Carol Cox: I'm sharing with you three signs you may be
stuck in the Expert Trap and how to Get out.
On this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses,
running for office and speaking up for what
matters. With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur and speaker,
I interview and coach purpose driven women to
shape their brands, grow their companies,
and become recognized as influencers in their
field. This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host,
Carol Cox. I hope you've been enjoying the
episodes we've been doing with our Thought
Leader Academy clients and our in-person
retreat clients. We've done two of those so
far and we have two more coming up,
so definitely stay tuned for those.
I know if you're listening to this podcast,
you want to grow your business and your
brand, and you want to have a bigger impact
as a thought leader.
But there are some beliefs that tend to get
in the way of those of us who are high
achieving women, and my hand is definitely
raised there. First, we believe that we need
to teach and train to provide value to our
audiences. We believe that training content
is what our audience wants from us,
and our identity is tied to seeing ourselves
as the expert.
We've gotten a lot of validation and praise
for being the expert, and as I always say,
you absolutely should be the expert in your
business with the clients that you work with.
Because after all, that's why they're hiring
you to be the expert.
But if you want to step into thought
leadership, we have to get out of what I've
called the expert trap.
The problem with the expert trap is that your
presentations and your content and your
content, I mean social media posts,
email newsletters, writing that you do in
your blogs, even podcast interviews where
that you're guesting on your presentations
and content are undifferentiated and they're
interchangeable with all the other experts
out there. Also, your presentations and
content, if you're stuck in the expert trap,
lack emotional resonance,
and without emotional resonance,
without that connective tissue of emotions
and stories, you're not going to be able to
connect with your audiences and your
audiences with you.
So I'm going to go through in this episode
today, three signs that you're stuck in the
expert trap and how to get out of it,
including some examples from myself and some
of our clients. If you would like to shift
from being an expert presenter to a thought
leader, that is the journey that you go on
with us when we work with you.
In our Thought Leader Academy,
we spend eight weeks together working both
one on one and in a small group of women,
so it's limited to eight women.
You get plenty of hands on time for coaching,
feedback, support, accountability,
and community.
Our next start date is coming up in April,
so pretty soon!
If you're interested in joining us,
you can get all the details,
including pricing and speaking your
brand.com/academy.
Again, that's speaking your
brand.com/academy.
And once you're there, you can schedule a
zoom call with us so that we can answer all
the questions that you have and make sure
that our thought leader Academy is the best
fit for you. Now let's get on with the show.
I've been speaking for all of my career,
from debate team in high school to Model
United Nations in college,
to presenting at tech conferences.
When I had my technology businesses many
years ago, and for a long time I kept a
professional distance in my talks.
And you know what? They went great.
The feedback I received from the audiences
and the event organizers was always positive.
Things like, I learned so much,
can't wait to try these strategies and
there's so much valuable content you gave us.
I wish this session was longer,
and this is the kind of feedback we want to
hear right in the beginning of our speaking
careers. When we're developing our expertise
in our topics, delivering presentations like
these can be helpful for validating our
knowledge and building our confidence.
But this kind of feedback isn't going to get
you to the keynote or the Ted stage,
and it's not going to get you the leads that
you want. And it's not going to have the
bigger impact that I know you want to make.
Around the same time as I was receiving all
of this great feedback from my presentations,
which were really trainings,
I attended a conference and I was in awe of
the keynote speaker.
She was confident, smart,
funny, engaging, and I wondered how she had
gotten the opportunity to be on that stage.
After all, she wasn't a celebrity or someone
with a fancy title, which was a relief since
I didn't have those things either.
After she was done, I didn't think to myself
that was so much valuable content she
delivered. That was a great training.
Instead, I thought, wow,
I feel this.
She gets me and I believe I can achieve this
too. Now, how does she do that?
And how do other great speakers do that?
After analyzing many, many,
many speeches, and this is what I count as a
hobby and working with hundreds of women,
I've identified these four layers that
separate the great content talks from the
life changing talks.
First, the foundation layer is your expertise
because after all, that is related to the
topic that you're talking about.
The second layer is your big idea.
So what's that perspective?
What's that angle that you have on your
topic? What's that bigger vision that you
have? The third layer is your personal
journey, your personal story that got you
interested in this big idea in the first
place and shaped who you are.
