Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

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A Post-COVID-19, Non-Fragile World

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Note: The following is an excerpt from 30 Days to the New Economy Second Edition, available soon on Amazon. This links  to the first edition with few changes except for this Afterword provided here.

Steward your business with both the local and global connections at your disposal, using all the technology available to advance your idea, and you can play a major role in the New Economy.

Language leads the way. If you want to put your finger in the wind of public sentiment or policy, listen to the words people use. In business circles, the word “resilience” has been replaced by the word “non-fragile”. That subtle difference speaks volumes about how we see ourselves, and it presages the kind of hard times that we think are ahead.

“Resilience” speaks of inherent strength – strength of character, depth of resources, and the ability to adapt. “Non-fragility” emphasizes weakness, and we are reminded of the fragile nature of life itself. Is our transportation system fragile? Are our supply chains weak? Is our food supply unsustainable?

We want to emphasize our resilience and our potential.

Actually, our future is the one that we imagine it to be. Because as a man thinketh portends our reality. That is not to deny the reality that our world – in the face of one microscopic pathogen – was shown to be a naked man, skittering across the stage holding a blanket across his torso. But we have the ability to think, and from those thoughts, we can act our way toward a world that embraces all the good that is possible and rejects resurrecting the things that had outlived their usefulness and, in some cases, had turned rotten as they’ve aged.

We are headed toward the future on hyperdrive.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) refuses to tank even amidst historic unemployment. Some skeptics attribute that solely to the Federal Reserve Bank of the U.S. pumping unprecedented amounts of liquidity (U.S. dollars) into the system. Because the stock markets can sometimes lead sentiment, rather than follow it, let me suggest that there is an underlying bullishness about the economy because it is shifting into a new reality more aligned with the kind of possibilities outlined in this little book. I am suggesting that the stock market is discounting the present because it sees the future. And the economic readjustment period has just encountered warp speed due to a pandemic that shut down the old way of doing things. When we ramp up again, we ramp up into the future having just imploded the old system.

For those who follow such things, we knew the old system was imploding. Our global relationships relative to the supply chain (think China) were already changing with an increased emphasis on national independence and more closely politically aligned partnerships. The Federal Reserve had already started pumping massive amounts of liquidity into the U.S. banking system 4 months before the pandemic even had a name. When oil’s price per barrel of crude went into negative territory on April 21, 2020 to minus $40 a barrel, it was not just in response to the pandemic. Our global supply chain and trade had already started to slow for other reasons. If oil went negative, perhaps we need to go positive because that indicator presages change. It means many of the changes discussed in this book are underway.

In the New Economy, we are encouraged to make a few new moves, just like the old moves, but better.

Here are a few directions to consider as we feel our way forward in the dark.

First, all politics and relationships are local and person-to-person. That also applies to business. Nurture personal relationships and imagine ways your business can flourish in your local geography, no matter what you do. We have discovered how fragile our supply chains can be, how quickly transportation and production can stop. We discovered in a harsh way the importance of local business to meet physical and psychological needs. You can play a role in keeping things moving by making sure you are sustainable locally. Be part of the Main Street movement.

Also, consider the converse.

The power of the internet anchors the New Economy. No matter how local your business and relationships, nurture your global connections. When you stay connected to all the best ideas and people available to you in the global economy, you will continue to improve your own prospects in your backyard.

Let’s wrap up and return to Day 1.

New ideas spread through wars, conquest and trade. The pandemic may give us the opportunity to bypass the war and go straight to the reward of moving the world ahead through an economic revolution aided by technology. After all, aren’t all revolutions economic at their inception?

Ask the British subjects living in North America about their opposition to “taxation without representation”. Or the French common man about his servitude to King Louis XVI (that one ended badly in a dictatorship – take heed!). Or the Southern U.S. plantation owners when the north threatened their economic model built on slavery. Human history is built upon populations pushing back against entrenched power and failing systems.

The pandemic is an opportunity to recalibrate the economic system, enjoy a flattening of power and financial wealth, and truly liberate individuals to embrace their personal power and express the full measure of their productivity.

Or not.

We choose.

Graphic Credit: http://www.clker.com/clipart-fragile-red-3.html

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Organizational Challenge for Experts: Trusting and Letting Go

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It’s kind of like being a new parent…

The focus of Working with Subject Matter Experts includes the technical aspects of knowledge capture – the process of what to capture and how to efficiently capture it in a way that makes transfer easy and accessible.

