversation with Tony D'Angelo, by going to: www.TheIPconversation.com or if you’re ready to take the leap and enroll in The IP Simplifier Series please visit: www.IPsimplifier.com to enroll today!
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Tony D'Angelo | Founder & Intellectual Property Advisor of Collegiate Empowerment & The Intellectual Capitalist®
Tony D’Angelo is the Founder and Executive Producer of Collegiate Empowerment®, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping students get what they want and need from college so they can create lives of passion and purpose. A pioneer in the college speaking industry, Tony has reached over 2 million students and 50,000 educators through his educational productions and workshops, including The What Every College Student Needs to Know® Series. As the author of The College Blue Book and a key contributor to the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the College Soul, Tony’s work has been featured in O Magazine, CNN, and SPIN. Known for his pragmatic idealism and straight talk, he continues to champion transformation in higher education—helping students not just earn a degree, but an education that truly empowers them. |
Brendon Dennewill: Welcome back to the Brendon Dennewill podcast. Today I'm honored to have with me Tony D'Angelo. He's the founder of Collegiate Empowerment and the creator of the Intellectual Capitalist®. He empowers growth-minded, ambitious, and decisive entrepreneurs, otherwise known as GMAD, to turn surplus understanding into cash-flowing intellectual property assets.
With more than 30 years of experience building and monetizing IP, he teaches that IP is property and the top asset class of the S&P 500, and therefore must be protected, packaged, and profitable. Tony's mission is to help 2,500 entrepreneurs create over a billion dollars in IP asset value by 2035. I think he's going to surpass that personally, unlocking new revenue and royalties through the seven stages and seven mindsets of intellectual capitalism. Tony, welcome to the show.
Tony D'Angelo: Brendon, this is a true joy. We had a wonderful time in Charlotte together and I just love seeing you again here on the podcast. Thank you for having me. And listeners, thank you for checking this out. I trust that we're going to bring a lot of value to your business model, to your thinking, and to this idea that everyone listening is actually an intellectual capitalist. I'm looking forward to this.
Brendon Dennewill: I love the way you teased that, Tony, because when I first heard you talk about that a few months ago, I thought, what is he talking about? Which I'm guessing is the first reaction a lot of people have. So I'm really looking forward to the value you're going to be bringing to our audience today.
Tony D'Angelo: Let me start with a full disclaimer: I'm not an IP attorney. I don't play one here on the internet. Kim Kardashian passed the bar; I never have and never will. I'm also not a tax attorney. What I am is an intellectual capitalist.
What does that mean? An intellectual capitalist is somebody who has understanding. "Intellectual" means understanding; "capitalist" in its finest sense means you have surplus. Every one of your listeners, you, Brendon, myself, every human being you meet has some sort of surplus understanding. And if you begin to understand that it didn't come from you but came through you, from your creator, that it's divinely inspired but also your right to own as property, that's what the intellectual capitalist framework is about. It's about awakening and helping you unleash your inner intellectual capitalist, not only for you and your business, but for humanity.
Brendon Dennewill: I like your attitude around this, and it connects to something you and I talk about roughly every 90 days: the mentality of being a go-giver. For those of you who haven't yet read the book The Go-Giver, I highly recommend it. And apparently there's an entire series. I've just read the original, but I know Tony is also a go-giver, even though he's here today as an intellectual capitalist. Tony, how did you become so passionate about the power and value of intellectual property?
Tony D'Angelo: My personal mission is to advance education that transforms lives. I've always been an educational entrepreneur. My space is U.S. higher education, and I've personally lectured at over 2,500 U.S. colleges. I'll give full disclosure: most of those universities, I'm not academically gifted enough to have been accepted to. But I was intelligent enough to figure out how to have them as clients, so I did something right there.
Through that journey, I began to see what is fundamentally missing in the American higher education core curriculum, whether it's financial education or, more recently, intellectual property. You can literally earn three MBAs from the finest institutions and, if you're lucky, get one or two courses on intellectual property law.
I see a great need, particularly for entrepreneurs, experts, executives, and what I call the Esquires. We need to bring back this powerful idea in North America and throughout common law countries: you have an inherent right to own your ideas, whether you're an individual, a company, or a corporation.
