Review

This book in part gave me permission to post in public. I realised I was further along my Product Management journey than many. I’m reading a book a week and have a decade of experience. I’m confident I’ll be able to help those starting out on their journey. That realisation was worth the purchase price alone.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• The expert industry share their advice and knowledge with the world and get paid for it
• Becoming an expert is simply a matter of positioning and packaging who you are and what you know so that you can help the greatest number of people in your target audience
• Anyone can create and distribute valuable how-to content that helps other people
• Most people tragically undervalue what they know. People will always need help.
• Expert types:
• The Results Expert (someone who’s been there done that and can help others)
• You’ve come further than others, and the lessons you’ve learned are valuable to them
• You’ve built accidental expertise
• There are people who will look at you and want to pay you for what you already know
• What have you gotten in life and business?
• Do you have motivation, leadership, financial, business, marketing, relationship, spiritual, style or productivity advice?
• The Research Expert
• Experts are students first.
• You can research a topic and become an expert
• You don’t have to have done anything but research a topic to become an expert in it
• What if you interviewed the top 20 people in a field, and distilled their lessons into a 10 step system?
• Choose a topic → research it → interview others → synthesise what you learn → offer findings for sale
• The Role Model
• People listen to those they trust, respect, admire and follow
• If people believe you’re a good person, they’ll ask you for advise
• Leaders in every field are asked for their advice
• Claim and master your topic: Pick one topic, learn it, master it, share it, become known for it, and make real money teaching it
• Pick Your Audience: You need to decide whom you want to serve most. You don’t have the time and resources to market to the entire world. Who will benefit? Who can pay? Who is underserved? Where are they?
• Understand their ambitions, needs, frustrations, and learning preferences and you’ll be able to create targeted problem-solving how-to information that they will buy
• Define Your Story
• Do you have a struggle people can relate to?
• What have you overcome and how?
• What did you figure out along the way?
• What are you going to teach me that I can apply now to make my life better?
• Create a solution (a product or program) your audience can buy is key to your success and spreading your message
• First choose the modality (text, audio, video, live event, coaching)
• Create the content
• Figure out what your audience needs to know in order to move from point A to point B
• What process or step-by-step approach will help them achieve their goals?
• Thinking through that will help you discover your content and how to organise it
• Drill down into each step and share examples, common obstacles, success secrets etc
• Create a solution they can follow to success
• Provide valuable information to your target audience for free
• Grow your newsletter, the size of your newsletter is correlated to your to your income and influence
• A value-added campaign is best practice in our industry
• send out a strategic series of communications that serves your audience with great free content
• … and then say, “Hey, if you liked that, then you will love this.”
• make sure your free information is truly valuable and actionable
• Give your best advice and ideas away for free → lead with your best work
• You’ll be able to create more content → you’re always learning new things → you’ll get feedback from customers that’ll make you more effective
• The more you post, the more people will find you
• Get promotional partners
• Find other experts in the community who have audiences that will like your content
• Give and you shall receive. Add value for them first, then they’ll reciprocate somehow and someday.
• Get them to promote your message and you amplify your message and income
• Be yourself, display your uniqueness and you’ll become more influential
• Know how you and your content are different
• Anyone can learn and master a topic AND anyone can organise that knowledge into helpful advice
• Mindset:
• My life experience, message, and voice are valuable
• If I don’t know it or have it, I will go learn it or create it
• Student First, Teacher Second, Servant Always
• Mastery is a way of life
• Dabbling in dozens of topics leads to failure vs a life of mastery which leads to wealth
• Stay focused, overcome hardships, become a true expert in your field
• Develop the skills you need (writing, presentation, copywriting, facilitation, listening, influencing)
• Position yourself purposefully vs other experts.
• How do I explain how I’m different? Why is my content valuable? How much do I charge? What “level” do I want to play at? How distinct you are and how much you charge and stay connected with your peers is vitally important to your positioning in our community
• Present to the world a very organised, articulate, caring, credible, happy, and healthy person.
• Promotion:
• Announcement marketing never really worked well, and these days it’s completely useless.
• Instead add value to your consumers for free by actually teaching and training them on your topic. Send out free content pieces then say ‘if you like those things, you’ll love my new program’
• The key to doing well with your promotions is to understand buying behaviour and sales psychology.
• Elements in any good sales message:
• Claim: a bold promise about what your product or service can help others accomplish
• Challenge: Show them that your audience’s world and their problems. Highlight their struggle.
• Commonality: If you haven’t been through it, they won’t listen to it.
• Credibility: I’ve already reached the destination, and I’m here to shorten your learning curve and your path to success. I’ve done it and I’ve helped others do it, and here’s proof.
• Choice. Present product, program, or service in such a way that it is obviously different and better than anything else out there.
• Comparison Pricing: Make them feel that they are getting a great deal
• Concern: Obliterate objections through sales messaging
• Close and call to action. Make a strong close and call to action.
• Stack benefits and bonuses. Reasons to buy now
• Offer a guarantee → more people will buy your offerings because of the guarantee than will abuse it
• End with scarcity or urgency messaging
• Very few products or programs can stand the test of time. So deliver new value and information. Challenge yourself to continue delivering new ideas, distinct stories and perspectives, and cutting-edge information
• Sharing your voice will help you grow and help you contribute to society

