Ep: 117 - Legal Missteps and Scalable Growth: Patrice Davis on the Importance of Owning What You Create
"I was so excited to get the contract—I didn’t read the fine print." Sound familiar? In this episode, Patrice Davis, founder of Grants Works, shares the painful but powerful lesson she learned about intellectual property when a contract misstep led to a cease-and-desist letter and thousands of dollars in losses.
Patrice opens up about how she built a scalable training offer from scratch, only to find out she didn’t legally own the product she created. Erin walks through exactly what went wrong—and how you can avoid making the same mistake with your high-value content.
This candid conversation is packed with practical insights on contractor agreements, NDAs, and how to protect your IP before you scale. Plus, Patrice shares how she turned things around—and the licensing play she’s launching now that could be her most impactful move yet.
Key Takeaways:
The Mistake That Sparked a Cease & Desist - Patrice shares how one contract oversight with a client led to losing access to the training materials she created.
The Cost of Vague Deliverables - Erin explains how unclear contract terms around “deliverables” can lead to clients assuming full IP ownership even when they shouldn't.
Free to Paid: Building the Grants Works Academy - From webinars to a scalable online academy, Patrice reveals how she productized her consulting services with intention.
Protecting Your IP from Client Hires - Patrice details how she shields her business from contractors or employees assigned by clients to “help” and potentially steal her systems.
Rebuilding with Licensing in Mind - After losing her original materials, Patrice rebuilt her training with future licensing opportunities and legal clarity at the core.
Ownership Differences: Employee vs. Contractor Work - Erin clarifies how IP rights shift depending on whether someone is a W2 employee or a 1099 contractor and why that distinction matters.
AI, Otter & ChatGPT Cautions - Both Erin and Patrice share risks of using AI or transcription tools with confidential or proprietary content and how to safeguard it.
A Resource for Consultants Ready to Scale - Patrice discusses her free ebook for professionals looking to turn their expertise into a multi-six-figure consulting firm.
Connect with Erin to learn how to Turn Your Expertise into Scalable Recurring Revenue.
Erin's LinkedIn Page: www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/
Scaling Expertise YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/@Scalingexpertise
More About Our Guest
Patrice Davis
Patrice Davis is the founder and CEO of Grants Works, a consulting firm based in Atlanta, GA, and lead trainer at Grants Works Academy. After transitioning from a senior nonprofit executive role, she launched her successful consulting business in 2020, leveraging her marketing expertise to serve universities, government agencies, corporations, and nonprofits worldwide. Patrice is a sought-after speaker and podcast guest, advocating for professionals to monetize their expertise through niche consulting. In 2022, she founded Ready Set Go Consult, a business accelerator guiding consultants to build thriving independent practices. She also hosts the Age Has No Limit podcast.
Find Our Guest
Music credit: Paphos by Mountaineer
A Team Dklutr production
Blog Transcript:
Erin Austin: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Scaling Expertise, where we talk to experts who have scaled their expertise and we give you some tips about how you can scale your expertise as well. So this week is a very special episode. First, let me introduce you to my guest, Patrice Davis. Patrice welcome.
Patrice Davis: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
Erin Austin: I'm gonna have you introduce yourself to the audience in a second, but first I wanna let them know why this is different than my other episodes in that, we're gonna be talking about a real life story of, scaling, through. Patrice and I working together, so we'll really see behind the scenes of what can happen when we don't pay attention to those little, the crossing those t's and dotting those i's.
So with that, Patrice, would you introduce yourself to the audience?
Patrice Davis: Absolutely. So I'm Patrice Davis. I'm the founder and CEO of Grants Works Consulting. Grants Works is a consulting firm that helps, organizations, nonprofits, colleges and universities, obtain and manage multimillion dollar federal grants.
Those are the grants that fund your domestic violence shelters, lifesaving research, and a host of other programs. And so we make sure that they can get those grants and that they can keep their grants through compliance.
