Welcome to The Rachel Kurzyp Show.

How can I position myself as an expert when I don’t feel like one yet?

This question always comes up in the first 1-2 sessions with 90% of my 1:1 clients. So today, I’m going to share how you can position yourself as a trusted expert.

But before I share my three steps, I want to quickly look at the definition of an expert. If I asked you to visualize the word expert, what do you see?⁠⁠

Is it a middle-aged white dude wearing a suit standing in front of a blackboard?⁠⁠ Because this is what many of my clients imagine.⁠⁠ And this doesn’t surprise me.⁠⁠

We’ve been conditioned to associate expertise with academic excellence, age, and masculinity. ⁠⁠ But I’m here to tell you that wearing tweed doesn’t make you an expert.⁠⁠

We’re slowly moving away from this outdated capitalist and patriarchal view of what it means to be a thought leader.⁠⁠ This is amazing for business owners because you can redefine what being an expert looks like for you.⁠⁠

So, if you aren’t showing up in your business because you feel you don’t have enough qualifications.⁠⁠ Remember you only need to be 1-2 steps ahead of your dream clients to be able to support them.

If you shy away from inviting your dream clients to work with you because you haven’t been in business for years.⁠⁠ Remember that it’s not about clocking up time. Instead you need to understand your niche and the problem you’re solving for your clients.

And if you don’t share your views or approaches because there are other business owners already talking about similar topics.⁠⁠ Remember that you aren’t trying to solve unique problems. People are choosing to work with you because they want you to help them thanks to your unique experiences and frameworks.

If you aren’t being referred by your peers and being sought out by your dream clients, it’s because you haven’t claimed your expertise yet.

You already have everything you need to show up, sell and serve your dream clients.

What you need is support with how to do this.

So get a pen and paper handy because I’m going to help you share your expertise (minus the humblebrag).

Step #1

You need to determine your leadership style so you can show up, serve and sell as your authentic self. 

There are three leadership styles: The Storyteller, The Teacher and The Facilitator. Most of us can identify with one or a blend of two styles. For example, I’m a blend of The Teacher and The Facilitator. 

I talk about these leadership styles in detail in Episode 35. So if you haven’t already, I would encourage you to go back to this episode and identify your style.

The idea behind these leadership styles is not to change your style, you’re either one or the other. By knowing your style you can learn how you authentically like to lead others and embrace your strengths and natural talents while being aware of your areas that don’t come naturally to you so you can do things like tell more stories to ensure you’re connecting with all of your dream clients.

Step #2

I’d love for you to start sharing tangible and intangible results you get for your clients that cover Financial Gains, Joy, Time and Clients because the not so humble brag and sharing our monthly income isn’t the only way we can demonstrate our expertise.

Financial Gains does have its place because it’s tangible and I’ve never had a client who didn’t want money (and anyone who tells you that is lying BTW). BUT you do need to go deeper than just saying my client had a $10k month because it’s not really about those dollar bills. It’s about what that financial freedom and security has allowed your client to do. For example, buy a new laptop, put their child through private school or go on a holiday with their partner.

Joy and Time are also important results to share. Do you help your clients streamline their processes so onboarding their clients is now a stress-free experience? Have you helped them to reduce the time it takes to create their weekly content so they can have Friday afternoon’s off to read a book? 

And finally Clients, like Financial Gains, most of my clients (and I’m sure yours too) want more dream clients and to be booked out months in advance. So talk about your mindsets, frameworks and approaches that have supported your clients to attract more clients of their own.

So everytime you go to talk about your expertise, ask yourself which one of these four categories are you addressing so that you can create a body of evidence over time and don’t feel forced to do a humble brag to get clients to work with you.

Step #3

I’d love you to start creating content that illustrates your personality, demonstrates your ways of working and provides value, inspiration and entertainment for your dream clients.

I say this all the time but I’ll say it again. You need to know your purpose, why, values and ethics so you can get clear on things like your brand personality. So many online businesses look and sound the same because they haven’t done this work and instead have bought a template or course that has laid out a generic one to follow. And no one buys that, literally.

The same thing applies with demonstrating your ways of working. You need to share your processes, frameworks and what makes you different from your peers. Knowing your strengths, skill sets and experiences and how you use them in your work will make this process easier.

Finally, I’d love you to move away from only sharing how-to content (I talk about this more in Episode 11 so go back and listen to this episode) and start sharing content that is fun, aspirational and shares more about you because that’s what your dream clients want. It’s this content that will help build the know, like and trust factor that is needed if you’d like your dream clients to work with you. So you need to step out from behind your computer and start being the face of your business.

This is why I said at the beginning of this episode that you are already an expert and that what you needed to do was no get more qualifications, make more money or have more offerings. What you need to do is claim your expertise and I hope that by sharing my three steps for doing this today, that you’re able to do this with more confidence and clarity.

Thanks so much for tuning into today’s episode.

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