One of the biggest hurdles for people who work with experts to capture and transfer information is the human element. People who capture knowledge from experts find they often must overcome resistance and reticence on the part of the expert.

Here’s why. Experts are used to being in charge. Either they are literally the leader of the organization, or they are one of the smartest people in the organization who house valuable information between their ears. It takes a leap of faith for experts to transfer their knowledge to someone else because it requires two difficult issues for anyone who is used to being on top – trusting other people to do an important job well and letting go so they can do it. After all, the inhouse leader and expert in charge of the domain has often been “getting it done” by himself or herself since the beginning. I have worked with more than one expert who has founded a company or organization, and it is their baby. For any new momma who has ever left her infant with a sitter to run to the grocery, you know about trusting your baby to someone else for the first time. This is kind of like that.

As a writer who has worked with experts and as a momma who has left her babies with someone else for the first time, I offer a few pointers to working with experts to help them trust and let go.

  1. Start small. Don’t expect to get the keys to the kingdom the first few tries. You need to gain the trust of the expert until they know that you understand them and can translate or execute for them in a way that is faithful to their mission and intent. Leave your baby for short periods of time and extend it slowly so your child can eventually go to Kindergarten without you.
  2. Examine resources around the expert to find support for expansion. When a leader is having to trust and let go, it is in the interest of furthering their passion. Maybe they have to let go of some tasks so they can concentrate on more important things. Maybe they want to preserve their work so they can move on. Or maybe they want to preserve it for posterity much later down the line. In any event, knowledge and responsibilities will have to be shifted today, so look for people around them who can be trusted to do the job faithfully in place of the expert. Slowly transfer tasks to trusted others. To extend the mommy metaphor, ask the teenager next door to help you with the baby while you are at home so you can watch them in action before you leave them alone with your child.
  3. Put supports in place to build a replicable framework. Figure out how things are done and capture the processes in steps and schedules. With the right documentation and systems, people will know what to do, how to do it and when to do it to keep things moving without direct input from the expert. Mommies do this when they write down baby’s schedule for the sitter.
  4. Prepare for contingencies. Life happens. Build in backup plans and have extra resources on hand. This might require having a virtual assistant on call to provide administrative support in case the regular staff is overwhelmed, for example. Or you may want to have strong ties to a professional network that can provide experienced engineers (or whatever) to pull through a project. Remember, the hands-on expert has been getting it done all the time and often by themselves. Your goal is to change that dynamic so they can be replicated. Mommies post Grandma’s and doctor’s cell phone for the sitter in case of emergency.
  5. Expect change. As knowledge and control leaves the hands of the expert, the input of other people will have two effects 1) things will be done a bit differently with different people executing tasks 2) the organization will be able to start to grow. Those changes require adaptation from everyone, including the expert.

Be prepared to be an organizational ninja as the expert watches their baby grow up and away from them with supports and systems in place. Help the expert expand his or her knowledge and mission beyond anything he or she can do on their own.

Send those babies out to grow into all they can be.

 

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From the ITMPI Webinar: Intentional vs Accidental Innovative Teams

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Last Thursday, the IT Metrics and Productivity Institute (ITMPI) sponsored a webinar on Retaining Expert Knowledge: What to Keep in an Age of Information Overload about building a crack innovation team by blending Traditional and NextGen experts. We unpacked how to build a winning innovation team, and I wanted to share a bit of it here with you.

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First, let’s define traditional and nextgen experts.

Traditional experts are the employees who have been around awhile. They know your business, your products and processes, your industry and their area of specialty – all extremely well.

NextGen experts are the brilliant new minds that you hire who are wired for success in the age of exploding information. Their expertise forms a foundation for them to bring skills to your team that help you navigate the world of information. NextGen experts know what to look for, where to find it, and how to leverage open source knowledge to build the next great thing.

That blend of traditional and next generation expertise is your secret weapon when you are building an intentional innovative team.

Intentional vs Accidental Innovative Teams

As we look at the definition of intentional teams, we see that there is a lot of thought and choice that goes into determining who will build your next breakthrough product or process. You will ask yourself questions like:

Who has done something like this before?

Who knows where the market is likely to go?

What are our customers thinking?

What are the limitations of the current technology?

What are the unexplored edges of this technology?

Have we tried something similar and failed, and if so, why?

Why isn’t this being done elsewhere right now?