A Real-Life Journey of Scaling Expertise
Erin Austin: Awesome. And so what was your journey to where you are?
Patrice Davis: Great question. So I started out actually in marketing. Uh, I didn't know
Erin Austin: that.
Patrice Davis: Yeah, I did. I started out in marketing actually initially in advertising. I was a media planner, when I first graduated from college. my clients actually included, you know, Johns Hopkins and some other, large.
Institutions. and then, in actual marketing, I used to manage global, marketing campaigns, direct marketing campaigns, India all over the world. And then, I did that for several years and then when my son, I'm a mom of three, when my son was going into middle school, I decided I didn't wanna have a latchkey kid.
That was a term we use quite a bit in my generation. Mm-hmm. and so I decided I'd rather slow down this career a little bit and work part-time. There were so few part-time jobs back then, 'cause we didn't have the kind of flexibility we have now the only thing that was part-time that was still kind of professional was as a government grant manager for a nonprofit.
and so that's how I learned about grants. I was already really good at numbers 'cause I was used to managing, marketing campaigns and then doing the analysis on the backend so wasn't just involved in the creative side, I was the number cruncher as well. looking at ROI and things like that.
And so I was able to use that analysis skills to then, manage government grants and that's how I ended up in this space.
From One-on-One Consulting to Scalable Products
Erin Austin: Fantastic. how old is Grant Works now? Long you've been doing this? Yeah.
Patrice Davis: So Grants Works is five years old. We just had our fifth anniversary.
Oh, congrats. In January. Yeah. Mm-hmm. We're still a newbie, but still, learn quite a bit. but yeah. But overall, I've been managing grants since about 2000. Six. So what is that? Almost 20 years. I'll back out one or two years 'cause I did go back into the marketing space, for a year and a half or so.
and worked as a marketing manager for a nonprofit. So, but yeah, almost 20 years, in this space.
Erin Austin: And so your clients are organizations whose funding comes from federal grants?
Patrice Davis: Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Federal or state or local government grants, but also foundation grants. and that of course has become more prominent in our work now as a result of everything that's happening.
but yeah, so we help them find them. Help them get 'em. And then most importantly, and this is the part that we really emphasize is we make sure that they have the systems in place. So we do provide a really strong consulting and handholding and implementation support so that they can actually keep the grant because there are a lot of, things that we need to do to make sure that they comply.
Erin Austin: Fantastic. Mm-hmm. So we became acquainted because you were ready to scale and you were developing a, product that you could leverage. Mm-hmm. And there are some issues. So first, before we get to the issues mm-hmm. What. Was the impetus, like was there some turning point, something that happened, like, I need to not just stop just doing one-on-one consulting, let me have this other leveraged offer.
Patrice Davis: so actually the second year of business, I was approached by an organization, and I won't go into the story now, but this is sort of the reason why I decided to figure out, hey, let's leverage this work that I'm doing. this organization reached out.
Prior to that, I started the business in 2020. I'd been doing a lot of webinars, free webinars to, get the word out about my organization. I didn't know how much I was actually gonna be able to convert folks into actual clients because again, it was 2020. and so I think as a result of doing those free webinars, and they were so good, and they were so detailed because I did not know any better.
So word from the wise, do not do webinars with too much detail. You don't give away your stuff for free. Butthe point of the matter is because of the work that I do, expertise and being able to demonstrate the expertise is really important. So, org dropped an RFP in my inbox, I responded to the RFP and that.
That's when I realized, oh, I can take what I'm doing and turn it into a product. and so I developed this training, product for them and then I realized all these other webinars that I'd been doing, I can record those and actually sell them. and so that's how I started doing it. And now Ihave a whole academy, a whole separate website, of all of our training programs.
Erin Austin: Wonderful. I will say that I'm going through a very similar process right now. I always have given away my expertise, frankly. And it is the idea of selling services, right? and it occurred to me recently that I've been talking a lot for free about a certain topic, AI and like.
Why am I only doing that for free? Yeah. So I am in the process of creating a scalable offer in that area as well. All right.
