Tweet

How Experts Are Born

Written by: Stefanie Hartman

Article Overview: Let’s talk about becoming an expert. First of all, what is an expert and why is it important for you? As an Entrepreneur, positioning yourself as an Expert allows you to become a big fish in a small pond, you don’t need to be known all over the world to make money, you just need to be known in your specific niche. Think of it like cream rising to the top, people begin to know and trust the real estate agent that has a column in the newspaper and was interviewed on TV, or has a real estate TV Show in their local area. Often times, increasing your status to being the Expert in your specific field, can earn you 100,000 to over 1,000,000 in products and services sold annually. Customers come to you because you’ve earned the reputation as being the “best” in your field.

How Experts Are Born

Let’s talk about becoming an expert. First of all, what is an expert and why is it important for you?

The dictionary definition of an expert is “a person who has special skill or knowledge in some field.” For our purposes I would like you to think of an Expert as someone who provides knowledge to others, gained either through study or experience. Financially speaking, your ability to provide your knowledge (through education, products or services) to others is what gives you a business and income.

The reason being, as an Entrepreneur, positioning yourself as an Expert allows you to become a big fish in a small pond, you don’t need to be known all over the world to make money, you just need to be known in your specific niche. Think of it like cream rising to the top, people begin to know and trust the real estate agent that has a column in the newspaper and was interviewed on TV, or has a real estate TV Show in their local area. Often times, increasing your status to being the Expert in your specific field, can earn you 100,000 to over 1,000,000 in products and services sold annually. Customers come to you because you’ve earned the reputation as being the “best” in your field.

Side Note: Just to be clear, establishing yourself as an Expert in the field may bring you customers, but to keep them you must live up to their expectations and not take advantage of them or give them garbage, treat your customers with respect and make their experience with you way above what they expected. Marketing may position yourself as an Expert but in my opinion, delivery is really how you “earn” the title of the Expert. So earn it!!

Some other reasons of why is it important for authors, speakers, financial planners, coaches, doctors, lawyers or entrepreneurs to be seen as Experts is because, being viewed as such can give you:

 Perceived Market Value. It can increase your value in the eye of a buyer, as most people would rather pay for training from an expert than a jack of all trades. As an Expert you need to know your value and not be afraid of asking top dollar for your product or service. If you are bargain basement Jim, you’ll attract those kinds of customers and you’ll have a heck of a time later trying to increase your fees. There is a reason people pay more for Gucci. You want your name associated with quality.

 Credibility. It can give you credibility with the press. There is a great cycle in publicity, as when you brand yourself as the expert in a particular field the press can call on you for comment or your opinion on current events related to your field. And the more they label you as the expert in your field you can then use their quotes for additional press and credibility. You tell them you’re the expert, they print it and you now have a valuable quote.

 Referrals. It can help people refer business to you when they say, you know, I met an expert on that subject at a seminar I attended, let me give you his number. Being identified as an expert also helps you get booked at conferences and events as organizers can get a fast idea of what you do and where you’d fit into their event.

So how do you find your expertise?

This answer may come instantly to you, but for most people they need to ponder it awhile as we tend to typically see ourselves as our job. I believe we are not our job. Our job(s) may be several extensions of ourselves certainly, but it does not entirely define who we are. So…

• What do you love to do?
• What do you excel at?
• What is “common sense” to you that does not come easy to others?
• What lessons have you learned in your industry that you could teach others?
• What do people want and would pay for in your field?
• Do you have an interest or hobby that you’ve immersed yourself in for years?
• What do people tell you you’re good at?
• Have you learned something the hard way (sometimes that is business, sometimes that is parenting lessons, or health vitality lessons)?

Be clear about who you are and what you know.

Here’s another way to think about it:
Review all of your life lessons, both in the personal arena as well as your career experiences. Don’t think of what you did necessarily but more what you learned. Maybe you worked for a big company and now you want to work with small entrepreneurs or something totally different but use your skills to help stay at home moms become leaders at home or delegate tasks or organize their homes.

Your hobby may also be where your expertise is residing. I know a woman that was a sales whiz but she decided to pursue her hobby which was meditation and built a business around that. Truth is, there may be several things you COULD do, but we want to find what excites you the most. What is the most deeply rooted to what you stand for and who you are.

