Hey, badass, woohoo! I'm feeling fired up for this one. So we're gonna be jamming on the concept of expertise today.
And, you know, when I'm talking about starting online businesses, I often reference these expertise-based online businesses or these knowledge-based businesses and the biggest limiting belief I have coming back to me as well. “But I'm not an expert in anything. I'm not a thought leader in anything. I'm not a mentor in anything. I'm not an authority in anything”. And it's a shame because I genuinely believe that absolutely everyone has a million dollar business idea sitting right there inside of them just based on who they are.
But this blocker, and this concept of expertise is really stopping people from acknowledging what they could possibly do for business. So let's get into this topic because I don't want this roadblock of what is essentially impostor syndrome, thinking that you don't have any expertise, and certainly not enough to help anyone with something useful. I don't want that getting in the way of your potential when it comes to starting a business.
And it's interesting, because before I work with people and help them to find their niche, and help them to find their thing, they're often saying things to me, like “I don't feel qualified enough to be coaching other people. I don't want to feel like a fraud. I don't want to feel like a scam artist”. I don't want this concept of tricking people into thinking that you can help them. Or I don't know if I'm particularly good at anything. Or, you know, I've worked in this field, or I have degrees and this and this. But that's not actually what I want to do for business. And so I'm stuck. Can you relate to any of these feelings? That essentially, you're not smart enough, good enough, qualified enough, expert enough to start an expertise-based online business?
And what's really interesting is that something that I see time and time again, is this overarching belief that's been drilled into us about expertise, meaning, you have to have a formal qualification or something. And we're going to have to dismantle that I'm just telling you right now, from the get go. Before I dive into the meat and potatoes of this episode, we're going to have to release that belief altogether because that's not how the world of business and online business works. That's how the world of corporate works. That's how the job market works. They care what you studied. They care about the online courses, they care about your certifications, and the only permission slip you have in general, to contribute to society is that piece of paper, right? I studied marketing, and therefore I'm allowed to be a marketer.
People want to work with people. They want to work with human beings. If you are on a mission to kickstart your health journey and lose 10 kilos, most people these days don't actually want to work with the dietician with a PhD who has never lost weight in their life, and has always found weight management easy and simple and never been overweight. They want to work with the person that they see on Instagram who has three kids just like they do, and has lost the weight in a way that feels really good and really sustainable, and really achievable to them. And they want to learn from that person.
Just with that idea alone. I know that you have expertise, because you've lived a life. And unless you've been in some kind of induced coma for your entire life, I know that you inherently have skills, strengths, experiences and passions that other people simply don't have. And to be an expert to someone.
If we take the definition. What does it mean to be an expert? If it's not about you know, having a PhD in something or two years of work experience in something, what is it? Well, expertise is all relative. You only need to be a few steps ahead on your journey to be an expert to someone. If I've worked in recruitment for six months, and I want to start a business helping people with their resumes, I'm not trying to help expert recruiters. I'm helping job candidates who have no idea what they're doing. For example, maybe I would target students who are trying to land their first internship. Or if I've moved to France, for example, and learn French as an adult, and I want to help people learn real life street French, as an adult, just like I have. I'm not trying to sell my course to people with their PhD in the French language, or native French speakers. I'm working with francophiles who are really into the French culture, French language, who currently speak little to no French. So even though I'm not French, if I can speak French, well, if I can connect with French people, if I know the slang, if I know the straight French, I'm an expert in that area, compared to other non French people who currently speak zero French, but want to speak French.
Or if I'm a mom, who has had three really successful and positive and peaceful water births. For example, I'm an expert to any pregnant person or aspiring pregnant person who wants to do the same thing but hasn't yet. Or if I'm a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and I found a way to eliminate my major symptoms, thanks to lifestyle changes, hormonal regulation, whatever it is, well, then I'm an expert to anyone with polycystic ovary syndrome, who hasn't yet achieved that thing.
And if I want to teach someone how to get their first 10,000 followers on Tiktok, guess how many followers I need? 10,000. Not 100,000, not a million. I just need my 10,000 followers to be able to teach someone how to get their first 10,000 followers because I've just done it.
So do you see how you are an expert to somebody, you're always an expert to somebody out there on something.
So in this episode, we're going to cover three key steps to being an expert to owning your expertise, even if you don't feel that you currently have any expertise right now. And we're going to walk you through how to get started with even just a little expertise. So you can get started today and grow it over time. You don't have to be the expert on every single facet of your chosen topic, you just need enough to get started and then you have your own journey of becoming the expert over time, and bringing your audience bringing your community with you.