And then layer four is the emotional courage
to dig deep, to be vulnerable,
and to truly share how these things have
shaped you. All those presentations and
trainings I used to give,
they certainly were based on my expertise,
and they maybe had a bit of an interesting
idea. What they lacked was any meaningful
personal stories, which meant I didn't have
to have any emotional courage.
Nothing was required from me.
And then I got to the point in my life and
career when I was bored and unfulfilled,
staying at that first layer of my expertise.
When I finally got the courage to dig deep
into my personal stories and identify my big
idea, the difference was extraordinary.
This is the feedback that I started getting
things like, thank you for teaching us to say
the hard thing, to dig deep and do the hard
work. Thank you for being brave and for
stepping up to use your voice.
Thank you for being who you are and the lives
of all the women you're touching and
challenging to stand up,
speak up and be seen.
Now, I don't know about you,
but that kind of feedback,
like I feel that in my heart and I feel that
in my body. And that's the kind of feedback I
want you to get, because that's how you truly
transform your audiences.
So here are three signs that you may be stuck
in the expert trap with your presentations
and talks, and then how you can start
shifting that. So the first sign is that
you're teaching your audiences how to do what
you do, instead of showing them what they
need to know to achieve their goals.
This would be like me teaching you how to be
a speaking coach or run a speaking business.
Now, I could certainly shift my business and
I could train other people to be speaking
coaches, or I could become a business coach
and teach other people how to run a speaking
business. But that's not what I'm doing.
So when I present to my audiences,
I'm not I'm not teaching them how to be a
coach or run a business.
And I'm not actually really even teaching
them the fundamentals of public speaking.
Instead, I'm getting them to think
differently about their public speaking.
I'm getting them to think differently about
their identity as a speaker,
getting them to understand that,
to be a thought leader,
that you have to step out of this expert
trap, that you have to be willing to ask big
questions and not have all the answers that
you have to be willing to put yourself in the
shoes of the audience.
So if you're a web designer,
don't teach your audiences web design.
Instead, show them what is possible when they
truly understand their potential clients,
and then their website does that when their
website speaks their client's language.
If you're a coach, you don't teach them kind
of your coaching process and and all the
different things that you do as a coach.
Instead, show your audiences what's getting
in their way. This is why our signature talk
Canvas framework works so well.
No matter what your topic and what your
industry, no matter if you think you have a
very technical topic or a very non-technical
topic, it's agnostic to topic and industry
because we take the very best of three act
story structure of psychology of marketing,
and we infuse all of that into the framework.
And then as we work with you one on one in
that virtual VIP day, we're getting the
information from you and putting it in the
right sections of the talk so that it flows
and that you are then instead of teaching
your audiences what you do,
you're showing them what they need to know to
achieve their goals.
One of the best examples of this is the
episode that I did last December,
episode number 362, with one of our clients,
Danielle Hayden.
She owns a bookkeeping agency,
and she does extraordinary work with the
clients that she works with, and she has a
team of 25 bookkeepers,
but she has a very different approach to
bookkeeping. And that was getting lost in the
presentations that she was doing for lead
generation. So when we work together in the
VIP day, instead, we shaped her talk around
thought leadership around what the women
entrepreneurs that she was speaking to,
what they needed to know to achieve their
goals, what was, what was preventing them
from doing that instead of Danielle teaching
them about bookkeeping, which is what the
entrepreneurs really didn't need to
understand, they said they needed to hire
Danielle's company for the bookkeeping, but
they needed to understand what was getting in
their way. So in that episode,
362, Danielle and I talk about that and the
revelation that she had about thought
leadership and how when she presented this
new version of her talk,
she got the most leads that she ever had.
Let's hear a clip from my podcast
conversation with Danielle Hayden of
Kickstart Accounting.
Danielle Hayden: I want to use the word fun and and I don't
want anyone to laugh at me as I use the word
fun here, but it really was fun to work with
you and watch you pull out those pieces from
what we were talking about because like,
how can I serve everyone,
right? So if somebody is doing DIY
bookkeeping, how do I help them?
If somebody is struggling with money mindset,
how do I help them if somebody is is uh,
has, you know, they're struggling,
they want to, um, you know,
they're not getting what they deserve from
their money team, from their their CPA,
from their bookkeeper.