Patrice Davis: Enough about me. bundle those things and sell 'em. Yeah, absolutely.
The High Cost of Skipping Fine Print
Erin Austin: Yeah. so. You had created this new academy?
Patrice Davis: Mm-hmm.
Erin Austin: Based on those free webinars that you had created
Patrice Davis: mm-hmm.
Erin Austin: Before org approached you.
Patrice Davis: Yeah. What
Erin Austin: happened?
Patrice Davis: So yes. Awesome, awesome experience. For six months I worked with this large organization, developed a really. Strong training program that's now rated four and a half by five stars. It's consistently rated four and a half by five stars out of five stars now by 954 people around the country.
So it's, done really, really well for them. Anyway, I developed a three module training program. and then, later on, number one, I didn't, read the fine print. I decided, you know what? I've created this great product for them. Certainly I can take the product, change the branding, change a few things, know, make sure the branding and the colors and everything, and I strip out all of their things that are specific to them.
Certainly I can do that and then sell it as my own product to the open market. Understanding that, unfortunately it's already offered. at no cost by this particular, organization. and that was what I did. And then about a year into doing that, I got an email from them saying, Hey, we understand that, This product is out there and you're utilizing it, and you need to stop. and so I had a meeting with them and it basically, I ended up getting a, what is that letter called? It
Erin Austin: Cease and desist.
Patrice Davis: A cease and desist letter, and, um, the dreaded
Erin Austin: cease and desist letter.
Patrice Davis: I got one of those. And so what does that mean?
That means that I spent that Friday afternoon removing all mention of that product from my two websites. deactivating, landing pages, just the whole thing. But I was also kind of mad. I was mad because I was like, wow, this is something that, is a really good product.
I did not know any better. I also remember that I received like two days to review the, legal agreement. Even though they asked for it in two days, I now know that just because they asked for it doesn't mean that you have to do it in two days. I was new in business, I was so psyched for the contract that I was willing to,
Allow them to just kind of push me into a two day contract review that is wrong. Mm-hmm. So for those of you guys listening, no matter how excited you are about an opportunity, make sure you reach out to an attorney, reach out to folks like Erin and make sure that you have a really good, legal review, because you don't wanna end up in the situation that I was in.
So, a year or so goes by, I reach out to Erin and of course, I, engaged her and she provided some really great advice. I had to redo the training altogether. I had to redo all the voiceover, all the video, everything. and then even after making those changes, the changes weren't, complete enough and then I had to spend, so it was a lot of money.
you're not saving time, you're not saving money. Do all the legal review at the front end. Pay an attorney because you're gonna end up paying on the backend, which is what I've done. I've now paid a lot of money, to revamp that training twice. Mm-hmm. so,
Yeah.
Erin Austin: Yeah. I mean, some things are not meant for DIY.
Patrice Davis: Yeah. Now, you,
Erin Austin: brought up. Pretty much everything I wanted to ask you about, but I'm gonna go back over them kind of one by one. Mm-hmm. To,make the point to the audience. One, regarding contracts, though you do not have to sign whatever is put in front of you.
So many people are afraid to ask for changes, and I will tell you, having reviewed. Large corporate contracts my entire career. There's only one, which we're probably already boycotting anyway, that, said no, no changes. I mean, so. That's literally one, of the thousands that I've, and they just have to be reasonable.
They don't want someone nitpicking, commas, but things that are reasonable that protect your work. They expect to get that, that, Agreement that comes across that is a first draft. Yeah. They understand it's a first draft and don't ever let yourself be boxed in In order to get that sale because it can cost you a lot in the long run.
Patrice Davis: Yeah.
Erin Austin: And then the other thing was regarding all the things that you had to redo over. we already talked about the fact that you had already, created your free webinars. Mm-hmm. That were based on publicly available information. I mean, your federal law. Right? And so there's not, but what does copyright protect?
Patrice Davis: Yeah.