Where are the landmines?

And on, and on…

Your intentional, innovative teams are agile and versatile. They are unlikely to have all the answers you need, but they will know where to find them. They will look up and down your organization for the right people who will know not only the limits and promise of the technology but will know the mindset of the customers and the peculiarities you might face as you develop something new.

Your intentional teams are inclusive. Who is in your organization who needs to be considered? Are there cultural or physical considerations of your employees or your customers? Is your intended product or process accessible for low vision and low hearing individuals and mobility-impaired?  Will someone in another culture understand your frame of reference and intent? Will the socioeconomic status of your employees or intended market limit or expand the possibilities of the features and benefits of your proposed solution? (Hat tip to SEI’s Inclusive Design panel discussion on October 17 in Oaks, PA. Thank you!)

If your innovative teams are not intentional, they are accidental. Accidental teams may make judgments without information. They include people who aren’t interested or who don’t know where to find the answers. Accidental teams are comprised of people who are available at the time to work on the project.

Do you assemble intentional or accidental teams to build your products and develop your processes?

NOTE: You can join ITMPI at no cost to access live webinars. Premium and corporate membership plans are available for recordings and PDU/CDU credit.

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Knowledge Management in a Law Firm: Yes, It’s a Thing

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giammarco-boscaro-380903-unsplash What does knowledge loss cost a law firm? If an attorney leaves a firm, usually knowledge loss is considered in the context of the loss of an individual attorney’s area of expertise and their relationships including the clients that might leave with them. The problem of knowledge management in a firm, however, transcends relationships and even the attorneys themselves.

In an article on legal knowledge management, the focus is on what has historically been called records management with an extended nod to efficiently managing electronic assets such as email. This addresses part of the problem of retaining expert knowledge in a traditional framework.

Forward-looking firms expand their definition of knowledge management to include the value of many types of knowledge – not all of which is legal or relational – and what might be lost to the firm if that information isn’t captured, preserved and able to be transferred as an asset.

Consider:

  • Automation: Begin to consider automating functions once considered human – think legal secretaries. One lawyer who lost the secretary upon whom he relied for support will be doing that job until a replacement is identified at a high cost of losing his billables while doing a job below his pay grade. What parts of that job can be automated or supported virtually to allow a bridge between the different humans who will be sitting in the desk thus retaining important functions beyond individual persons?
  • New tools for capturing, preserving and transferring knowledge: It’s not just what your employees know, it’s how they know it. If you wonder how your wunderkinds think, find out. Give them tools that capture their thought processes so you can replicate how they see the world. Those tools exist, and they allow younger associates to learn how their more experienced counterparts make decisions and craft arguments.
  • Corporate culture: A professional world is often a world of egos and personal value. No, an individual is not irreplaceable, but another valuable individual is different. It’s important to capture the essence of the value of a high-profile, charismatic person to replicate the style as well as the substance of that individual as part of the culture of the firm that you want to preserve to retain your competitive advantage with clients.

As in many other professions and industries, it is difficult to completely inoculate your organization from knowledge loss. Particularly in fields such as the legal profession where personal privacy and data security are acutely critical, capturing and retaining your expert knowledge has unique challenges. Yes, your departing employees will take relationships and tacit knowledge with them. You can’t prevent that. You probably already create barriers to prevent personnel of all types from taking digital assets with them. Beyond that, your employees are storehouses of value some of which may be captured and preserved to retain your edge in an increasingly competitive and cost-sensitive environment.

Is it time you do a thorough knowledge scan of your law firm to find out what you need to preserve and where you need to bolster your assets?

Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

 

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Use Your Subject Matter Experts as Part of Your Data Quality Initiatives

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pankaj-patel-516482-unsplash  An article in the autumn issue of strategy+business  Digital Champions discussed the imperatives of linking all IT systems across the organization to be able to compete, excel and innovate. Certainly, as data is used for decision making, you need to link all pieces of your information architecture together in a way to create an intelligent organization. That means getting data quality right.

First, data quality requires essential tasks like making sure your inputs are accurate. And it goes even further than that. Getting data quality right means that your assessments of your data are also accurate. You’ve got to know what it means and how it is likely to impact you to truly experience the power of the information you are gathering.

For that, you need more than your IT team. Think strategic. Think long-term. And think about involving your experts from across the organization to make sure you are interpreting your information in a way that you truly have an intelligent system.