I believe everyone has value, something to contribute or teach that could enrich or improve another person’s life or business. It’s pretty hard to get through life without learning a few things. Do you have some knowledge or expertise or experience that you know could help other people? What lessons in life or business have you learned that could be of value to others?
The fact is, you may have developed an experts instinct and not even be aware of it. I read this interesting book called “Blink”1 by Malcolm Gladwell, who was recently called one of the most influential thinkers of our time. He writes about Thin Slicing or the ability to get a fast amount of information (in a blink of an eye) when you’ve immersed yourself in its study. He illustrated this point with the Getty Museum in California who bought a marble statue for 10 million dollars and had a geologist testing the surface of it to make sure it was authentic and after 2 days that geologist determined it was. Then the Museum decided to brag about it.
Shortly thereafter they were showing this sculpture to an Italian Art Historian Frederico Zeri who served on the Getty’s board of Trustees and Evelyn Harrison one of the world’s foremost experts on Greek Sculpture. When Zeri was taken down to the museums restoration studio to see the korus, he found himself staring at the sculpture’s fingernails. They somehow seemed wrong to him, but in a way that he couldn’t immediately articulate.

When it was Evelyn’s turn, the curator took her down to the basement, swished the cloth off the top of it and beamed, “well it isn’t ours yet, but in a couple of weeks it will be.” To his shock Evelyn turned to him and said “I’m sorry” she had no idea why she said that, she just had a feeling, a hunch. You see these two individuals had spent most of their life pouring over original sculpture and art and became experts.. Something got recorded in their brain that they cannot explain. They absorbed a complicated amount of clues along the way and it turned into instinct. This happens to me with marketing and perhaps to you with your expertise. When they looked at it, right away in a “blink” of an eye, those two individuals instinctually knew it was a fake, although they couldn’t logically explain to the Curator why they had come to that conclusion. This area of our brain is not connected to our speech. In 2 seconds they knew what eventually took the museum 14 months to confirm. Successful people in business or even stock investing can often get unexplainable feelings or indications that something is not right or when something is great and they should move on it quickly.

I bet you have your own unique expertise and instincts based on your life experience, hands-on experience and training, and that you could teach that valuable info to another human being who could really use your help and guidance. What information or skill is literally immersed into your being, your brain that has become your instinct? Answer that, and your life could change.

1 Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by the author of the Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell. Published by Little, Brown and Company twbookmart.com

Related Articles
  Change
  Article #28 Looking For A Business That Works Fast In As Little As Six Months?
  I can’t help but wonder if I were born in any other time…
  The Banner of Success
  How to Change the Leadership Myth

Article Tags: big fish, dictionary definition, doctors, education products, entrepreneur, financial planners, garbage, lawyers, local area, marketing, money, niche, real estate agent, reputation, small pond, speakers, tv show



