The Value of Insights
By the time most expertise-based service providers strike out on their own, they have achieved mastery of their subject matter. This mastery is more than the moving pieces that make up the subject, it also includes the years of trial and error, repeated exposure, and range of contexts in which the services are provided.
In Episode 26 of the Hourly to Exit podcast, I was joined by Michelle Calcagni, who’s expertise and experience are more than impressive. In addition to a career providing consultation services to major corporations, Michelle took the opportunity offered to her by COVID to work with female entrepreneurs. She’s back to working with the Big Guys (often as the only female in the room!), and the combination of these two client bases gave her some important insights … about insights.
Rembrandt in the Attic
This is a metaphor I developed that is exactly about this topic. The Antique Roadshow prompted many of us to look more closely at family items lying around the house. After all, that painting we inherited might not be our cup of tea, but it just might be an incredibly valuable work of art, painted by a Master like Rembrandt. What does this have to do with Michelle’s thoughts about insights or IP in general? Think about it, our expertise is a unique set of thoughts, experiences, processes, and yes, insights. Unless we take the time to record, unpack, and evaluate these various elements, we may be missing a Rembrandt in our “experience attic.”
Michelle has a similar opinion about our experience. As we gain our expertise over time, we tend to get into the weeds of our work, and we forget that not everyone has our passion for the many details of our subject matter, so they are likely unaware of some fundamental aspects that we work with all the time. Our ho-hum rinse and repeat may be someone else’s eureka moment, and we need to place more value in our knowledge, particularly on our understanding of the broad base of basics that make up our business.
Experience is Data
Michelle helps her clients to sift through information to glean the key components of a successful project. She brilliantly turns this process towards the meta topic of experience itself. As we work in our area of expertise, we are constantly gathering data that we need to track, organize, and review to glean important information like
Process: it’s not just what you know, it how you go about using that knowledge that has value.
Trends: we are the first and most likely to identify trends in our business, both what’s new, and what has actual value
Basics: we don’t even notice how much we know and apply in our work because we’ve acquired the muscle memory to do it without even thinking.
Michelle encourages expertise-based service providers to track this data by recording your work contemporaneously and religiously. If you are just getting started in understanding the shape of your unique experience, then try to conceive of a course you would teach others on how to do what you do. Unless you write it, there is no book out there that someone can pick up and learn how you do what you do. You need to record your secret sauce so you can replicate it for yourself and then monetize it.
But be careful, sometimes our experience contains data that is not relevant. When tracking your experience or other assets, ask yourself whether it is valuable—on its own or aggregately. In other words, you need to decide where to expend your energy by asking the key question: I have this information, so what?
Needless to say, Michelle and I had a fantastic conversation, and I really loved her unique way of looking at the very subject that I talk about all the time. I think the main takeaway from our talk was that we need to give our expertise and experience the respect they deserve so that we can capitalize on them in our business. If you want to sharpen up your IP practices, including developing a non-disclosure agreement that works for you, contact me to discuss how I can help.