Episode 328: Monetize Your Expertise

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:01:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. Boy, am I excited today to have Debbie Allen on the show? She is the world’s authority on expert positioning. She’s an internationally recognized business growth and marketing positioning expert. Debbie has been a professional speaker and business mentor for over 25 years and presented before thousands of people in 28 countries. I don’t know if I’ve even been to 28 countries.

0:01:45 – (Brynne Tillman): She is also the best-selling author of ten books, including The Highly Paid Expert Success is easy and expert positioning. She mentors clients from around the globe who want to position themselves for influence and credibility to highly monetize their expertise. My friend Debbie, welcome to the show.

0:02:08 – (Debbie Allen): Hey, Brynne. Always great to be here with you. You’re looking fabulous as ever. I don’t know if that’s a new filter or you got some, I don’t know, some good jeans there. You’re looking great.

0:02:17 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, thank you. Maybe mostly filter. I don’t know.

0:02:21 – (Debbie Allen): It’s all good.

0:02:23 – (Brynne Tillman): No, it’s all good. You know, I feel good. It’s fun. I’m a grandma now and all of a sudden I feel younger.

0:02:29 – (Debbie Allen): That’s the glow. The grandma glow.

0:02:31 – (Brynne Tillman): It is the grandma glow, for sure. So I’m excited to drive to really kind of dive deep into this. You know, almost everyone has some kind of expertise, but not everyone knows how to monetize it. So I’m excited about that. But before we go into a deep dive, I’d love for you to share because we ask everyone the one question which is what does making sales social mean to you?

0:03:01 – (Debbie Allen): Well, I’m actually doing a class on this tomorrow, so I’ve been really studying a new way of doing sales and really focusing on emotional-based sales and helping people. Once you really kind of coach people through a sales process, you’re discovering what’s really holding them back. And I think what most people go to when they don’t do the emotional-based sales, they’re just trying to get the sale on their end. They’re just trying to make the money. And really, sales is about building loyalty, trust, and connection. So you’re building a relationship, and it’s not a one-off, it’s a Yemenite, a long-term relationship. That’s what really is going to make a difference in your business.

0:03:35 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. I don’t know that we’ve had that emotional connection to social, so I love that. All right, let’s dive into your expertise, which is helping other people monetize their expertise. If you could just start by talking a little bit about positioning and expertise and why really monetizing their talent and knowledge is under-leveraged.

0:04:01 – (Debbie Allen): Oh, my gosh, yes. And it’s the foundation of everything we do in marketing the thing that’s going to get us opportunities, make us money, get us clients, especially the high-value clients. And so when I started speaking many years ago on marketing, it was always about, you know, promoting yourself, because that’s how you start. And then it was like putting yourself out with a good website and a good niche market. But now it’s got to go deeper than that. We know there’s so much more competition, especially if you’re trying to do online business.

0:04:29 – (Debbie Allen): You’ve got to position yourself as that true. Go to expert. So you got to pick a lane, and you got to stay in that lane and be known for that. And then when people think of it, maybe might not even remember your name, it’s like, oh, yeah, that expert on that thing, right? So I’ve been doing this for so long that I’ve been able to title myself the expert of experts, which my clients coined me, and then also the world’s number one authority on expert positioning.

0:04:55 – (Debbie Allen): And the reason I’m so passionate about it is because we all have a level of expertise. We all have knowledge of something that we’ve experienced in our life. We all have experiences that are part of that expertise in a different way, and we can really put that knowledge out there. Why wouldn’t we make money from that? We know now, Bryn, the corporate market is laying off a lot of people, and we’re going to see more and more layoffs. People are kind of scared about that. And I say, why wouldn’t you create a side hustle?

0:05:22 – (Debbie Allen): Figure out if you’re in a corporate world you want to leave the corporate world, or you want to create a side hustle before you leave. Whatever it is, discover what expertise you have that you learn with inside of that business, and then bring it out to the world and then get coaching clients from it. Create multiple income streams. So, um, I teach my clients, once they build the foundation of expert positioning, how to create multiple income streams around how you deliver that knowledge.

