How to Be Seen as an Expert in Your Field

Many people feel “insufficient” to create courses, but the truth is, YOU are an expert! This week, Chris talks about how to set yourself up as an expert in your field, no matter what it is you want to teach. A special “crossover episode” with the Course Wizards podcast.

Links:

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Episode 24 Transcription:

[00:00:14].030] - Chris
Hey, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Christopher Maselli and I am here.

[00:00:18].560] - Chris
With my co host.

[00:00:20].450] - Chris
Wait a second. I am all alone today. Well, if you've been watching me or listening to me and the Writing Momentum podcast, you know that I usually host that podcast with my wife, Gena. And if you know me from the Course Wizard podcast, then you know that I usually co host that with my buddy Amit Arora. Well, neither one of them could make the podcast this week because we've had crazy circumstances going on around here. And so I said, you know what, this is the perfect opportunity for me to hijack each podcast for this topic because there is a topic that we've wanted to talk about this week on both Writing Momentum and on Course Wizards. Whichever podcast you listen to. And it's a topic that works for both. Whether you are trying to write a book and become an authority in your field or you are trying to create a course and you want to be seen as an expert in creating that course, that's what we want to talk about. How can you be seen as an expert in your field? So I'm hijacking both of these podcasts today. If you listen to Writing Momentum, you're going to find it there.

[00:01:28].720] - Chris
If you listen to Course Wizards, you're going to find it there. And just so you know, if you're someone who normally visits us with the Course Wizards podcast but you're interested in writing, check Gina and I out over at the Writing Momentum Podcast. And if you normally take some time with Gena and myself on the Writing Momentum Podcast, check out Amit and me on Course Wizards, where we talk about how to teach anything online. It's a good podcast too. They're both very good and very fun. I really have some great co hosts and they have taught me a lot over the years, for sure. But today we're going to talk about how to be seen as an expert in your field. And I think this is something that is important because we all want to have authority online, right? We want to have people see us as authorities, whether it's online or even offline. If we want to go speak somewhere, we've got a book or something like that. And so what do we do to make that happen? I mean, does it just happen one day or is it something you can fake it until you make it kind of thing?

[00:02:29].590] - Chris
And I would say it's a little bit of both. Normally when I've talked to people about being an expert in their field, they feel a little bit insecure, right? They feel like, I don't know that I can just say that I know a lot about that because I'm still learning. And here's the thing you've got to remember, every expert is still learning. I mean, if they're truly an expert in their field, they are still learning. An expert is someone who knows something more than someone else. And that's it. That means you don't have to know everything about that topic. You just have to know more than the person you're training and the person you're teaching. I remember learning this at writers conferences years ago. Those are training conferences for writers where writers get together and you'll have editors speak and writers speak and agents speak, and people would get up there at the front and they'd start talking about some topic, and I'd be listening to them, and I'd think I think I know more about this topic than this person does. But how do they get up on the podium? Well, the thing is, even if I knew more than some of those speakers, and I certainly didn't know more than a lot of them, but I knew more than some because I'd had some experience by then, but I realized they had put themselves out there.

[00:03:46].880] - Chris
I never did that. I never put myself out there as someone who could speak on that topic. So no one ever looked at me as an authority on that topic. Had I just put myself out there, I might have gotten an opportunity. So an example of this is just from the writing world is with self publishing. I remember years ago, I started doing self publishing. I've been traditionally published for years, and that is like published through big New York type publishers or that sort of thing. And I decided I want to self publish. I want to figure out what that's about. So I learned a little bit, and I went ahead and self published through Amazon Kindle's platform. And that was cool, and I enjoyed doing it. And then I had people come to me and they'd say, how did you do that? How did you publish through Amazon Kindle? How did you get a book in your hands that you published yourself? Right? And suddenly I realized, you know what? I'm not like an overall expert at this, but I'm more of an expert than this person, so I can teach them what I know.

[00:04:51].310] - Chris
So I did. I teach them, here's what I learned about how to publish through Amazon. And then they might say, well, how do you publish through a local printer? I was like, I don't know how to do that. So I went and I learned from someone who did know how to do it. I found an expert myself. And then after they taught me, then I was enough of an expert that I could lead someone through the process. And that's sometimes all an expert is. It's just someone who knows a little something more than someone else, especially when it comes to writing some how to books about this sort of thing, like some nonfiction books or creating a course. And another example of this recently is from a friend of mine who created a course. Her name is Liz. She's super sharp when it comes to email marketing, and she's got a good following of email marketers who want to learn how to write emails. And she decided the other day she was going to hold a webinar on how to learn about open rates, right? What's the trends right now in open rates? So she set up this up, and then she realized, I need to learn more about this.

[00:05:56].320] - Chris
So she started contacting all the major email outlets, and she started talking to friends who knew a lot about it. She did research article after article after article and learned all this stuff, put it all together. And then she held her webinar. And all of us who went to the webinar, we're like, Liz, you're the expert on this. You've researched this. You know about it. But to her, she had just started to learn about it, right? But she just dove into it, and she learned a lot, and suddenly she became the expert for us. So it's just someone who knows a little more than someone else. So I want to encourage you. If you are wanting to write a nonfiction book, if you're wanting to create a course, you can be an expert. You just have to learn, just learn more than what other people know. And over the years, the longer you do this I've been self publishing now for many years now. I truly am becoming an overall expert in the field, right? I know a lot of things more in this field than most people do. But you know what? There's still a lot I don't know.

