As business owners, we all have knowledge and abilities that offer real value to customers and clients. I call these unique skills our “secret sauce” – and its often what sets us apart in a super-crowded marketplace.
These days, the prevailing philosophy is to be generous with your secret sauce – to share your hard-earned expertise freely. And there are plenty of reasons to justify this. As AI continues to level the playing field, your knowledge may not be so “secret” anymore. Or maybe prospective clients want some insight or how-to tips before they’ll trust you with a job or project.
While I’m not opposed to offering prospects a peek behind the curtain, there’s a difference between being generous and giving away the very thing that pays your bills.
What if sharing your secret sauce for free is actually costing you money?
My client, Bob, learned this lesson the hard way.
Bob has spent his entire career in the entertainment business. He’s the consummate expert in his field – the guy you hire when you need an event to go off without a hitch.
One of Bob’s long-time clients, Sam, owns a night club. Sam had retained Bob to produce events for years, and it was a highly successful partnership. Then Sam’s son, Paul, joined the business.
Paul decided he could save money by cutting out the middleman and hosting an event himself. He tried to follow what he believed was Bob’s formula: the same vendors, the same timeline, the same run-of-show. But without Bob’s relationships and judgment calls behind it, the event began to unravel. Panicked, Paul called Bob for pointers. Wanting to help a loyal client, Bob offered his advice for free.
Why is this a bad thing, you ask? Well, it’s likely that Bob’s generosity has cost him a lucrative client. On the plus side, the experience taught him a valuable lesson: savvy business owners don’t give away their secret sauce, they leverage it.
Bob and I turned his know-how into a product instead of a favor.
We packaged his knowledge into “Bob’s Secret Sauce: tips and tricks for creating a wildly successful event.” Bob priced it to sell and offered it to all the Pauls out there –do-it-yourselfers who would happily pay for expertise rather than guess at it.
Now Bob has a second income stream that runs while he sleeps. And rather than cannibalizing his primary line of business, the increased exposure has boosted his reputation – generating more high-end clients and business opportunities.
Is the cost of giving away your secret sauce keeping you up at night? Let’s talk about turning your know-how into a revenue stream instead.