0:05:48 – (Debbie Allen): So, again, when you think about how lucrative that is, once you’ve nailed it down, it’s like you’re sharing your knowledge, right? You do not have to have some expensive thing that you’re sharing. And you can do that online. You can do it on live stages. Of course, I’ve been a speaker for 20-some years. But you don’t have to be a speaker. You just have to position yourself as that true expert. Whether that’s a doctor, whether that’s a carpet cleaner, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in.

0:06:13 – (Debbie Allen): What are you truly an expert at? That you could say, this is my sweet spot. Right? So that’s kind of where it starts, is finding that really beautiful thing that you are Wiz, you’re really wise at, brilliant at, and then putting that out there as you’re. As your foundation, and that’s the key. And then you start building that foundation. So, Bryn, I mean, you know about how you’re on social media, there’s all different ways of doing this.

0:06:39 – (Debbie Allen): All the work that people put out there going on social media and being on LinkedIn and AI and all the things they’re doing. Right. If you don’t create the foundation first and position yourself as an expert in some category, it’s almost like you’re wasting your time. Like you’re trying to get on podcasts and you’re trying to do this and you’re trying to do that, but there’s no people go to your website or even your LinkedIn profile, and they’re like, well, what is the thing they do? I mean, you probably see that all the time, Brent.

0:07:06 – (Brynne Tillman): All the time. Yeah. And one of the things I love is to help people productize that, like, really put the words around that for their LinkedIn profile. You know, it’s interesting. Often I talk about if, when I’m talking about people that are trying to get that side hustle or want to work themselves out of a job, I’ll say, what are you good at? What do you love to do and what are people willing to pay you for? And if it meets all three of those, then you can launch.

0:07:39 – (Brynne Tillman): But I never know how do you launch. So I’m going to ask you, although I know that’s a big question, what’s the first thing that someone does when they’re like, okay, I now have identified what I love to do, what I’m good at, and what people are willing to pay me for. What do I do?

0:07:57 – (Debbie Allen): Well, yeah, you got a key point there. Willing to pay you for it because you might be passionate about something. If there’s no market. And people that come to me and they say, I want to speak on this and I’m like, you know, okay, give me some more things that you’re good at or whatever else you do. Because it’s like, if there’s not a market there, then there’s no money. So that was a key point you pointed out there.

0:08:15 – (Debbie Allen): So you need to work with a marketing expert, something like myself, that can hone in on that. I’ve been doing this for so many years that I can see it intuitively and I could see, based on your background and where you want to go, then I can actually not only see what your foundation and what your expertise is going to be, who your ideal target market is, and then other ways they would want to learn from you. So let’s say sharing your expertise, it comes in a form of a book, it comes in the form of a podcast, it comes in a form of speaking online, whatever it is. You could get paid to speak, or you could learn the skill of speaking to sell, which is my sweet spot. I love teaching that because I can see people monetize it so quickly, but those are steps along the way. So again, that foundation, that first piece, and as you said, Brenda, putting that message, that unique selling position, that is that hook, that five to 15 words that defines, like, the outcome, the benefits of what they offer so that people aren’t questioning it, they should know when they get to your website, on the top one-third fold of your website, it should have you featured as an expert. If you’re the main person of the x as of your expertise.

0:09:21 – (Debbie Allen): If somebody clients that build teams and they’re like the founder, and then they have their expert teams in AI or their experts in it management, that kind of thing. So it’s all over the board, it’s everywhere. And so really it’s kind of a wake-up call today for everybody to hear this and say, we’re going in a tough economic market. Right? And so if everybody’s out there marketing, everybody’s trying to do online, and they’re all trying to get the same dollar, it’s like you have to hone in on that expertise to go, don’t be everything to everybody. Pass up business to other people and get the type of business that you’re brilliant at.

0:10:03 – (Debbie Allen): And again, people ask me all the time, will you position people as experts and you can take their ideas and turn it into money? Yes, I can. And then after they’ve done that and they built the foundation, then I can teach them the skills to really monetize it. But the first step, Brin, is always to build the foundation. Get that really clear. Then you build your brand, then you build your website. Now you have to learn the skills. And one of them is sales and one of them is social media.