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

• The expert industry share their advice and knowledge with the world and get paid for it
• Becoming an expert is simply a matter of positioning and packaging who you are and what you know so that you can help the greatest number of people in your target audience.
• Experts work for themselves
• Anyone can create and distribute valuable how-to content that helps other people
• 6 areas an expert can get paid for:
• Speaking
• Writing
• Workshops
• Coaching
• Consulting
• Online training products
• Tony Robbins message: “You have unlimited personal power to live the life you desire and make a difference, and I can help you tap into it”
• The author became the leader and spokesperson for the expert industry
• Most people tragically undervalue what they know. People will always need help.
• Build your expertise, learn to package and promote your message, to serve as many people as you can
• What do people ask you for help with? That should be what you choose to do
• Reasons for working in the expert industry:
• You can base your work on your passion and knowledge
• Your work will be about relating and creating
• Relate to your audience to build trust and understand their ambitions
• Create useful content that adds value
• Send out free information, then at some point put out something they can buy which goes deeper
• You can work from anywhere and anytime
• You can choose who to work with (and get to work alongside industry leaders) \
• You get paid for value not hours
• You don’t need a bit team.
• If you have more than 10 employees you’re doing it wrong
• Great tools have lowered the barriers to entry
• You can profit (more so than working in house)

• Expert types:
• The Results Expert (someone who’s been there done that and can help others)
• You’ve come further than others, and the lessons you’ve learned are valuable to them
• You’ve built accidental expertise
• There are people who will look at you and want to pay you for what you already know
• What have you gotten in life and business?
• Do you have motivation, leadership, financial, business, marketing, relationship, spiritual, style or productivity advice?
• The Research Expert
• Experts are students first.
• You can research a topic and become an expert
• You don’t have to have done anything but research a topic to become an expert in it
• What if you interviewed the top 20 people in a field, and distilled their lessons into a 10 step system?
• Choose a topic → research it → interview others → synthesise what you learn → offer findings for sale
• The Role Model
• People listen to those they trust, respect, admire and follow
• If people believe you’re a good person, they’ll ask you for advise
• Leaders in every field are asked for their advice
• The Guru Trifecta:
• Build on the three pillars consciously, strategically and actively for the topic you want to help others in
• Have you diligently researched the topic? (Read at least 6 books in the last year?)
• Have you interviewed at least 10 other experts on the topic?
• Have you applied your lessons learned and gotten results?
• Are you living a life people will admire and respond to?

