Two months is a long time to be staring at Roger the Floor Elf’s mug, much as we love him, so I thought, “Okay, let’s have a Best Of series!” As in: recycling some of our great guest posts. Because in case you haven’t noticed, the color scheme is green. It all makes sense in my head. Anyhoo… without further ado:
Please welcome niche-y business expert Abby Kerr! ~ LaVonne
I jumped into this Customer Love Challenge {that’s #customerlove, for those of you who are Twitter fluent} pretty darn quickly. In fact, I think I may have been the very first person to respond to LaVonne Ellis’s Tweet back in August calling for co-challengers.
I knew immediately how I’d step up the customer love in my own enterprise: I’d rock out my expert-y mojo even more intentionally than usual.
You’re an expert, you say?
Why, yes, I am. And so are you.
Do you see yourself as an expert? Because you are one, you know.
You’ve got an entrepreneurial niche — the niche of You, culled from the best {and sometimes worst} of your life-defining experiences, your shiniest skill sets, and your truest inborn talents.
Because no one else can replicate the exact path you’ve taken to get where you are today, the exact maneuvers you’ve made and the exact responses you had, this means that no one can teach about what you do in the exact way you do it. And believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who’d love to do what you do the way you do it.
{No kidding.}
You are a natural-born, life-made resource.
You’re chock full of expert-y knowing. You’re marinating in firsthand understanding of something. You’re a witness to valuable experiences that you could be sharing with others who want to do something like what you’re doing.
You’re not obliged to share any of it, but doing so is one way to exercise authority in your macro niche, create fame, spread goodwill, and make your customers love you.
There’s almost no better way to gain the love, respect, and appreciation of your right people than to share with them something they want that right now feels quite far away to them.
5 ways to enter into the space of your expert-y self, right now
- List 10 elements of your business that are key to its survival, well-being, and richness {and I’m not necessarily talking monetary richness here}, i.e., your blogosphere relationships, your networking on LinkedIn, the way you plan your weekly workflow. Write out a simple, 5- or 10-step breakdown of how you do what you do. Or a 3000-word blog post manifesto. Approach this in a nuts-and-bolts-y way or in a philosophical, meta way. Both approaches can help your people.
- List the 5 questions people most often ask you about your business — big questions and little. Answer them in the form of blog posts or information products that teach your right people how to do what you do. Or how to do what they want to do.
- Make a list of 100 things you now understand about your entrepreneurial niche that you didn’t used to. These are all the lessons, understandings, and knowings you take for granted that will absolutely light a fire underneath your customers. {So don’t hide yours under a bushel, so to speak.} Start blogging, teaching, and connecting from this place. At the same time, be hungry to learn more about everything on your list. True experts are lifelong learners who continually soak up new understanding wherever they can find it.
- Pretend you’re not you. Look at yourself as if you were your biggest fan, your most satisfied client, or your best friend who loves you. What would those people say you’re an expert at? Write from that place. Let their confidence in you infuse the way you talk about your Thing. {This technique works particularly well if you tend to get hobbled by self-doubt and insecurity. Not that we Customer Love Challengers would know anything about that.}
- Bravely dare to share what you know is true even if you think your knowledge and experiences are not as game changing, earth shattering, or business/life enhancing as what somebody else has to share. I can guarantee you that it *will* be game changing, earth shattering, and business/life enhancing for someone else. It doesn’t matter if your topic has been written about 15 times in the blogosphere already this month. If you can put an unique spin on it — one fashioned from the niche of you — then it’ll speak to your ideal customers in a way that only your words and experiences can.
I hope you can use one of the above doorways to enter a space in which you find yourself standing tall, beaming happily, and feeling, sharing, and teaching like the expert you really are.
Tell me in the comments which doorway you’re going to try right now.