Don't take my word for it. Look at the S&P 500. When I was born in 1972, only 10% of S&P 500 valuation was in intangible property. The other 90% was steel, buildings, factories, equipment: heavy, capital-intensive assets. Fast forward to 2025 and that's literally inverted. It went from 10% intangible to 90%. Now 90% of the S&P 500 valuation is in intellectual property.
What I really care about is you, the entrepreneur, the business owner, the C-suite executive. Do you have IP on your balance sheet? It is the biggest asset class of the S&P 500. If they have it, why not you?
Brendon Dennewill: To add to that, depending on the month, over 70% of our clients run on EOS. And one of the things I know from EOS is that most companies that run on it properly have what's called a proven process. In Strategic Coach, that's called your unique process. If a company has done a really good job creating that proven process, surely that would be considered IP.
Tony D'Angelo: Absolutely. Let's get to the brass tacks. When people hear the word "IP," they often freeze up. They create a mountain in their head, a fictitious mountain I call Mount IP, and it becomes overwhelming. So we're going to help listeners climb Mount IP. And I always remind you: your goal when climbing a mountain is not only to reach the top. It's to get back down the other side and get home safely.
What you just described, a unique process, is key. The word "unique" matters. It was divinely inspired; it typically came from your pain or the pain of your customers. As Dan Sullivan says, all of your IP is found in the "dangers" of your hero target. You, as an entrepreneur, came up with a solution. It came through you. You're a big Wi-Fi router. You picked it up, iterated it, tested it, and proved it works.
And as we've learned at Strategic Coach, you make it up, make it real, make it recur. I'll add one more: you make it last. When you put intellectual property around that process, that's how you make it last.
Specifically, intangible property is a broad category that includes domains, blockchain, trade secrets, and more. Within IP, we're really focused on copyrights, trademarks, and patents. When you write code, that's copyrighted. When you have a business brand, that's a trademark. And you can have technology that's patented. The "Buy Now" button on Amazon? That's a patent. Google's PageRank? That's a patent.
If these big players can do it, so can you. Every big company was once just a small one with an idea that became a process and began to solve a problem.
There are 45 different trademark classes. In the U.S., Canada, and the UK, the structure is broadly similar. Of those 45, 35 are for goods and services, for physical products. But most listeners on this show don't live in the mainland; they live in Cloudlandia. Those cloud-based capabilities are all services. Classes 35 through 45 are available to you as entrepreneurs, engineers, builders, and creators, to claim property, put a name around it, and place a deed on the great idea you've spent most of your life building.
Brendon Dennewill: And those are the classes as classified by the USPTO?
Tony D'Angelo: Yes. USPTO stands for United States Patent and Trademark Office. Note that copyrights are handled through the Library of Congress. They are a type of intellectual property, but our real focus here is on patents and trademarks. They all work hand in hand.
Brendon Dennewill: So what is the first step you'd suggest for someone who wants to develop IP around their proven process?
Tony D'Angelo: Before I answer that, let me share an intimate story about EOS. I was in a Strategic Coach workshop, around 2006 or 2007, and Gino Wickman was working on his book. We were partners in a workshop in Chicago, and he pulls out two cover designs. The book title was Traction. One cover was plain, and the other had this rubber texture. I told him, "Go with the rubber one, Gino."
What Gino was doing was solving a problem. In the 21st century, people feel four core negative energies: confused, isolated, powerless, and overwhelmed. As an entrepreneur, an engineer, an EOS implementer, part of what you do for humanity is bring a solution to one of those four energies.
If you're strong with leadership, you bring clarity to the confused. If you're strong with creativity, you bring capability to the powerless. If you're strong with management, you bring coordination to the overwhelmed. And if you're strong with relationship, you bring connection to the isolated.
What I'm really communicating is this: you are creating a brand, an idea that lives in the mind of the experience. In intellectual property, instead of share of market, we talk about share of mind. When you create a solution that is genuinely useful, as the Constitution says, "to promote the progress of useful arts or ideas," you can actually own a piece of the mind share of another human being. That's profound.
What Gino did with Traction and EOS is a perfect example. If you're in EOS, you know exactly what it means. To those outside it, it's unfamiliar. That's the whole point of the brand.
I'll bring in two more examples, both of which are registered trademarks: "Make America Great" and "Black Lives Matter." Love them or hate them, when you hear either one, you have a visceral reaction. That's exactly what a brand does. As human beings, we are confused, isolated, powerless, and overwhelmed, and we are creators. You have the constitutional right to name your idea, claim it, domain it, put it on your balance sheet, and get it to cash flow.