Here are a few ways to engage your experts in your cross-organization data efforts:

  1. Involve them in determining the parameters for quality inputs.

Your experts understand what defines accurate data in their own field. Involve physicians, chemists, engineers, human resource professionals and so on when you are creating parameters. The values you have been using may be outdated, or the ones set my standards organizations may not apply to your special case, for example.

  1. Ask them to help you rank projects and initiatives by importance

This is where your business teams are especially critical. Your executive team knows best the direction of your organization, so make sure to start there. Then drill down to find out the order in which things should roll out both from a practical perspective (you can’t implement B without making A operational) and which functions are most essential for running the business day-to-day so you don’t trip up your current operations.

  1. Make them part of your documentation teams

After you’ve built it, you need to capture what you’ve done so it can be maintained, built upon and improved over time. Documentation is essential to information management. People need to be able to use it, know where to find it and train others on it. For that, make sure your experts are involved in documenting your systems because they understand the logic behind them and can put the content in context. Sales managers need to be involved in documenting software used by their teams, and so on.

  1. Leverage their experience to help you integrate your initiatives across units, divisions, etc.

No man is an island, and no data capture effort can stand on its own, either. If it is important enough to capture and analyze, it has impact beyond your own part of the organization. Involve people who understand impact upstream, downstream and who know where the bridges are that cross the stream. Cross-check your data gathering efforts with the people who will use it or will be impacted by it in all pockets of the organization and outside the organization – like your customers, suppliers and wholesalers.

  1. Include them in your long-term strategic planning process

We usually think of strategic planning as the province of the executive team and the board of directors. When you dig down into an organization, you have experts in pockets everywhere who may hold vital pieces of information who may contribute to altering your plans or even redirecting them completely. Your experts in different areas will see things in the data and trends that impact your direction.

The quality of your data is only as good as the parameters you set when you determine what to collect, the integrity of the inputs, the way it is organized and interfaced, and the way it is interpreted. Each one of those phases requires experts across the organization who “get it” when it comes to their corner of the world. Find them and ask them.

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

 

 

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Build Your Business Muscle with Targeted Knowledge Management

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Chubby wrestler

If you throw a lot of training at a problem, you might be getting some results but they may not be the exact results you need. Too much training with too few results is a sign that your corporate learning might be top-heavy with learning programs built to solve ill-defined problems that don’t focus on clear business solutions.

You can tighten up your flabby programs when you clearly identify your knowledge gaps and define the exact behaviors that will close them. Then make sure those gaps align with your strategic plans.

In fact, LinkedIn Learning’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report found that executives want learning leaders to more closely align training programs with business objectives. Business leaders are overwhelmingly asking for learning to reflect business imperatives and make an impact on the business.

Leadership Craves Impact and ROI_LinkedIn

All of this begs the question: What is the best way to design your corporate knowledge management efforts to align with your business objectives?

The answer to this question is evolving because the technology to create a robust internal corporate knowledge management is improving all the time. While the tech exists now, you still need to have a clear vision of the knowledge you need to capture to get you where you are going.

Just to get started, here are a few overarching ideas to consider as you create your knowledge management plan.

  1. Be clear about where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow. And yes, tomorrow means your 1-year, 3-year, 5-year and beyond strategic plans. These plans get fuzzier the farther out you go because a lot is changing on the ground but it is good to have some general ideas about where you would like to be.
  2. Figure out who your experts are that know how your business runs and thrives today. Some of them will be retiring and some of them will be the bright bulbs you just hired. Identify the things you need to know and the people who know it.
  3. Finally, begin to consider the best ways to capture the knowledge you need to know to secure your current position/customers/contracts/business and what you need to capture or acquire to meet your long-term strategic goals.

Yes, that’s a lot to think about. So over the next few months, we’ll start to dig into each of these areas in more detail. Stay tuned.

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Succession Planting for Retiring Experts

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This article is also posted at the International Federation on Aging website here.

As a newbie gardener, I subscribe to lots of gardening magazines and email lists to get up the learning curve as quickly as possible. This morning, I received an email about succession planting for a bountiful garden all season long. For those who have been cultivating a lifetime of knowledge, we also have waves of harvests. And it seems that the rules for succession planting in our gardens also make sense for succession planning for our lifetimes of contribution to the world around us.

Growing meals throughout the season means consistently looking forward, and reaping harvests from your education and experience means looking forward, too.

