Are you an expert?
Last week, I shared a powerful piece with you titled, “Are You Brave Enough to Be An Expert?”. If you didn’t get to read that piece, or want a refresher, you can click here to read it.
I’m not gonna lie. I’ve reached my frustration point as a Thought Leader in the marketing space. I’m no longer willing to ignore the way peeps diminish their brilliance and shy away from calling themselves an expert.
Hands down, I want to hire experts—and I’m sure you do, too.
Consider this:
Your heater goes out in the dead of winter. You are freezing. Do you mess around with amateur heater fixer-uppers? Hell no. You probably call a friend or get on Facebook and ask, “Hey, we are having major problems and have no heat. Who do you know who can fix this ASAP?” You crowdsource an answer and get the heater fixed!
or this…
Your child has been diagnosed with an illness. It’s imperative you find a medical professional who can help you navigate a path back to wellness. Do you him-haw around and “test” peeps out? Hell no. You get on the phone or on the internet and start making moves. You read reviews. You book appointments.
So, if experts are who you are looking to hire in a time a need, who do you think your clients are looking for to help THEM in their time of need? Yup, an expert.
Are you standing in your brilliance and claiming your expertness? If you are like most entrepreneurs I work with, the answer is probably no.
Believe me, I understand the reasons you might be shrinking your brilliance and Thought Leader voice! I’ve heard them all—I’ve even had to work through many of them myself to get where I am today. (Common reasons are fear of the unknown, scared of being seen as a know-it all, don’t want to step on toes, imposter syndrome, not sure how to talk about your brilliance in a way that feels genuine, etc.)
If you haven’t figured out how to claim your brilliance and stand in your expertise yet, is it any surprise that your client roster and courses aren’t full, you aren’t making the money you want to be making, and you are frustrated and feeling burnt-out and over-worked?
I laid in bed this weekend and thought about the 4 types of experts I know:
Invisible Expert:This is the expert who is brilliant at what she does, but she hasn’t claimed it yet. She hides her brilliance because she isn’t sure how to talk about it. She isn’t known to many and putting herself “out there” feels uncomfortable. She desires to reach and help more peeps, and she often feels lonely and stuck. She views marketing as a hard, yet necessary, and undesirable means to an end.
Downplayed Expert: This is the expert who is brilliant at what she does, and when someone compliments her on her brilliance, she downplays it. She says things like: “Oh, thanks, but I still have a lot to learn.” or “Oh, no, I’m not that brilliant.” Because she downplays the compliments, she is seen by others as an quasi-expert. Her marketing is inconsistent, because the belief in her own brilliance falters and sways when others say things to her that make her doubt herself or she doesn’t “feel” like doing the marketing.
Confident Expert: This is the expert who stands in her brilliance and knows how to help clients get the results they are looking for. She has testimonials to back up the work. She speaks openly and confidently about what she knows and who she wants to work with. She builds a wait list for her services and people will wait to work with her. Her marketing is mostly fun and light, because she markets from a place of alignment and confidence in who she is, what she does, and the results she gets her clients. This expert often hits a plateau in her business and needs help on the marketing side of things so she can reach more people, refine her thought leadership message, and continue doing the work she loves.
Boisterous Expert: This is the expert who tells everyone they are an expert, every chance they get, and often it may be true, but the energy is a total turn off to those who are sensitive to this kind of energy and over-confident approach. This person may or may not have the results to back up the expert claims—and that doesn’t even matter, because people are turned off by the delivery they use in their marketing.
Do you see yourself in any of the above? Are you teetering in-between, as you move from one expert type to the next?
Here’s the thing I want you to walk away with today: The fear from most entrepreneurs is that if they say they are an expert, they will be seen as a Boisterous Expert. So, what do they do instead? They hide or downplay their brilliance, which isn’t serving anyone. {no bueno!}
My brilliance is helping you claim YOUR brilliance, embody the Confident Expert, and learn how to market yourself and your ideas in a way that feels good.
When you are ready to step into Confident Expert, send me an email to hq [at] mshannonhernandez [dot] com. I can’t wait to hear from you!
