Your knowledge is your economic salvation
Summary:
Your knowledge is your economic salvation. Focus on developing it, and you will achieve financial freedom.
Details:
Below is an email I sent to friends over three years ago. I talked about how a person should focus on developing valuable knowledge that he/she could sell via the Web. Today, there are free applications like Mediamax, where you can get for FREE 25 Gigabytes of online storage space. There's also Payloadz, for getting paid for your digital content.
The problem, of course, is the same as when Gutenberg first invented the printing press: people have the POWER to disseminate knowledge, but do they really have VALUABLE knowledge to disseminate in the first place?
Indeed, one of the BIG reasons why you have to work every day to make someone else richer, is that you haven't clarified what it is that you know best which could be productively or profitably applied to improve the quality of life of someone else.
In short, what you know is not useful to others. If it were useful, they would buy it from you (in which case you would be a consultant delivering your knowledge via a personal service, or an author delivering your knowledge via a non-personal media such as a book, an audiobook, a video presentation online, a DVD, etc.
To be more accurate, what you know is probably useful to other people, but the problem is that your knowledge is NOT in a form or format that others can EASILY and CONVENIENTLY USE (e.g. book, audiotape, etc.).
Of course, it's possible also that a person's knowledge is so little or of such low quality or accuracy that it is useless to other people. People who read fiction, for instance, cannot realistically expect their market value to increase, since fiction is, well, not true!
Reading fiction and expecting to become financially free one day, is like eating ice cream and expecting to win the gold medal at the Olympics!
Let's assume that a person is serious about becoming successful in life. She starts to read a lot of books. She reads the usual suspects, like Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, etc. After she is done reading 200 books, does that mean she is better off in life?
Not necessarily. It's not enough to have a lot of knowledge in one's head. It's critical to also be able to apply them and implement them in real life. This requires that the person put herself in situations where she will be DRIVEN to use her knowledge. That is, in situations where she MUST make decisions within a reasonable time frame.
Here's an analogy so you understand the distinction between "knowing the path" and "walking the path."
After tons of martial arts programs have been directly downloaded into his brain via a neuro-port behind his head, Neo (in the movie The Matrix) finally opens his eyes and says: "I know kung fu."
His mentor leans over and says: "Show me."
The "show me" part (or "prove it to me") is the knowledge application part. It is the true test of whether you really know and master a subject.
The person who reads 50 books, and is applying the knowledge content of one book, is in the same situation as the person who reads one book and is applying the knowledge of that book. Of course, the second person gets a better return on (time) investment since she did not spend time reading the 49 other books!
That is, her return on investment is 100%, whereas for the other person, the ROI is more like 2% (1/50).
Another analogy to illustrate the critical difference between theoretical "knowledge" and practical "competency" is that of learning a foreign language.You may have attended all classes, learned a great deal of vocabulary and understood the grammatical rules. But until you find yourself in a REAL conversation with another person who is a native speaker, you cannot "perform." In other words, there's knowledge acquisition and there's knowledge performance.
(Actually, it's a little more complicated, since there are many "steps", from information to instruction to integration to implementation to inspection. I will write more about this later).
Knowledge performance -- such as teaching, training, writing, etc. -- is where money is made.
Knowledge acquisition is where money is lost (that is, you have to pay for tuition, or you have to pay for a consultant or trainer to teach you).
The success secret is to learn as fast as possible, so you can get to the "knowledge performance" part, where you make easy money.
Look, even Donald Trump is now going into the business education industry!
Wealth in the new economy comes not from physical things, but from instructional things.
Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:43:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Peter Nguyen
Subject: Sex management
To: Friends
Note: Important email. May I respectfully suggest you print it out, and read it carefully. Your future is in it.
--
Ah, these management people!
One day, they might find out that sex improves productivity at work, and is the basis for building a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Immediately, all sorts of self-proclaimed "gurus" would coin the word "sex management" and tons of books would be dedicated to it -- a new field of managerial expertise.
