Honesty is the best — and most profitable! — policy

Warren Buffett is not the only wealthy person who has proven decisively, in his life, that honesty and integrity leads to wealth. Oprah Winfrey is another such person. It’s great that their fame and worldwide reputation enable them to be clear examples of how human beings should behave.

In short, they prove that honesty is not only the best policy (“best” in a moral sense), but it’s also the most profitable policy.

How does all this apply to your situation as a professional who wants to share his knowledge, or even offer it for a fair price?

After all, you think of yourself as an honest person who acts with integrity at all times. In fact, I’m SURE that you are an honest person.

But if you are honest — like Oprah or Mr Buffett — then how come you are not as wealthy?

I know what you’re going to say: they have wealth creation systems that leverage their efforts and abilities, so that small actions on their part produce HUGE results. Oprah, for instance, has a media company (Harpo) that broadcasts her shows in hundreds of countries, and that’s not including her magazine and radio show.

Mr Buffett, for his part, uses the stock market and the legal capitalistic structure of the U.S. to allocate capital very brilliantly, hence producing huge returns for himself and his shareholders.

In your case, you might not be able to use such leverage systems.

However, here’s the good news. In fact, it’s GREAT NEWS.

But before I tell you what it is, I must say that there’s a catch: You have to be 100% honest with yourself, if you are to use this piece of great news profitably.

Okay, here’s the big insight: Your knowledge is worth millions of dollars. I’m serious! I’m not trying to excite your imagination. (I only do that when I’m dating a beautiful woman).

Before I go further, let’s start with a basic premise: When you multiply ANY number by zero, you get what? Zero.

So right now, you have to assume (feel free to verify this for yourself) that the market value of your explicit knowledge is zero. “Explicit” means the knowledge that you have which can be captured in the form of a document (digital or paper).

So even if you had 10,000 friends on Linkedin, you cannot make ANY money because your explicit knowledge has a market price of zero.

I know it’s tough on the ego when you are forced to admit that nobody is willing to pay you even $5.00 for a document that captures your knowledge. This is why I mentioned earlier that honesty is the foundation for any great career or business.

So what should you do? The obvious answer is that you should try to create a document that has a market value of at least $5.00 or even $1.00. That way, you can upload such a document on Payloadz and start offering it to your Linkedin connections.

Several people have already started doing precisely that. They write an ebook on “how to use Linkedin” and then sell the ebook to all Linkedin users.

You can also create an audio recording of an interview, and sell that audio file via Payloadz. For example, ask a friend to interview you on your area of expertise, then upload the resulting audio recording on Payloadz.

A reader might say, “Okay, Peter, that’s a good idea. But I’m kinda busy right now. I’ll try your idea in 6 months.”

And boom! That person just lost thousands of dollars, possibly tens of thousands of dollars.

Why? Because whatever he knows, somebody else in his profession or industry also knows it, and the other person is faster at implementation.

Sometimes, a person can be good at implementation, but the problem here might be that his ego is too strong for him to admit that there COULD be another way to generate revenues (other than a full-time, white-collar job).

For my part, I can only say that I’ve been studying “knowledge management” since 1998, and my main conclusion is that “knowledge is money.”

Indeed, if knowledge is power, then the person offering knowledge should be entitled to some money.

If you offer knowledge (via an ebook or seminar) and nobody wants to pay, then your knowledge has no value (not for those people, anyways). In that case, humility and honesty are needed to accept that fact. Also, discipline and determination are needed to develop a way to acquire good, marketable and sellable knowledge.

The bottom line is that knowledge is power, and that power can be used to create a second source of income for you. In some cases, the second income could surpass the income from your full-time job, in which case the only sensible thing to do is to quit your job in order to focus on the knowledge-based business.

Can your knowledge make you rich?

The saying goes, “Knowledge is power.”

One could also say that “knowledge is money.” This is especially true if knowledge is first converted into power, which then is converted into money. Consultants have known this for a long time, which is why they charge an arm and a leg for their knowledge.

If the above is true, then are YOU making money from your knowledge? If you’re a writer (of non-fiction books) or a speaker, then you could say that your knowledge brings money to you.

However, the overwhelming majority of Linkedin users do not make money from their knowledge, even though they are obviously very smart. Indeed, the average household income of Linkedin users is $140,000.

