Stop Proving, Start Positioning: The Real Path to Expert Authority

Welcome to the Scalable Expert, the podcast where we unlock the secrets to building a business that grows with you, not around you.

I'm your host, Tara Bryan, business strategist, mentor and creator of the Infinite Scale method.

If you're a coach, consultant, or service provider who's maxed out with one on one work, overwhelmed by the grind, and ready to scale your expertise into a business that works for you, then you're in the right place.

Each week, I'll share actionable tips, inspiring success stories, and proven strategies to help you reclaim your time, grow your income, and create a business business that delivers results without sacrificing quality.

Let's dive in and make your business infinitely scalable.

All right.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to today's episode.

So this is a little bit of a personal episode for me, but I'm going to tell you this story because I think it's powerful and I think it's something that would resonate with you and you may have had this happen before.

So as we're talking about being a scalable expert, one of the things about being a scalable expert is that you own your proprietary methodology, you own your expertise, and that means something different to everyone.

But one of the things that I teach is here's how to package your expertise into a framework, right?

So essentially you're saying, okay, so here's the problem I'm solving, here's the result or the transformation that I can give someone, and then here's the fastest path to get from point A to point B.

And as an expert, you can see that because you can see the 10,000 foot view of whatever your expertise is, right?

So you've gone down the road, you've helped other people with it.

And just as a sidebar, like, if you're not confident in your framework, then keep helping people, right?

Because sometimes you have steps in the wrong order or sometimes things just need to be tweaked.

I can't tell you how many times I've tweaked the titles to the Infinite Scale method or the phases are pretty solid, but sometimes there are steps that are moving inside of the framework.

And it's not because I'm not an expert at it, it's because there's new pieces of information that I get when I'm working with people and I want to guide them down the fastest path, right?

So if it's not the fastest path, if they're getting stuck, then I'm able to adjust and go, oh, okay, maybe that's coming from my point of view.

And not from my avatar's point of view.

Right.

So I have to adjust that a little bit.

So I'm giving you permission.

If you're not a hundred percent on your framework, sometimes that means you need to serve more people and practice with your framework before you make it infinitely scalable.

Sometimes it's just the nature of the business, right?

Like, things will shift and change as you go.

But what's really important is owning your authority, right?

Like you're owning how you show up and you say, I'm an expert at this.

Here's my expert framework, and then here's how I help you, which is an extension of the framework.

It's not an extension of who you are as an expert.

That's the positioning that I help my clients with is get out of who you are as an expert and package your framework in a way that allows you to show up as the expert with a methodology.

There's a huge shift in saying, I am the creator of the infinite scale method, where we help you go from X to Y.

And so you can do this thing, right?

Versus I'm an expert at this, and I can help you do this thing, whatever it is.

And a lot of times when you lead with your expertise, you can just do all the things because you're really good at everything.

So it just helps to position.

It helps you to position yourself, and it helps other people to position you as the expert in a methodology.

Then, of course, you can make that infinitely scalable.

But what I want to talk about today is the getting into the trap of trying to prove you are an expert and.

And how kind of yucky that is when you're in a position of proving that you're an expert when you lead with your methodology, people are like, oh, well, she's the.

The creator of the infinite scale method, or she's the creator of the Fit Life method or whatever it is, Right?

Like, that's something that makes the intangible tangible.

Right?

And so people can say, oh, well, they're an expert at this thing, so they can see it and experience it.

So there's less questioning about your authority or your expertise based on who you are or what you've done in the past.

Okay, so I'm gonna get tactical in this.

And this is the vulnerable part of the podcast.

I have mentioned in some of the prior episodes that the summary took on a little bit of a different spin on some of the agency work that I used to do.

And I did that for a lot of different reasons.

Go listen to the other podcasts in order to find out the detail around that.

But one, I had this conversation.

It was just fascinating because I don't lead with my resume in terms of my experience level, with my expertise, especially my expertise back in the agency.

Like, I just don't do it because I don't feel like it's necessary.

And as I've been out as the creator of Infinite Scale Method and as the host of this podcast, and just all the brand positioning that I do when I speak and I am helping customers, I don't really feel like I have to go back and give them my resume in order for me to show up as the authority in the space.

I just.

I haven't had to do that in a very long time.

I have 30 plus years of experience.

I don't really feel like I have to tell people that.

But sometimes I forget that not everybody knows that.

Right.

Because I live in this world all the time and I'm always talking about it.

I'm on the podcast, I'm doing different things.

So when I was working on some of these projects this summer, they didn't know me in the same way.

They hadn't listened to the podcast.

They weren't.

Hadn't gone to my website, they hadn't heard about the Infinite Scale Method.

They haven't seen any of the books that I'd written, all the fakes.

Right.

I found myself in a position where I did my thing where I was like, hey, I just have a lot of experience and I've been doing this for a really long time.

And here's what I lead with and what I'm passionate about.

And that's how I introduced myself, because that's usually what I do.

And this woman that we were on the call with proceeded to introduce herself and she gave her resume and all the experience she had and where she had worked in the past and her education and all of the things.

Long story short, it was interesting because she didn't see me as the expert, she saw herself as the expert.