This is why "knowledge management" is so misunderstood today.
Knowledge, and how you create, manage, use, leverage, capitalize on it, is the ONLY hope for people to create better careers, multiply cashflows (yes, absolutely: a person can have a full-time job, and also manage a few other websites or audiosites, and earn significant money "on the side"), live more fully, interact with new people, make new friends.
The reason I decided to start giving free seminars on knowledge management, every Wednesday, is that I want to share my first-person research findings (experiments I performed on my own brain) as well as tons of research materials that could make a difference in a person's career or business.
(A career is just a stationary business, and a business is a fast-moving career).
WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
Why should you spend one hour, Wednesday, to hear me babble about knowledge management?
Because I'm an undercover federal officer (UFO) working for a secret, highly funded government agency, whose aim is to leverage kwowledge capital and maximize the strategic advantage of all Canadian citizens, so that together, as a "team", we can compete more effectively among G7 players.
Just kidding. Too much coffee.
You should come to this KM seminar because your future is at stake. Oh, I'm not saying you wont' find a job or earn a good living.
I'm just saying that the best salary, in the future, is free time.
A guy on his deathbed rarely wished he could have more money or a higher return on his investment. He probably wished he had more time to live.
This is ultimately my goal, through the seminar: to inform you of the latest research in human
performance, learning, training, KM, etc. so that you can FREE yourself. How?
- by being so good at what you do, that employers will agree to let you work from anywhere (like John Cage, of Sun Microsystems)
- by packaging (in CD-ROM, DVD, paper, mind map format, etc.) your hard-earned know-how and selling it to millions of people, who wish they knew what it is that you know (search for "robert allen" on the Net for more information). By making yourself into a "product", you can free yourself, and let other people "market" your product.
- by creating expert systems, on the Web, which capture everything you know or master, so that you can consult for clients, via Internet telephony, from anywhere on the planet
Story: When I was 19, I worked as data entry clerk for the Centre d'education des adultes. I programmed a macro that could automate lots of data entry activities. But I didn't tell my boss about it. Just asked her, "Rosalie, if I could finish the 50 cards (which was the daily average or quota), can I go home afterwards?" She said "yes." So every day, I finished by lunch time, and had the afternoon off!
Same thing at a law firm I used to work for. I created macros that DID MY JOB! I was proofreader, but the computer could more easily detect mistakes than I did.
I had a LOT OF FREE TIME, sitting in that nice office in downtown, daydreaming, while the computer worked for me.
That's not how it works in today's workplace. You finish your work? No problem. They'll give you MORE work. Result: everybody's trying to "stretch" their work so as to finish by 5 PM.
(Believe it or not, some people will purposely leave a stack of "dossiers" on their desk, to "signal" to the boss that they have plenty of work, thank you very much).
Work doesn't pay. The more you work, the more work they give you. Result: People work JUST enough to avoid being laid off, and employers pay JUST enough to prevent workers from quitting (for a better-paying job).
Nobody cares about becoming the best. It's "just a job."
This is why the country is becoming dumber and dumber. Don't believe me?
KPMG recently released a report saying that Canadian workers are the cheapest!
Labour here is so cheap, they say.
If that were not enough, the government is taxing us and misspending our money (federal sponsorship scandals).
Apparently, there's a guy who's paid $100 million for carrying a check, from a federal office to a
communications firm. I would love to get his job.
CONCRETELY SPEAKING
I began to create a form of 3 pages, that seminar participants can fill out. Based on your answers, I can give you a diagnostic on how well you manage your knowledge. SEE BELOW.
In the same way that every professional could use a financial planner, we all could use a personal intellectual capital planner and strategist (yes, that would be me).
Anyways, call me and let's get together for the next KM seminar. Tons of stuff I need to share with you, you will not believe it!
