Your Job Title is Not Your Expertise

For most of our careers, we learn to describe ourselves by our job title.

“I’m a Project Manager.”

“I work in HR.”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“I’m an Operations Manager.”

“I’m an accountant.”

“I work in procurement.”

It makes sense. A job title is an easy shorthand for explaining what we do.

But there is a problem with it.

Your job title is not your expertise.

Your job title tells someone where you sit within an organisation. It doesn’t tell them what you actually know, the problems you can solve, the judgement you have developed or the value you are capable of creating.

And if you are thinking about creating an additional income stream, consulting practice or business of your own, that distinction becomes very important.

Look Beyond the Job Description

Take an experienced Project Manager.

On paper, their role might be described as managing projects, budgets, resources, schedules and stakeholders.

But after 15 or 20 years, that person may know how to:

• rescue a project that is heading off the rails;
• manage difficult stakeholders;
• establish governance where very little exists;
• identify project risks before they become expensive problems;
• negotiate with vendors;
• control scope and budgets;
• build practical delivery processes; and
• guide less experienced project managers.

Those are not simply tasks on a job description.

They are capabilities.

And capabilities can potentially be turned into consulting services, advisory offers, training, workshops, digital resources or other income streams.

The Expertise You Take for Granted

One of the interesting things about becoming highly experienced is that you can start to underestimate what you know.

Something that would have taken you days to work out fifteen years ago may now take you twenty minutes.

You know where to look.

You know which questions to ask.

You recognise the warning signs.

You know which approaches probably won’t work.

You may even know the answer before someone less experienced has fully understood the problem.

And because that knowledge has become normal to you, it can be very easy to think:

“Everyone knows that.”

Often, they don’t.

You simply have years of experience sitting behind what now feels like an obvious answer.

Customers Buy Outcomes, Not Job Titles

This is another useful shift in thinking.

A potential client probably isn’t sitting at their desk thinking:

“I really need to find a Senior Project Manager with 18 years’ experience.”

They are much more likely to be thinking:

“This project is becoming a disaster and I need someone to work out what is wrong.”

Or:

“We’ve never done this before and we need someone experienced to guide us.”

Or:

“Our managers don’t know how to deal with these employee problems.”

Or:

“We are about to spend a lot of money on technology and we don’t know whether we’re making the right decisions.”

Those are problems requiring outcomes.

And somewhere inside your professional experience may be the knowledge required to produce those outcomes.

That is where expertise can start becoming commercially valuable outside your employment.

You Don’t Need a Business Idea Yet

A lot of experienced professionals make the mistake of starting with:

“What business could I start?”

I think there is a better question:

“What valuable problem am I unusually well equipped to solve?”

You don’t necessarily need to know whether the answer will eventually become consulting, coaching, training, advisory work, a digital product, a workshop or something else entirely.

That comes later.

First, you need to identify the value already sitting inside your knowledge and experience.

What Would Someone Hire You to Achieve?

Try this question:

If somebody hired you tomorrow specifically because of your expertise, what outcome would they expect you to deliver?

Not your job title.

Not your list of responsibilities.

The outcome.

That question can reveal far more about your commercial potential than your CV ever will.

And it is exactly the kind of thinking behind the Expertise Monetisation Quiz™ I created at Seybienne.

The free Quiz asks you about your experience, the work you enjoy, the things people seek your help with, the value you create and what you would like the next stage of your career or business to look like.

Your answers are then analysed to create your personalised Expertise Monetisation Intelligence Report™, identifying potential strengths, opportunities, possible offers and practical next steps.

You don’t need to have a business idea.

You don’t need to be ready to leave your job.

You simply need to be curious about one question:

What could your expertise become?

Take the Free Expertise Monetisation Quiz

Your job title might belong to your employer.

Your expertise belongs to you.