Erin Austin: So copyright protects the things that then get put into concrete format. So that video, the recording, even, even though it's you, the recording, the slides, the examples, all the things that were inside of those client deliverables, work that you created and delivered to the client, that format was.
copyrightable work. And going back to the contracts, the problem was that the client contract provided that they owned 100% of that deliverable. Yeah. And it did not acknowledge the fact that it was based on your work. Yeah. And that's the other thing is that, The reason a client comes to you is not because you're an extra pair of hands.
They come to you because you've put out some great work that they're like, I wanna work with Patrice. Not, they don't wanna work with somebody else. They wanna work with Patrice because of what you bring to the table. whatever it is you're bringing to the table, make sure you're not giving that those rights to the client so that you can continue to use them.
Absolutely. So, yeah,
Patrice Davis: learn from my mistake guys. Yes
Protection and IP Awareness for Scaling Experts
Erin Austin: Yes. and so what lessons, I mean
generally, what lessons have you learned as you go forward, as you're continuing to create products, continuing to engage with clients?
Patrice Davis: Man, I've learned a lot, I'm gonna list three.
So, number one, I always review my contracts and I always have, and.
In those instances, I ever need anything I can reach out to Erin. I have a small business attorney for just general things. Hey, please help me develop a partnership agreement, a joint venture, partnership agreement. I have, a trademark attorney. 'cause I'm learning. That's, there's some differences there.
and so she helps me trademark certain things. So, Pay the fees, it's so worth it. And then number two, sometimes when you are engaging with your client, you're sometimes engaging with your client's, other contractors or consultants. So you must have things in place to make sure that there's some protection of, your ip.
so that it doesn't go to some other contractor or consultant 'cause they can easily use your resources remake it as their own. I haven't been aware of that happening.
But I've had a number of instances where I'm like, wow, in some of our tools with our clients and how do I know they're not taking our process, all of our different things. And then using that. And so I've actually asked Aaron to look at our consulting agreement and our NDA, to make sure that there's some protections there.
You can't protect everything, but you can at least have documents that they sign, taking responsibility for any kind of, I don't know what's the proper term. Aaron, it turns out that someone's utilizing your IP and you can Yeah. Infringement, copyright infringement.
Infringement, infringement, yeah. Mm-hmm. and so definitely think not just about, infringement and, as it relates to your clients, but also your clients' contractors.
and then I would say the third, but like my employment agreement, I make sure that there, Terms in there around, protection of copyright, trade secrets and a lot of those things. And even with our contractors. I just think that's really important. I do wanna add a fourth, and this is just my thing, and Erin, I'd love to get your thoughts about this.
I intentionally do not search for things that are related to my industry and ai. I'm like, I'm not giving chatty chat, GPT you know, I'm not saying, Hey, my client has this problem. How do you recommend that I resolve it? Mm-hmm. I would've used two C ffr, so, and so what regulation do you think is better?
No, I'm not giving chatty that stuff because I don't want chatty Uh, chatty is the term that my coach uses.
Erin Austin: I like it.
Patrice Davis: I'm not giving chat g pt, like my info. so I would love to get your thoughts about that because I think we need to be very careful about what we're putting into ai. because, that's just important.
so I'll leave it down. It's
Erin Austin: important. It's important. You raised a couple of things. I'm gonna answer the. Previous one first, and I'm gonna come back to chatty.
Patrice Davis: Mm-hmm. So
Your IP and Data in the Age of Contractors and AI
Erin Austin: you mentioned, the agreements with contractors and employees, and I wanna make sure people are clear about the difference when it comes to ownership of ip.
Mm-hmm. You know, so if you have someone who is working for you as a W2 employer, like you're paying employment taxes, you're, you know, W2, you issue. Mm-hmm. W four. Mm-hmm. That person, anything they do in the course of working with you, you own it. It is as if you made it right. Yep. But that is not the case with contractors.
