This week, I'm going to cover how to make that mental shift to where you begin to see yourself as the expert when you present. Just so you know, one of the major sources of nervousness and fear comes from people standing up to speak and fearing that the audience is going to figure out that they are not the real expert or that they are not as much of an expert as their boss or coworkers or other people who do what they do. Once you realize that if you are the person speaking, it is because you have information that the audience needs to know it helps boost confidence immensely.
You Are the Undisputed Expert. So, Now Prove It
Regardless of what industry you are in or what expertise you have, you are the expert. The knowledge that you have is valuable to someone.
When I was 14 years old, my dad owned a home remodeling company. Every winter, I crawled under houses helping him repair frozen pipes that had burst. After a couple of winters, I had so much experience doing this that I could do it in my sleep. So as a teenager, I was an expert at repairing ruptured PVC pipes.
After I graduated from college, my first real job was working for an oil company doing title work for mineral rights. Before long, I had not only gotten pretty good at it, but I had also trained a number of new people.
In my third year in the training industry, I generated a half-million dollars worth of sales for the first time. That same year, I also received a couple of awards for outstanding instruction.
It took me five years as an entrepreneur to attain my first million dollars. However, it only took about eight more months to generate my second million.
With each of these accomplishments, I became an expert at that thing. I had information that the general public didn’t have (even when my expertise was just repairing frozen pipes).
Don’t underestimate your knowledge. Your experience has made you the expert.
One of my friends in college was going to school to be an elementary school teacher, and she absolutely hated math. However, once she graduated, she found out that in the State of Texas, Math and Science teachers got paid an extra fee. This was because teachers with this expertise were in high demand. So, she decided to be a fourth-grade math teacher.
Those of us who knew her pretty well were laughing when we asked her about her career choice. For the three or four years that we had known her, she complained over and over about her math classes. These classes were her nemesis. After a little teasing from us, she replied by saying, “In order to teach fourth-grade math, I just have to be an expert at fifth-grade math.” That day, I learned a prophetic life lesson…
In order to be an expert at something, you just need to have a little more knowledge than your audience.
For instance, let’s say that you are a restaurant manager who turned around a struggling location. How many other managers are there in the world who would want to hear how you did it? You’d be the expert at restaurant turnarounds (especially if you were able to do it a second or third time). Or, if you are a dentist who is really good at getting your patients to show up for every sixth-month check-up, then other dentists would pay dearly to figure out how you do it. Whatever you do on a day-to-day basis makes you the expert at that activity.
Show Notes: You Are the Undisputed Expert (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/you-are-the-undisputed-expert-so-now-prove-it/)