How do I help them?
And in working together,
I loved how you narrowed that down to very
specifically, who are we talking to?
Why are we talking to them?
And what does that person what does that
woman what does that person need to leave
with?
Carol Cox: Yes. And then and as we were,
I was as I was asking you question and
getting to know a little bit more about your
methodology and the process that you use
internally and who are your best clients.
And then you mentioned to me about this idea
of the spending gap and how so many
entrepreneurs actually don't spend enough,
or at least spend enough in the right places
in their business. And when you said that I
had this like little. Ding ding ding light
bulb go on. Because this is what I'm
listening for as I, as I'm working with,
with clients like you is like,
what is that thing that I think most people
haven't heard much about yet?
It feels counterintuitive,
like it feels unusual to hear that.
And I feel like that's what gets the audience
to then pay attention. So,
Danielle, for the benefit of our listeners,
can you explain what is the spending gap?
Danielle Hayden: Yeah, this was incredible.
And I'm so glad that you picked this up,
because I feel like I have been talking
around this concept for so long,
but never actually understood what I was even
talking about. So thank you for pulling that
out of me.
Carol Cox: And then the other thing is that I really
encourage you to share more stories in your
talk, specifically stories about you,
not just about clients. Clients stories are
really important because of course there's
such credibility markers.
Plus then the people in the audience see
themselves in those clients.
But I also encourage you to share some
stories about you.
How did you feel about that?
Danielle Hayden: Well, when I first, um,
did my dry run, I had recorded a dry run for
you and I had sent it over and I my comments
and my email literally was,
I don't know, Carol.
These these these stories feel off.
I don't think that I'm making the point that
I should be making here.
I think that that story doesn't feel right.
And you had commented back,
you know, you're probably just not used to
telling this much story in a,
in, in, in a speech.
And when I gave that talk the first time in
person, it's those stories that really
connected, um, not just connected me with to
the audience, but they were the moments of
almost relief.
Yeah. Remember, like, money is a hard topic
to talk about and it's a hard topic for
people to sit through.
So having those stories and giving the
audience a moment to laugh or connect or to
really see themselves in that situation,
I just walked away from such a deeper
connection with with the audience,
and.
Carol Cox: That was pretty powerful.
Right? So that's sign number one that you're
stuck in. The expert trap is you're teaching
your audiences how to do what you do instead
of showing them what they need to know to
achieve their goals and what's getting in
their way. Sign number two that you're stuck
in the expert trap is that you don't have any
personal stories in your presentations and
talks, or the personal stories are kind of
superficial. They're not meaningful.
They're not vulnerable.
Your presentations and talks need connective
tissue between point to point.
Your stories are that connective tissue.
Your openness allows your audience to be
open. Now, you may be in a setting where
there's 500 people or a thousand people or
even 150 people in your audience,
and you're not going to have them actually
share stories out loud.
I mean, you could it depends on the setting,
but instead your vulnerability by sharing
those personal stories,
those those stories that have really impacted
you and shaped you and shaped the ideas that
matter to you, that openness,
that vulnerability is going to open up your
audience's minds and hearts.
And when your audience's minds and hearts are
open, they're much more able to receive the
information, the content,
that thought leadership message,
the bigger vision that you're presenting to
them. And then they start thinking to
themselves about stories and experiences that
they've had, the journey that they've been
on, and now how you could be the person who
can help them go further.
So that's excellent for lead generation as
well. And oftentimes, again,
as that's high achieving women,
we feel like, well, our personal stories are
going to get in the way. Like I want to
present because I want to get clients from my
talks, which is an excellent way.
Public speaking is an excellent way to
generate leads, but your personal stories are
what going to connect you to your audience,
and they're going to be more likely to want
to work with you because they learned
something about you, because you've had
you've shown them that openness and
vulnerability, and it truly is contagious to
them as well. Another great example is from
another client, Terry DeLuca.
This was back from last summer.
So last summer 2023 episode 338.
And she was very much in the expert trap
before we worked together. Because she has a
background in academia,
she actually has two PhDs,
and now she's a sought after speaker and a
paid speaker because of working with us and
the shift that she has made into thought
leadership. Let's listen to this clip from my
podcast conversation with Doctor Terry
DeLuca.