0:10:30 – (Debbie Allen): And what are you going to put out there learning that skill? When I came from a paid professional speaking background, I had to shift my business and reinvent completely because the financial crisis hit in 2008, and it was like, yeah, that just, like, killed my business. So I knew that I had to learn something else. I had the skill of speaking. I had the expertise in marketing, but I had to hone it in better. And I had to go from, you know, having to speak all over the world to speaking online, all of those different things. How could I, how could I shift that? And what I had to do was to shift my business of how I position myself.

0:11:08 – (Debbie Allen): And if you’re, you know, we had a conversation just before we got on here, you know, if you’re in a position right now, you’re having a hard time getting clients, you think, you know, the economy is really affecting you. It’s harder to get people on webinars and all different things. What are you doing that you have been doing that isn’t getting attention? And what else could you bring up that you also have those of you that are listening, that are already experts and going, I want to do more, or I’m kind of tired of doing that and I want to do this.

0:11:35 – (Debbie Allen): You know, true entrepreneurs get tired of stuff, and we always want to do stuff. So it’s really interesting, Bryn, that whatever you focus on, you get more of, and you totally understand that, right? And so think about everything you focused on in one niche market, you’re going to get more of that. And then if you want to add another income stream to it. You focus on that. My goal right now is to get more clients who want to learn the most, most brilliant business skills that I have that I’ve ever done in my entire career.

0:12:06 – (Debbie Allen): And that is learning to speak and sell and create their own events and make multiple six figures in a weekend. That I think is probably the thing I have that very few people could say. I got that on my list that I’m brilliant at. And so I just started thinking that, hey, that would be fun. I kind of want more clients like that, people that are already experts, but they’re ready to take it to the next level and go get a bunch of clients in one weekend and learn how to do that and just nail it.

0:12:34 – (Debbie Allen): And I did that for 15 years. And so I started thinking about that brand, and I was like, I want more clients like that. And the smart ones that have the money to invest and really are ready to go for it and want to make money from events and learn this. And then all of a sudden, that was all I was getting. Like every lead was it was like, I didn’t even put that out. Maybe I put it out there in a webinar or something. But it’s quite interesting that when you hone in on what you want and what you’re an expert at, what you really believe you’re brilliant at, it’s like business just comes.

0:13:05 – (Debbie Allen): Right. Powerful.

0:13:08 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. So, you know, there’s a lot of moving parts around doing this. So when you work with a client now you’ve identified the Persona they’re going after, you’ve identified what it is that they want to do. What’s the next thing? We’ve got this little bit of a plan. What is the go-to-market strategy? Because it sounds great, but now, how do I get this message in front of people so that I can sell from the stage?

0:13:40 – (Brynne Tillman): I can get asked to do x, y, and z, right.

0:13:45 – (Debbie Allen): So there is a step-by-step process. And I always tell people, you can’t skip the steps or your business is going to hurt. It’s not going to grow like it’s supposed to. So I take it through step by step. So, great question. The first step in the very first call is let’s discover what you’re brilliant at. Let’s discover what your brand is. Let’s discover a great domain name or multiple domain names that you can kind of gobble up and own those before we launch that business.

0:14:11 – (Debbie Allen): So it’s like any ID you have, you need to own that.com. and so we start with that. Then I also, on the very first call, what do you want? What do you want your business to look like one year from now, two years from now, three years from now? Let’s create a business plan right now. And so I pull out my multiple income streams and let’s say, okay, we’ve got your expertise around dog training and you’ve had all these years of experience. Now what would you want to do? Oh, you want a course on that? Okay, let’s put that in your, in your business plan. And you want to do maybe some speaking online and you want to do. And so we write, I create like every idea I can think of around income streams, how much money you want to make, you know, so we have their goals and their business plan on a one-page business plan done on the first call.