Brendon Dennewill: I think IP is such a misunderstood and underutilized form of asset value, which is exactly why I was so excited to have you on the show. A lot of the folks listening are probably wondering why I'm interviewing someone about intellectual property when what we really do is help companies use software to drive growth. But we're not thinking about the fact that whatever software we're implementing, those are all brands, owned by somebody, potentially trademarked and patented. And anything intangible that's growing in value, if it's not protected or owned, leadership teams eventually realize they're leaving a lot of value behind.
Tony D'Angelo: A lot of value. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, and my entire family is in real estate. My father is a land surveyor, one uncle is a builder, another is a real estate broker. They understood tangible property intimately. I didn't get that gene. I got the intangible gene.
But here you are as an entrepreneur, as a C-suite executive, and you've been committed 20 or 30 years to your company. You've literally been out in a field building a castle called your business, your enterprise. But you never filed the deed. You never honored the fact that there are legal structures to protect, profit, and promote what you've been building.
The biggest sin I see for entrepreneurs is they've spent all their time and energy, their entire lives. They've got some revenue to show for it. But at the end, there's no asset on the balance sheet.
Tony D'Angelo: Going back to the Mount IP metaphor: there are three main dangers every entrepreneur faces when it comes to climbing this mountain, and the goal is not just to summit it, but to get back down safely.
The first is IP ignorance. You don't know what you don't know. So you either do nothing, or worse, you go to market with a brilliant idea, a brilliant strategy, a brilliant solution, and you never package or protect it. To use the real estate metaphor: imagine you spend years building a 28-bedroom oceanfront property in Miami. It's magnificent. And then someone asks if you own the deed. You don't.
In the 21st century, if you don't have an IP strategy for your business, you will come into contact with an entrepreneur or enterprise that does have an IP strategy for your business. And I promise you, it won't be the strategy you were hoping for.
The second danger is IP fog. You start to climb the mountain, you get into the clouds, and you slip into a crevice because you get overwhelmed and stop moving.
The third is IP gap. Anyone familiar with Dan Sullivan knows the concept of the gap versus the gain. You hear the word "patent" and you get paralyzed trying to be perfect. Don't overwhelm yourself. Start with your domain. Start with your copyright. Start with your trademark. Then work up to the patent level.
There's a fourth danger, and it's a bit sneaky. The first three are internal; the fourth is external. I call it IP arrogance, and it comes from two places. First, from the education system: IP law exists to advance knowledge, yet most university curricula ignore it entirely. Second, from the legal industry: IP attorneys approach it purely as property creation, not asset creation. There's a difference. An asset generates cash flow. An asset has a capital gain component, collateral value, and tax benefits. An attorney focused only on property creation misses all of that.
Brendon Dennewill: The IP arrogance point is an interesting one. I've heard of successful entrepreneurs who've built incredible IP but, when asked if they've protected it, they say they're happy for others to use it. Complete that story for us: what happens when another entrepreneur finds your unprotected product and runs with it?
Tony D'Angelo: If you don't have the IP strategy, you will come into contact with someone who does. And here's the key thing: the goal of all intellectual property, when understood from an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset, is progression. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, the IP Clause, is the only place in the original document where the word "right" appears. You have an exclusive right to the fruits of your intellectual labor.
You are absolutely welcome to give your IP away. Some of the most important medical inventions in history were given freely to humanity. But if your goal is to progress your ideas and benefit from them, the mechanism is licensing. Just as real estate investors don't live in every property they own, they rent it out. With IP, you don't rent it, you license it. And in exchange for the license, you, the creator, receive a royalty.
Calculating the IP Value Already in Your Revenue
Tony D'Angelo: Since we're on a show about revenue operations, let's talk about revenue. I want to suggest that 18.25% of your current revenue is already coming in as a result of undocumented, unidentified intellectual property. It's like a UFO, unidentified but generating lift.
Say you have a line of business generating $2 million in revenue. 18.25% of $2 million is $365,000. That's roughly $1,000 a day coming in from your undocumented IP.
Just as you value real estate by what it could generate as rental income, you license IP. A licensing rate on $365,000 at roughly 20% yields $73,000 per year in licensing revenue. And if you have a holding company structure or a work-for-hire agreement, you're entitled to roughly half of that, around $36,500, or $100 a day in royalty income.
