Build And Monetise Your Authority Status - Part 1/3 [What Monetising Knowledge Actually Means]

If you’ve followed me for a hot second, you’d know by now that I’m a massive fan of building a portfolio career and having multiple income streams. Not only to give yourself a buffer and be your own life & career insurance but also to be your own career catalyst.

Monetising your Personal Brand doesn’t only build skill sets that help you progress in your current career, profession, or industry but it also connects you with different people and as we know – your network is your net worth. Being seen, known, recognised and of course, trusted, by multiple people across different industries and influence levels opens doors that you may not even have considered.

So the question is: How do you actually monetise your expertise? Where to start, what can you actually monetise also when you’re a fulltime employee and have intention of ever (or at least for now) change that and how do you build a system around it that can be monetised with you being there or not? This is exactly what this 3-parts series is all about.

Now, as a disclaimer before we get into the meat and potatoes of this training: if you were hoping I give you the get rich quick solution, I’m sorry to disappoint. It doesn’t happen nor should it. 

Same goes for your deep expertise which is the baseline to not only become the authority but to also monetise your authority status. How would you feel if a rookie gets into your profession and wants to manage the biggest accounts, projects, or budgets without solid foundation and proven results? 

Yes of course, there are influencers who have monetised their accounts after having gone viral but that’s not the type of people I work with. I specialise in helping professionals commercialise their expertise, education, and experience.

I’ve monetized my expertise and the expertise of hundreds of clients at this stage in multiple ways and it’s crucial to be strategic in how you approach doing so. This is what I’ll be covering in this 3-parts series.

In part 1/3 we’re looking at the fundamentals that may be a little boring but hey – if you don’t know what it actually means to monetise your expertise as Personal Brand, whether you’re a corporate professional or an entrepreneur, and how you can find your sweet spot, we don’t need to go any further as everything beyond that, wouldn’t make sense (nor would it result in any sustainable outcomes).

So let’s start with what it actually means to monetise your expertise because this is where some already struggle to get their head around and may think it doesn’t apply to them as they don’t run their own business (yet or maybe never want to), they don’t want to set up an ecomm store nor do you have a celebrity status.

If that’s you too – let me stop you right there 

Monetising your knowledge and expertise means that you provide value in exchange of money.

Whether that’s in form of employment, a contract engagement, project-based, through a consulting offer, by giving a keynote, you name it. What I don’t mean is to make money because of your social status, like being an influencer or a celebrity. This isn’t my playfield as I only work with professionals who have proven experience and a have achieved results in their profession. 

They are already experts in what they do but they want more, they want to make a bigger impact by sharing their knowledge and message and want to be known for what they know. They want to become the Trusted Authority, the go-to in their industry and monetise their knowledge as they know this is the mark they want to leave in this world.

This is the biggest difference between an expert and an authority: an expert solves a problem. An authority can explain how they solve a problem so that their method ad message becomes the focus, not the person as such. 

Ok, so far so good you might think but you think that you are not even expert ‘enough’ because you don’t know anything special, nor do you have a unique skill set or can solve a relevant problem.

Firstly, welcome to the club! 

Because, let’s be honest – most of us, you take what you know for granted. 

Everyone knows how to do this and how to do that, right?

Wrong.

What you do is the result of you studying for years, gaining experience, practising over and over and establish your expertise through trial and error.

This right there is your opportunity.

What you probably lack is knowing how to translate your unique knowledge and skills into a viable solution – whatever that might look like – that people are happy to pay for.

This is also one of the biggest reasons for people to feel like an imposter: it’s the lack of predictability for the results they can achieve and what they want to be known for. You only feel that way if you don’t have a system, a method or process behind your actions and it often feels all over the shop or the results you got were ‘good luck’. 

Not having systemised knowledge is another big difference between an expert and an authority. Experts have an immense range of knowledge based on years of experience, their education, and the expertise they’ve gained. However, they have never learned to package it, so it makes sense to others, more specifically: their decision makers who usually don’t have their technical background and training. 

So their knowledge is scattered and all over the shop which of course makes it hard to articulate how you go about delivering results.

Authorities on the other hand have systemised their knowledge and can articulate how they achieve the transformation they promise, meaning: how can they guarantee the outcome they want to be known for through a system, process, method. This is what we call signature framework. 

Let’s not jump the gun – because this is what part 2/3 is all about.

Let’s go back to today’s training focus which is about what monetising knowledge means which we just discussed and also how you can find your sweet spot which brings us to the next section. To get to the conclusion, you want to answer a few questions. Feel free to work through them in your own time and come back to this training.

1.) What’s the problem you solve / what do you know for sure?

The first and most important but probably trickiest part is to get clear about your expertise, its value, and who it benefits. This is what we call in the Trusted Authority framework your capability. What is it that you want to focus on and be known for. It’s connecting the promise you want to make (meaning: a solution to a problem) to a proposition (an offer that’s relevant to your ideal decision maker) with a clear distinction to competitors (this is the positioning). 

