Tangible and intangible aspects of your career
In the previous posting ("What's your career worth?"), I talked about the importance of treating one's career as a business and being able to sell your career to interested buyers.
But before you can sell your career, it's important to realize a career is made up of two major components: an INTANGIBLE component which includes all the knowledge in your head as well as all the goodwill and relationships with other professionals and managers involved in your career, and a TANGIBLE component which comprises books you wrote, blogs you maintain, plans you developed, workshops you've developed, etc.
The intangible part of your career can only be offered in the form of professional services that you deliver in person (or via the Web using Skype, etc.). It requires the active participation of your client or employer.
The tangible part of your career, however, can be sold as products. You usually do not have to be present.
In his amazing book titled Blur - the speed of change in the connected economy, Stan Davis wrote brilliantly about how a professional can increase the intangible part of his career in order to increase his market value. I highly recommend the book, it's definitely the best book I've read on the topsy-turvy nature of the digitized, connected global economy.
Here's the success secret: if you are a professional, try really hard to "productize" your human capital, so that you can sell it easily via the Web. In other words, capture your knowledge into a document (PDF file, audio recording, etc.) so that you can sell it via Payloadz.
At first, it will seem strange. After all, we were raised to believe that only by working can we get paid. In short, we were taught that "work = money." If you don't show up at the office and work, you won't get paid.
However, that's only half the equation. It might not even be the profitable half of the equation!
The other half is "value = money." In other words, if you provide value to people, you will get paid. This value can be in a digital format, so you pretty much make money WHILE YOU'RE SLEEPING.
But before you can sell your career, it's important to realize a career is made up of two major components: an INTANGIBLE component which includes all the knowledge in your head as well as all the goodwill and relationships with other professionals and managers involved in your career, and a TANGIBLE component which comprises books you wrote, blogs you maintain, plans you developed, workshops you've developed, etc.
The intangible part of your career can only be offered in the form of professional services that you deliver in person (or via the Web using Skype, etc.). It requires the active participation of your client or employer.
The tangible part of your career, however, can be sold as products. You usually do not have to be present.
In his amazing book titled Blur - the speed of change in the connected economy, Stan Davis wrote brilliantly about how a professional can increase the intangible part of his career in order to increase his market value. I highly recommend the book, it's definitely the best book I've read on the topsy-turvy nature of the digitized, connected global economy.
Here's the success secret: if you are a professional, try really hard to "productize" your human capital, so that you can sell it easily via the Web. In other words, capture your knowledge into a document (PDF file, audio recording, etc.) so that you can sell it via Payloadz.
At first, it will seem strange. After all, we were raised to believe that only by working can we get paid. In short, we were taught that "work = money." If you don't show up at the office and work, you won't get paid.
However, that's only half the equation. It might not even be the profitable half of the equation!
The other half is "value = money." In other words, if you provide value to people, you will get paid. This value can be in a digital format, so you pretty much make money WHILE YOU'RE SLEEPING.
posted by Super Peter at 1:14 AM
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