• Claim and master your topic
• Let your curiosity, love for learning and desire to master your field help you gain expertise
• Pick one topic, learn it, master it, share it, become known for it, and make real money teaching it
• Master one topic before moving onto another
• You can quickly become an expert by getting results, doing your research, and serving as a role model
• You must love to do it, and be excited by the thought of learning more and mastering it (for at least the next 5 years)
• The path: student → practitioner → expert
• You can become an expert on any given topic, you can reinvent yourself
• Have you had a turning point, a triumph, or a tragedy you can leverage? and teach others how to overcome?
• Pick Your Audience
• You can start with a topic, or start with an audience
• You need to decide whom you want to serve most
• Who, exactly, is your target audience?
• Narrow your audience to a recognisable type of person
• You don’t have the time and resources to market to the entire world
• Find people similar to you, who are passionate about the same topics you are
• Who will benefit? Who can pay? Who is underserved? Where are they?
• Discover Your Audience’s Problems
• Study your audience, discover their needs, and serve them with advice and how-to information that can solve their problems and improve their lives
• What are their aspirations? Challenges? What have they tried? What didn’t work?
• Understand their ambitions, needs, frustrations, and learning preferences and you’ll be able to create targeted problem-solving how-to information that they will buy
• What are they afraid of?
• What do they miss?
• What do they hate?
• Define Your Story
• Do you have a struggle people can relate to?
• People relate to struggle more than success
• Have you been through what they’re going through?
• What have you overcome and how?
• What did you figure out along the way?
• What did you succeed at—what results did you get?
• What are you going to teach me that I can apply now to make my life better?
• Create a solution
• Create a solution (a product or program) your audience can buy is key to your success and spreading your message
• Most fail here. Few do the work to create the product
• First choose the modality (text, audio, video, live event, coaching)
• The modalities here are in order of how much you can charge for them
• Create the content
• Figure out what your audience needs to know in order to move from point A to point B
• What process or step-by-step approach will help them achieve their goals?
• Thinking through that will help you discover your content and how to organise it
• Drill down into each step and share examples, common obstacles, success secrets etc
• Create a solution they can follow to success
• Put up a Website
• Provide valuable information to your target audience for free
• Add value and build rapport
• Capture leads
• Offer something in exchange for a name and email address
• Grow your newsletter, the size of your newsletter is correlated to your to your income and influence
• Make money, offer something for sale
• Create a reliable funnel that leads to a sale
• Campaign Your Products and Programs
• A campaign is a sequence of promotions that lead to a desired consumer behaviour
• A value-added campaign is best practice in our industry
• send out a strategic series of communications that serves your audience with great free content
• … and then say, “Hey, if you liked that, then you will love this.”
• make sure your free information is truly valuable and actionable
• You’ll also need to communicate why your customers should believe in you\
• Describe your audience pain points and how your solution overcomes them
• Share your credibility
• Reinforce the benefits of your solution
• Show testimonials who’ve had success
• Offer a money back guarantee
• Create some urgency
• Post free content
• Search and social media bring traffic and attention to your work
• Post free high quality content: blogs, articles, podcasts, training videos
• Don’t worry about giving stuff away or running out of stuff to teach.
• Give your best advice and ideas away for free → lead with your best work
• it gets more people into your funnel
• You’ll get more content:
• You’re always learning your topic
• You’ll get feedback from customers that’ll make you more effective
• You’ll grow with time
• Post 10 videos on YouTube, each addressing one question from the most frequently asked questions by your audience
• The more you post, the more people will find you
• Get promotional partners
• Find other experts in the community who have audiences that will like your content
• Get them to promote your message and you amplify your message and income
• Always attend conferences, networking, researching, and seek new partners
• Give and you shall receive. Add value for them first, then they’ll reciprocate somehow and someday.
• Find them by searching keywords on your topic or looking on speakers bureau
• You want to share your information with their audience
• Get them to interview you, promote something you’ve posted, or direct their people to your blog posting. You want them to give you exposure.
• Turn that exposure into income for you and them
• Repeat and Build the Business Based on Distinction, Excellence, and Service

• Three values to keep in mind:
• Distinction, be unique
• Be yourself, display your uniqueness and you’ll become more influential
• Know how you and your content are different
• Excellence, give your greatest effort
• Care about your career and customers
• strive to be a master and leader in what you do
• Service:
• The foundation of the expert industry is serving others

• Money can amplify your message
• Don’t limit your income, explore all 6 profit pillars
• Many experts with a best-selling book become one-hit wonders as they didn’t have anything else to sell
• Example Expert achieving £1m
1. 1 low-priced audio program a day at $197 → $70,920 a year\
2. 100 people into a $97-a-month subscription program → $116,400 a year
3. 60 mid-tier products a month at $497 → $357,840 a year
4. 100 seminar tickets at $1,000 → $100,000 a year
5. 15 coaching clients at $2,000 a month → $360,000 a year
• The value of any program is not how much it costs but how much value it delivers
• Anyone can learn and master a topic AND anyone can organize that knowledge into helpful advice
• People will pay a lot of money to shorten their learning curve and their path to success
• Our mission is to improve the lives and businesses of those we serve, by providing great value and information.

• The messenger mindset:
1. My life experience, message, and voice are valuable
• If you don’t value your voice, you don’t have a shot at feeling confident and becoming successful as an expert
• Messengers have a hunger to share and serve. It comes from a moral obligation or calling
• What would you say if your friend used the same excuse as you?
2. If I don’t know it or have it, I will go learn it or create it
• Find a way to share your message
• If others have achieved it, model what they’ve done and follow their lead
• What will you have to learn? Create? Overcome? Is there a playbook you can follow?
3. I will not let my small business make me small-minded
• Don’t give up on your vision or play small just because you are starting out
• Have a grand vision for yourself and your message, despite your present circumstances
4. Student First, Teacher Second, Servant Always
• be a student at heart
• Sings you’re a student: you talk about the books you’ve read, research hours on end, attend seminars, listen to tapes, and interview people
• Pride yourself on your ability to learn and synthesise good ideas that can help others
• Be a world-class student, make life a learning lab
5. Mastery is a way of life
• Dabbling in dozens of topics leads to failure vs a life of mastery which leads to wealth
• Stay focused, overcome hardships, become a true expert in your field