Related Forum Posts
Funnies - Hi There, Here are some bad headlines: Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge Eye Drops Off Shelf Hospitals Are Sued By 7 Foot Doctors Inclued Your Children When Baking Cookies Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted Kindest regards Beat
Re: Credit Tips: Dos, Don'ts & a Quiz! - Don't forget to check your credit ratings and know where you stand. It can give you a good idea of where you can improve, unless you already have an impeccable score! Experts recommend checking your credit score at least once a year. Normally if someone else other than yourself checks your credit (ie. mortgage company, auto dealer, credit card application), which is called hard inquiries, it can lower your credit score. However when you check your own, it is considered soft inquiries and there is no impact on your overall ratings. You can easily review your score online at Equifax or TransUnion Canada.
Re: History of Women in Business in the United States - Nice read. I feel a few things were left out. At a time in American history it was illegal for a women to do many things. Not only did they need a man to stand up for them, but they needed him to sign bank documents etc.. for the women in question. Not long ago in our history a women did not have a bank account. This was a slap in the face for the woman's husband or father. My state of Oregon is supposedly had a very strong women, a madam, contribute to the establishment of our state. Of course this is seen as a very old business but a business a women were able to run in the back alleys, and as I have read, in the underground here in Oregon. Mileva Mari? was a women in our history that in her own right contributed to America with her mathematics and physics smarts. Born disabled and "homely", her rich parents sent her to many fine schools where she was (it has been said), the only women in these establishments. Since her father did not think she would ever get married seeing how she was, I bet he was a happy camper when Albert Einstein married her. I feel, with no hesitations if it were not for Mileva Mari?, Albert would not be in the history books as he is now. I feel since in the day women were not supposed to have a brain, nor be allowed to publish their own work, that her husband took her work and published it as his own. The Pendleton Roundup , (a huge rodeo here in Oregon), banned women from the rodeo due to "unlady like" behavior around the 1900's. Hence barrel racing took hold as the ONLY women event. In WWII women were the ones who were the welders etc.. women were the ones to take on the jobs of men who were fighting for our country. Once the war was over, women had to relinquish their jobs to the men. One such women was in my sons family, and I got to hear first hand how things were. I like to bring up Emily Dickinson as well, as for women who changed who women are. Women helped establish equal rites here in America. Women along with the black society fought for equal rites. A white women had the same rites as a black person here in America, thus it was only common sense to help with the equal rites movement. Again running into a women who was there. I feel Oprah Winfrey is passing down a history of strong women. Strong women who have always been. She has just stepped it up to modern times. Women rites is not a white nor black issue, it is a women, man issue. Women have done so much for America, sorry to say to find information which gives credit where credit is due when the husband is a big name, or when the establishment is huge, it takes some digging. Women in history have done bigger and better things than the girls of today are taught in schools. Bigger and better then beauty products, or cooking. Women have been, and always will be the back bone of America and American Business.
Julia Hartz of Eventbrite.com - Julia Hartz December 16th, 2008 Co-Founder & President Eventbrite.com As gigs go, Julia Hartz had a good one. While the rest of her twenty-something peers were merely watching MTV, Julia was working for the network in series development, producing wildly popular shows such as Jackass, Real World and Sorority Life. After two years there she took a job at FX. Nip Tuck, The Shield, Rescue Me-Julia was right in the thick of the hottest shows on TV. But in a dramatic move that would make her fictional characters proud, Julia gave it all up for a man. At least it looked that way on the surface. Actually she always knew working in LA would be short-lived so when her long-distance boyfriend Kevin proposed, she headed to San Francisco. And the TV-like saga continued. Not knowing whether they could live together, let alone work together, Julia and Kevin nonetheless launched Eventbrite, a do-it-yourself online event management and ticketing service, in 2005. Their relationship and their company thrived. Today Julia and Kevin are married, have a ten month old daughter, and can proudly say that though Eventbrite began as a small start-up, it has transacted millions of tickets to date. Talk about happily ever after. What we learned from Julia: In the start-up environment you’re wearing many hats. But if you want to grow, you’ve got to delegate. Hire good people and trust them to do their jobs. The most successful entrepreneurs are those who can relinquish well. Learning the Ropes Landing an internship at MTV was exciting. But being hired full time was even more so. There I was at 22 working on Jackass. It was amazing. When I moved to FX I was the youngest member and the only woman on a five-person