You are not for sale

Transcript

Hello and welcome. Today we are going to get into the nitty gritty detail of how to position our expertise for the future.

And there’s a few different parts of this because the first one is becoming the go-to expert in your particular field or subject matter. But the second thing I want to talk about today are some of the traps that people tend to fall into and the reason why perhaps it hasn’t worked for you yet.

So if you are somebody who knows the value of building your professional reputation, you’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. You don’t need to convince me. Great. Welcome. But it hasn’t quite happened for you yet and you feel kind of like you’re missing something, then hopefully this is going to help you speed up that timeline.

So making it really more than possible that it happens and that it happens quickly. Yeah, because I’m all about like getting where you want to go with as less pain as less as few side tracks that aren’t actually enjoyable and fun and, um you know, can we do it as effectively and efficiently as possible without waking up at 5am because really like, give me a break.

Uh so. How to become the go-to expert?

Firstly, there are so many people and this is one of the reasons why I do what I do is if I had a dollar and it seemed to happen at a certain point in time where I was constantly having conversations almost always with older women, not always women but oftentimes women and almost always they were 50 plus and I had conversation after conversation where the person would, the woman would tell me this, you know, really in-depth, nuanced, thoughtful opinion on her particular area of expertise.

She’d say things that would kind of stop me in my tracks where I was like, you know, dumbfounded and struck by how intelligent and interesting and nuanced and thoughtful and the depth of expertise that was evident in that opinion.

And then I’d go away from these conversations, I’d walk away and as you do, I would Google the person because this is what we do, right? We Google the person and I’m trying to find evidence of that opinion. I want to know more. The person has intrigued me. You know, they’ve gotten me interested and I’ve gone to find out more and I have not been able to find any evidence of that really interesting, nuanced, thoughtful, in-depth opinion.

And so it became clear and obvious to me that we needed to do something about this. I’m sick to death of people who are the town’s best kept secret, where those in the know absolutely know who they are. They know their name, they respect them deeply, but those who aren’t in the know have absolutely no idea who they are. I’ve seen this happen over and over and over and over and over again.

So let’s contrast that with those 22 year olds who loudly self-promote themselves and I remember one time I was listening to somebody and they were like, they were on a rave on social media. Know, they were, they were on a roll. They were having a rant. They were like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was listening, like, don’t get me wrong. I was, I was there. I was, I was pulled. I was hooked.

And then they said 18 months experience. And I’m like, huh? They said this like it was you know 18 years that they had 18 months experience. I’m like what you know the um I really want to swear now but I’m gonna leave it.

So your reputation, your professional reputation is a bankable asset. It is an asset that you can draw dividends on, you can translate into money absolutely definitely.

And more than ads, it’s a bankable asset because more than ads, it’s not interrupting you. It’s not interrupting people as they go about their daily business and say, Hey, look at me. This is interesting. It has the opposite effect.

It has the effect of somebody, you know, finds you somehow has some, know, here’s your name somehow has some experience of you somehow. And then goes away and Googles or searches and comes up with a pleasant of information and they can binge on you. And binges are buyers, people who are binging your content are buying from you. If not now, then later.

Your reputation matters.

So one of the biggest issues with this and this might be if you’re listening closely and you’re like, oh shit, then please pay attention, right? The problem that it might not have happened so far is that you might have looked at you know what’s going on, what other people are doing, the endless people having their rant, having their rave like I was looking at that person who said 18 months experience.

You look at all of those loud voices on the internet and you get existentially weary. You want to sleep but not just a normal eight hours. You want to sleep for eight years. It makes you just want to give up and you start to fantasize about other ways of marketing or other ways of people miraculously coming across your stuff.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you have to do business like everybody else. In fact, when you come across those people, and they give you the existential weariness, pay attention. Pay attention to why. Start looking at it like a scientist. Why does that make me existentially weary? It’s not just, you know, the superficial stuff. Really go into this and look at why does it make me existentially weary? So that I can do the opposite.

And when you look at people on the internet and they give you a certain thrill, they give you a feeling that you love to feel, notice that as well. What are they doing? What are they doing? You want to try and understand what are they doing that’s making you feel what you feel so that you can do something similar.

So if you’re somebody who is sensitive, it is normal to feel baffled or disillusioned with it all. You don’t have to do it like everybody else is doing it. You absolutely don’t.

Now the other reason why it may not have happened for you yet… is because you’re stuck in the trap of thinking that you have to sell yourself. And this is understandable, right? Because there’s been a lot of people that talk about, know, sell the lifestyle. Not just the work, sell yourself, make them have a relationship with your cute dog, make sure that kids are in the videos, make sure they know what your hobbies are, etc.

There’s a lot of online gurus that are selling this and their message will boil down to I’m proof. But it’s not proof. One person does not make for proof. One experience from one person saying, I did this, you know, I’m proof you can do it too. Well look, that is just not proof. That is one person’s life. That is not repeatable results.

So um you might have fallen into that trap, understandable, but you are not selling yourself.

Because of course the problem with authentic marketing, when it’s been co-opted into a cult of personality, which it has, is that you end up thinking oh shit I’ve got to do that too. I’ve got to be somebody who um you know videos my life, who shares every thought bubble that I have, who films every holiday, who broadcasts every you know every tiny progression that’s made.

And maybe you’ve seen other people do this and you’ve also seen other people topple, you’ve seen them be cancelled, you’ve seen them attract haters and trolls and understandably that’s the last thing that you want.

Now this is not what I recommend because when you put yourself on a pedestal and you say I’m proof, do what I do, if you want to be just like me, then you are vulnerable.