Let’s apply the 6 tips for choosing appropriate crops for succession planting to succession planning for your ongoing contribution to the world:

  1. Rotate plants in season. After you have harvested the value of your education and experience in one career, use that bed of knowledge to prepare for your next adventure – be it volunteerism, consulting or starting an enterprise of your own. Your prior experience will help lessen the chance for failure.
  2. Sow or transplant a small amount of seeds at one time at regular intervals. Make sure you have several little projects and interests in play for a well-rounded life. Your new business doesn’t mean giving up your volunteering. One thing may always lead to another.
  3. When planting late in the season, choose plants that can be enjoyed young. When you embark on an adventure completely new to you, choose one that you can enjoy immediately, like learning a few chords on the piano that allow you to play a simple three-chord song for immediate gratification.
  4. Switch varieties for switching weather. As your life changes, or as your mind, body and emotions change, be prepared to try a new hobby, interest or career path more in tune with who you are becoming.
  5. Consider how two plants share a space and interplant complimentary varieties. Think about the people around you, how you can build teams and community, and how you can serve others. Life is more fun lived with and for others.
  6. Transplant and sow directly. Sometimes you want to take skills and abilities from other parts of your life and earlier career paths, and use them in your current pursuits. Some other things can be started from scratch so you can always be learning something new.

Life is, indeed, our garden to nourish, grow and enjoy. With some care, you can reap harvests throughout all its seasons as you continue to mature, contribute and participate while sharing your unique gifts, talents and experiences to leave everything better than the way you found it.

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Imagining Knowledge in the Age of AI

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K35621_cvr  Artificial intelligence, data, analytics, neural net, computer-human interface…these aren’t the future. They are now. For those of us with a foot in the age of human intelligence and a foot in the age of artificial intelligence, it makes us wonder: so what do we make of what we know, if we (as humans) may become irrelevant?

It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds.

This blog will be brief because the idea is huge, and I want to give us all time and space to ponder this one thought.

Humans are finite, at least for now. We have a limited lifespan. For generosity’s sake, let’s call it 100 years. And then we take what we know with us when we go.

Some of us have preserved our thoughts, ideas and creativity for future generations, but let me venture to guess that most of us have not.

For millennia, without that knowledge capture, preservation and transfer, we kept starting all over.

All that changed with the printing press, and accelerated rapidly with video and audio capture. Look at the rapid proliferation of knowledge, now doubling about every one or two years because we are able to continue to build on what came before.

So what is the threat of AI to human intelligence? Here it is…

Computers don’t die. Teach them to think, and they will keep thinking and growing and learning and eventually…well, their intelligence surpasses that of any human simply because their learning curve is theoretically infinite.

This is what all the fuss is about.

I leave you with that.

And encourage your thoughts and debate in the comment section or send an email at workingwithsmes@gmail.com.

Oh, by the way, my latest book, Retaining Expert Knoweldge: What to Keep in an Age of Information Overload, was published in hard cover on May 10 and you can buy it here. I just noticed that a Kindle version has been added. Thank you for your continued interest!

 

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Working with Retiree-Experts and an Encounter with a Growing Business Niche

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Experts who know home construction or music production are not usually experts in how to package and sell their services. So when they are facing retirement – whether or not by choice – the desire to continue to serve often burns within them. If you are that retiring expert, how do you offer your services outside the structure that your old job provided?

A 2013 survey by AARP showed that 23.6% of new businesses were started by entrepreneurs 55 to 64 years of age expecting another 15 to 20 productive years. I have personally worked with several vital octogenarians in the past few years who were still actively contributing while taking steps – such as writing books and building training programs – to preserve their legacy.

Some retiring experts find a way to offer their services ad hoc to friends and former colleagues. But others get more deliberate about creating a business of their own. In fact, retiring experts have created a boon in a niche market teaching business skills to people trying their hand at entrepreneurship in their second career. Experts retiring from one field seek other experts who know modern marketing, sales and revenue-generating techniques to handle the business details for them. Last week, I attended a conference of about 200 experts – many of whom were building retiree or second-life businesses – sponsored by a company based in Montreal that teaches experts how to handle the business end for themselves.

Combining Expertise and Business Acumen

Often, successful enterprises are based on the subject matter expertise of person and the business acumen of another, and that combination can make a big difference in the world.