The problem is that most professionals are trained and/or conditioned by the corporate employer to APPLY their knowledge to the SPECIFIC problems or challenges associated with their SPECIFIC position in the SPECIFIC employing organization.

The specific application of one’s professional knowledge is important, of course, because knowledge by itself, in a person’s head or in a book, is of no value. Knowledge becomes money only when it is IN USE.

For example, a doctor can be the smartest doctor on the planet, yet if he doesn’t apply his knowledge to YOUR illness, then you will not likely pay him.

However, and here’s my mega-insight that could make you rich, the same doctor could ALSO publish his knowledge in the form of a book (or DVD, website, e-learning program, etc.).

Our doctor would then be a “knowledge professional” and not just a (medical) “services professional.”

Depending on his marketing strategy or publishing firm, this doctor could make more money — with less effort — from his knowledge career than his services career.

It’s important to understand that a knowledge career is more about supplying knowledge, while a services career is more about applying knowledge. Efficiency is key in the supplying of knowledge while effectiveness is key in the applying of knowledge.

When you participate in S.E.N.S.E., you supply expert knowledge to the other person, but you also try to apply your knowledge to his/her situation.

The more you supply knowledge, the more you can apply it, and the more you apply knowledge, the more resulting NEW knowledge you have to supply to future clients.

Most professionals are stuck at their income level, whether it’s $40,000 or $90,000, because their employing organization does not offer new opportunities to supply new knowledge or apply knowledge in new ways to new situations.

Except for ad agencies and other similar creativity-based firms, most organizations are characterized by a stable structure — that is, they are predictable and reliable. This is great for shareholders and investors because revenue predictability, among other factors, reflects the quality of a business investment.

However, it is not so great for the professional that you are. That’s because a routine and stable organization provides no opportunities to develop NEW knowledge or apply existing knowledge in NEW ways.

This is probably why — subconsciously or consciously — most young talents who join L’Oreal (the giant cosmetics company) leave after 18 months.

So to answer the question, “Can your knowledge make you rich?”, one must say “yes.” But only if:

1. you consciously separate your services career from your knowledge career. They obey different economics.

2. you commit to planning and developing your knowledge career (most people are not even aware of the existence of such a career).

3. you participate in SENSE in order to allow your learners to help you develop your valuable knowledge.

4. you price and charge for your knowledge. I charge $100 per hour for individual consulting, and $300 – $800 per hour for corporate clients.

The bottom line is that without the premeditated, strategic and careful management of your knowledge, and its subsequent commercialization, you cannot become financially independent. You will always need an employer, and will always remain under his control.

The expression “The truth shall set you free” could be adapted to “Your valuable professional knowledge shall set you free.”

The great news is that as you take your tacit knowledge and convert it into explicit knowledge that you “plant” out there, in other people’s minds or in an explicit medium like a book or mind map, such explicit knowledge — like a plant — will grow naturally and make you richer and richer in the process.

SENSE could launch your second career

Most people on Linkedin have a career, which I call the “what you do” career.

Everybody, especially the knowledge workers on Linkedin, will soon have a SECOND career, or what I call the “what you know” career.

This second career will be much more profitable than the first career for the simple reason that one’s expert knowledge CAN be sold worldwide to millions of people. Contrast that with the first career, where what you do will only benefit ONE person: your boss. If you are a liberal professional like a lawyer or a doctor, then your work will only benefit the client you are serving. And usually, lawyers and doctors can only serve ONE client at a time.

SENSE could help you to launch your second career, as it did mine.

SENSE was originally a daydream or vision I had in 1994. I was 25 years old at the time. Ah, the innocence, idealism and naivete of youth!

Since then, SENSE has gained a powerful theoretical and practical understanding of how the Internet works, and this will enable you to launch your second, knowledge-based career.

How?

First, let me share with you how my own second career started. In August 2005, I began teaching a workshop called “Career Brainstorming.” My sister Zoonie and I charged people $15 to participate. It was a new, unproven workshop, so the low price was fair.

However, a friend who formerly worked for Accenture told me, “Peter, I can brainstorm on my own. Why do I need to come to your workshop?”

So I rebranded the workshop as the “Ideal Career workshop” and abandoned the term “brainstorming.” Instead, I adopted the expression “Ideal Career Framework” or ICF.

This workshop has been quite popular so far, and has begun to “eat” other career methodologies out there.
In other words, ICF was designed to be integral (that is, it integrated other methodologies into its core) as well as practical.

