This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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If you’re a professional coach, consultant or other service provider, conventional wisdom for the last several years has suggested you should strive to establish yourself as a recognized expert in your field. An infoguru. A celebrity. The foremost authority. The subject matter expert.
Having been a practicing coach for several years myself, I’ve worked through the process of trying to distinguish myself as an expert. Yet, to this day, I’m still not comfortable thinking of myself as an expert (even though it may appear to a couple of you that I’m an expert on small business branding). I’ve usually attributed my discomfort to an underdeveloped ego, but lately, I’m starting to see an entirely different reason.
Even though they usually have an expert level of knowledge and wisdom, most savvy solopreneurs don’t really think of themselves as experts.
I recall an interesting email exchange with Bob Bly, for example, who argued up and down with me that he was "just a copywriter," even though he’s written over 50 books on marketing, writing and business success. He finally gave in when I said:
"With all due respect Bob, don’t blame me and be insulted that I see you as more than a copywriter. Blame yourself. You wrote all those books."
Bob’s one of those people who just gets in there and hangs out with everyone else – all the other users. He’s an expert on many things, but if you read his blog, you’ll see much of it is asking questions and stimulating debate rather than giving expert advice.
Interestingly enough, Bob has always been skeptical about blogging as a viable business tool. But that didn’t stop him from getting in there and engaging other users. It didn’t stop him from becoming just another user. Here’s an interesting excerpt of a recent post:
"I just signed a contract with a major publisher to write a book titled ‘My Year in the Blogosphere: Confessions of a Blogging Skeptic’ – and I’m hoping you can help me with it."
In that one sentence, you see a guy who’s an expert on the outside, and just another user on the inside. Rather than separate himself behind the vail of expert status, Bob knows he can learn more and get many more ideas by engaging with other users – by being another user himself.
There’s no better selling tool than a user talking about their amazing experiences.
My friend Helaine and I met for dinner Saturday night in Worcester, Ma. She glowed with excitement as she described in vivid detail the amazing time she spent with four other business women friends earlier that day. "A woman’s self care day" was the term I think she used. Her excitement and gratitude for the experience was palpable. It made me want similar experiences in my life, which says a lot since I’m not even a woman.
We share little nuggets of intimacy like that all the time. And in those moments, as she pours out her life to me with excitement and exuberance, she’s not "being an expert" on living a fabulous life. She’s being "just another user of the tools" that help her live a fabulous life. These are the same tools she offers to her coaching clients, who are mainly women business owners. Women who want the same experience she does – a fabulous life.
There’s so much power and energy in hearing someone talk passionately and openly about their experiences.
It’s much more powerful than listening to them dispense an expertly annotated prescription for how to have those same experiences yourself (that’s not to say expert advice isn’t valuable). This is the power of a blog, by the way, when it’s done right.
The whole notion of "users" comes from the technology world. It first occurred to me when I began reading Kathy Sierra, a self proclaimed geek and co-author of Creating Passionate Users. Kathy doesn’t talk much about clients or prospects or customers or target markets and such. She talks mainly about … you guessed it, USERS and how to create passionate users of your products and services, For example, Kathy writes:
"If you’re using formal language in a lecture, learning book (or marketing message, for that matter), you’re worrying about how people perceive YOU. If you’re thinking only about the USERS, on the other hand, you’re probably using more conversational language.
Users. What a great term for the times. Whether it’s a user of software or a user of professional coaching/consulting services.
This idea of users was really driven home for me recently when I began reading and listening to Dave Winer. If you’re not familiar with Dave, most people say he’s the guy who’s mainly responsible for the emergence of blogs and RSS. Not sure how true that is, but at the very least, he’s a brilliant and visionary tech guy (more on him here).
I tracked down something Dave wrote over four years ago titled: How to Make Money on the Internet v2.0. You can read the whole thing. It’s not long. But here are the important parts as it relates to this post:
"… From there, it isn’t too hard to see how money is made. Make the product people want and sell it to them.
"But many companies seem scared of users. Our culture says that people buy products that geniuses develop. Contact with the user is something to say you do, but there’s not a whole lot of that going on …
"But listening to users is actually not that easy. It’s easier to *be* a user and make products for other users. And that my friends, the combination of user-based information exchange and products that reflect user experience and wants, is where money will be made on the Internet."
See, I think a couple of big things can happen internally when you begin to think of yourself as an expert. Number one, you’ll probably feel more confident, which is a great thing. The downside is your confidence and expert status has to constantly be reinforced, and that makes it hard for you to be real. It makes it hard for you to say "I don’t know." After all, you’re the expert. You need to have all the answers.
It makes it hard for you to be curious. Curious about "the products people want," or curious about alternative tools, solutions and information that are outside you bag of expert-ise. It also makes it hard to respond to any emerging trends or emerging needs of your network.
The second thing that can happen is a distance can develop between you and your network – like a mental pedestal. You’re up here and they’re down there, and how can you possibly hear what they’re saying from way up there. And even if you could, would you listen to them? After all, you’re the expert. Not them.
Ultimately, it’s okay and sometimes crucial to be an expert in the mind of others, especially if your knowledge, skill sets and/or credentials support it. In your own mind, however, you’re better off being just another curious user looking for ways to solve your problems, achieve your goals and live a great life.