Dr. Terry DeLuca: As you mentioned, I got my,
um, my graduate work was all in the academia
side. So I have a dual PhD in developmental
psychology and educational psychology,
and all my work was focused on research.
So that's where a lot of my original speaking
experiences were presenting my data.
I was principal investigator on a lot of
studies. I held a research scientist position
for a children's literacy program,
so I would travel and speak at conferences.
And it was exactly what you say with the
expert travel. It was very comfortable.
You could walk on stage.
I have my you know exactly how the
presentation is going to go.
If it really capturing introduction,
you present the facts.
Here's the applied aspect of the research.
Everyone go off and have a great day.
That's that's really the sum of an academic
presentation. And I was very comfortable with
that. I think something that I've talked with
you about is embracing that thought
leadership. It took me out of that protective
little, I don't know, the protective zone of
being an expert leader walking in.
You have to just embrace sharing your
personal stories. And so I think that's how
we've been able to get to the heart of our
clients. We've had, you know,
just just sharing these are some thoughts and
feelings, some insecurities, some anxieties,
things that we've struggled with in your
shoes. When I was sitting at the desk leading
a school or as you know,
as a teacher in a classroom,
I had imposter syndrome.
I wanted to quit my job because it felt too
overwhelming. I didn't know how to handle the
chaos in the classroom.
I worried what other people were thinking. Do
they think I'm a good leader? Should I be in
this seat? So sharing all of that,
that stuff, that's nice.
It's nice to keep that tucked down deep and
not let that out into the world. Right.
So it takes it takes that extra dose of
courage and getting over that fear of
failure. At least for me,
that's what it took. And so it's definitely a
very different approach to talking to an
audience. But when you're able to humble
yourself and just open up and share the
things that you've struggled the most with,
at least for me, the things that were the
deepest struggles, my deepest fears,
getting that out there,
it just it's almost like the elephant in the
room is removed.
Your audience can relate to you and they
think, wow, she gets it like she understands.
And then they at that point is when the
beauty happens, that's when they'll open
their mind.
Carol Cox: So that's sign number two that you're stuck
in the expert trap. You don't have any
meaningful personal stories,
any vulnerable personal stories in your
talks. If you listen to the last episode that
we did with our Thought Leader Academy
clients, it was so much fun.
We had we did a LinkedIn live show where we
brought three of them on,
and they each presented a ten minute section
of the signature talk they had worked on with
us in the Thought Leader Academy,
and we had a round table discussion at the
end. And for each of them,
one of the biggest revelations of working
with us is how important personal stories
are, especially those vulnerable personal
stories and how it was.
They were a little reluctant to put them in
their talks. They, you know, they had that
the fears, the vulnerability,
hangovers. But they realized,
especially after presenting it on that live
show last week for the first time,
how incredibly important it is.
Sign number three that you're stuck in the
expert trap is that as a speaker,
when you're presenting in front of your
audience, this is especially for in-person
engagements, but it also applies virtually,
is that you're not matching the energy and
the mood of the audience.
As I've said on this podcast before,
as the speaker, if you're standing in front
of a room, if you're standing on the stage or
you're the one who is the the presenter on
that zoom call or that webinar,
you are the leader in that room.
You are the leader in that audience.
If something is going on,
either out in the world or perhaps just
within that conference or something's
happened within that industry,
it is up to you as the speaker,
as the leader to address that and to match
the energy and mood of the audience.
If you show up and you're super high energy
and bubbly and you just want to be playful
and have fun, but something has happened.
Something has happened in the world. Or
again, like at that conference,
and you you're aware of that and you can
sense the energy of the audience like they're
maybe they're introspective,
they're reflective, like they're feeling what
has been going on, and you just bounce up and
you don't address it at all.
There's going to be that disconnect,
like it's going to feel incongruent to the
audience. Now, I'm not saying you have to
change your entire presentation just because
something else has gone on,
but I really do feel like it.
It's up to you to and this is how you develop
as a speaker, and this is how you know you're
getting better and better as a speaker is
being able to do this very authentically and
seamlessly with your audience.
