How Experts Can Stop Being Overlooked in Their Industry

If you’re good at what you do, you get results, you have experience, you have credibility, then the question is, well, why are other people getting the things that you should be getting? Why are they getting speaking opportunities and engagements? Why are they getting media exposure? Why are they getting high-paying clients? This is not a talent problem. What it typically is is it’s an awareness by your market and a positioning problem that you have. See, to get a client in today’s market, you have to have like some things in place. Number one, you need to be seen. Okay? You need exposure. Number two, people need to like you. And ideally, you want people that do like you to also want to trust you. Because when they know you, they get to know you, and they decide that they like you, and they decide that you’re trustworthy, then they’re going to begin working with you. When I said a minute ago that this isn’t necessarily a marketing problem, and it’s not necessarily a problem with how good you are at your job. One type of client that I often work with are financial adviserss. And I often talk about Susie Orman as an example. And I say, you know, look, you don’t have a work ethic problem. You have all the initials after your name as a financial adviser. You’re really good at what you do. And yet, here’s Susie Orman, the financial adviser to the people. And she probably makes significantly more money than the average financial adviser. And in fact, you could probably put a zero or maybe two zeros on top of whatever the average financial financial adviser’s net worth is. And that’s what Suz’s is. And that’s not because she necessarily gives better advice than you do as a financial adviser. In fact, in most cases, she probably doesn’t. Many financial adviserss tell me, “Oh, her advice is too simplistic. It’s it’s obvious. It’s” And that may be true. But see, you did the hard work in getting some initials after your name. And she did the hard work in those first three things I talked about. She is seen everywhere, right? So, she has great awareness. She’s likable at least to a certain percentage of the population, right? And she’s trustworthy. So, people come to her for advice. People come to her for help. And because of that, she used her best-selling books and media exposure and speaking engagements to explode her credibility and her authority. That’s why she has far much more net worth, far many more people willing to listen to her than the average financial adviser. So if you’re a financial adviser, if you’re whatever you are, doesn’t matter. That is a model to follow. You have to fill in those gaps. So let’s let’s spend a little bit of time and talk about what those gaps are. The first gap that we have to fill in is what I reference. It’s the visibility gap. You see, the real problem that we are facing is that whatever business you’re in, you’re really in two businesses at the same time. See, if I were to ask you, we were to meet a at an event or something and I said, ‘Hey, tell me about your business. What business you’re in? You would most undoubtedly tell me about all the magic that you perform for other people, it would be like someone asking me, Rob, what kind of business you Well, I, you know, we help people ghostright. We help coaches, consultants, experts, financial advisors, doctors to ghostwrite a book or write a book and then launch that book to bestseller and then use that book as a platform to grow their business. That’s our magic, right? That’s the magic of bestseller publishing. And that’s great. That’s one of the businesses that I’m in. What’s the other business? Well, it’s not just the magic. I am in the business of letting people know about our magic. You see, I have two businesses. The business of the magic that I do and the business of telling people about the magic that I do. And you may say, “Well, you know, I get that, Rob, but what’s really more important?” You know, that’s a little like asking, well, which wing of an airplane is more important? You know, if you’re at 30,000 feet, would you prefer the right wing to stay on or the left wing to stay on? At 37,000 ft, I kind of want both wings to stay on at the same time. And that needs to be true for you. You see, you are in both of those businesses. If nobody knows, if you have no awareness, no visibility, no one knows the magic that you could perform, then guess what? you’re going to have to go do something else because you need people coming to you. You need people interested. You have to check that box first and that is the awareness box. The biggest problem that most people have, I mean the biggest is that nobody knows you exist. And that’s a big issue. If more people knew what you did and how you did it and how you could help, I guarantee you that your business would explode. But most people don’t. You see there is a significant issue with awareness. Okay. So there are some signals around this idea that we need to kind of pay attention to to become the obvious choice in people’s life in whatever like amazing thing that we can do for them. The first obviously I mentioned customer awareness. Authors get mad at me when I tell them to send their book to prospects for free, right? But, you know, I spent so much time and energy and effort on this, right? Somebody should be willing to pay for it. And I agree with that. But the reality is, if you could just get your book into the