executive team working on shows like Nip Tuck and The Shield. It was like a start-up; we all wore different hats. I learned to speak up and go with my gut. I built a foundation of knowledge and confidence that I still rely on today. Heading Home I left FX and headed to northern California to be with my fiancé Kevin. What a cliché. But I always knew FX would be short-lived. Yes I loved the creative process and meeting lots of new people but I never intended to stay in LA. I moved to San Francisco in the fall of 2005 to start Eventbrite with Kevin. We laugh about it now but at the time this was a big risk. We went from a long-distance relationship to living and working together. We had no idea how this dynamic would play out. Obviously it worked. We’re married and have a ten-month old. Born to Bootstrap I’m a planner. Plans make me happy. But when we started Eventbrite I had to give that up. I learned to take it one month at a time which was a huge growing experience for me. It was just the two of us in a conference room using saw horses and slabs of wood for desks. Boy were we bootstrapping it. All of our income went back into the business. We were our own bosses so we could do that. Start-Up Central We were occupying a small section of a much larger space that our land lord told us we could use. We filled it with other start-ups. At one point there were ten start-ups in there. The energy was amazing. This was where we built our company. Starting Out Strong We wanted to build a strong foundation from the very beginning so we focused on providing a great product. We figured either we would end up with the eBay of online ticketing or just a great small family business. Either way we weren’t going to skimp. We weren’t taking salaries and we didn’t use outside funding. We were incredibly capital-efficient. Our only hire was a CTO who lived in France. We focused on our product and growing the business during the day in the United States while he slept, and he built the technology while we slept. You can’t get more efficient than that. The Customer Challenge Our biggest challenge was customer acquisition because it wasn’t readily obvious how we would market our product. But because we provided world-class customer service, word of mouth was huge. We didn’t find search engine marketing to be very helpful in the beginning because we were too small for it to be effective. It’s kind of a catch-22. We had to grow first before we could use a tool that was supposed to help us grow. Balancing Business and Baby As a mother and a business owner I do get anxious now and then because I care so passionately about both roles. But I work from home sometimes so I can be with my daughter. I love to watch her climb out of her crib and make a break for it. We spend our down-time as a family. And Kevin and I have Wednesday date nights. Sometimes we’re practically sleeping in our salads but this time is sacred. This Featured Lady was profiled by Ladies Who Launch Associate Editor Susie Lacey.
Top 50 Entrepreneurs Ever! - And the Top 50 Entrepreneurs of all time are… (In no particular order) Hugh Hefner – Obvious. Oprah – Born to a single mother in rural Mississippi, did what she loved and never let up. Popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre. Simon Cowell – Guy made millions off Karaoke. Jenna Jameson – Worth $70 million using only what god gave her. Henry Ford – Standardized efficiency. Thomas Edison – Numerous failures on the road to success. Perseverance! Adrian Block - 1612 establish the first known brewery in the New World on the southern tip of New Amsterdam (Manhattan). I live in a city with more than 30 breweries operating in the city limits…think these guys were onto something. Hans Christiansen – Partners with Adrian Block. Adam Osborne – Creator of the 1st personal computer. Howard Hughes – Say what you want about him the man had a vision and stuck to it. Madame C.J. Walker – 1st Female African American Millionaire…and she did it in early 1900’s. Safe to say she had a lot of obstacles, but persevered and prospered. If you think you have more working against you than Madame C.J. Walker did, think again. Mary Kay Ash – The woman behind Mary Kay cosmetics. Redefined affiliate marketing. Howard Schultz – Who’s gonna’ pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee? With $2.5 billion plus in total revenue the answer at Starbuck’s is a lot! Alexander Graham Bell – Inventing the telephone in 1876 was about as wacky an idea as teleportation is today…did that stop him? King Croesus – Minted the world’s first coin in 6th century. Benjamin Franklin – Author, printer, inventor, businessman. Ray Croc – Where do you go for dinner when you spent all your money on $4.00 Starbuck’s coffee? McDonald’s! Franchising and national expansion (both stores and waistlines) would never be the same. Sam Walton – Speaking of saving money and expanding like crazy. Sam Walton found a niche and filled it, regardless of what you think of the extra traffic Wal-Mart brings to your neighborhood. Ernest Gallo – Took what was once an exclusive product and repackaged it for the masses. I was 20 years old before I knew wine came in anything but a “jug”. William Middlebrook – Giving William the nod for inventing the paper clip, although some debate remains. However, you have to include the inventor of the paper clip in this list since we’ve all said, at one time or another, “and whoever invented the paperclip is rich, and I’m still working in this crappy office!” Bill Gates – Took a risk and was a first mover in a market that