[00:06:58].140] - Chris
There are still things I'm learning every single day when I help people self publish their books, every single time, questions come up and I think, oh, I got to figure that out, right? So then I go and figure it out, and then I'm able to use that with the next client. And so that's the power of becoming an expert, is that it's continual learning. And so what I want to share with you in the back end of this podcast today are just a few tips for becoming an expert. So I have six tips here that I wrote down, and if you've got some tips, I'd love to hear those too. Go ahead and send them to us on social media, either at Writing Momentum or to the Course Wizards and Gena and I or Amit and I will look at those. So the first one is find a subject that people often ask you questions about, okay? Chances are, if there's some subject that people regularly ask you questions about, that's because you're more of an expert in that field than those other people are. So find ask yourself, what is something I'm an expert about what is something that I can teach others?

[00:07:58].210] - Chris
Or what's something that you just know that you know how to do better than other people? Maybe no one even knows about it. Maybe you've trained your dog to do amazing tricks, but no one even knows it. But hey, that's something that you could teach. Okay? So look for something like that. You don't necessarily want to do something you don't know anything about, right? My friend Liz, who did that training seminar on open rates, she has been an email marketer for years. So she knew the questions to ask. She knew what the trends had been. She just had to brush up on the latest trends in order to teach that course, right? If I were to teach a self publishing course today, I can do that because I already know a lot about it. But I just have to brush up to make sure that I'm sharing the latest and greatest information. So be sure that you find a subject that people ask you about or that you know a lot about. Second thing, break down that subject into the utmost simplicity. When you're wanting to teach a course on something that you know a lot about, don't assume that whoever is taking the course knows anything about it.

[00:09:02].440] - Chris
Or if you're writing a book about how to do something or how something works. Don't assume your reader automatically knows the basics of what you're talking about. They may not know anything. And so what you want to do is go ahead and break it down to the utmost simplicity and start from there and then build up with your reader or your listener. Next, tell your story. It's always good to use your personal experience, okay? It may not be perfect, but it helps people relate to you, right? Even as I was talking about this podcast and putting this together, I thought, I need to put an example in there of what I've learned about self publishing because that helps me relate and explain what I'm trying to teach, right? And hopefully that ring true with you. Next. Help others organize themselves and develop a strategy. This is a big part of being an expert. If you can help other people with those steps by creating checklists or showing them how they can empowering them to do this expert thing themselves, they will be super grateful and they will see you as the expert just because you empowered them and helped them so much.

[00:10:16].490] - Chris
Next, speak confidently. I know sometimes when if I feel like I don't know something, it's hard for me to speak confidently about that and to project myself as the expert. But if you'll do that, I'm telling you, it goes a long way. That is kind of the think until you make up part of this, right? You want to speak confidently. Let them know that what you're saying you believe, because what you're talking about, you really know about. Well, right, you've learned that you are the expert on that piece of this that may be that you're not the expert on all of it, right? Just like self publishing, I can't tell you all about self publishing across the field, but when it comes to self publishing on Amazon, through some local printers, I can probably talk pretty extensively on that, and so I can speak confidently about that and help reassure the listener of the viewer or the reader. And then finally start putting yourself out there, write some blogs about what you know, appear on some podcasts and talk about those things. You know, when you do that, that confidence just comes through and it helps other people who know a little less than you do, who want to learn from someone who knows a little more than themselves.

[00:11:32].890] - Chris
It helps them find you, right? It's a great marketing tool. If people can find you, then that's when they're going to want to buy your book, invest in your course, get to know you, and build that relationship. A lot of times when I find courses or read books, I don't necessarily want to read them by people who are really far along in their field, right. I like finding people who are just ahead of where I met, because when I do that, I know that this is a journey that I can learn right, where they've been, which is just ahead of where I've been. So it's not so far ahead that I'm going, oh, I can't even see how to get there. I'm able to see a clear path, and they're able to help me because they just went through that stuff. And sometimes the relationship will start to flip because if I really invest my time in this stuff, then I might be able to help them with some things too. And then back and forth and back and forth, especially if you're both real learners. So definitely start to write some blogs, appear on podcasts, and just put yourself out there and do some webinars, that kind of thing.

[00:12:36].140] - Chris
I think you'll be surprised how many people you can help by doing this, because that's what this is all about. All right, well, hopefully next week I'll be back with Gena on Writing Momentum Podcast, back with Amit on the Course Wizard Podcast, and everything will be back to normal. Until then, please rate, review, subscribe, and share these podcasts with people you know, help them see how they can be an expert in their field, too. And we just really appreciate that. If you haven't checked out our other podcast, please check out the Writing Momentum Podcast. Check out the Course Wizards Podcast. We're just happy to put all this stuff in your life and help make you an expert in these areas, too. Until next time, this is Chris. See you later.