right person’s hands, no matter what they paid for it, of course, if they paid for it, it’s better for you. But if you could just get it into the right person’s hands, if you used your book in every way possible to make yourself known, organic posting, content, paid advertising, speaking engagements, PR, and media. I got off a Zoom call with a client of ours that’s um in the Nordic countries uh early this morning. She is she has a a company that helps and I’m not going to get this right so forgive me but she helps like hedge funds and and other big traders to enter the uh oil and gas industry in Europe. Okay, it’s a very specific and yet very re rich niche. if more people were aware of what she could do to help them enter that niche, solve other people’s problems in the oil and gas industry. Do you think her business would explode? Of course it would. So, here’s the first thing that I told her. I said, “Look, you don’t have a million people in your audience. You may not have 100,000 people in your audience.” I said, ‘The first thing that you need to do when your book gets done is you need to take a three-pronged approach to making yourself and your magic aware to those that you want it to be aware in in their in their awareness. And that is you got to get the book to them. I said, “So, number one, when your book is published and when we finish launching it, you need to send a physical copy of that book to every single one of your past clients.” Now, that would be a client that you’ve already served and that has moved along through the process. And maybe you’re at the very end of the process or perhaps the process completed some time ago. Maybe they haven’t heard from you in a while. You need to send them a copy of your book with a cover letter. In the cover letter, you even need to offer, hey, if you know anybody else that you think would benefit from this book, then please let me know and I’ll send them a copy on your behalf for free. Now, why would you do that? Well, it’s simple. They’ve already worked with you. They like you. They trust you. They’ve paid you. And guess what? They may have other problems that you could solve. So now you get back on their radar. You make them aware of more things that you can do for them. That’s the first kind of person that you send it to. The second kind of person that you send it to is any prospect that you had in the last I would go back as far as maybe even a year or further that did not actually become clients. any prospect that you have that did not become a client. Now, why would you do that? Well, because many of those prospects are still in the market, but they just got busy. They got focused on other things. So, now what needs to be done? Well, those people need to be brought back to the awareness of their problem and of your solution and your book can do that for them. Third type of person to send it to is any current client that you’re working with. Same idea. You send a personal note attached. You don’t just send a copy of the book. It needs to be very personal. It needs to be a great touch point for them. Sticky note right on the front. And you let them know that you would love to not only give them a copy of the book, but anybody else that they know might be interested in the same subject matter. You would gladly send a copy on their behalf. Now, I I asked her this morning when we spoke. I said, “How many people might that be? Is that even a hundred people or 200 people that you could think of? Let’s go crazy and say it’s 200 people, which would be fantastic because that’s 200 more people directly in your niche that you’re going to get your book to. What’s that going to cost you? You can print the book for five or $6 and send it for another dollar or two. It’s going to cost you a,000 or $1,200 to do that. What it’s going to do is put that your book, your absolute best possible tool into the hands of the ideal person that you can work with because you know that they already contacted you or you’ve already worked with them in some capacity or you’re currently working with them. See, our biggest problem to solve is that most people do not know we exist and those that do perhaps didn’t become clients and so they’ve moved on. Let’s make them aware again that we’re in this space. Signal number two, and this may even have been out of order a little bit. Let’s put it back in order, if you will, and that is that your message needs to be a really niched and clear message to your audience. Now, I’m hoping that the book that you wrote has your ideas, your stories in a way that is memorable, powerful, simple, repeatable, something that has frameworks as a part of it. We want your ideas to be something that people, you know, can get easily. And most importantly, it needs to be niched down, right? I talk about this a lot. You need to focus on your niche. The more narrow you can focus for your book, the better because that’s an audience that you can find. When you write a book to everybody, then you really write a book to nobody. So, focus on the best people that you can serve, the ones that you can help the absolute most. And don’t be afraid to niche it down tremendously. Signal number three, you need to make sure that you have a credibility asset. Now, most of what we’re talking about, I’m making the assumption that you already have a book or that you’re writing a book. I’m I’m making that assumption. So, for those of you, whether you’re my client and you’re in the