3 ways to turn your knowledge into tangible assets that attract clients automatically (with 15 pictures)

So for experts and thought leaders, here are three ways to turn your knowledge into client-attracting assets.

If you'd rather see this as a video click here.

Before we get into the 3 steps, let me ask you a question.

Why is McKinsey Known as a Thought Leader? (It's not what you think)

When you think of McKinsey, what do you think?

Love it or loathe it, the company is probably best known as a thought leader.

And if you ask most other consultants they'll tell you the reason McKinsey is known as a thought leader is it has an incredible amount of knowledge.

From AI to tech to talent to urbanisation to pandemic recovery strategies. And more.

You may push harder and ask where does this reputation for thought leadership come from???

And you'll hear people say it's everything the firm has learned. It's all the skills it has. All the experience it has.

And that's why people see McKinsey as a thought leader.

But they couldn't be further from the truth.

The reason that McKinsey is so well known as a thought leader is not because of its knowledge.

It's because of...?well, let me show you.

This blog post is based on a McKinsey survey.

This piece on the pandemic recovery is based on a McKinsey report.

This McKinsey program is another way the firm shares its knowledge.

So the reason McKinsey is seen as a thought leader is nothing to do with its knowledge.

It's because the company is brilliant at just one thing: making its knowledge tangible.

And that's my goal for you with this short article today. To help you make your knowledge tangible in three steps.

Your Knowledge is Not Up For Question

But first let's say something about your knowledge. Because it's probably not up for question.

You are probably brilliant at what you do. You're brilliant at what you know.

The key, then, is how do you share that knowledge with others? And how do you have other people know you and see you as the source of that knowledge?

Because at the moment, your knowledge is this fluid mass of information in your head, or in the heads of all of your people.

So what we need to do today is focus on how we turn that very fluid knowledge into a very tangible asset.

How Do You Turn Your Knowledge into a Tangible Asset?

Before we go any further we also need to think about this word asset.

Because it has very specific meanings.

According to Investopedia, an asset is something that will generate cash flow for you.

It will improve sales.

It may have economic value and it will deliver future benefit for you, or for your business.

So making sure that people see your knowledge as a tangible asset is a very significant strategy for you and for your business moving forward.

Let's look at some practical ways now of doing that.

The Single Most Important Tangible Asset (One That Spawns Other Assets)

First of all I want you to be thinking about the single most important way of making your knowledge tangible. And that's by writing a book.

A book is very clearly a tangible asset, but it's much more than that.

Firstly because it attracts companies to you looking for products and services to solve their problems.

But it also does more than that.

Secondly, a book will attract other influencers to you, creating new business relationships and new networking opportunities. Because of the very specialism that you have and because they find you through your book.

Thirdly, journalists and media outlets looking for experts to interview will find you – through your book. (What price an editorial mention these days rather than advertising?)

Fourth, associations and meeting planners looking for keynote speakers will find you through your book.

Fifth, podcasters and bloggers looking for people to interview will find you through your book.

Here's a quick summary of the five things a book does for you commercially.

The business model of these two last groups – associations and podcasters – depends on their finding people to speak to on a regular basis.

And let me explain why that is.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous

I'm going to do this by reminding you of the work of Peter Drucker, an amazing journalist who became a fantastic management thinker, because he tangiblized his knowledge. (If there is such a word.) What I mean is he wrote his knowledge down, not just in journals, but in book form.

Drucker said 'The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous', and that's brilliant for us as thought leaders. Because we don't want to be seen to be hawking all wares.

We want to be seen as thought leaders, simply writing and crafting our work, talking about and sharing our knowledge.

Let's explore Drucker's thinking a bit further.

He said 'The aim of marketing is to know and understand customers so well that the product or the service that we have fits them and sells itself.'

I love this. In part because this is what a book does.

And, importantly, it does this through self-selection.

So what you find as people get towards the end of your book is that your ideal readers become your ideal clients and in turn become your ideal community.

But the people who are not your ideal clients just won't be interested because your knowledge, your stories and your services just aren't appropriate for them.

So a book is a fantastic filtering mechanism, you can be certain of that.

But first we have to get your book into the hands of those ideal readers.

3 practical steps to turn your book into tangible assets

And that's where the three practical steps come in. Steps that will help to get your book in front of the right kinds of people.

So what other assets can your book help create?

Well, the first thing I want you to do, when you're thinking about what content to put into your book, I want you to interview people.

This may seem counter-intuitive. I know you've got a tremendous amount of knowledge in your head, or in the collective heads of the people in your business.

But you also need to speak to the men and women around you, other experts, for example, to help contextualise your knowledge. Perhaps even clients who've used your products or gone through your particular process.