Next, in May 2006, I created the BMW workshop for women entrepreneurs. Details at http://businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com.

After the first delivery of that workshop to 22 women entrepreneurs at the CEFQ (www.cefq.ca), I felt I had created a second “hit.” I felt like James Bond after his second hit, which made him a true “double oh seven.”

Since I’m more ambitious than James Bond, I decided to take on M’s position. That is, as James Bond’s boss, I would have the license to print licenses to kill. 🙂

The New Economy, indeed, is more about lethal knowledge than lethal force. Knowledge is the new wealth, but you’ve got to build your own spy network.

But back to your second career.

How can you create knowledge that is valuable enough to base a second stream of income on it?

Here’s a clue from ancient Eastern wisdom: “The teacher and the taught together create the teaching.”

It’s a process that I call “instructional capital co-creation.”

Concretely, it means that you cannot create instructional capital, like my ICF and BMW materials, without having learners who listen to you and interact with you.

You could use Linkedin Answers to find potential learners, and invite them to communicate with you so you can teach them stuff.

Or you could just email all your Linkedin connections and tell them what you are an expert on, and invite them to ask questions.

There are many other ways to find learners who would value your knowledge, but the important thing to realize is that it’s not the quantity of learners but rather the quality of learners that will determine how fast you develop your instructional capital.

Without instructional capital, you are forever stuck working for somebody else in your first career (the “what you do” career).

With instructional capital, you can become a millionaire. Like Eben Pagan, Mike Filsaime, Rich Schefren, Wayne Dyer, Jay Abraham, John Reese, etc.

You can become a millionaire by selling your information and instructional capital because the Internet is perfect as a medium to distribute instructional capital (in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.).

Instructional capital is like a recipe. You can sell it over and over and over, because you own the legal rights.

So your first career is like baking a cake. You can only bake one cake at a time, and sell it to one person. (Or you could sell the same cake to two people who are on a diet. Sorry, couldn’t resist that joke!).

Your second career, however, is not about cakes per se, but cake RECIPES.

You just upload your recipe on Payloadz and people can buy them online, anytime, from anywhere. Every day, you wake up richer!

The awesome thing about your second career is that you can have affiliates who sell your instructional capital and pocket 30%. You could have 50 or 100 such affiliates.

Bottom line: SENSE exists to help you launch your second career. I’m going to help you identify what part(s) of your knowledge is really valuable, and I’m going to help you get rich from it.

Make money from your explicit knowledge

Linkedin Answers is a great platform for socially or intellectually interacting with others, often leading people to invite one another to connect as a result of like-mindedness or shared interest.

It should be noted that an “answer” on Linkedin Answers can be either an opinion, or a piece of knowledge.

We all know what an opinion is: it’s a strong and self-confident statement without empirical evidence backing it up. I say this half-facetiously, but seriously, an opinion is not worth much.

Knowledge, on the other hand, can be worth quite a lot — and I’m really talking about cash value.

SENSE exists to help people identify their knowledge so they can develop it, and make money from it.

Sometimes, the money can be made DIRECTLY from the sale of one’s knowledge (in the form of an ebook, a special report, a consulting methodology, a process map, a procedure, a newsletter, etc.). Other times, the money can be made INDIRECTLY through contracts secured as a result of positioning oneself, through much publishing, as an authority in one’s field.

In either case, “the price is write.” In other words, you have to write down your knowledge and expertise so others can review it and determine, logically, that you are a high-value professional.

This (little understood) process of putting down on paper the knowledge in your head, is what I call a Midas process: it turns your knowledge into gold.

But notice the first two letters in the word “GOLD”: GO. Your knowledge must first GO into the world and into someone’s hands — your hands at first. It must be written down on paper. It must, from its current tacit form in your head, become explicit in the world.

This is a wealth creation secret that I summarize as follows: You must turn nothing into something, before you turn something into something else. A sculptor might say that one must first get the clay before one can create a statue.

In other words, epistemological explicitness is the way to wealth. That is, people cannot buy what they cannot see. So to sell your knowledge, you must first make it VISIBLE.

Once your knowledge is visible both to you and to your learners (the people in your target market), then both of you can co-create the resulting knowledge masterpiece.

Let’s use the sculpture analogy once more.

If you’re Michelangelo, you don’t need people’s feedback. Your genius allows you to create David, the sculptural masterpiece.