process of it and maybe you need a little reminder like, “Hey, this is how important this is.” Or maybe you’re watching this and you’re still not sure about what kind of book to do or whether or not you even want to do a book. Just understand if people are going to trust you, they need to have a reason to trust you. Okay? Know, right? awareness, like make a decision that they think you can actually help them and they like you and trust. Yes, this is where the book comes in. A book does this better than anything in the world. A book packages your thinking. Let’s call it your your IP, your intellectual property. It positions you instantly. It builds trust before the conversation even takes place. It differentiates you. It helps you to stand apart. years ago had a really good friend that I went to church with and he was talking to me about wanting to do a book for his uh expertise and we had even done books in his uh direct niche for other people and so I shared with him about how the other folks were using their books and helping and and all of that. For the most part we attract our clients through referrals, through our paid advertising and most importantly through my books. when I meet somebody outside of that environment, like in church or whatever, hey, I’m not chasing them. If they want help, I’ll offer free advice. I’ll do whatever. But I did not push this. I just simply shared. One day, he called me and said, “Hey, man. I I need to do my book with you.” And I’m like, “Great.” Like, “What changed?” I said, he said, “Look, this has never happened before, but I got a call last week from a client of mine that I helped. Everything went amazing with this client and they referred their neighbor to come and work with us. And he said, “Almost 100% of my business is through referrals.” He said, “When we get a referral like this, it’s a slam dunk.” He said, “So, uh, I contact the referral. We talked through everything. Everything was a go. Everything was perfect. It lined up exactly with his expectations. There was a guarantee. He was getting ready to get started. The next day, he called back and he said, “You know what? I’ve I’ve decided to to go in a different direction. I’m not going to, you know, be getting your help with this issue. And of course, my friend was really dumbfounded by that and said, “Well, do you mind me asking why that is? Because, you know, we helped your friend to accomplish this exact same thing. He referred you to us. You know that we can help you.” He said, “You know what? I understand all of that.” He said, “But I was sent this book about this subject by somebody else. I read through it. I really like the process and how they uh tackled this particular challenge. I contacted them and I’m going to be starting to work with them. So, he said, “Look, I’ve never lost a referral before. I lost it to someone that this person didn’t even know simply because they have a book. A book fixes those trust problems and it fixes it really, really fast. You have probably lost clients to others with a book. You just maybe don’t know it. you should be the one instead that has the book and other people are losing clients to you. So, we need to fix these things. We need to fix the visibility issue, right? And you can do that lots of different ways. You can obviously post more content, you can run ads, you can do networking, you can do speaking, you can do all of that. But if you do it without fixing the positioning, then you’re probably going to be running in place. And a book fixes that. organizes your ideas, helps you create your IP and intellectual property, clarifies your message. If you do it right, it niches down, which is exactly what we want. We want it niched down and it signals authority instantly. It will be the thing that creates trust and gives you something tangible to share with people. Just like the example I gave you about my client, a book is the fastest way to change how the market sees you. So, what you need to do, what you need to be focused on is getting it into people’s hands every single way you can. Okay? So, let’s go back to the beginning. You’re probably not being overlooked because you’re not good enough. Okay? That that’s not the problem. You’re being overlooked if you are because people aren’t aware of you. It’s not clear who it is that you help and how you help them. and for whatever reason, you just haven’t checked that trust box, you might need more effort, right? It’s not particularly an effort problem by itself, but you might need more effort. We talked about this last week. We talked about making more offers. So, you might need more effort in making offers, more effort in getting yourself out there, whether it’s content strategies or paid advertising or whatever. So, you may need to do that better. But just remember your book is the positioning tool that’s going to be the game changer for you. Okay? So the goal is not just to become better this year, right? The goal is to become too clear, too obvious as a choice for people to ignore. That’s what we want. We want them to see your book, to see your credibility, to see your content, and go, I got to do it. I got to work with these folks. So, this solves the being overlooked problem. This solves the boy, I’m I’m so good. Why am I being ignored? Why am I not getting the attention that I deserve? I want you to have that attention. And your book and using your book is going to be the very thing that does that for you. [music]