You need at least 20-30 interviews with people and these will give you the stories to populate your book.

And this will also give you your first tangible assets.

For example, my own personal workflow is to start with video.

I record all my interviews on video interview, I either do a Zoom interview with people, or if I'm face to face, I'll have a camera with me.

And so my video, the behind the scenes video from the interview, will go onto YouTube. Because YouTube is a humongous search engine. And people looking to solve their problems will be able to find my interviews on the web.

Then you can take the audio from the interviews and create a series of podcast interviews with the men and women you've been interviewing. Because they matter to you, they make a difference, and they've been helping you to tell your stories they'll be great interviews.

You can put those on Apple or Google podcasts. (Pick one.) You just put it in one place, and then the web spreads your podcasts everywhere.

Let's pause a second, because this is an important point.

So in the research phase you'll be posting interviews periodically – even in the 6 to 9 months BEFORE you write and publish your book.

What does this achieve?

Well, you'll be building an audience for your book, and your services, even before the book appears. Brilliant strategy.

Then, of course, in the second phase you will need to sit down to write and launch the book, including the best stories from those interviews you've just been doing.

Now you'll probably post your book in hardback on Amazon. (Whether you use a mainstream publisher or if you self publish.)

As well as the hardback edition, make your book available in Kindle form, too. They're picked up by a slightly different kind of reader.

You could make your book available as a paperback, but we urge you to save that till six-nine months or maybe a year after you publish the hardback. That just gives you another opportunity to remind everyone in your community that your book exists.

And then one of the really great things you can do is this: take the content of your book – whatever it might be, let's say 50,000 words – and break it up into thousand-work chunks.

With those posts you can populate your blog for the next year. Content marketing done! And every single post is strategic, focused on the key messages in your book.

Not just random content, dreamed up five minutes before the deadline.

Goodbye hamster wheel of death, trying to find new content!?

Finally, in step 3, I'm going to recommend that you turn your book into an audiobook. A lot of people consume audio books – when they're on their daily commute, or on a flight somewhere, or in the gym.

And you've got to remember that we're still talking about one project here. You've still written only one book!

But that's a lot of material you've created – the tangible output from your book, the assets that you've created. There's nothing else like a book for sharing your thought leadership.

All these platforms are search engines

You've now created a web of your thought leadership across all of these different platforms. So that when people search for solutions to their problems they'll find you. Remember all of these platforms are search engines.

So you can see your book really is a powerful asset. An asset that is tangible in multiple different ways across multiple different platforms.

Who will find your book assets?

Remember, too, that your book is a tangible asset that will be found...

1) by influencers who are looking for men and women like you to network with.

2) by journalists and media looking for people to interview.

3) by associations and firms who run inspirational conferences. They're looking for speakers every year, every quarter, every month. If you publish a new book, they will find you. If you craft the right title, the right book with the right message, your speaking schedule will just explode.

4) by podcasters and bloggers. I've already said they have an immense problem because they've got to fill their pages, or their airwaves, with new speakers every week, every month. So they're going to want to interview you and have you share your knowledge with their communities. Because they want to look up to the minute, they want to look cutting edge, and so your cutting edge knowledge can help them.

5) And finally, by clients reading your book, who will buy you and your products or services. And this is the key point, your book has becomes a a direct commercial asset. Clients will say 'We need this product, this service, this person to help us solve our problems.'

So let me recap.

1) Capture interviews, specifically the audio for Apple Podcasts, but also if you can do video recording you can put that material onto YouTube.

That will take you, I guess, 3 to 6 months before you've even written the book.

2) Write and launch your book. Get it on to Amazon –?initially as a hardback, but also as a Kindle edition.

Then after the publication of your book, edit out thousand- or 1200-word chunks, and this will give you 50 or more posts that will give you social media content for a year or more.

3) And the final phase after the book launch is create an audio book.

If you don't feel your voice is right for the task you can hire somebody to read your manuscript. Or you can use Amazon Polly, a free AI transcription service run by Amazon.

Then, once you've got an MP3 file, you can upload it to Audible, Amazon's audiobook service. Which means that now your audiobook is marketable on Audible and findable on Audible.

You should write a book

So that's the 3 practical steps to making sure that your knowledge is made tangible for your ideal clients. This strategy will attract clients to you automatically, because they are already out there looking for you.

If you're an expert, a coach, a consultant, a thought leader in any area, there should be no doubt in your mind.

You really should write a book.

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This snippet is a transcript of a session from the Authors Roundtable Q&A – if you want to ask me any questions about writing or publishing your book, click the link in the comments to sign up for this week's live Q&A.