However, if you’re like most people, you’ll need onlookers and learners to give you some feedback so you can create a sculpture that appeals to them (i.e. that you can sell to them later on).

I will write more about how SENSE can enable you to gather feedback from many learners so as to guide your knowledge development efforts in a commercially profitable direction.

Share your expertise via Tumblr

I created an account at Tumblr (http://superpeter.tumblr.com) to share material from my BMW workshop (http://businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com). I encourage all SENSE members to similarly share their expertise!

Audio, somehow, adds a human touch to knowledge. Of course, you can create a blog also.

Financial benefits of joining S.E.N.S.E.

Talk, teach & print money

The above diagram shows what will happen to SENSE members who seriously share their valuable knowledge. At first, their answers will be a bit clumsy since it is likely that they have never worked as consultants before. But then, as they interact with more learners, their answers will become more and more confident, streamlined, robust. Eventually, they will be able to capture their best and most valuable knowledge into a report or ebook. THAT is when they will begin the marvelous process of “printing money”!

I’ve gone through this process myself since 2005, and my reports and ebooks are currently being sold on the Web as well as translated into several languages. What I know for sure is that you cannot teach unless you first talk to learners and hear their questions concerning your field of expertise. Their questions will help you to structure your knowledge, and this very structure is what makes your knowledge valuable.

It’s important to realize that the shift from “talking” to “teaching” is very subtle. It’s simply a matter of paying more attention to every word that you say, and how you say it. Also, the shift from “teaching” to “printing money” is barely perceptible, and has to do with structuring your knowledge by using diagrams, maps, frameworks and other teaching aids.

How to join S.E.N.S.E.

1. Email me at peter@careerknowledge.net your name, email, blog(s) or website(s), phone (optional), list of max 10 areas you are highly knowledgeable about or expert in. Example:

Peter Nguyen

peter@careerknowledge.net

http://linkedinusermanual.blogspot.com
http://www.careerknowledge.net
http://www.powerknowledge.net

Entrepreneurship
Small business marketing
Career consulting and coaching
Instructional innovation
Media relations
Business consulting and coaching
Knowledge management

2. Next, I will include you in the SENSE members list, which is sent ONLY to SENSE members

The above super-simple process — which I call “Get on the list to get the list” — enables people to QUICKLY get on the SENSE members list and benefit from others’ knowledge.

If you’re not sure if SENSE is right for you, just subscribe to this blog by clicking, at the right, the link “Subscribe to LInkedin SENSE by Email” to receive email updates and learn what’s going on at SENSE.
You can unsubscribe at any time.

My personal feeling is that joining SENSE might be one of the greatest career moves a person can make.

The great benefit is not only being able to learn from other experts who are willing to share their knowledge, but being driven — through conversations with others and their asking good questions — to develop your own knowledge.

Knowledge is money, and once you identify properly what you know that is valuable to others, you can begin the incredibly blissful process of “printing money.”

I speak from personal experience. I began to share my knowledge as a workshop leader, consultant and coach in 2005 and today, I spend my days “printing money.” I speak and get paid hundreds of dollars. I also sell various strategic documents on Payloadz.

You too can, one day, be in a position to sell your knowledge. But you’ve got to start today to identify what it is that you know which other people value. Don’t wait, join SENSE today!

Tell us about yourself and your expertise area

If you wish, please introduce yourself by emailing me a 50-word description. Example:

“Hi, my name is Peter and I’m a business consultant, writer and coach. I also offer strategic career consulting based on a framework I created in August 2005 called the Ideal Career Framework. I’d love to share my knowledge with SENSE members. Check me out in the SENSE members directory!”

Once I receive your 50-word description of yourself, I will insert it in THIS blog so all subscribers can know a little bit more about you. It’s like a self-promo.

Who am I?

Hello!

You can read a brief bio about me HERE.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about you! 🙂

By subscribing to this blog and becoming a member of SENSE, you’ve acted in a most honorable fashion. Indeed, you are saying, “Here I am, ready to serve and share my knowledge, and also ready to learn from others.”

I look forward to getting to know you and what you are knowledgeable about, so others can benefit from your knowledge and wisdom.

I also look forward to giving you all the strategic knowledge you are interested in, so that your career or business can flourish.

In the end, we are all both learners and teachers.

It is my hope that SENSE will create opportunities for like-minded people to get together and learn from one another.

Have a great week-end!