exploded. Steve Jobs – Make your products easy and people will love to use them…making a dead sexy laptop doesn’t hurt either. Mayer Amschel Rothschild – Started the world’s first international bank in the mid 1700’s. What did you do today? Scrooge McDuck - Scrooge has emerged from being a mere supporting character to a major figure of the Duck universe. Parlayed early success into his own comic book series, television appearances, films, and video games. As big as David Hasselhoff in Europe, he seized opportunity when it arose. Russell Simmons – Worth $325 million, and started as a teen street hustler. A hip hop pioneer and visionary who has shaped the hip-hop scene of the early 80’s, has branched off into fashion, television and film. And I don’t care if you grew up in Brooklyn or Beverly Hills you remember “Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam”. Ron Popeil – Net worth in excess of $100 million dollars. A consummate salesman, he had us believing we NEEDED a food dehydrator and spray paint to cover our bald spot! The Phoenicians – Inventors of the sail boat, and could be credited then with giving our early explorers the means to take over the western hemisphere. H. Ross Perot – Used a $1,000 loan from his wife in 1962 to start Electronic Data Systems. Became a billionaire as computer systems drove the need for electronic data storage. JP Morgan – How many people get credited with having saved or rescued the U.S. national economy in general—and the federal government in particular—on two separate occasions? Not many, and JP was a merger monger legend in his time. Charles Schwab – Founder and CEO of the Schwab Corporation, made having a broker cool and accessible. Worth $5.5 billion for his efforts. Larry Page – Google, need we say more? Sergey Brin - Google, need we say more? Philip Knight – In partnership with Bill Bowerman created Nike. What’s the reward for taking a product everyone uses and making it functional and fashionable? Try a net worth in excess of $9 billion dollars. George Lucas – Start with a vision, add some talent, and never waiver. Stars Wars is as well known on this planet as Coca-Cola, and Lucas is worth a cool $3.6 billion. Doctor John Pemberton – Pharmacist who in 1886 invented Coca Cola. Forced to change his formula from including wine due to prohibition his elixir with “tonic and nerve stimulant properties of the coca plant and cola nuts sweetened with sugar” became a sensation. Eberhand Anheuser- Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…thank you sir for the many mornings where I regretted the night before. Adolphus Busch - Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…bless you for allowing me to think I am funny, great looking, and a fabulous dancer for a few hours every Saturday night. Jeff Bezos – Founded Amazon.com in 1994, and wrote up the business plan for his company on a cross country drive from New York to Seattle. Was a .com entrepreneur before there was even a term for it. Thomas Kinkade - Americas most collected living artist. Marketing works people. Erno Rubik - Invented a puzzle only .000001% of the world population could solve without cheating, and sold millions! Marketing works people. Alex Tew - 21 year old entrepreneur made $1,000,000 off the “Million Dollar Homepage”. Adding him to the list to illustrate that great ideas are sometimes in plain sight. Didn’t we all think, “I wish I had thought of that”? Henry Hassenfeld - Owner of a textile plant in 1923 his company struck gold when they developed a way for kids to play doctor. The first toy the plant ever produced led the way for the likes of Mr Potato Head, GI Joe, Life, Yatzee, Candyland, and just about any other game we played as kids. Partners with his brother Helal Hassenfeld. Helal Hassenfeld - Thanks for the memories man, I still get misty eyed thinking about Cobra Comander and the words “YO Joe” will live with me forever. Rollin King - In 1965 started a regional airline serving 3 Texas cities. 40 years later Southwest Airlines has 3500 flights a day and is the number one airline in the United States and the World by number of passengers carried. Herb Kelleher - Partnered with Rollin King to start Southwest Airlines. The guy started an AIRLINE COMPANY for crying out loud, that’s ballsy. Guy Laliberte - Made the circus cool again. Founder and CEO of Canda’s Cirque du Soleil, Laliberte founded Cirque in 1984, and revolutionized the idea of what a circus could be. Cirque du Soleil has toured more than 100 cities around the world. Admiral Zheng He - Built the vaunted Treasure Fleets, comprising dozens of ships and tens of thousands of sailors, and led them in trade missions across south Asia and as far west as Africa and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. In seven voyages from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He spread China’s goods across the world and returned with treasures for the Ming Dynasty. Andrew Carnegie - The Scottish immigrant and weaver’s son built a steel empire whose mills churned out the railroads, ships, and structures of post-Civil War America. Milton Hershey - In 1905 built the worlds largest chocolate factory. His name has become synonymous with chocolate, which Americans consume more than 11 pounds of each year. Gary Dahl - A millionaire for selling rocks, pet rocks, enough said.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

9 tips to increase ROI in PPC Campaigns

Is the iPad useful? One CEO tells all ....

The new marketing question. Will they follow?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.