And I went specific with that number intentionally. This is what becomes possible when you start taking this asset class seriously.
Brendon Dennewill: That's a great thought to leave people with. I can tell you I'm not thinking that way, and I suspect most people listening aren't either. There's a certain percentage of their revenue that is essentially IP they could be licensing.
Brendon Dennewill: With AI accelerating innovation so rapidly, the IP landscape is constantly changing. What mindset shifts do you think will help leaders stay ahead of the threats and opportunities as technology continues to evolve?
Tony D'Angelo: First, we should always humble ourselves. We are in a massive change and transformation, but as Dan Sullivan teaches, before we get overwhelmed and anxious about the future, we've been here before.
I live in a small colonial town in Pennsylvania, about an hour north of Philadelphia. My yoga studio was once a major textile plant, because textiles were the raging new technology of their era. Someone was slaving away in a 90-degree building turning silk into fabric three generations ago. Now I do yoga there.
Let's do a quick history review. The first modern intellectual property system arose in Venice, where the patent was used to grant exclusive privileges and encourage trade and immigration. The biggest transformation came when Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1500. That capability created a new IP asset class: copyright. Originally, copyright wasn't for the author; it was for the printer who owned the block. Over time it evolved to protect the creator or the company who commissioned the work.
Trademarks didn't emerge until we had mass distribution of products via canals and railroads. A new type of technology, the train, delivered goods to the masses, and manufacturers began to mark their trade so consumers could identify their products. That became federal trademark law around 1870.
Then in 1995, the World Wide Web went live, and we moved into Cloudlandia. The first domain was bought and sold in 1985. Today I bought three domains before lunch.
Back to AI: as technology advances, so too does what we define as intellectual property. I'll be honest: I don't know exactly how AI will reshape IP law. But I do believe blockchain will play a central role. Carrie Oberbrunner's work with Instant IP is a great example of where this is heading.
Dan Sullivan said it perfectly: patents are the nuclear weapons of the IP world. They're powerful and expensive. But before you think about patents, I'd focus on blockchain. All IP is fundamentally about timing. It's about "when," not "where." When did I come up with the idea? When did I file it? When did I put it in the blockchain? That timing mechanism is crucial.
Brendon Dennewill: Yeah, the timestamp matters enormously.
Tony D'Angelo: Exactly. I know I threw a lot on the table, but I wanted to walk you through this history because we've been through tumultuous, paradigm-shifting moments before. The Venetians panicked over patent law. The church panicked over the printing press. People are going to be okay. At the core of all of this is property law, because that's what keeps a society civil.
Brendon Dennewill: That reminds me of a great question from Dan Sullivan: what is going to stay the same? Because change is constant, and some things change while some things never do.
Tony D'Angelo: Here's what will never change in commerce: trust. Trust in transactions never changes.
AI is called "artificial intelligence" for a reason. It's artificial. I use AI constantly and I love it. It's like electricity: we use artificial light and the world didn't end. Every time a new technology arrives, there's a wave of doomsday thinking. The battle between Westinghouse and Edison is a perfect example. Edison was literally electrocuting animals to prove that Westinghouse's AC current was dangerous. Westinghouse won because they had more trust in the marketplace.
This is why I'm a big trademark fan. The only type of intellectual property that never expires, as long as you renew it, is a trademark. Coca-Cola has been around since the 1800s. The oldest currently operating trademark is a UK trademark for Bass Ale. That orange triangle logo has been around far longer than any of us. Trademarks are permanent IP.
As you build processes that solve people's problems, help heal their pain, and bring them clarity, confidence, capability, or coordination, you are going to own a piece of their trust. And the mind never forgets what the heart remembers.
Brendon Dennewill: As we start to wrap up: with AI accelerating innovation, how can companies safeguard what makes them uniquely human, including their cognitive and affective capabilities, while scaling their IP?
Tony D'Angelo: Kevin Kelly, curator of Wired magazine, said it well: the 20th century was about the electrification of everything; the 21st century is about the cognification of everything.
I live along the Delaware River. There's a famous picture of that stretch showing a canoe, a canal boat, a train, and a car all traveling alongside one another. Each new technology didn't erase the ones before it. AI is doing the same thing for cognition: it's freeing the mind, just as electricity freed us from candles and the automobile freed us from fixed train schedules.
