What if sharing your knowledge, rather than holding onto it, is the change your business desperately needs? 

Have you ever worried about sharing too much of your processes or too much of your business knowledge and information? Worried that if you did share, people might copy you and you’d lose your competitive advantage. 

If so, I’d like to ask you to suspend that fear for a moment and re-shift the perspective. 

Take Tesla Motors for example. If you were the owner of this company, and you had a significant advantage over some of the biggest car manufacturers the world has seen, would you ever consider sharing the patents that gave you the edge over your competitors? Probably not.

It would take someone seriously confident in their brand and someone who truly believed that their knowledge had the power to re-shape society and help billions of people. 

Cue Tony Stark… sorry, Elon Musk. 

Elon decided to share Tesla’s innovative electric battery patents with the industry in a revolutionary move that might have advanced the electric motor industry 5-10 years, speeding up the global adoption of electric vehicles. 

Musk writes, “Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

Elon saw that Tesla’s mission was bigger than just car sales. But rather it was about making his technology more accessible and increasing the takeup of electric vehicles, something the world is in desperate need of. 

When your goal and vision as a business is set beyond the finite ‘me vs you’ game, and rather on creating positive impact beyond, it then becomes a game of collaboration and partnership. 

As business owners, specialists, and experts, we hold knowledge that has the potential to change people’s lives. Whether that impact is small and localised or big and global, it matters not. What matters is that we all shift perspective to a purposeful intention, built around partnering with like-minded businesses with shared visions. 

Taking a note out of Elon’s book, what do you have to share? Without fear of increasing competition, but rather in the hopes of sharing your knowledge and contributing to the betterment of society? Whether that be to your local community or to the international community, focus on creating impact by sharing, contributing, and educating. It will help shift the mentality from a traditionally competitive nature to one of collaboration and growth. Something we humans are in need of.

“Choose Collaboration Over Competition for Better Business and Relationships.” – Courtney Carver

Now that I’ve made the case for sharing rather than holding onto your ideas and knowledge, let me talk about some of the huge benefits your business can start to tap into once you package your expertise up and get it ready to share with the world. 

Video e-learning. 

My preferred method of educating is in the form of online video courses. While there is no substitute for in person learning and education, creating video courses is the next best thing. Sometimes they even prove more effective as learners can pause, rewind and re-watch content for repetition. The benefit of video courses is that once you have packaged your course and shot all of the contents, you have officially digitised yourself and can potentially reach anyone with an internet connection. 

A barrier to entry. 

Creating an online course for the first time is a daunting task. The first course I created brought me close to tears and took me two years to complete. It was a labour of love that went through multiple iterations before being launched, only then to go through another iteration based on real-world market feedback (a vital step in creating a user-centric product).

After the initial thrust of time investment, going through iterations, testing, re-shooting, and re-editing, the result and experience was something I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

Receiving positive feedback and getting messages that the contents of the course helped people gain confidence, learn a new skill, and improve aspects of their businesses was incredibly rewarding. 

The process of adding value and giving back to the community, as well as creating a product that added a lower price point to our core business, expanded our market and multiplied our impact, allowing us to serve people who maybe could not afford our ‘done for you’ video services. 

Adding value and reaping the rewards. 

Creating an online program that aims to educate your client base and offers them a ‘Done with you’ solution is a value-adding exercise. Your knowledge and expertise in your specific niche is a gift and can be packaged in a variety of ways. 

• Self-learning online course. One price which gives your students access to the content.
• Access to the course contents plus guidance and accountability check-ins. Mentoring style.  
• Access to the course content as a bonus to your core service increases the value of your core offering. 
• Free access to the content of the education material on YouTube and LinkedIn. (This approach can provide big returns in brand awareness, and add massive value to develop devoted followers who come to trust you and will be more inclined to purchase from you down the line.)

E-learning is on the rise. Companies are investing huge amounts into training and education. The market is growing and people’s taste and ambition to acquire new, specialised skills is rising. 

We all have a deep-rooted responsibility to be conscious in our ways and help usher in a world which is centred around collaboration and sharing over competition and scarcity. 

The rise of E-learning is a great step toward a more open, sharing and collaborative world. 

With the Global e-learning market predicted to reach $457,8 billion by 2028 How will you respond to this opportunity, how will you contribute?