I sent out an email asking for some tough questions for the podcast, and I got some amazing ones. I wanted to answer a great one today in the show. 

The question comes from Jim, “How can I be recognized and paid as an expert, without calling myself an expert, guru, genius or other nonsense.”

So I want to give some practical examples where it’s easy to stray into puffery and hype without even realizing it, because we see so much of this everyday in the coaching and consulting world.

When it comes to puffery, I learned a great rule of thumb from Frank, my mentor at my last agency, who I had on the show last week.

Here’s the Rule: Make Zero Claims the Reader Could Disagree With.

This means we drop any adjectives or other types of language that don’t keep the reader shaking their head Yes as they read. Anything that makes them go, “I don’t know about that..” needs to be examined and potentially removed.

As Seth Godin says, the web is incredibly distrustful. People don’t know what or who to believe. So showing up and claiming that you’re more of an expert or guru than others isn’t helping you like you might think. It’s creating resistance and raising suspicion because you’re saying something they can’t verify. Why are you having to talk yourself up?

I want to give you some examples because this can be hard to grasp at first, but once you see this kind of puffery, you’ll see it everywhere. Let’s look at John Maxwell’s site, where he is described as “#1 New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned leadership expert.”

Sounds fine at first, but look closer.

Out of the 3 elements in that statement, only ONE is a verifiable fact. The other two elements are opinions at best, and one is definitely puffery.

What does “world-renowned'' mean, and whose opinion is that? What about leadership “expert.” Certainly if you know John Maxwell and have read his books on leadership, you’d agree that he’s a leadership expert. 

But if you hadn’t heard of him and were reading this for the first time, would you nod your head along in agreement? Of course not.

So if we do this in our marketing, especially in the things people see when they come across us for the first time, we’re just creating resistance.

So what would I put on the website if I were in charge of John Maxwell’s marketing?

“#1 New York Times bestselling author and International Speaker on the Subject of Leadership”

You could also say something like “America’s Leadership Expert” as long as there were other forms of proof nearby. We’ll touch on that later. 

The point here is that John Maxwell gets paid for what he IS, not what he claims to be.

One way I follow through on this is that I call myself an author, not a “bestselling” author.

What does best-selling even mean? Best-selling according to who?

That’s become so abused in this space that I don’t use it. I call myself an author. I have a book on Amazon, you can literally see a picture of the big on the front page of my website. It’s not something a reader can disagree with. Now, if you hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, feel free to tell us. That’s a verifiable fact, and it leads us to another rule of thumb.

If You Must Make a Claim that the Reader Could Disagree With, Let Someone Else Say It. 

When the New York Times says you’re a best-seller, people say, “wow that’s impressive.” It’s a credible third party saying you are a best-selling author, not an unverifiable claim coming from you.

Another example of this is with expert or ninja or guru or all those other words.

The best way to lay claim to that title is to let someone else say it. Grab a testimonial where someone calls you a master of your craft, an expert at what you do, and use that in your marketing.

I call myself a podcaster, not a podcast expert. Why? Because even though I could lay claim to that word Expert, it creates a potential for disagreement. I am a podcaster because I’ve hosted and launched podcasts for over 5 years. Yet I’m not an expert unless others agree that I have authoritative knowledge and mastery in that area.

That leads us to our next rule of thumb on puffery and labels, It’s Better to Show than Tell.

This is where you really get into the answer to Jim’s question about getting PAID as an expert without having to call yourself that. The best way to show that you have mastery and expertise is to share it publicly.

Think about Bruce Henderson from Boston Consulting sending out his Perspectives essays, basically the equivalent of today’s blog in brochure form. It’s where he shared concepts like the Growth Share Matrix that put BCG on the map.

If you share real expertise, unique ideas, compelling content, and you get that into the hands of the right people, it will get spread.

The problem for most people is that their ideas aren’t all that clear or compelling, or their message doesn’t communicate their ideas in a clear and compelling way. We’ll deal with that in another episode.

But if you want to get paid as an expert, you have to actually BE one, then you have to share that expertise to the point where others agree that you’re an expert. And at that point, it’s irrelevant what you call yourself, you don’t need the puffery anymore. 

John Maxwell doesn’t need to say he’s world-renowned, he could have shown it with screenshots of all the books he’s written and the testimonials of the lives he’s changed.

Coming back to Bruce Henderson’s Perspectives essays, it brings up another good Rule of Thumb I picked up from folks like Frank. Make Your Free Content so Good it’s Worth Paying For.

Bruce Henderson sent out his essays to CEOs for free, and that one idea could change their entire company. It could have been locked behind the paywall and only accessed by the CEO’s they consulted with. Instead he gave it away for free and it created demand for BCG’s help in implementing it, and built BCG’s reputation as an intellectual leader in the field of strategy.

If your free content doesn’t blow people away with value, it doesn’t matter what labels you give yourself. People won’t agree with your labels, and you’ll just create resistance and distrust.

Not let’s talk about a couple ways to separate yourself that aren’t puffery.

First or Only

This concept comes from work like Al Ries on positioning. People do want to know the #1 brand in a niche they care about. If you’re the #1 SUV brand on the market, like Jeep is, and you have the stats to back it up and most people would nod their head on hearing that claim, go ahead and make that claim.

If you can claim a niche that you own, you can rightly and accurately claim to be either the first or the only in your niche. Now, it has to be a niche that people actually care about, and it has to be supplemented with proof or be so obvious that it won’t create disagreement and resistance.

If you claim to be America’s #1 personal transformation guru, how many people are going to go, What about Tony Robbins? If you claim to be the #1 leadership expert in the world, people are going to go, What about John Maxwell? So that does you no good, it creates resistance.

But if you claim a niche that people care about that’s very specific and there is no other guru or expert or brand in that space, you could rightly claim that niche as your own and create little to no resistance.

Specialization

“I specialize in helping X kind of person.”

Who can disagree with that statement? They don’t know how many of your clients fit that exact description, or how many clients in that space you have compared to other experts. But it’s not a claim that creates resistance, it’s just your statement of who your ideal client is.

Now, you’d want to supplement with proof to create more trust. If you have no examples or testimonials of you helping that type of person, it should raise some red flags.

Designed For

“Our coaching program is designed for X who want to achieve ABC”

Another way of saying you specialize. This is what I’ve done with MicroFamous.

Who can disagree with you stating that you created a program specifically for a certain type of person? Again this gets around creating resistance by making statements that a reader couldn’t disagree with.

I position MicroFamous as the only marketing system designed for introverted experts. Are there other marketing systems that can work for introverts? Of course.

Could the MicroFamous system work for people other than introverts? Of course.

But that’s who benefits from it the most, and trying to cater to everyone dilutes my message and my ability to reach the people who benefit the most.

I also designed MicroFamous for an audience that feels neglected and overlooked by other marketing experts and gurus. So when you can find a group of people like that, who feel neglected, misled, overlooked and underserved, and you offer something designed just for them, you have a much better chance of getting their attention.

Here’s a useful exercise.

Take a look at your LinkedIn profile or the Homepage of your website.

Read it as if you were someone seeing it for the first time, and ask yourself continuously, “Is there anything here that a reasonable person could disagree with?”

If you can remove that language from your marketing, it will go a long way toward creating trust, which is the first step in actually selling something to someone. All the attention in the world doesn’t matter if you have to break their trust in the process of getting attention.