You are an ex­pert be­cause peo­ple of­ten come run­ning to you. You are sit­ting on a gold mine and do not know how to mon­e­tise it. You scratch your head be­cause you need di­rec­tion and a path­way to take what is in your mind and turn it in­to a mar­ketable prod­uct. You know in­tan­gi­bles are chal­leng­ing to sell, but you see ev­i­dence of sim­i­lar knowl­edge pro­fes­sion­als’ suc­cess. How do I be­come a knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur?

Knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur is born

For 20 years, com­pa­nies called Daniel when op­er­a­tional is­sues got messy. He was a se­nior process con­sul­tant with a strong rep­u­ta­tion and a full pipeline. The prob­lem was not de­mand. It was his de­pen­dence on an em­ploy­er who lim­it­ed his po­ten­tial.

The trig­ger came af­ter a six-month free­lance en­gage­ment where he solved the same prob­lem he had solved re­peat­ed­ly: un­clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween sales, ser­vice, and fi­nance. The client praised the re­sult, but Daniel re­al­ized he had re­built his method from scratch again and took it for grant­ed.

He be­gan doc­u­ment­ing the pat­terns from his cur­rent job. With­in two months, he pack­aged his ex­per­tise in­to a sim­ple of­fer: a four-week In­ter­nal Rev­enue En­hance­ment course for SMEs. It in­clud­ed a di­ag­nos­tic check­list, two work­shops, a hand­off map, and a 30-day im­ple­men­ta­tion plan.

The les­son is clear. Knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur­ship does not be­gin with a course, a big au­di­ence, or a per­son­al brand cam­paign. It be­gins when a pro­fes­sion­al iden­ti­fies a re­cur­ring prob­lem, turns their ex­per­tise in­to a struc­tured method and sells an out­come in­stead of hours.

Start with a strug­gle

Peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions have strug­gles, and they of­ten lack the knowl­edge to get out of what feels like an un­solv­able prob­lem. If you find your­self solv­ing a prob­lem re­peat­ed­ly or ex­plain­ing how to do some­thing, you may be on­to some­thing if the val­ue it cre­ates is high. A nu­tri­tion spe­cial­ist must ex­plain how to get fam­i­lies to stop drink­ing juice and start eat­ing whole fruit and veg­eta­bles. She has de­vel­oped a step-by-step process in­stead of a cold-turkey ap­proach, which, de­spite its val­ue, fails.

Maybe, as an en­tre­pre­neur, you have gone through the com­plex process of pric­ing and achiev­ing high­er prof­itabil­i­ty. Your col­leagues in the small busi­ness ecosys­tem keep ask­ing how you can repli­cate it for them. They pri­vate­ly call you the pric­ing gu­ru, and you re­al­ize you are leav­ing mon­ey on the ta­ble. While you do not have the high cre­den­tials of many man­age­ment con­sul­tants, you have gone down that road. All you need is a re­peat­able process and a way to de­liv­er it.

Dis­cov­er a method

Some­times we do things on au­topi­lot; we use lit­tle cog­ni­tive ef­fort and in­cor­rect­ly as­sume every­one should know this method. We see YouTube videos where in­flu­encers solve a com­mon elec­tric gen­er­a­tor prob­lem in five min­utes. Small gen­er­a­tor own­ers of­ten park it or leave fu­el in it for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods. This makes the fu­el go stale, and the car­bu­re­tor fouls up. This habit leads to ex­pen­sive main­te­nance and down­time dur­ing a pow­er fail­ure.

Just as Daniel, the stand­by gen­er­a­tor YouTu­ber, iden­ti­fies a fre­quent prob­lem and shows a fix. While some prob­lems are hard­er to solve, you al­ways need a path­way that moves knowl­edge from your head in­to the re­ceiv­er’s mind. It sounds sim­ple, but it is de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple. But knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur­ship isn’t about be­ing an in­flu­encer; it’s about tak­ing proven knowl­edge and pack­ag­ing it so more peo­ple can ac­cess, ap­ply and pay for it.

Method to prod­uct

First, try to avoid sell­ing what you know. Fool­ish­ly, point to your de­grees and years of ex­pe­ri­ence. But who cares about your lead­er­ship, or man­age­ment, or your au­to­mo­tive parts knowl­edge? Peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions want a clear out­come, one that takes them to a high­er lev­el of per­for­mance.

The best start­ing ques­tion is sim­ple: What prob­lems do clients reg­u­lar­ly bring to me that I can solve for them in a re­peat­able way? If you have no clients, you no­tice your cir­cle com­plain about get­ting some­one with elec­tron­ics ex­per­tise to re­pair their cars with­out go­ing to an ex­pen­sive deal­er­ship. While you have not reached a high lev­el of com­pe­tence as an au­to­mo­tive en­gi­neer, you know how to do re­search to solve these prob­lems. AI-gen­er­at­ed knowl­edge has be­come more of a com­mod­i­ty, and the low­est price will, in the­o­ry, win the sale. How­ev­er, in your spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, AI might not have the an­swer, as it could be a lo­cal is­sue or an area where lit­tle re­search has been done. And that is where you come in.

Let’s say you are a con­sul­tant hired to fix a cus­tomer ser­vice is­sue with your lo­cal gro­cery store. While shop­ping there, you no­ticed the man­ag­er strug­gling to keep his front-end staff mo­ti­vat­ed. You ap­proached the su­per­vi­sor, as some­one with an eye for op­por­tu­ni­ty, and had a chat with him. He wants a pro­pos­al, and you will de­liv­er one with a clear, five-step so­lu­tion.

Since you have a re­peat­able process, be­gin with an au­dit of cus­tomer com­plaints. While the gro­cer will try to con­vince you he knows the prob­lem, don’t take that as gospel, as he may have a blind spot. Sec­ond, iden­ti­fy com­mon fail­ure points; third, de­vel­op tem­plate re­spons­es for key en­gage­ment is­sues. Fourth­ly, train front-line staff and fi­nal­ly, mea­sure cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.

Match buy­er with out­come

Of­ten, you will get re­quests that may not be the right fit. Re­mem­ber you are not an ex­pert in all ar­eas. Some de­mands might stretch your com­pe­tence, and that is ok. How­ev­er, there comes a point where it is be­yond you, and you need to find an­oth­er ex­pert. Re­fer­rals are part of the busi­ness; think of your knowl­edge as part of an ecosys­tem. When an­oth­er ex­pert rec­om­mends you, rec­i­p­ro­cate to keep the re­la­tion­ship grow­ing. Med­ical doc­tors do that all the time.

If you need more in­for­ma­tion on be­com­ing a knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur, I am the keynote speak­er at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Na­tion­al Ser­vices Week on Sep­tem­ber 7. In this break­fast ses­sion, I will map out how you can move from a pro­fes­sion­al to a knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur.

Even if you see your­self as just a pro­fes­sion­al, there is a next step to earn more and achieve more with the ex­per­tise you have. Or­gan­i­sa­tions that em­ploy tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als can lim­it ca­reer paths. As tra­di­tion­al en­tre­pre­neurs, you need to build a busi­ness mod­el around your prac­ti­tion­er skills and cre­ate a knowl­edge ven­ture.

Saj­jad Hamid is an SME and Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Ad­vi­sor and a Fel­low of the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute. Con­tact him at en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com