Think Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. We know one name so well and the other…not so much. Jobs and Wozniak are the dream team responsible for the first personal computer and the company that came to be Apple. Jobs knew computers but he really understood business, marketing and his customer. Their dynamic pairing demonstrates that many great businesses are built on an expert who joins forces with an entrepreneur who can envision the possibilities.

The experts at the Montreal conference each paid close to $20,000 for business support over the next 12 months from this team of business building experts. Obviously, this company found a lucrative niche by filling in that business knowledge gap helping experts to monetize the value of their specialty, and for both parties I imagine it is a good deal.

Not all experts want or need to monetize their expertise commercially. Sometimes the satisfaction of passing on your hard-earned knowledge in front of a college class or in journal articles is more than enough reward.

But for experts who are looking to build a business on a lifetime of knowledge, there are people building businesses to help you. AARP can’t be wrong. With nearly a quarter of new businesses started by entrepreneurs of retirement age, any expert with a passion can live the entrepreneurial dream in the second half of life.

Perhaps we can start a club: E. R. A. Experts of Retirement Age.

Are you in a corporation losing its expertise to retirement? Your expert may thrive in retirement. Let me help you review your knowledge management plan so your company can thrive after they leave, too. Contact us at workingwithsmes@gmail.com

 

Photo by Raul Varzar on Unsplash

 

 

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The Online Course Opportunity and Your Expertise

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jazmin-quaynor-392995The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is typically one that is slow or completely non-existent for business. Traditionally, I use that week to do a lot of offline activities to plan for the upcoming year. This year I took two great online courses, and decided to build one of my own in 2018.

First, the plan.

The last few years, I went through Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever online course and found it very helpful in the way it structures your planning process, challenges your assumptions, pressure tests your goals and is full of logical advice. He has captured the course in a book that launches today, Tuesday January 2, and if you grab it now it comes with some bonuses available until the end of the week, Friday January 5. His bonuses are terrific  and will help you apply what you learn in the book. If you are still in your planning stage for 2018, I recommend it. Here’s a link that will get you the book and bonuses.

As part of my 2018 goals, I am going to build an online course to accompany the launch of my next book due out later this year. The book, Retaining Expert Knowledge: What to Keep in an Age of Information Overload, takes the Working with SMEs series into some new territory. Writing this book met one of my 2017 goals to write a book with a major publisher, and I am very happy about meeting that goal. (More about the upcoming book in later blog posts.) Writing a book is just the first step, however, because it is getting the book and ideas out to the public that is the most important part of the process.

As part of that effort, I am going to build an online course to help readers apply the content of Retaining Expert Knowledge to their areas of expertise and their companies. Which leads me to the second course I took last week.

Executing the Plan

Big plans are accomplished one small step at a time. As Michael Hyatt says in his course (paraphrased), you only need to take the next small step to attain big goals. If your goal is big, hairy and audacious enough, you won’t know exactly how to get there. Hyatt advises that you set goals outside your comfort zone and take the very next small step that you can see, and it will usually appear in the form of resources or some kind of help that you need. That is exactly what happened. I had signed up with an elearning hosting platform, and they offered a course to make the most of your investment.

For three days, I delved into how to use this particular online platform and now I am very excited about building and presenting an online course for Retaining Expert Knowledge.

The course reminded us:

  1. Online learning is mainstream.
  2. Education is now lifelong.
  3. People want bite-sized information.
  4. Information wants to be free.
  5. The size of the online opportunity is about to explode.

Learning from Experts

For those experts who read this blog and the trainers who work with them, that list tells us that we’ve only just begun. As knowledge and information explodes, we have so much to share and people have less time to absorb it. It is a great time to share what you know and do it in a way that you can reach a lot of people.

Massive amounts of information are free or very inexpensive. Because information is free, you have to earn the space you take up in someone’s brain. Keep it short. Keep it relevant. And provide value. Blogs are one of the new “free information” sources, as well as endless streams of webinars, podcasts and more.

That is why when building a course for sale, experts need to build premium courses.  Your Expertise 101 is free, and Your Expertise 301 premium course has some price attached to it as well as support that helps your learners apply the information.

Today is the first workday of 2018. It is exciting to do what we love. And it is equally exciting to share what we love. If you are an expert in some area and have something to share or teach, think about the fact that adult learning is all-the-time, online, bite-sized and much of it is free.

You don’t have to wait to be asked. Get out there and share what you’ve got. People want to know. You can be part of the knowledge explosion.

 

Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash