e194 Your Future Clients Need You To Own Your Expertise
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[00:00:00] Welcome. Welcome to Rewild Your Business. I'm your host, Gill Moakes. Thank you so much for joining me again this week, or if you are new to these parts. I am very thankful that you found me, and I hope you really enjoy this episode. Everyone's having a good week, by the way. Sometimes I feel like I get so excited to talk to you about whatever the thing I've picked to create the episode on that week.
Sometimes I forget to actually be a human and say, Hey, how are you? How's your week yet? I'm, I'm just not good at it. Let's get in, let's get into it. So what are we talking about this week? We are talking about why your future clients need you to bloody own your expertise, right? We're gonna be talking about imposter syndrome.
We're gonna talk about that resistance we feel to [00:01:00] bragging, you know, showing off in New Zealand. Lovely lady. Christine, if you are out there, I always remember this conversation with you. A lovely lady who lives in New Zealand told me about tall poppy syndrome, which is, you know, something that's very common out there.
It's really discouraged for anyone to kind of stick their head up tall. It's almost not acceptable to be above the rest of the crowd. All of those things are what I wanna talk about today because. While you are busy making yourself smaller, staying humble, qualifying, everything you say with, you know, well, I think, or you know, maybe, or the good one.
Well, it's just my opinion, but Right. There's someone out there who desperately needs what you offer and they're not gonna be able to find you. Or if they do, they're not gonna realize. [00:02:00] Because you are playing humble. You are so worried about being too much or worrying that you're gonna look like a dick and it's not doing your future clients any favors, and it's certainly not doing you any favors or your bank account.
So let's fix it today. Let's dive into the episode. Welcome to rewild Your Business, the podcast for women doing the work, their soul intended. I'm Gill Moakes. I'm an international business coach, and I'm a guide for women doing the work that matters. Rewilding your business means cutting away what doesn't belong.
To allow what does to thrive, finding simplicity in your work, and it's about bringing the whole of who you are to the table. Whether you are building something new or finding your way back to what really matters to you. I'm so glad you are here. Okay, so. Let's start off with [00:03:00] something that I just really want you to adopt as you are listening to this episode as a truth, okay?
And that is that your modesty is not serving anyone. It's not serving you, and it's certainly not serving the people who need what you offer. I get this. Oh my God, I get it. I'm British. You know, we get raised to be humble. We're told to not show off. We're told that, you know, don't show off, don't brag. You know, God, especially if you're British like me, a lot of you are across the pond, but if you are British like me, then God forbid, we actually acknowledge we're good at something, right?
We would literally rather die than look like we're blowing our own trumpet. But here's the thing, there's a huge difference between owning your expertise. And being an arrogant dick, right? So [00:04:00] owning your expertise sounds like I've spent 10 years learning how to solve this exact problem, and I've worked with dozens of clients who've got results.
I know what I'm doing and I can help you, right? That is owning your expertise. Being a dick is like, I'm the only person that can solve your problem. Everyone else is shit. You'd be really stupid not to hire me. Can you see the difference between those two things? One is confidence, one is arrogance. One invites people in and the other pushes them away.
But they're very, very different things. I wanna talk a bit about imposter syndrome for a minute, actually, because I do think that we've almost made it. Too comfortable, too acceptable. It's a bit like, you know how like busyness has got the badge of honor sometimes. I think that imposter syndrome started to have it [00:05:00] too.
It's almost like we are really willing to admit to anyone who listen that we have imposter syndrome. Oh yeah, I have terrible imposter syndrome, and we're saying it as if it makes us more relatable, like one of the good ones. But honestly, what imposter syndrome really is, it's a refusal to actually integrate your experience into who you are, into how you portray yourself.
If you are someone who's done the work, who's got results with clients, who's helped people transform their lives or their businesses, right? That isn't fake. It's not luck. It's real tangible evidence of your expertise. But the problem is, instead of owning that, so often we dismiss it. Will say things like, you know, oh [00:06:00] no, you did the work, not me.
Or, you know, I don't really know if I deserve the credit for that. Wait, that's crap. Your clients didn't pay you for luck. They didn't pay you 'cause you got lucky and somehow managed to get a result with them. They paid you for your expertise. They paid you for your perspective for the years of experience that you brought to their situation.
So when you refuse to own that and when you like downplay your expertise, you are not actually being humble. Well, you are. You're being humble, but actually there's something slightly dishonest about it almost. And if that helps you reframe this and gets you less comfortable having imposter syndrome, then I'm owning that.
I don't want you to be comfortable having imposter syndrome. I want it to make you really uncomfortable. I want it to [00:07:00] feel disingenuous. 'cause actually it is. Right, and here's what I really want you to understand. Your future clients are looking for someone who can help them solve a real problem. They are scared, they're uncomfortable, they're uncertain.
They're probably investing money that. Feels like a stretch for them, right? They need to feel confident in you. They need to know that you've done this before, that you've seen this problem from lots of different angles, that you are confident that you can help them. So when you are showing up online. In this kind of tentative way, if you're always qualifying, everything you say, if you are apologizing almost for your expertise, you know, what message is that sending to people?
It sends that kind of, I'm not [00:08:00] actually sure I can help you, but I'll really do my best. You know, that doesn't inspire confidence. That doesn't make someone want to hand over their hard earned money and trust you. Your confidence gives them permission to trust you. Your belief that you can help them is what creates the space for them to believe in the possibility of their own transformation.
Can you see that? Can you see how that is so fundamentally true? This isn't about you, it's about them. It's about what your future clients need from you. So this kind of allergy to standing out this tall poppy syndrome, it's really a cultural thing where if you dare to stand out to claim your success to be excellent at what you do, people will try to cut you down.
That's the fear [00:09:00] that we have. Don't get too big for your boots. Don't think you are better than everyone else. I do get that. You know, no one likes a show off. No one likes the person who is making everything about how amazing they are. But here's where we get confused. We're confusing confidence with arrogance.
We're confusing, owning your expertise with thinking you are better than other people. They're really two very, very different things. You can be excellent at what you do and at knowledge and think that other people are also excellent at what they do is not mutually exclusive. This is abundance at its best, right?
You can be the best choice for your specific client, and you can recognize that other people out there are the [00:10:00] best choice for their ideal clients. There's no conflict there. This isn't about you showing off this tall poppy syndrome. It keeps us playing small, keeps us all being nice. It keeps us so worried about what other people think, that we never really acknowledge or step into the version of ourselves that is the most powerful, that has the most ability to bring about change for our clients, and the cost of that for ourselves is that the people who need us don't find us Simple as that.
So with all that said, with muchos passion, how do we own our expertise without being a dick? Well. The first thing I want you to think about is, and this is step one, the first thing you do is tell the truth. Just tell the bloody truth about what you've done, [00:11:00] about what you know about what you are good at.
Not some kind of inflated guru version, right? Not the like, I am the world's leading expert kind of bullshit. Just the honest truth. So that could sound like, you know, I've worked with over 50 clients on this exact issue, or I've been doing this for a decade, or I've seen this pattern play out hundreds of times.
Right? Those things are not bragging. Those are facts. So tell the truth about what you've done. The second step is to let your work speak for itself. So this is why it's so important to share results, share testimonials, share case studies. And it's not in a look how amazing I am kind of way, but in a, this is what's possible for you too, kind of way, right?
Because your job [00:12:00] isn't to convince people that you are good. Your job is to show them what becomes possible for them when they work with someone who knows what they're doing, right. Third thing, be specific. When you water down your messaging and make really vague claims, it sounds a little bit bullshit, honestly.
Whereas specific claims. Specific truths sound like expertise. So if you say things like, and you know that this is something I really think is important when it comes to messaging, you know, if you go really high level and just stay very vague and say, I help people transform their business. What does that mean?
It's like, what, how? What do you do? I don't understand. Whereas if you say, you know, I help ambitious women build [00:13:00] legacy focused businesses, and I do it through helping them hone their thought leadership. Can you see how much more confident that sounds? And it's because it's specific, it demonstrates knowledge.
It shows that you know exactly who you serve, and most importantly, how you serve them. Fourth thing, own your perspective. And this one is probably the most important actually. You don't have to be the world's leading expert in your thing to have a valuable perspective, but you do need to own the perspective you have.
So instead of saying things like, oh, you know, I think this might work, I want you to start saying things like, here's what I've learned. Here's what I [00:14:00] believe. Here's what I've seen work. Right? It's your perspective on your thing, and I really want you to understand that that is an arrogance. That really is leadership.