What AI is doing is decreasing cognitive load so we can access our best selves: our cognitive instincts, our affective capabilities, our full humanity. I prefer to call it "augmented intelligence" rather than "artificial intelligence."
And practically speaking, many people don't own their IP. Their IP owns them, living rent-free in their heads. The goal is to get it out of your head and onto your balance sheet. Use AI to help you do it.
Here's a brass-tacks action: go to your favorite AI, whether it's Perplexity, ChatGPT, or whatever you prefer, and type: "I am a blank in the blank industry. What trademark class should I pursue?" If you're a technologist building a SaaS solution, it'll tell you Class 42. You can also paste your website and ask: "What IP do you think I have here? What should I file?" The tools are available to all of us.
What I do at the Intellectual Capitalist is prepare you with the mindsets. And a book I'd highly recommend is Primal Intelligence. Not only do you have primal intelligence, you have primal instinct and primal intuition. These are your somatic, instinctive, and sensing capabilities. Together, they are your primal essence: your fundamental human foundation.
We have never been alive in a better time in humanity, except for the people who will come after us. Our job is to take what our creator puts in our souls and then package it, protect it, and profit from it, not just for ourselves, but for humanity.
Brendon Dennewill: Tony, what would you suggest folks do if they want to learn more about how you can help them through the mindset journey of understanding the value of IP?
Tony D'Angelo: A few things. First, take this podcast and listen to it again. We covered a lot, and you don't want IP ignorance to push you back into overwhelm. Know that you're building an asset; it doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen over time.
Second, take the transcript, put it into your AI, and ask: "Based on this podcast, what can I do immediately?" Don't just trust us. Use the very tools we're talking about.
Third, if you want to go deeper, I invite you to a free, no-pitch, 45-minute IP Conversation with me personally. You can book that at theipconversation.com. I'll do a complimentary IP audit to see where you stand. I find that even people who just fill out the intake form, without showing up for the call, get tremendous value from that exercise alone.
Fourth, you can listen to the Intellectual Capitalist podcast, where I feature other entrepreneurs who are intellectual capitalists.
And finally, if you want a crash course in IP education, check out our new offering launching in 2026: the IP Simplifier. Go to ipsimplifier.com. It's a 21-day course led by me via digital Zoom, and the outcome is a minimal viable protected IP. You monetize and grow it later, but you leave with your first piece of intellectual property. Those are the steps I'd recommend.
Brendon Dennewill: That's awesome. Tony, as we head into the final weeks of 2025, what other advice do you have for the folks listening?
Tony D'Angelo: If you've made it this far, you're likely growth-minded, ambitious, and, as I've recently reframed it, collaborative. I've updated the acronym from GMAD to GMAC: growth-minded, ambitious, and collaborative.
My encouragement is to continue getting to know yourself better. Do your Print, your Kolbe, your StrengthsFinder. If you've already done them, pull them out at the end of the year and actually digest them, because how you approach IP is very unique to you.
Brendon, for example, is a 9/7 in the Print. He has a brilliant capability to create community around other people. The 7 is the great thinker: Dan Sullivan is a 7. That lucid clarity of thinking, when you're on point, is magnificent. Brendon, you're going to create IP based on building community and lucid thinking.
If you're not in Strategic Coach and want to explore what these profiles are about, go to knowthyselfy.com. That's our six-session series on getting to know yourself here in the 21st century. Because "know thyself" is timeless, but how we do it today is a selfie.
Brendon Dennewill: I love that name. Very clever.
Tony D'Angelo: And when you're coming up with a new idea: domain it, claim it, and blockchain it. Those are the three things to do immediately.
Brendon Dennewill: That's awesome. In fact, my annual theme five years ago was "know thyself." And then I came across Strategic Coach and they said, "How would you like to know your unique ability?" I thought, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And that's where my journey started.
Tony D'Angelo: Beautiful. And it's been a real joy. Thank you for creating this experience for your listeners. I have to give a shout-out to you, Brendon: your ability to bring this energy is genuine. Emerson said it best: "Who you are shouts so loudly, I do not hear a word you say." Thanks for being such a great host.
Brendon Dennewill: Tony, thanks so much for being on the show. For those who are new to the Print, it's a variation of the Enneagram, except in Print you get two numbers rather than one. Tony, thank you for bringing such incredible value today. I hope we can get you closer to your 2035 goal of creating over a billion dollars in IP value.
Tony D'Angelo: You got it. Thank you very much