You are vulnerable because pedestals are risky. You’re vulnerable to being toppled or perhaps worse. You’re vulnerable to believe your own hype, to actually take yourself way too seriously and perhaps risk your actual authenticity because there will be parts about yourself like they’re parts of all of us that we don’t love. The parts of us that are perhaps, you know, bits that we feel a little embarrassed or ashamed about, that we’re going to pretend don’t exist.

And when we put ourselves on a pedestal, of course, we attract sycophants and those sycophants will be the first to pull us down because sycophants are people that aren’t thinking with their critical brains, right?

And if you’re saying, follow me, I’ll, you know, I’ll fix all your issues, then naturally you’re going to attract people that aren’t critical thinkers. And when you do something that doesn’t you know that isn’t in line with what they’re expecting of you because hey what do you know you’re human you’re not an actor they’ll be the first to pull you down.

So what do we do then? What is the alternative?

If we’re not selling our lifestyle and we’re not selling you know a cult of personality and we’re not you know, putting out this overly simplistic marketing which basically boils down to I’m proof. The alternative is that we spotlight our system. We don’t sell ourselves, we sell our process.

We don’t sell our lifestyle, we sell our methodology. We don’t sell our personal story as proof. We sell a system or framework that is repeatable and sustainable and scalable. Work that can happen without us needing to document our every waking moment.

And this matters because if you sell yourself, you’re bound to disappoint people eventually. You’re going to disappoint yourself because you are a complex, multifaceted, nuanced person with bits that are ugly and selfish and rough and self-serving.

So either you’re going to be very, very disappointed in yourself or you’re going to become quite deluded believing those parts don’t exist. So you’re bound to disappoint everybody and yourself eventually.

And if you’re selling a system, then it’s not about you, it’s about the work and the results.

And if this hasn’t happened for you yet, it’s quite possible that you’re attracting people who are still thinking that they’re buying you. And when things don’t happen exactly as they planned or hoped, then it feels really personal. The critiques, the criticisms feel really personal and perhaps they are. Perhaps they are very personal because the person believes they’re buying you and you are not for sale.

Because when we can scale a process, a framework, a methodology, a proprietary framework that’s repeatable and scalable and sustainable, firstly, scaling becomes possible, but also scaling becomes possible without it feeling quite so very vulnerable all the time, without us feeling so very self-conscious about everything.

Our capacity is able to expand because it doesn’t feel like we are needing to, you know, touch, metaphorically speaking, each and every single client that we have.

Alright that is a lot. I’m going to give you a few kind of actionable practical things that you can go away with today.

The first one and apologies if this is annoying I’m sure sometimes it is annoying is to define your edge. You’ve got to know what you’re good at. You can’t do everything for everyone even if you are multi-talented and it’s worse for us multi-talented people right?

If you are struggling to define what that special something is, look at your testimonials, read your Google reviews, go back into your client emails, look for the patterns, look for the words, look for the repeated compliments that you get. People say the same thing over and over again and they’re leaving clues for you. That is more than likely your edge.

The second part about becoming a go-to expert is we want to find the right environment because the wrong crowd are going to keep us stuck for years where you feel like you are constantly justifying your prices, over explaining everything, know, spending a lot of time marketing, spending a lot of your marketing efforts on really like how to suck eggs.

One, two, three. Information because people just don’t seem to get it. You’re in the wrong room, you’re talking to the wrong people.

Third thing, we want to stop being an island. This is really important. This is really important. Especially for those kind of solo genius type people. We’ve got to get out of our own little silo and we’ve got to stop thinking that we get better by ourselves. We don’t, we get better in collaboration with other people, with partnering with other people, borrowing other people’s audiences, guesting for other people on their group programs, in their certifications and masterminds, on their podcasts, on their blogs, being interviewed, joint ventures, discussions I could go on.

The fourth point we want to build a body of work online. You cannot be a go-to expert if there is nothing online for people to go to.

Binge’s are buyers. Give the people what they want. Make your website Netflix binge worthy so that somebody can grab a tub of ice cream or bucket of popcorn, a chock top and spend hours and hours and hours binging your body of work. This is how people buy without a sales conversation.

Give away your gold, give away all your best ideas, stop holding yourself back and gatekeeping your best stuff. Trust comes from that generosity.

We’ve got to say something worth listening to. We have to stop with the boring ass hot takes that aren’t a hot take at all. Leave it to me to tell you whether or not it’s a hot take. Um, you know, if you have to frame it by saying hot take, I’ll put money on it that it’s not a hot take.

So have an opinion, be willing to stand for something, be willing to ruffle feathers, be willing to have people disagree with you, be willing to have people argue with you or call you a peanut.

Finally, and this kind of goes with what else we’ve just been talking about, do something worth talking about. It’s all well and good, like talking and being articulate and being able to kind of play the good game by having the gift of the gab and that’ll take you a long way, but it’ll only take you so far because hype will fade.

Yeah, but what you’re building, the actions that you take, this is the stuff that lasts. And media loves more than just an articulate person. Media loves an actual story of somebody who’s doing something. Say something worth listening to, yes, but also do something worth talking about.

Alright so in conclusion we’ve covered a lot in a short amount of time. In conclusion you do not need to sell yourself.

If it feels like you’re constantly for sale and you’re constantly feeling like you’re tap dancing naked in the spotlight having to justify everything to your clients then I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re trapped in that kind of cult of personality marketing silo.

You need to start unsubscribing and unfollowing those big, strong, loud personalities and start trusting yourself, trusting your work, selling the system, selling the scalable, repeatable, um sustainable results, not yourself.

You are not for sale. Repeat after me. I am not for sale.