So step one, how do we uncover the kinds of unique expertise that you all really have? Now, as I said, this is going to become really, really crucial here, that you unlearn that belief that our expertise, or our credibility in our life comes from our formal qualifications. And I want to give you the example of Simran Kaur. So Simran is the founder of Girls that Invest - check them out on Instagram. They're amazing! She is a fellow Kiwi from New Zealand, like me. And she is a BOSS, co-founder of Girls that Invest, Forbes 30 under 30, TEDx speaker, author, you name it. Girls that Invest is ranked as a number one business podcast. There's a book. There's a global audience of over 1 million women and minorities listening to their podcasts in 60 different countries, Instagram following, and they're on this incredible mission to make investing education more accessible, especially to the woman and minorities. And what I need you to know about Sim is that she started Girls that Invest in her very early 20s, after about 18 months, working as an Optometrist, that's what she studied.
So you've got someone who has no PhD in finance, no degree in financial markets, like that is not her profile at all. But she has this passion, about learning about stocks and investing and, and wanting to share what she knew what she was up to in terms of her own investing activity and becoming a homeowner, and that kind of thing, and she brought people along with her on her journey. And of course, four years later, she's accumulated a lot of knowledge. And I can see that later on. She eventually ended up getting a certificate and financial markets and so on, okay. But her story didn't start there. And if She had waited to have her degree or PhD in finance to be able to start Girls that Invest. Well, she wouldn't have started.
And it's the same thing for other big entrepreneurs, I'm thinking about the Queen of Confidence. You can't go out there and get a PhD in confidence. I mean, you probably can, there’s probably a PhD in Psychology. But the Queen of Confidence is all about sharing, first and foremost, their journey of confidence, making bold moves, and teaching other woman how to do the same. Imagine if either of these powerhouses had been held back by the concept of formal qualifications, right?
So looking at your life, where might you uncover some expertise that you could foster, and you could use to help people. One of the key sources of expertise is obviously just your lived experience. Maybe it's you know, someone's kind of life transformation, you've experienced a hurdle you've overcome something that you've been through, I'm talking about overcoming divorce, losing 20 kilos, homeschooling kids becoming vegan, travelling the world, keeping houseplants alive, getting your baby to sleep through the night at a really young age, regulating your hormones. What have you lived through? What have you achieved, outside of formal qualifications, just in terms of what have you been through in life, you know, that's an incredible place to start looking at your sources of expertise.
The other centre of expertise you could tap into are your soft skills. So the leadership skills you have the human skills you have the ways that you're able to connect with other people. And, you know, ask yourself, have you ever significantly improved your soft skills in any way, for example, learning how to be become a really great public speaker, as an introvert, or communicating with your partner, or becoming more confident at work, learning how to lead a team, or time management and productivity in your studies. All of these are things that you can help people with. What about technical skills? And this is, you know, really great if you know, if you have work experience and less in formal qualifications, and less, I'm not saying that's not your zone of expertise, all the better. That's amazing. But maybe it's something that came from, you know, a self initiated project on the side as well. Maybe it's starting a YouTube channel, budgeting, speaking a second language, playing an instrument, growing social media accounts. Are you a master at Excel? All these kinds of things, right?
Or what about your passions and hobbies? What is something that you've always been really into really good at? What are you obsessed with? Where do you spend your time? When it comes to reading podcasts, books, articles? What are you consuming? Why? What have you spent hours and hours and hours learning about or learning how to do compared to the average person? Maybe you're really good at painting. Maybe you're really good at dog training, baking tarot card readings, using Canva, to design wedding invitations for your friends, crafting and cool activities to keep young kids engaged.
And then, what are you currently being paid to do? It's worth looking at that to how could you take what you studied, or what you're currently working in and turn it into a business. If you're a recruiter, you could become a job search coach. If you're a dance studio owner, you could become an online dance teacher and teach people how to dance from the comfort of their own homes. If you're a social media manager, you could become a content coach, for a speech language therapist. You could become an online speech therapy coach, whatever it is, and I guess zooming out completely, what about just who you are fundamentally?
One of my clients is from Palestine, she's in in the US and dentifies as a proud, modern, millennial, Muslim woman. And she was struggling with this question until I asked her well, what would the 20 year old version of you have wanted to know? You know, what do you wish it looking at everything that you've lived through and every and who you've become and such a powerhouse, you know, a lawyer or a mom or partner, you know, just has built this incredible life herself. But what were you struggling with when you were 20? And the light bulb went on. And so now she's developed this incredible programme for millennial Muslim woman who want to, you know, be proud of their identity and connect with their faith and connect with their culture and at the same time, become real actors of their life, life by design, understand what they want, and build their confidence and their self advocacy and really build themselves up first, and their career and everything, so that if and when they do want to become partners or mothers or whatever that is, they've got this really rock solid sense of self. First, it's almost like a, a leadership or life coaching development programme for young millennial Muslim woman. It's incredible. And that's just inherent to who she is as a human being.