I'm selling these consulting sessions to corporate employees for $100 (but HR pays for it), but you get it for free! Places limited, call me today! (514) 931-7879
===
File: KM services - client profile
KNOWLEDGE INPUT
at work
at home
while networking
magazine
newspaper
technical publication
white paper
KNOWLEDGE PROCESS
how do you add value at work
which tool
which methodology
which teamwork
which individual work
workstation
software used
_ MS Project
_ PowerPoint
_ Excel
_ Access
_ Visio
_ CAD
_ QuarkXPress
_ Photoshop
_ Illustrator
KNOWLEDGE OUTPUT
report
proposal
procedure
memo
plan
book
intranet document
methodology
advertisement (copy)
graphic design piece
blog
white paper
article
press release
flowchart
ISO document
do you have a personal intranet
how many contacts do you have
education
training on the job
employers to date
writing capability
French, English?
public speaking
seminar leading
knowledge of KM
_ none
_ beginner
_ intermediate
_ advanced
Palm
_ memo
_ agenda
_ other : _____________
laptop
Internet
_ regular
_ high-speed
personal website
belong to professional association
coaching experience
If invited to speak for one hour on your profession,
you can do it
_ easily
_ with 5 days preparation
_ you can't do it
File: KM services - client profile 3
the best thing you learned which significantly increased your earnings
your learning style
_ reading
_ interacting with people
_ seminars
_ coaching
_ e-learning
Familiar with:
_ K curve
_ CIA techniques of collecting, analyzing information
_ memory techniques (e.g. Harry Lorraine)
_ mind mapping (Tony Buzan)
_ speedreading techniques
what is the most important knowledge you have, which
your employer values
what is the best skill you have, which your employer
values and pays for
in your opinion, what are your knowledge gaps
Your action gaps?
do you have a strategic plan for developing your
career?
belong to a mastermind association
headhunter
placement agency
strategy for job hunting
read
_ fiction mostly
_ non-fiction mostly
_ psychology
_ business / management
_ marketing / sales
_ technologies
_ investment
house or appartment
car value:
_ 10K
_ 10-20K
_ 20K +
Your knowledge is your economic salvation. Focus on developing it, and you will achieve financial freedom.
Details:
Below is an email I sent to friends over three years ago. I talked about how a person should focus on developing valuable knowledge that he/she could sell via the Web. Today, there are free applications like Mediamax, where you can get for FREE 25 Gigabytes of online storage space. There's also Payloadz, for getting paid for your digital content.
The problem, of course, is the same as when Gutenberg first invented the printing press: people have the POWER to disseminate knowledge, but do they really have VALUABLE knowledge to disseminate in the first place?
Indeed, one of the BIG reasons why you have to work every day to make someone else richer, is that you haven't clarified what it is that you know best which could be productively or profitably applied to improve the quality of life of someone else.
In short, what you know is not useful to others. If it were useful, they would buy it from you (in which case you would be a consultant delivering your knowledge via a personal service, or an author delivering your knowledge via a non-personal media such as a book, an audiobook, a video presentation online, a DVD, etc.
To be more accurate, what you know is probably useful to other people, but the problem is that your knowledge is NOT in a form or format that others can EASILY and CONVENIENTLY USE (e.g. book, audiotape, etc.).
Of course, it's possible also that a person's knowledge is so little or of such low quality or accuracy that it is useless to other people. People who read fiction, for instance, cannot realistically expect their market value to increase, since fiction is, well, not true!
Reading fiction and expecting to become financially free one day, is like eating ice cream and expecting to win the gold medal at the Olympics!
Let's assume that a person is serious about becoming successful in life. She starts to read a lot of books. She reads the usual suspects, like Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, etc. After she is done reading 200 books, does that mean she is better off in life?
Not necessarily. It's not enough to have a lot of knowledge in one's head. It's critical to also be able to apply them and implement them in real life. This requires that the person put herself in situations where she will be DRIVEN to use her knowledge. That is, in situations where she MUST make decisions within a reasonable time frame.
Here's an analogy so you understand the distinction between "knowing the path" and "walking the path."
