Hello, and welcome. In this episode, we’re going to look at the importance of becoming an expert, the types of experts and the process on how you, yes, you can become an expert in this podcast episode.
Episode 16 – Why you need to become an expert (you probably already are one…) and how it helps with YouTube – Podcast Transcript
We’re going to look at the importance of becoming an expert, the types of experts and the process on how you, yes, you can become an expert. Hey, Thrivers, I’m Sara Nguyen, creator of the Thriving Creator Academy. And I’m here to help you go from stuck and overwhelmed to becoming a confident, profitable and thriving YouTube creator.
Join me here each week for honest conversations about what it really takes to be a successful YouTube creator without compromising your creativity, sacrificing cheeky drinks with the people you love or downtime for yourself. You’ll hear about the hard lessons I’ve gone through so you can avoid making the same slow and costly mistakes on your journey, as well as my secret weapons to help you dig deep and do the work it takes.
I’m honoured and grateful to have this opportunity to share this together with you right here on the Thriving Creator Podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s get started. Why would you want to become an expert?
You want to become an expert if you really want to leverage YouTube to create value and to use it as a vehicle to grow your business. If you want to attract more dream clients into your business, not those cray cray nightmare client, dream clients who are willing to pay, take your advice, do what you say and get the results.
If you want to build a solid foundation for your business with 100% integrity, and if you really want to open up income opportunities that you never would have imagined, you need to position yourself as an expert in your category. And it’s really important that you come to realise that you need to be an expert, because when experts exist or when you’re an expert, people trust you. Right?
And people trust people who have knowledge in a specific area and you create value for your time, your products and service. And therefore you can go from cheaper prices, painful clients to higher prices, better clients and more value for the time that you put into the products or services that you deliver.
It also allows you to create demand so that people want to hire you and work with you. And when it comes to experts, people are willing to pay and you get to choose who you want to work with. I think this is one of the greatest freedoms that you get to enjoy as an expert, that you get to say, you know what, I don’t want nightmare clients that demand me, who want me on call all the time, who lack boundaries.
I want dream clients who do this and you get to create that profile of who you want and choose the clients that you work with, as opposed to being desperate and not having any choice but to take whoever comes to you. And being an expert also allows you to build confidence so that you can attract more of these dream clients so you can make more money in your business from your YouTube efforts as well.
But the problem with this whole notion of being an expert is that, one, most people really don’t feel qualified enough for the title, and I’m doing air quotes here, “expert” to we’re afraid of being called out as a fraud. Impostor syndrome is a massive thing.
We’re afraid that if we label ourselves as an expert, even if we have all of that experience, then people are going to, you know, think that we aren’t good enough. We’re going to feel that way. We think we aren’t good enough. And they’re going to realise that we’re not who we say we are, even though we have all of these credentials.
Imposter syndrome, it’s a thing. The third problem is we really don’t feel that we’re perfect enough. We don’t feel that we’re good enough. We don’t feel that we can do all of these things even though we have it in ourselves.
And the fourth problem is that there’s a stigma with being an expert because of all of the bad, sleazy Internet marketers out there. But I want to say now that just because there are people who go by the title of guru, who go by the title of expert, who go by the title of, you know, whatever it is, just because they’re sleazy, just because they make you feel icky and people judge them doesn’t mean that you are that classification.
It just means that those people exist out there. But I’m going to walk you through how you can become an expert and not be sleazy, full of integrity. And let’s get into that right now. Now, the first step in you stepping into your expertism requires you to shift your mindset.
On one hand we have someone, so we have someone who wants the results that you can create for them. They see value in what you offer and they’re able and willing to pay you. Right. This is someone, let’s put them on the left-hand side of you and then on the other side, we have you.
So you, you have knowledge or, you know, you’ve got the knowledge, you’ve got a couple of steps at the very least ahead of this person who wants the results. And then you can also teach them how to get the results. So you’ve got that experience because you’ve done it.
You’ve got the knowledge. And in as long as long as there is an exchange they’re willing to pay and you’re able to give them the knowledge, you’re able to give them the information, the transformation, the systems, the processes, then you’re an expert.
You’re an expert because you’re able to help them get from point A to point B. And this exchange in the middle of money and of knowledge and of transfer of these processes, that means you’re an expert and that means that it’s not sleazy because you’re adding value.