So a couple of things that you can do, to try to get these ideas out, as, you know, firstly, you could draw out your life timeline. And from age zero to where you are today, identify really critical life experiences that you've been through, and things that have shaped you, you could also dissect all of the major areas of life. If you Google wheel of life, a really handy graphic will come up for you. But the wheel of life is typically split into categories like money, love, friendships, career, spirituality, mental health, physical health, family, deep dive into each of these areas of life and acknowledge the things that you're good at or what comes easily to you and each of those kinds of areas.
And another thing you can do is just reflect on the questions that you get asked, or what do people come to you for advice on, that's how you can start to get those brain juices flowing, and figure out where might I have some expertise. Now, step two, is then deciding what kind of expert you might want to become. So in business, there are typically three broad categories of expert who want to build this leveraged expertise based online business. And sometimes there's overlap, of course, but you usually start out in one main category.
So the first category is what I call the role model. And this is very much results based so you are someone who is a couple of steps ahead of someone else, and you have the results that people want, and the ability to teach people how to get that result. And you have strong first hand experience in that field. And just as a side note, you can also be on your journey here. Again, if you want to grow your YouTube audience to 100,000 followers, but you're currently at 5000, you can still take people on that ride with you, because you would start creating content about how to get your first 100 followers, how to get your first 1000, how to set up your channel, how to etc. And you'd be able to take them on the journey with you as you grow. But you've already achieved results in this area. I'm a role model based business with Empires. Because I've achieved the seven figure multimillion dollar business that people want. And that's not the case for Badass Careers. Because I work for myself, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm teaching people how to thrive in the corporate world with Badass Careers.
So you see the difference, I'm not actually the role model. In that situation, I'll tell you what I am in the next category. So the role model is all about, you've done the thing, you got results. And now you can teach other people to do the same
For example, you raised four kids who now ate anything you serve them, you've never had to cook two dinners at night, one for your kids, one for you and your partner, and you've helped your friends to do the same. And now you're on a mission to help other parents to get their kids to eat anything to that would be one example of a role model based expertise that you can leverage for business.
The second kind of expert you might want to become is what I call the knowledge fountain. So this is the person who knows a lot about a particular topic. Maybe you've researched it, maybe you've worked in it. Or maybe you just spend hours every week consuming information about it for fun. And this kind of expert will package up this knowledge to educate and empower people to get the results that they want in life. So for example, for Badass Careers. Yes, I worked in corporate I had a kickass career, I did really cool things. But for the four years of me running badass careers as my sole focus. I wasn't in the corporate world. It wasn't like, oh, Rosie has this role as a product manager and tech. And now I want to get a role just like hers, not I was using the expertise from my career in human resources and leadership development and recruitment and my master's degree in Human Resources. And I was packaging up things that I knew to help other people to get results. So I wasn't the role model, and that I hadn't actually achieved what they wanted to as such. But the knowledge I had around the job search help them to get their dream job. Or if we take Sim from Girls that Invest again, she was sharing what she knew about investing. She was obsessed with investing, learning about it, reading about it, and she knew a lot more than the average because she was so passionate about it. And of course, she had started seeing some results as well. There's a bit of overlap here with the with the role model, but again, she's able to actually use what she knows a lot about to educate and empower.
And, you know, in the financial space, you never say that anyone like, you know, this is what I do invest in my stocks too and follow my exact pathway. Again, it's, it's using your knowledge and expertise to help people to achieve their results depending on their values and what they want for their life. Okay, and then, you know, that expertise, of course, grows and grows, and then maybe eventually you become the role model. But you don't have to be it from the get go off.
And then the third kind of expert is the curator. So the curator sets apart from the other two types, as they aren't necessarily your role model, aka someone you want to become or emulate the results. And they don't necessarily start out with a huge depth of expertise or mastery of any one topic. However, they are brilliant at curating packaging and communicating information to people in a really clear and simple way, which ultimately positions them as an expert over time. So you can be a curator of vast amounts of information, like my friend Jess, who founded love in London. So she moved to London, from Virginia in the US, and she started creating videos that she thought could help other tourists and newcomers to navigate London and find the best restaurants find the best events. And she, you know, would gather this huge amount of pre existing information, blogs, articles, interview people interview Londoners, and then she'd go and test things out and gave her opinion on this. And now she has this global empire with a fully fledged team working for her over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, and is launching her second brand love and Paris this year. And she wasn't a tourism professional. She wasn't a London local, well hadn't been for a very long time when she started, like anything that would naturally qualify her to have the audacity to be that badass.
