You should really be charging for this

Value creation is the ultimate entrepreneurial starting point.

If you’re naturally gifted at something that improves people’s condition in a material way, then it’s possible you’ve got a business opportunity on your hands.

If you’ve spent years helping hundreds or thousands of people with a specific process that is common to them all, then there’s no reason you can’t transform that experience into a product that others can pay for and become obsessed with.

Think back if anyone has ever said this to you before: “You should really be charging for this.”

If so, then that’s an opportunity. If there’s something you’ve accomplished that people respect, something you know that others find valuable, something you do that they would pay money to learn, then you can parlay that into a real business.

When positioned strategically, your expertise could create an entirely new category that’s potentially worth millions of dollars.

But first, you have to respect your talent enough to treat it as a buyable asset. Doing this requires confidence, courage, compassion and permission. Each of which is easier said than done, and worth more than you might think.

Because in the entrepreneurial realm, vision is everything. If people say you should really be charging for something, then it’s critical to imagine a future in which that’s possible.

The hard part is the instantiation process. Converting all the specific applications of your expertise into a general classification, principle or theory. Building a body of knowledge complete with its own set of concepts and terms and activities to make up your new professional discipline.

This process is highly labor intensive. Building out an entire ontology for your specific domain can take years.

But that’s how value is created. And that’s what the enterprise calls for.

If you want to productize your unique talents into a buyable product, then at some point, you have to take an intellectual inventory. You have to comprehensively flesh everything out.

Doing so is one a hell of a project, but if you’re lucky, it will prove people right.

You really should really be charging for this.

What are you so good at that you make look easy?