If you're 10 99 contractor, I don't care how much direction you give them, you paid them. If you don't have a written agreement with them, you do not own that deliverable. So you wanna make sure that you understand the difference and that if they're creating something for you, frankly you should have it anyway.
I mean, it doesn't have to be a treatise, it can be two pages, you know, to make sure that you own, anything that, they are delivering to you. SoI wanted to clarify that, but, and also the competitor issue. when you're letting. A competitor in on your secrets, that's a different challenge, right?
Than the client. The client probably isn't your competitor and they might know your process, but they're not gonna run out and become, a consultant. But if you're working with other consultants, they might. So you do wanna be mindful when you are working with competitors. So, thank you for bringing that up as well.
Patrice Davis: Yeah. If I can quickly add, so I've, actually had to sit with my team and, because they're the One's actually doing the client services now. and so we have conversations every now and then, about what we can do to make sure that we're engaging our clients contractors, and we're.
being collaborative, but if we need to send some kind of checklist to our client, make sure we send it to the client and make sure they understand that this is not a resource to be shared. We also, like I said, make sure that their contractors sign an NDA.
and so just,
Erin Austin:
Patrice Davis: Things that I've learned over the years. Yes,
Erin Austin: yes. some lessons we learned, the hard way, but yeah. But you have all that button up now. Now let's go to Chatty, which I'm, now, I'm never gonna not, thank you for adding that to my, brain here. So well, for one, I don't want to think that Only Jadis taking your information,
AI is. Probably a part of every single software tool you're using right now, whether it is Adobe or Otter or Zoom or anything. And so we need to be mindful of what that tool can do with our input. So, chat explicitly says yes, anything you put in the chat becomes part of our training data and it can be used, others.
and Otter, I might add so if you have them transcribe something, that transcript goes into their training data. 'cause that helps it learn and makes it better. Right now, Otter, I'll say this about Otter, they say, well, we de-identify it. Well that's nice, but if I just told you the secrets of the universe doesn't matter that it's de-identified, it's still the.
Patrice Davis: That's, that's good to know. Like all of my Zoom transcripts, even my Asana projects, I, we manage our stuff in Asana, but yeah. So, and Asana's using AI quite a bit, that's interesting to Yeah. That's good to know.
Erin Austin: Yeah. But there are definitely tools, which is why you need to know the difference.
Patrice Davis: Yeah.
Erin Austin: That there are tools and Zoom is one of them that does not commingle your data with. Their training data. So they're not using, if you use Zoom AI companion, I guess it's called to mm-hmm. create a transcript or summary, I guess it makes, it will not be using that to train, their, platform.
So you need to understand, 'cause some are just more, Adobe, the same thing. Obviously Adobe is processing lots of very sensitive. Information. but you need to know, um, the terms of whatever platform you are using. Super important.
So,
Patrice Davis: yeah, that's good to know. I didn't know that. Thank you so much. I'll definitely start opening up your emails more often. I already read them. I already read them, but I'll definitely read that more often. That's good insight.
Erin Austin: Yeah. It's been on my to-do list to start creating Like a library of terms of use and like what, the problem is if it changes and I'm trying to figure that one out.
Like how do I create this repository that people can use without worrying about it becoming stale or, inaccurate, once they change it. So when I crack that nut, that will be, be available.
Patrice Davis: Yeah. Auto update and then they get the update automatically. Yes. that's still because, and you're thinking for your clients, or even as a tool that you would sell a product that you would sell?
Is that what you mean? Yes.
Erin Austin: Yeah, absolutely. Like a subscription based library to terms of use. And maybe it would be an add-on, like maybe it wouldn't be separately available.
Patrice Davis: Yeah.
Erin Austin: But like if you've worked with me, then part of the deliverable when you're working with me would be access to this library, something like that.
Patrice Davis: Awesome.
The Future of Grants Works Academy
Erin Austin: Yeah. So tell us what is new? What's happening? I mean, how's the academy going? what's happening?
