I Asked Myself: Can I Allow My Knowledge to Die With Me?

I asked myself recently a tough question – what will happen when I retire someday? Will I allow the knowledge and expertise I’ve built up over decades to just disappear with me?

For me, this question is tied to another set of questions:

• How deeply do I believe in the value of the work I’m doing? Do I feel a “calling” to do it?
• Is it important to grow the impact of the work?
• Is it important that this work has a future – one that exceeds my involvement?

For me, the answer to these questions is “Yes!” How about you?

In this post, I want to share 3 concrete tips I’m using myself to ensure my hard-won brilliance lives on.

Will you be inspired to do this for yourself, too?

Key Takeaways

1. Record yourself when you are training others or doing work with clients.
2. Use artificial intelligence tools (AI) to analyze recordings and extract key talking points and concepts. Accelerate creating training materials.
3. Create an outline for the training you want to create to pass on your expertise. You can create an outline before you start recording. Or, use the method that often is faster and easier: Use tips 1 and 2 before you have an outline. Use the AI output to help build an initial outline for systematizing your knowledge into training. Then make this outline better and more complete.

Want to Learn More?

There are two ways you can do that

1. Check out the full transcript below.
2. Come to my Q&A where we discuss this topic in more depth – the last two weeks were phenomenal! Register here.
3. Message me or give me a call

Peruse the Transcript In More Detail

Tip 1: Record Yourself

Perhaps you are haunted by the same question I was recently asking myself, namely, what will happen when I retire? Will I allow the knowledge I’ve gained over the decades to disappear and die or retire with me?

I want to give you 3 concrete tips that I have found myself and then invite you at the end to dive deeper into a Q&A that I’m hosting later today.

When you do your work, whether that is training somebody one-on-one, even spur of the moment, or in a bigger group setting, please record it. That’s tip number one.

Of course, you have to store this information properly. This can be done very simply: Start with putting the date into the filename. For example, “20231004” means October 4, 2023. Then maybe use an underscore and add the main topic of the conversation, e.g., “20231004_Secret Sauce Training“

That’s a great start.

Tip 2: Use Artificial Intelligence to Process Recordings

Tip two is about how to process the information in these recordings quickly. You can process it with artificial intelligence. That’s one option. I don’t know how you feel about AI – whether you’re already using it, or perhaps have started to use it. But I think we all know AI is going to have, and already does have, a profound impact on the entire business world, especially when it comes to knowledge-driven industries.

It pays to pay attention to AI. It does not have to be a fearful conversation. For the last two weeks, we have been talking about this quite a bit during our Q&A sessions. What has happened is that each time, the participants came out saying, “Oh my gosh. I didn’t know you could do that with AI like this!”

This is more like using AI as a super-powered virtual assistant rather than someone who’s going to take over and make you feel useless. No, it’s not like that. The opposite is true: AI can actually help you process the videos you have taken of training you’ve given or of yourself working. It can help you speed up the capturing of YOUR unique knowledge, document it, and make it trainable.

Tip 3: Create an Outline

It’s always a great idea to have an outline as you think about how you might want to train others in areas of your knowledge. But I want to tell you that you don’t necessarily need to have an outline at the beginning.

You can also create the outline by first following the first two steps: Recording a video and then pulling the key points out with AI. As you look at the key points that come out of the analysis of your video/s, the outline will fall into place much faster.

Summary

Those are the three tips:

1. Video yourself.
2. Use AI in a smart way as a virtual assistant.
3. Create an outline either from the beginning; or in many cases, it is more easily done after implementing the first two tips.

I’ve started this same process, even in small ways, to expand my reach while ensuring my legacy. What about you?

Join My Free Virtual Q&A – It Is Interactive!

Join my interactive Q&A session to discuss capturing your brilliance before retirement. Press the golden button to register.

What knowledge do you want preserved? What’s one small step you can take this week?

Live brilliantly,

Dr. Stephie

P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this weekly “Brilliance Nugget” newletter with others. Thank you!