They’re seeing the value, and you’re not doing something for free. They’re not getting nothing for the money that they pay for. They’re getting value and you’re getting value as well. Therefore, it’s not sleazy. It’s not icky. It’s fair.
It’s balanced. As long as we’ve got this in equilibrium, someone who wants the results that you can create for them, you on the other side having the knowledge and able to actually help them. And then that exchange actually happened.
Shift your mindset to see that you being an expert really is bridging the gap between helping you move someone from point A to point B. Now, I want to talk about the three type of experts that exist. There are three types of experts, in my view.
The first is a results based expert. Right. This is an expert who has loads of testimonials. They’ve got heaps of clients. They’ve got lots of connections and customer relationships. And this is also through the experience that they’ve built over time. An example of a results based expert would be Shauntay from Beachbody.
He’s been a beachbody coach for a very, very long time. Lots and lots of people have had results from his programmes, from his videos, and we know that he’s been on television and he’s a bit of a personality. This is a results based type of expert.
The second type of expert is an experience based expert, so this is the type of expert where you teach people through your experience, and whilst you may not have 15, 20 years worth of experience like the results based expert, you’re sharing as you learn. You’re ahead of people in some in some sense and you’re facing challenges and you’re showing transparency because you’re able to show kind of almost real time what it’s like as you go through the journey.
And the proof is through your doing. The proof is in you creating the content and showing up. An example of that is me. When I first started as a social media consultant, it was also a very long time ago. And the whole concept of social media was very, very new.
And I didn’t have a whole sweep of clients because, one, I had left the corporate world to go and do my own thing. And then I was starting from scratch, like most people do. But what I was able to do was I was able to create a portfolio.
I was able to demonstrate results based on starting with myself, creating my own social media pages, creating my own graphics, creating my own campaigns where I was able to show examples of my work. And then I was able to get clients based off that.
And people were willing to hire me just based on the fact that I could show them that, hey, I can do this for you, I can create campaigns for you, I can create social media plans and all of that because I’ve done it for myself. And these are the results that I’ve got.
And this is where a lot of people start as well. This is where I can see you possibly starting, where if you are really new to the niche that you’re in, or maybe you’ve even been in it for a little while, but you haven’t been in it for like 50 years, then this is probably your area as well.
And it’s one of the easiest ones to grow as an expert with. Use experience and document it. So Gary V. we all know Gary V, he loves to talk about documenting your processes and your journey, and this is what helps create you as an expert. So the third type of expert is what I like to call an aggregator.
And these experts are created by bringing on board and leveraging other industry experts. Right. So they’re seen as the connectors and they connect top experts to produce value. One of these aggregator type of experts is Founder. And I really, really like Nathan from Founder.
And what they started doing was they had the podcast and they kind of had like the publishing house where they were able to bring on board the Tony Robbins, the major, major names and to create content, get their advice, get their knowledge, get their insight.
And they were able to bring these top experts together. And then they themselves were seen as the expert and they themselves started creating their own content, their own courses, some with these experts, some on their own. It’s another way of becoming an expert.
Now, I’m going to walk you through the four steps on becoming an expert in a very high integrity kind of way so that you don’t feel sleazy and icky and you can feel good about it. I’m going to walk through the four steps in detail.
And they are step number one, to get really clear on your niche and to share your knowledge. Step two is to learn and teach what you know. Step three is to get results for yourself, for case studies and for clients. And step four is to get testimonials to share them and to share examples of your work.
Now, let’s look at the nitty gritty of how we would start building this. Step one, getting clear on your niche and sharing your knowledge. If you are in a niche, let’s call it, let’s do weight loss, because that seems to be a really easy one to create examples for.
And let’s say there are 10 steps to weight loss and you are steps, and you are at steps one to three. You can take steps one to three to people who are at step zero. Right. Just as an example. And you can work towards getting to step 10 with more experience.
And whilst you’re doing that, you can create content for YouTube, you can share it on social media, and this helps you to start to build authority. And I know it’s scary and I know it’s incredibly vulnerable to put yourself out there, particularly if you’re quite new in an area as well.
But you’ll see that the more that you share, the more proof that you create, the more you kind of accept that. Yeah, you know what? You are the expert and the more that people will start to come to you as well.
This is step one in getting clear on who you will target, and to start sharing your knowledge in that area. And to get that experience, you know, learn it, teach it and to really start to refine it. Step two is to learn and teach what you know.
Creating free content for YouTube and social media really helps you get more confident. And it really helps you to get clarity on your business in general. Right. It helps you to build authority through the information that you share.