• Develop the skills you need (writing, presentation, copywriting, facilitation, listening, influencing)
• Ask what new skills will you need to develop to stay relevant, connected, and effective
• Then diligently develop that skill.
• E.g. Presenting on video is now important
• Don’t outsource it, master it
• Build skills by taking action, struggling, figuring it out, asking questions, and persisting
• Positioning
• Develop a good sense of..
• what your audience wants
• what it takes for your community to hold you and your content in high regard
• Position yourself purposefully vs other experts.
• How do I explain how I’m different? Why is my content valuable? How much do I charge? What “level” do I want to play at?
• How the author did it…
• Premium pricing
• Synthesised so much best practice it was comprehensive and cutting-edge.
• Structured in a very practical and actionable manner
• Presence and presentation style was distinct and more engaging
• Made seminars about training content NOT hyping people up with affirmations
• Took a different approach to live events, I was obsessive about quality and excellence
• Met and worked with all other leading experts in my industry
• How distinct you are and how much you charge and stay connected with your peers is vitally important to your positioning in our community
• First, position yourself as a credible source on their subject.
• Second, position your information as leading-edge training content
• Third get close to the other experts in your field
• Packaging
• Learn to package their information in a way that their customers can easily understand and implement.
• Outlining, chunking, ordering, and structuring your message is a skill that takes time to hone
• Focus on process and practical methodology. Order information so it’s process and system driven, geared to helping learners move directly and efficiently, step by step, from point A to point B. Build an ability in your audience to achieve a specific outcome
• create a clearer and more implementable system, that helps your audience solve a problem and achieve a very specific outcome
• be clear about what your customer wants to overcome and achieve, create a step-by-step process that shows them how to achieve their goal
• Learn to logically lay out your content and design it beautifully
• 80% of the products in our industry look horrible
• Present to the world a very organised, articulate, caring, credible, happy, and healthy person.
• To stand out in the industry, dress well, speak well, and carry yourself well. Project the strength and energy within you that cares and is enthusiastic about the world.
• Promoting
• Alert the world to who you are, what you teach, and what you offer
• Announcement marketing never really worked well, and these days it’s completely useless.
• Instead add value to your consumers for free by actually teaching and training them on your topic. Send out free content pieces then say ‘if you like those things, you’ll love my new program’
• The key to doing well with your promotions is to understand buying behaviour and sales psychology.
• Elements in any good sales message:
• Claim: a bold promise about what your product or service can help others accomplish
• highlight the benefits, results, newness, distinction, or wow factor of what you are offering
• Challenge: Show them that your audience’s world and their problems. Highlight their struggle.
• Commonality: If you haven’t been through it, they won’t listen to it.
• Don’t sound too perfect and too successful to be believable
• Make prospects feel the challenges their facing are common and that you have encountered similar obstacles on your path to success
• Credibility:
• Create credibility by sharing the reasons why you are qualified to help your customers overcome their challenges and improve their life, results, or situation.
• I’ve already reached the destination, and I’m here to shorten your learning curve and your path to success. I’ve done it and I’ve helped others do it, and here’s proof.
• Choice. Present product, program, or service in such a way that it is obviously different and better than anything else out there.
• be bold in bemoaning why other offerings are insufficient or ineffective
• state strongly and specifically why your solution is the best available to date.
• show all the benefits that your solution will bring into your prospects’ lives
• show testimonials
• Comparison Pricing: showing big numbers and high value and then scaling down to a lower number but equally high value. Make them feel that they are getting a great deal
• Concern: Obliterate objections during sales messaging, by thinking through likely objections, doubts and fears. Answer them in your copy
• Close and call to action. Make a strong close and call to action.
• Stack benefits and bonuses. Reasons to buy now
• Offer a guarantee → more people will buy your offerings because of the guarantee than will abuse it
• End with scarcity or urgency messaging
• Partnering Get partners who make your great content go viral
• Find more messengers to amplify your message
• Identify other experts on your topic (subscribe as you go)
• Reach out to these potential promotional partners. Give and you shall receive. Reach out to another expert and give them exactly that which you wish to receive.
• Promote what they want. Follow up with evidence you did. This promotes reciprocity.
• Create an affiliate program and make it easy and profitable for them to promote for you

• Customers are demanding greater value, more free content, and higher levels of access to, and interaction with, experts through social media.
• Content is king, and the new kings of the economy will be the content creators
• You can take any industry that doesn’t collaborate well or share best practices, and improve its earning potential by a factor of ten by helping it do so.
• share the industry’s best practices across the silos
• knockoffs and copies never do well
• Very few products or programs can stand the test of time. So deliver new value and information. Challenge yourself to continue delivering new ideas, distinct stories and perspectives, and cutting-edge information
• Be distinct. Share your own stories and create your own content
• Transition from Sales Communication to Value Communication
• Don’t sent sales-only emails
• Send out useful training that helps them move from point A to point B
• Focus on our customers as much after the sale as before the sale

• The final barrier to your sharing your message is fear. Audiences will listen they always do
• Give people value → they will support you → buy from you
• Sharing your voice will help you grow and help you contribute to society