In the Trusted Authority roadmap this literally takes up the first 3 weeks of the program because it’s in depth and can’t be rushed, nor can it be guessed.

Many of my students and clients have the challenge with – what I call – curse of competence, meaning: they have troubles choosing what they actually want to do because they’ve done so much and are also really good at all of those things.

One prompt to ask yourself in this case is:

“I use my expertise to help people ______.”

Getting down to this one statement will help you focus your efforts and clearly define the value you provide. What’s important however is to avoid generic terms and instead focus on addressing specific in the result you provide for people.

For example, my sentence is, “I use my expertise to help professionals go from experts to authority by systemising and packaging their skills into a solution they can monetise their personal brand”.

If I’d say: ‘I use my expertise to help people grow in their career’, no one will know what that even means because those are broad terms and don’t speak to a concrete result

2. What separates you from other experts in your field?

Since anybody can monetize their expertise, it’s important to position yourself in the market and show people why they should choose you as opposed to other experts. 

To figure this out, come up with 3–5 unique things that separate you — these are your competitive advantages (and everybody has one).

Don’t settle for statements like, “I’m better” or “I have 30 years of experience” or “I have a Masters in this and a Bachelor in that”. Even if it’s true, being ‘better’ is not a brand nor does it mean anything — it’s a judgment call. And honestly- no one cares. No one buys credentials; everyone buys results so trying to compete on credentials is as effective as trying to empty a swimming pool with a spoon.

So choose traits few others have as opposed to opinions anybody can claim.

In my case, what separates me from most personal branding strategists is that I know how to commercialise skill sets and monetise personal brands. My competitive advantage is the marriage of 3 of my biggest passions as well as professions that I’ve had: 10 years brand and product marketing for top performing global products where I developed, launched and marketed over 55 new products, couple with my experience and passion for career development that I discovered when I was in recruitment and placed over 300 candidates into roles, often in completely newly created roles based on how we positioned their skill set which had come from my ability to connect the dots and focus on commercialising solutions.

These points of differentiation, whatever they may be, won’t make you the right choice for EVERYBODY, but they will make you the perfect choice for SOMEBODY.

And that’s how you attract decision makers. Which leads us into the next part:

3. Who needs your expertise?

This is a tricky question.

You’ll probably be tempted to answer it with ‘everyone’ or ‘everyone in the engineering industry’. 

Well – that might be the case. However, as authority you are clear who not only benefits from your expertise but also who you gel with.

Otherwise, you’ll not only create yourself a job but a job you dread.

Plus- not everyone is looking for a solution for their problem. I can probably give you 30 people top of my head who’ve been in touch with me to build and monetise their personal brand over the last 6 months alone but haven’t moved anywhere. They are in a cushy job, things are ok, they aren’t that ‘unsatisfied’. If there’s no sense of urgence and a genuine interest in making the shift from good to great, you can’t force people, and neither should you as this will also end in a disaster. So get clear on how you actually want to work with, what are their traits and characteristics and which stage in their life or business are they in that they need your solution. This brings us to Q4 to tackle:

4. How will your expertise change a person’s life?

People buy solutons, products, services, or skills that provide value to them based on their current situation and the way to provide value is to enable transformation they eventually want.

You need to figure out how your expertise helps people move from point A to point B in their lives or careers (and they have to want to get to point B).

To clarify it for yourself — and your customers — fill in the blanks on this sentence:

“People who pay for my expertise go from ______ to ______.”

Here’s how I complete that sentence in my own consulting business:

“People who pay for my expertise go from being unknown, underappreciated, underpaid and underutilised in their career to creating their own commercial opportunities and take control over their level of success, income and impact.”

Developing this framework is part of building your credibility which we will go into a lot more detail in part 2 of this mini training.

Before we get there, let’s finish off part 1 of the mini-training which covers the Q:

5. What are your monetary goals?

Why are you looking to monetize your expertise in the first place?

Is it a secondary revenue stream? Is it to enable a new lifestyle?

How much do you need to make from whatever you come up with to justify the time and effort you put into it? And how quickly do you need to get to that level?

Don’t be fooled: While it’s easier than ever to monetize your expertise, it won’t happen overnight and without significant time and effort.

When I left my full-time job to become a consultant my initial goal was to a) not go bankrupt in the first 12 months, then b) earn at least half the salary I previously made in the first year and c) replace my – back then very high salary from year 3 onwards.

(I’m happy to report I hit that goal already in year 1 but there was a lot of prep involved and it didn’t just miraculously happen. And no, I also didn’t sleep much in this first year as I was literally trying to figure it all out whilst deliver everything myself also.

There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, but it’s important to consider because your monetary goals will influence your approach, the product you develop, and audience you cater it to.

So let’s get back to your homework from this first part:

Go back and work through the Q 1-5

To recap, these 5 questions are:

1. What’s the problem you solve / what do you know for sure?

2. What separates you from other experts in your field?

3. Who needs your expertise?

4. How will your expertise change a person’s life?

5. What are your monetary goals?