That is thought leadership. It's being brave enough to say, I believe X, and owning that. Owning that. Not everyone has to agree with you. Not everyone has to share your perspective, but the people who are looking for someone like you to support them need to know that you are very secure and steadfast in what you believe to be true about your thing, your topic.
So I think those four things super important. You know when you get a chance, maybe if you are driving or whatever, maybe when you get home, just perhaps go down, replay, scribble down, just some bullet notes on those four things and how you can [00:15:00] integrate those four things into the way you talk about what you do, the way you position yourself.
The other thing I wanna talk about really is the identity shift. Required for this to happen. This is the real work. Honestly, this is the work that I do with my clients that I work with One-to-one. You cannot. Just put on confidence like a costume. You can't fake your way into owning your expertise. You have to actually bridge that gap between who you've been.
So that person who's been humble, the nice person who doesn't wanna make waves, who doesn't wanna stand out, who doesn't want to show off, doesn't wanna come across as arrogant or bragging, you need to bridge the gap between her. And who you need to become to build that full fat version of your business.
So that is the identity work. That's the transformation between the person [00:16:00] who plays small to stay safe and the person who claims their authority because their future clients need them to. And this isn't about becoming someone you are not. Often, when I talk about this future self work, when I talk about the identity work that I do with clients, there's this.
Worry or there's a challenge that comes up that often people will put to me actually the challenge around Gill, you talk a lot about authenticity, so why are you now saying. We've gotta change who we are. Surely that's inauthentic. Do you know what? Nothing could be further from the truth. This isn't about becoming someone you are not.
It's about becoming more of who you actually are, who is there inside you. If you peel away the layers of conditioning, it's about becoming more of your true, authentic self. So here's what I want you to take away from [00:17:00] this episode. Your modesty. It's not a virtue if it's keeping the people who need you from finding you.
That's one thing I want you to take away. The second thing I want you to take away and really process for yourself and how this applies to you. Your imposter syndrome is simply a refusal to integrate your experience. Think about that. How is that true for me? Also your fear of being too much or of being arrogant or of being, of bragging all of those things.
Your fear of that is robbing your future clients of the confidence they need to invest in themselves to actually get the change. They want to get the result they want. So please own your expertise, not just because it's gonna make you feel good, although honestly it will, but [00:18:00] because the people who need you are out there right now looking for someone who knows what they're doing, someone who's confident, someone who's certain they can help them.
So I want you to be that person that is the person that your future clients need you to be. If this episode resonated with you, and if you are ready to do that kind of deep identity work that work around, how do I become the woman who has the business I want, then I want you to get in touch. I'm gonna pop a link into the show notes.
I want you to get in touch. I want us to explore what that kind of work. For you, and I'm doing this in a really transparent way because I want to model everything I've been talking about in this episode. So this is very meta right now. I'm encouraging you if this has landed with you, if doing the [00:19:00] work around your who you are and around really getting clear and honest about the business you want.
And then who you need to be to make that happen and how you are gonna make that happen. I do all of that. I work on that whole spectrum around the identity work, but also around the business model, the marketing, the, the thought leadership, all of that work. If you are listening to this and thinking that's the kind of work I need to do, I wanna share something with you.
I've been doing this work for a long time now, and if you head to jill oaks.com, you're gonna be able to see and check out lots of testimonials, lots of kind, beautiful words from clients who got results because they worked with me. It's what I do. I'm good at it. It's [00:20:00] important to me that I be good at it.
And so I'm constantly upgrading the level I work at with my clients. Okay? So I deliberately want to include this. I want to show you that it's okay. It's quite possible to talk about the fact that you are good at what you do. Without coming across. Hopefully you might think, God, she's a dick, in which case this is massively backfired.
That's okay. If you are listening and thinking that right now you probably wouldn't enjoy coaching with me, but honestly, I hope you get the point. It's really important that you own your expertise. Like I said, I'm gonna put the links in the show notes to everything you need. If you would like to explore what working with me could look like, and I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
Again, do jot down those four bullet points and just have a little journal around [00:21:00] how you can make the changes that you need to make so that you start. Integrating your experience, owning your expertise, and making sure that your messaging and the way you talk about yourself and what you do makes it clear that you have that level of confidence that you are good at what you do and can help the people who need you.
Alright, I'll see you back here again. Same time, same place next week. Bye for now.
