This is something that can be hard to get your head around at first, especially when you’ve just realised your Thing and you want to keep it well protected. But the best thing you can do with your Thing is give it away.
Very often, simply telling people about your Thing is not enough for them to experience the ‘big result’ of your Thing (there are exceptions, of course–when your Thing is the actual recipe). So you’re quite safe to give away a lot of INFORMATION about your Thing and still be left with something to sell. Because what you’re left to sell is ACTION.
For many people and business owners, simply knowing how to do something doesn’t mean that they WILL do something!
I know how to get fit–it involves doing more exercise–but WILL I do it? Er... not usually on my own, I’ll be honest. So even through I know HOW to do it (and if I don’t, I can easily Google some free advice or watch a YouTube video), I won’t very often actually DO it. However, if I take myself off to the gym (which I’ve paid for) and attend a class (yes, that’s me running around the beach at bootcamp every Saturday morning), then I WILL do exercise. Because in this instance I am very happy to pay someone else to make me take the ACTION.
You can see this information-vs-action playing out all around you. Just because you have the recipe to hand (for free) doesn’t mean you want to cook... so you go out to eat and pay the chef and restaurant staff to take care of that. Just because you know how to answer your own phone/set up your systems/do your own marketing/keep your own books, etc. doesn’t mean you want to do that, or will... I know–I pay other people to take care of all of those (well, except the marketing... I mostly do my own there!).
And the same goes for your Thing too... don’t worry about giving lots of it away as information–you can share all the plans, checklists, concepts, philosophies you want to. If people want to put them into ACTION, they will pay you.
Again, I’ll repeat the caveat: if your Thing simply IS the recipe or plan, then you need to give away information ‘around’ the plan–why it works, what makes it different, examples of it working. But in most cases, you can talk all day long ‘about’ your Thing and people will still pay you for the ACTION.
So don’t hold back when it comes to sharing your Thing, because the more you talk about it, the more people will want to put it into ACTION (and that’s when you get paid!).
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