And another example of the curator would be Lewis Howes, who is the founder of the podcast, the School of Greatness. So this podcast started out with Luis reaching out to a bunch of mentors, a bunch of people who had inspired him in life, and then chat about that person's expertise and growth mindset and how they became so great how they became a leader in their field. And there's just people that genuinely inspired him in life, and he wanted to share their stories. But over time, after interviewing and networking with these thought leadership giants all around the world, he becomes the sort of go to resource of, you know, growth, mindset and performance, peak performance and greatness. And now he's a speaker and author and coach himself on how to become great. So do you see how again, he wasn't, quote, unquote, great to begin with. He was interviewing and curating the stories of other people who were, and then became a go to reference and authority in that space.
So in studying an expertise based business, you're most likely to start either with the role model or the knowledge fountain option, right. But the curator is also a valid option, it is a slower burn, for sure, it takes much more time to become the authority to become the go to, but it's also just a third option that I wanted you to know existed because it may resonate with you.
So you found your area of expertise, you've decided what kind of expert you'd like to become. Step three, is, how do you get started? And how can you start with what you know today, and then commit to further expansion. And I can tell you that no one starts out as a perfect expert and anything, even though like take badass careers. Even though I had my master's degree in HR, I had this global career in HR. And I had done so many cool things in HR and recruitment, you name it, I actually wanted to help people find their career purpose. And I had never actually worked in that. Even I struggled with impostor syndrome. I started with what I already knew, and I built up over time. So this is how you start with what you know. And you become the real expert you want to become over time in your niche.
So firstly, you add value and you build authority by sharing the things you already know. For me, the area that I was most comfortable with was resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn, the personal branding stuff. So that's what I started building my career coach authority in.
Step number two is then you help people you get really, really clear on who you help. And then you know and integrity, that you're only working with people that You know, you can help. So with my personal branding idea, I was looking for people who wanted to land a job who maybe weren't seeing any success on the job market and wanted to overhaul their resume cover letter and LinkedIn, which I felt confident and to help them land, the jobs.
And then you work with people on that you get results, you get social proof, you get those testimonials coming in saying Rosie helped me land, my dream job working with Rosie was amazing. And you keep learning, keep expanding and keep gaining expertise on the side. So while I was serving my clients, and personal branding, I was doing my reading my research my thinking around, okay, but how can I help people get clear on what they want first, before they go into the job search.
And little by little, you can start integrating more of that content and more of that expertise and share what you're learning into the fold as well. And over time, you will start to be seen as more and more of an expert on that thing as well. And then you get to work with clients on that, and create offers around that, whatever that looks like for you.
And eventually, over time, I became this fully fledged career coach who taught the clarity the career vision, the purpose stuff, the personal branding, things, of course, resume cover letter, LinkedIn, job search, and networking, interviews, and salary negotiation. But I didn't start with all of those things. I started with what I was comfortable with, I worked with people, I got results, I got social proof. And then I added something new. And as I was continuously committed to learning upskilling and growing myself.
So that's how you become the expert you want to become, you start small, you start with what you are confident in, and you evolve and go from there. And that makes complete sense because honestly, even just creating the content and developing programmes and working with clients on the topic of personal branding was already huge. It took me four years to start speaking to interviews and salary negotiation consistently, okay, takes time, personal branding, first than it was purpose. And for a long time, it was purpose and personal branding. Then I got job search networking in, then I got interviews in. And then I got salary negotiation going over a period of four years, which established me as that go to career coach for career change, and career pivots and landing dream jobs in my space.
So, let's loop back to the beginning of the episode, and let's debunk some of those fears that we were talking about. So if you're thinking to yourself, I don't have a degree or certification to do this. Now, you know, reframe your experience is your qualification, it's your best qualification. And if your limiting beliefs are saying, hey, you know, what, if I can't deliver results, what if I get called a fraud? What if I get it called a scammer? And what if I can't actually help people with this? Well, now you know that you start really, really small you niche down, you be honest with yourself, and with your clients with what you do and don't know. And you only accept to work with the people you can feel confident and helping today, while committing to getting better and better and better and better with your expertise over time. And if your inner critic is telling you, you know, I can't do this, I'm just not good at anything. Well, you know that there are actually many things in life that you know about, or you know how to do that others want to learn. Because even if you're at step three out of 10, in the expertise letter, not that that exists. But if it did, you can still help people at step 01. And two, even if you're only at step three out of 10. And just a bonus tip for you.
If the word expert still feels too big, still feels too loaded and it's freaking you out. I want you to then think of yourself more so as a coach, a mentor, a guide, or a facilitator of results, whatever you need to get out there and get started.
So I would love to hear from you. I know that this has been a deep and juicy conversation and we've dismantled a lot of old ways of doing and thinking.
Do you feel like you could be an expert now? What kind of expertise do you already have? What expertise is inherent to who you are as a person because of who you are, what you've been through, what you've done in this life?
So reach out on Instagram, send me a DM at @badassempires_, I would love to have a chat. And until then, stay badass and keep conquering that empire of yours. We'll speak in the next episode.