And you may not feel that you’re ready to start sharing and start teaching, you may feel that, hey, I’m a weight loss coach, you know, in steps one, two, three. And I’m not at step 10 where I’m a bodybuilder. And you know what? It doesn’t matter because you never feel ready.
You will never have that right feeling. It will never be the right time. You need to start before you feel that you’re ready and you need to start as long as, as soon as you can start showing some form of results. And as soon as you can start adding value and creating value, that’s when that’s when you’re ready.
And this documentation process is how you become an expert without feeling sleazy because you are not sleazy, you are sharing your information, you’re sharing your experience. And that is real. And people cannot fault you for that.
And if they do, they’re just not meant to be your clients or your audience. Step number three is to get real results for yourself and for case studies and for clients. So if you haven’t gotten results in your niche yet, you need to go and create them.
I talk a lot about the concept of extreme ownership and extreme responsibility. If you are new to a market and you haven’t gotten results yet, use yourself as a case study, if possible, and get those results. Right. And then you’ve got one solid case study to go off.
I would find clients or people who are willing to work with you. And if you have to do a little bit of free work, a couple of free case studies in return for testimonials, this is okay, as long as you set the expectation up front so you don’t have, you know, these free nightmare case studies who consume all of your time and make you end up regretting it.
As long as you connect with people, qualify them as your ideal client and manage the expectations, then this is a legit way of creating that expert status and of getting real testimonials and of getting real proof that you can do what you say you can do. Right.
And this is how I started off when I was a social media consultant at the very beginning. I created case studies for myself and I had businesses that I worked with for free. They were very selective because social media content is so time-consuming.
But I was able to do lots of case studies and lots of campaigns. And as I pitch for more jobs, I was able to show, hey, look, this is an example of the results that I can generate. They started from point A here. They ended up at point B when I was working with them.
And these are the results that we got. And that’s what you can create for yourself as well. And then step four is to get testimonials right and to share examples of your work, and I had someone contact me not too long ago saying that they wanted to become a social media consultant, but they found it really hard to get work without any experience.
And I was telling them that in my experience back in the day, I started with creating results for myself and creating a portfolio from that, I started with some free client work. And that alone was enough for me to build a portfolio and then to start landing five thousand dollar projects with monthly support.
And so it really is about creating work that you’re proud to share and your own work is better than none. So you may be going do people you know, just want to see your results or do they want to see lots of results?
And the answer is it would depend. Some of the clients that I worked with at the beginning, they were very happy just to see work from my portfolio because that was enough proof to them that I could do the work.
Always leverage the case studies and client testimonials and share them. And keep adding to them as you get more of them. Always ask for the testimonial and keep sharing those wins, posting them on Facebook with permission, of course, screenshots and use that social proof to help build your expert status.
It really is a cycle, right? What I’ve walked you through today, it starts at the top where you share your knowledge, you learn things and you teach what you know. Right. This is all doable. This is all within your control.
And what I love teaching people how to grow on YouTube by becoming experts in their field because it levels the playing field. You don’t need a lot of money to become an expert. You need to put in the effort.
You need to put in the effort of being able to do the work, of being able to learn and teach yourself and then get results for yourself and for others. And once you’ve done this, you can start to share the wins. You get that proof and you continue to learn, continue to grow and the cycle continues.
And you are just the expert and the bomb-dot-com. I really want you to remember that you will evolve as your experience grows, you will evolve. You may feel like I’m not good enough to do this at this point.
Who am I to do this? And we all go through this at the very beginning whenever we start anything new. But this is totally normal. But remember that it really is something that’s possible and it’s something that I’ve done.
It’s something that I’ve trained many people to do and to create profitable businesses from in an entire integrity, sleaze-free kind of way. The episode is over, but it doesn’t have to end. Head on over to thrivingcreatormasterclass.com. The link is also in the show notes.
If you’re ready to go from confusion to clarity and to finally ditch that self-doubt so you can build the profitable YouTube channel, you know, deep down you’re always meant to create, then join me inside my signature programme, the Thriving Creator Academy, where you get the content, coaching and community you need to successfully implement my proprietary system so you can start reaping the rewards of running a thriving YouTube channel.
The Thriving Creator Academy is a coaching programme for creators who are ready to transform their creative ideas into thriving YouTube channels. Sign up to the masterclass now to learn more at thrivingcreatormasterclass.com.
