Magicians never tell the secrets to their tricks. Once they do, the magic and wonder disappears, and the magician is no longer valid to anyone anymore. He can get replaced by someone cheaper or younger. In business, you can learn a lot from them. To someone that lacks your skill, your knowledge is extremely valuable. They will constantly try to pick and prod it out of you and if you let them, you lose your leverage and power. A lot of people want your knowledge, but they don’t want to do what it takes to get to that point. They want you to do the research, spend the time and test it out first then just give it to them. I wrote about this in an earlier post.

I also wanted to talk about another reason you should safegaurd your knowledge: creating competition. Sometimes people will see your success, and want to duplicate it for themselves. They will come off as a friend, in an attempt to take what you have inside that head of yours. To see what they can pry out of you. In my line of work, often people want to tap into my brain. They know I’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars and years of time researching and testing tactics or products to find the best. Many try to see what they can get out of me for free. You must be careful not to give too much of your ideas and knowledge away… especially for free. Once you give away the farm, you lose your value and they will take your ideas, use it for themselves and forget you ever helped them. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. When I first started, I would give away too much. Pretty quickly I created competition for myself. You give man a fire, and he’ll burn everything down. I found out that if you create a titan, they will forget they were once merely human with you.

I am a pretty open book to most, but I rarely ever give out my best secrets and knowledge. I will hold back what I know. I may throw out some gems to them to help, but I keep the best locked away inside my head for my business and for my personal clients that hire me.

Never show anyone. They’ll beg you and they’ll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up… you’ll be nothing to them. – The Prestige