Patrice Davis: So, the Academy, the way that we currently use the academy is, value add. For our clients. So we provide consulting services and all the things, but then we also train our clients, because we want them to do well.
we want them to be able to work independently if they need to. Some would say, well, why would you wanna do that? Well, I'd rather. Provide huge value at a premium fee, right? over six to 12 months rather than kind of just hold our clients the whole time, pay them, they have them charge a tiny amount of money, then they're always dependable, you know?
So I just feel it's better to just provide the value. and so that's how we use the Academy. Another way that we use the Academy, or that we're gonna be using it now, is that we're actually going to license one of our training, products. And actually that same training that we talked about earlier.
Mm-hmm. I'm now gonna finally be able to license this thing. and I wonder how much of the market is gonna be out there that's gonna want it, again, considering the amount of people that we're able to access it for free through. Mm-hmm. But I do still think there's a huge market. I'm not one of those people that believes that, hey, because this thing was taken away, that means there isn't still a gold mine out there.
So I am. Expecting, for that training program to do really well, especially since this current administration is using three words that I think is become. Becoming more and more prominent in people's minds, and that is Fraud, waste and abuse. Yes. Um, that's something that one should have always been concerned about when it comes to using federal funding.
But, this administration, is kind of just bringing that to the forefront, that, hey, if you have our funding, you need to make sure you avoid fraud, waste, and abuse. and I have my thoughts about that, but the bottom line is that is important. And so that's one of the ways that we're gonna use to, make sure that that's the front of, everyone's minds to be able to, sell our licensed product.
Erin Austin: I mean, at the end of the day, staying current. Mm-hmm. You know, and as a, for-profit offer, frankly. Mm-hmm. Keeping it current and reacting is a different model than, the government model that, for some things that offered for free, so it's different. So there'll be a lot of value there still.
A Real-Life Journey of Scaling Expertise
Patrice Davis: Oh wait, so as we wrap up, is there a new offer or something happening that would be interesting to our audience?
Absolutely. So, in addition to being a consultant, the owner of a consulting firm, I also train other consultants. So if any of you out there have been ever, interested in launching your own consulting firm, you can reach out to us at Ready Set go consult.com.
I have a free. Ebook and I think, Erin is also gonna share, it's called How to Build A multi six figure consulting firm. so you can certainly grab that ebook. I do talk quite a bit about using your seek your skills, experience, expertise, and your knowledge that you typically give to your employer.
we want you to use your. Seek to actually build a business, a business that gives you the freedom you want. Whether it's the freedom to travel, while you work, whether it's the freedom to take care of an agent, parent, or the freedom to take care of a child that has special needs. Having your own business and using your knowledge and expertise, and selling that knowledge and expertise, and making sure you have the right pricing
And knowing how to propose your services and how to use thought leadership, those are the things that we teach you. and so if that's something that's of interest, again, go to Ready, set, go consult.com.
Erin Austin: That is awesome, and we will have that in the show notes as well. And I will say that whenever I, talk to Patrice, she's she's in some other fantastic location, so she definitely is taking advantage of the freedom and flexibility she's drinking her own Kool-Aid, put it that way.
So in addition to ready. set, go. Where else can people find you if they wanna connect
Patrice Davis: with you? Absolutely. You can please find me@grantsworks.com. So there's an S after grant and s after work. Grants works.com. and of course I'm on Instagram, at Grants Works if you're interested in a consulting firm.
and also at Patrice a Davis on Instagram. and I'm on LinkedIn, of course, at Patrice a Davis I believe. so I'm everywhere. One would expect, the, you know, owner of a business to be
Awesome.
Erin Austin: Awesome.
Thank you so much, Patrice. It's been fantastic to have you here. Thank you for sharing your story. 'cause I think it is so important.
it's not just theory, this is real life. It happens and we need to be mindful of these things. and thank you also for, generous, free ebook that I'm sure people will wanna access as well. Thanks again.
Patrice Davis: Thank you so much. It was great. Nice getting to talk to your audience.
Erin Austin: Thank you.
Patrice Davis: All righty. Bye.