After tons of martial arts programs have been directly downloaded into his brain via a neuro-port behind his head, Neo (in the movie The Matrix) finally opens his eyes and says: "I know kung fu."
His mentor leans over and says: "Show me."
The "show me" part (or "prove it to me") is the knowledge application part. It is the true test of whether you really know and master a subject.
The person who reads 50 books, and is applying the knowledge content of one book, is in the same situation as the person who reads one book and is applying the knowledge of that book. Of course, the second person gets a better return on (time) investment since she did not spend time reading the 49 other books!
That is, her return on investment is 100%, whereas for the other person, the ROI is more like 2% (1/50).
Another analogy to illustrate the critical difference between theoretical "knowledge" and practical "competency" is that of learning a foreign language.You may have attended all classes, learned a great deal of vocabulary and understood the grammatical rules. But until you find yourself in a REAL conversation with another person who is a native speaker, you cannot "perform." In other words, there's knowledge acquisition and there's knowledge performance.
(Actually, it's a little more complicated, since there are many "steps", from information to instruction to integration to implementation to inspection. I will write more about this later).
Knowledge performance -- such as teaching, training, writing, etc. -- is where money is made.
Knowledge acquisition is where money is lost (that is, you have to pay for tuition, or you have to pay for a consultant or trainer to teach you).
The success secret is to learn as fast as possible, so you can get to the "knowledge performance" part, where you make easy money.
Look, even Donald Trump is now going into the business education industry!
Wealth in the new economy comes not from physical things, but from instructional things.
Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:43:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Peter Nguyen
Subject: Sex management
To: Friends
Note: Important email. May I respectfully suggest you print it out, and read it carefully. Your future is in it.
--
Ah, these management people!
One day, they might find out that sex improves productivity at work, and is the basis for building a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Immediately, all sorts of self-proclaimed "gurus" would coin the word "sex management" and tons of books would be dedicated to it -- a new field of managerial expertise.
This is why "knowledge management" is so misunderstood today.
Knowledge, and how you create, manage, use, leverage, capitalize on it, is the ONLY hope for people to create better careers, multiply cashflows (yes, absolutely: a person can have a full-time job, and also manage a few other websites or audiosites, and earn significant money "on the side"), live more fully, interact with new people, make new friends.
The reason I decided to start giving free seminars on knowledge management, every Wednesday, is that I want to share my first-person research findings (experiments I performed on my own brain) as well as tons of research materials that could make a difference in a person's career or business.
(A career is just a stationary business, and a business is a fast-moving career).
WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
Why should you spend one hour, Wednesday, to hear me babble about knowledge management?
Because I'm an undercover federal officer (UFO) working for a secret, highly funded government agency, whose aim is to leverage kwowledge capital and maximize the strategic advantage of all Canadian citizens, so that together, as a "team", we can compete more effectively among G7 players.
Just kidding. Too much coffee.
You should come to this KM seminar because your future is at stake. Oh, I'm not saying you wont' find a job or earn a good living.
I'm just saying that the best salary, in the future, is free time.
A guy on his deathbed rarely wished he could have more money or a higher return on his investment. He probably wished he had more time to live.
This is ultimately my goal, through the seminar: to inform you of the latest research in human
performance, learning, training, KM, etc. so that you can FREE yourself. How?
- by being so good at what you do, that employers will agree to let you work from anywhere (like John Cage, of Sun Microsystems)
- by packaging (in CD-ROM, DVD, paper, mind map format, etc.) your hard-earned know-how and selling it to millions of people, who wish they knew what it is that you know (search for "robert allen" on the Net for more information). By making yourself into a "product", you can free yourself, and let other people "market" your product.
- by creating expert systems, on the Web, which capture everything you know or master, so that you can consult for clients, via Internet telephony, from anywhere on the planet
Story: When I was 19, I worked as data entry clerk for the Centre d'education des adultes. I programmed a macro that could automate lots of data entry activities. But I didn't tell my boss about it. Just asked her, "Rosalie, if I could finish the 50 cards (which was the daily average or quota), can I go home afterwards?" She said "yes." So every day, I finished by lunch time, and had the afternoon off!
