“No one gives away their secret while that secret still has value.” I disagree.

In the information age, sharing expert advice and important resources does not end your career. In fact, it may be the key to having a career at all.

In this photo, an expert shares their best ideas without losing his value. Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

I am not so sure that some people don’t give away the secret while still using it, or while it “still has value.” In fact, I know many who suggest that this is how to get ahead in one’s chosen profession.

Many writers about different types of success, including ramit sethi (getting rich) and Danny Margulies (succeeding on Upwork), and many others, swear that giving away value upfront is the best way to command the work that you want to do. They have different levels of current professional success, but seem to fit a standard business definition of “success.”

I borrowed this idea of sharing one’s expertise in my Medium article about writing for marijuana and CBD and vaping companies. This article is almost directly the notes I have developed for doing this kind of writing. In fact, there is a picture of my actual notes in the article. And there is also the screenshot of my first $67/hr job. The only thing missing from the article is the specific companies who hired me, and links to articles I ghost-wrote.

However, this hasn’t flooded the zone with writers (at least not any more than the marijuana and CBD oil zone was flooded in the weeks and months before.) Instead, it was actually the calling card that got me a couple $200 articles on Upwork the week after I published it.

Also, in fairness, I note that my article has only 25 views, so … there is little chance to upset the apple cart there!

Anyway, I think that perhaps sharing the best information doesn’t “give it away” nearly as much as it “establishes you as an expert,” which suggests that the writer will be able to do what the writer talked about, and a lot more. This makes that person an expert in demand, not a revealer of a golden nugget of truth.

Or perhaps it makes them both.

Thank you Ryan Hicks for your revealing and thoughtful article.