So because of that, the way that she was positioning the conversation was that I was new or I didn't have the level of experience that she anticipated or wanted to have on this project.

And so it was a really big lesson for me because I just don't feel like I need to talk about all of my credentials in terms of having an undergraduate degree in the field and a master's degree in the field and an MBA and all like, and 30 years of experience and working with some of the top brands in the Us.

I don't need to talk about that when I share the work that I'm doing and whether or not it's because I've already declared my expertise and I feel pretty comfortable with that, or if it's just my style.

I'm from Minnesota.

Like, we don't really need to boast about those kinds of things.

But it was a good lesson for me to just take a step back.

And there are times when I need to lead with that.

There are times when I need to lead with my authority so that it shows people that I do have the level of experience to bring to the table.

And so it was a moment in time that reminded me of what it's like to try and fight for that sort of respect in terms of not owning my framework, not owning my methodology, and what that looks like before you step into a role of being a scalable expert where you can claim your authority and you can lead with your authority so people come to you, you don't have to come to them.

And that was that moment that just reminded me, like I talked a lot about this in the prior podcast of all the fun lessons that I learned this summer by putting myself back into a position of being, you know, before all of the work that I've done over the last couple years.

But this was one of them is when you show up on a call and the person needs to prove to you that they are the authority in the room, what that looks like, right?

And how it either undermines or advances your objectives when you're in a meeting.

And then what happens when you don't lead the same way?

And so it was just an epic failure with the fact that I didn't introduce myself in that manner.

And because of that, the project actually got dissolved.

Not just because of that, there are other reasons, but one of the things around that whole experience was really how you show up, right?

How do you show up as an expert or don't show up as an expert?

And one of the things that I always try and remember is, and for those of you who are serving people online is that there is someone on the other end of that camera and sometimes they need to hear your expertise.

They need to hear that you have sort of the, the business or the, the experience chaps to be able to be the authority to have the conversation, right?

Like, I couldn't stand here and say, hey, you know, like, here's how you create a successful seven figure business.

If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be able to say, hey, here's how you become infinitely scalable.

If I hadn't been able to do that.

And.

And so sometimes you have to say that, right?

Like, sometimes I may have to say that I have an MBA and a advanced degree in organizational development, instructional design, and elearning.

Like, I may have to say all of those things for someone to go, oh, oh, well, she does have a lot of expertise in this, right?

She is somebody that I want to listen to because I trust what she has to say.

Or, oh, the infinite scale method is legit because it's grounded in all of this experience.

It's not just like, I just dreamt it up or I went to chat GPT and made up some random set of steps.

So that is what I learned this summer, is that on that call, I probably should have given a little bit more of my background and not been so, like, laissez faire around that I have a lot of experience.

And so the reason that I'm having this be a podcast episode is just to remind you that, well, one, everything is easier for when you have your own.

Your authority framework and that you could lead from that.

Like, everything is easier when you're like, I'm the creator of this framework because people are like, oh, yeah, tell me more.

Like, how did you experience that?

If you can say, I take people from here to here and, you know, here's the fastest path that I do that, that level of clarity is so much more powerful than, yeah, I can help you for sure.

Like, what do you need done?

Right?

Two different approaches, and one leads to higher level of authority.

So everything is easier with a methodology.

So find one.

And if you don't know how to do it, call me.

I will help you.

That is one of my superpowers, is helping people actually, like, extract their framework into a packaged, proprietary methodology.

But sometimes we just take for granted that people know what our experience is.

And sometimes you just have to remember that you need to tell them and that people don't always know, especially when you're in.

Like, I am in the trenches with this every single day.

So regardless if I'm working with, you know, my Fortune 100 clients or any of the other experts that I'm working with, I am in this every single day.

And so a lot of times I forget that.

Like, when somebody's meeting me for the first time, they don't know that's what I do or the time, and that I'm super passionate around it.

And so I forget that.

Or I think, oh, I'm online.

People should just see me online and know what I do.

Again, remember that not everyone is going to know exactly what your authority is.

Sometimes you have to actually tell them.

So there you go.

That is my podcast today.

It's a little bit different.

It's a little bit revealing in terms of, like, I made an assumption I shouldn't have made, and because of it, there were real consequences to it.

So if you're one of those people who needs to know my resume, like, I got you covered.

It's on the website, but there you go.

Like, sometimes you gotta lead with the actual experience that you have and show that you've got the right level of experience that will elevate your authority.

So how do you need to do that for yourself today?

Where are you making assumptions about people understanding your background or not understanding your background that maybe you need to do a little bit more work on?

That is my lesson for you today.

If you love this episode, give it a rating, share it with your friends.

And if you were to talk to me about really dialing in that proprietary framework that does help you elevate your authority without having to say a resume, I can't tell you.

It's funny.

Before this conversation, like, I don't think people have asked me for my resume in years because that's not what I lead with.

Right.

I lead with the methodology that I've developed and everything that comes around that.

And so because of that, the resume aspect of things is just not relevant, or so I thought.

So it.

So if you are in that place, I challenge you to start looking at it a little bit differently.

How can you start with that methodology and then back it up with your resume?

All right, there you go, my friends.

Until next time, enjoy this episode and really think about how you are on the road to becoming a scalable expert, really finding that scalable impact of your work.