Same thing at a law firm I used to work for. I created macros that DID MY JOB! I was proofreader, but the computer could more easily detect mistakes than I did.
I had a LOT OF FREE TIME, sitting in that nice office in downtown, daydreaming, while the computer worked for me.
That's not how it works in today's workplace. You finish your work? No problem. They'll give you MORE work. Result: everybody's trying to "stretch" their work so as to finish by 5 PM.
(Believe it or not, some people will purposely leave a stack of "dossiers" on their desk, to "signal" to the boss that they have plenty of work, thank you very much).
Work doesn't pay. The more you work, the more work they give you. Result: People work JUST enough to avoid being laid off, and employers pay JUST enough to prevent workers from quitting (for a better-paying job).
Nobody cares about becoming the best. It's "just a job."
This is why the country is becoming dumber and dumber. Don't believe me?
KPMG recently released a report saying that Canadian workers are the cheapest!
Labour here is so cheap, they say.
If that were not enough, the government is taxing us and misspending our money (federal sponsorship scandals).
Apparently, there's a guy who's paid $100 million for carrying a check, from a federal office to a
communications firm. I would love to get his job.
CONCRETELY SPEAKING
I began to create a form of 3 pages, that seminar participants can fill out. Based on your answers, I can give you a diagnostic on how well you manage your knowledge. SEE BELOW.
In the same way that every professional could use a financial planner, we all could use a personal intellectual capital planner and strategist (yes, that would be me).
Anyways, call me and let's get together for the next KM seminar. Tons of stuff I need to share with you, you will not believe it!
I'm selling these consulting sessions to corporate employees for $100 (but HR pays for it), but you get it for free! Places limited, call me today! (514) 931-7879
===
File: KM services - client profile
KNOWLEDGE INPUT
at work
at home
while networking
magazine
newspaper
technical publication
white paper
KNOWLEDGE PROCESS
how do you add value at work
which tool
which methodology
which teamwork
which individual work
workstation
software used
_ MS Project
_ PowerPoint
_ Excel
_ Access
_ Visio
_ CAD
_ QuarkXPress
_ Photoshop
_ Illustrator
KNOWLEDGE OUTPUT
report
proposal
procedure
memo
plan
book
intranet document
methodology
advertisement (copy)
graphic design piece
blog
white paper
article
press release
flowchart
ISO document
do you have a personal intranet
how many contacts do you have
education
training on the job
employers to date
writing capability
French, English?
public speaking
seminar leading
knowledge of KM
_ none
_ beginner
_ intermediate
_ advanced
Palm
_ memo
_ agenda
_ other : _____________
laptop
Internet
_ regular
_ high-speed
personal website
belong to professional association
coaching experience
If invited to speak for one hour on your profession,
you can do it
_ easily
_ with 5 days preparation
_ you can't do it
File: KM services - client profile 3
the best thing you learned which significantly increased your earnings
your learning style
_ reading
_ interacting with people
_ seminars
_ coaching
_ e-learning
Familiar with:
_ K curve
_ CIA techniques of collecting, analyzing information
_ memory techniques (e.g. Harry Lorraine)
_ mind mapping (Tony Buzan)
_ speedreading techniques
what is the most important knowledge you have, which
your employer values
what is the best skill you have, which your employer
values and pays for
in your opinion, what are your knowledge gaps
Your action gaps?
do you have a strategic plan for developing your
career?
belong to a mastermind association
headhunter
placement agency
strategy for job hunting
read
_ fiction mostly
_ non-fiction mostly
_ psychology
_ business / management
_ marketing / sales
_ technologies
_ investment
house or appartment
car value:
_ 10K
_ 10-20K
_ 20K +
posted by Super Peter at 3:47 PM
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