And the flip side, if your audience is really
energetic, maybe they just had a great
session where they were working on something
together and like the mood is really
energetic and, and, you know,
they're having a great time and then you're
ready to start. And you know that the story
you start with is kind of it's like a hard
story, right? It's one of those personal,
vulnerable stories that we encourage you to
share. But maybe starting with that story is
not the best thing to do,
because it's good to bring the energy and
mood of the audience down right away,
when maybe you need to save that story for a
little bit later in your presentation,
so that you can continue to match the energy
and mood of the audience. Yes,
these are advanced speaking techniques,
but this is what I want you to get to.
Because this is how you're going to get to
those paid keynote talks.
And again, getting more leads and clients
from the lead generation presentations that
you're doing right now.
I'm reading a really good book called Super
Communicators by Charles Duhigg.
It just came out.
I'll include a link in the show notes,
and he has a whole section,
a whole chapter in his book about this idea
of matching energy and mood.
And in this case of the book,
they're talking mainly about one on one
conversations you're having with other
people. But I'm applying it to you as a
speaker in front of a room full of people in
front of an entire audience.
So sign number three that you're stuck in the
expert trap is that you're not matching the
energy and mood of the audience,
and you're not bringing the audience along
that journey and kind of either lifting their
mood or addressing their mood as needed.
So again, why does any of this matter?
What if you just want to get leads and
clients from your presentations? Or you're
thinking, I just want to get paid some money
for my presentations?
And here's the thing if your presentations
are boring or flat, or just like everyone
else's, they're not going to get you the
results that you want.
They're not going to get you the leads and
clients. They're not going to get you those
paid speaking opportunities.
They're not going to get you to those bigger
stages. So really think about developing your
big idea. I did a podcast episode about that
late last year that I'll include a link in
the show notes, add those personal,
meaningful, vulnerable stories into your
content and be a leader in that room.
Match the energy and mood of the audience and
take them along that journey.
This is exactly the work that we do with you
in our Thought Leader Academy. It truly is
transformative as we see our clients develop
over the eight weeks that we work together.
We help you develop your thought leadership
message like find that big idea,
develop your framework,
which is your intellectual property,
which you can use not only in your
presentations and talks,
but in so much of your other content.
And a lot of times it provides the foundation
for, say, a book that you want to write.
We also teach you how to tell great stories
and to connect your stories to your bigger
message. We work with you one on one in that
virtual VIP day to create your signature
talk, so you are guaranteed to have a
signature talk done that you love,
and that's going to push you a little bit out
of your comfort zone, because that's exactly
what's going to give you the bigger impact
and income that you want.
You also learn the business of speaking what
to charge for your speaking,
how to develop your speaking proposals, how
to find the best events for you.
And then you have practice time.
So you get to practice with us in the group
zoom calls. And then we also schedule that
LinkedIn live for you towards the end of the
program, so that you can take a section of
your signature talk and deliver it live to
our audiences. I know that may sound a little
scary, but it's so much fun.
And if you listen or watch the one that we
did last week, as well as the one that's
coming up, you're going to see how great the
women did. And here's the best part about
working with us in our Thought Leader
Academy. Your transformative talk transforms
you as much as it does your audience.
You develop as a person,
you develop as a speaker,
you develop as a leader.
And that's why I truly get so much value out
of the woman that we work with on our Thought
Leader Academy.
We've been running the Thought Leader Academy
since the fall of 2020,
so it's been almost three and a half years
now. We have graduated well over 100 women
from the Thought Leader Academy.
We work with women from all different
industries, all different topics.
Because again, our framework is not specific
to one type of topic, whether it's technical
or non-technical or if it's story driven or
if it's more content driven.
It all works.
If you're ready to get out of this expert
trap and shift into thought leadership,
I invite you to join our next group that
starts in April.
You can get all the details,
including pricing and FAQs and testimonials
from the women that we've worked with and
speaking your brand.com/academy.
Again, that's speaking your
brand.com/academy.
And once you're there you can fill out the
application form.
And you can also schedule a zoom call with
us. Don't forget our next episodes.
You're going to be hearing from more of our
thought leader Academy grads and our
in-person retreat clients, so that they can
share some of the insights that they've
gained to help you with your speaking and
thought leadership. Until next time,
thanks for listening.