0:14:56 – (Debbie Allen): So foundation, everything, right? So now we’re ready to hit the ground running because now I know exactly what they want, how much they want to make. Some people want to work with individual clients, some want to do group coaching, whatever that is. We’ve got that all figured out from the very first call. And then after that, we start building it. So if they start, you know, working with me, we build the brand.

0:15:17 – (Debbie Allen): A brand can take three to, you know, three weeks or more, three weeks or a month to build a brand. Because you have to think about every single thing a brand is. It’s got to be on every one of your social media. That, that logo, that unique selling proposition. It’s got to be every, you know, it’s got to be on every single one of those social medias. It’s got to be for your website. It’s going to be your business cards going to your email signature, your PowerPoint slides. Like everything is going to be consistent. We’re going to build all of that for you. So they have the brand consistency.

0:15:44 – (Debbie Allen): And then after that, we move in. Let’s build a website, or if they already have a website, go in and let’s tweak it, let’s revise it. And we’re going to have to add extra pages to it because the pages of the website are actually the income streams they want to create. So when we started from the very first thing with the business plan, with the income streams, now I know, oh, they’ve got to have a link for speaking. They have to have a link for their coaching programs. They have to have a link for online courses.

0:16:13 – (Debbie Allen): So we build out of the business. Exactly. And I’m telling you, like, if we start from somebody with ground zero, right? Or if they’ve already got the website again, I’m usually redoing it because they don’t, they’re not positioned right and we have to redo the whole thing. So now once that’s built, let’s say you’ve taken now even ground zero, I got an idea and I want to build it all out. How long does that take?

0:16:36 – (Debbie Allen): Typically a month for branding and then going into website building. That could maybe take another couple of months because you have to figure out what your coaching program prices are. I mean, everything I do, like write all the speaking topics, everything is written out. Okay, so think about that. Three to four months. You have everything built into your foundation. Everything’s there. You can start marketing and then you look at, okay, well, I can start on social media. That’s an easy one to start with.

0:17:05 – (Debbie Allen): I could start maybe learning a skill of doing some webinars and present some of these topics I have. I can reach out to associations that would hire me to speak. I mean, whatever direction they want to go. We then put together the marketing plan because the foundation is built and people, what happens is they try and do this by themselves and it can take years, years to build it. I mean, they have to have a brand graphic, they have to have a graphic person, they have to have a webmaster, they have to have an entrepreneur consultant that knows what they’re doing, a marketing expert, all of those things, right? And so people waste so much time when just get it done. Like, I’m, you could probably tell Vern, I’m like, I get it. I just get stuff done. Like, here’s the idea. And it’s getting done. And so that’s why I like the done for your program is because if I leave people on their own to get it done, it’s so, like you said, so many puzzle pieces, there’s so many things, and we just take it with the team and get it all done for you. And then once you’ve got that done, you’re going, okay, here’s a skill I need to learn. I need to learn speak and sell. I need to learn, you know, how to do webinars, whatever those next skills are, and you learn how be, you know, maybe I want to write a book, whatever that is, and then just take them through that process.

0:18:17 – (Debbie Allen): So I have clients that will they make come to me just to build a foundation, and then they’ll leave maybe and go off and do their thing and start making money and getting clients. Most of those are speakers that go off and start getting bookings. I have other people who have stayed with me for 7810 years because they’re developing the level of those skills that go along with experts, and they’re. They’re mastering those skills.

0:18:40 – (Debbie Allen): And I have clients that will go and speak at an event, waive their speaking fee, and speak at one. He speaks for 45 minutes to an hour on somebody else’s stage, doesn’t pay for the meeting room, nothing. And he walks away, typically with $100 to $150,000 in leads that he closes on a phone. Like he had no idea. He had no idea how to do that. When he came to me, he was a salon owner. He had no idea. And now he just nails it, right?

0:19:07 – (Debbie Allen): He’s got the whole thing, but he only stayed with it. He mastered it. You know, it’s like he honed in on what his niche was. And it interesting that his niche had to be more general when we started. Like, his niche is communication skills. But he had to speak to entrepreneurs and all types of businesses until he got into the niche that took him seriously, which is the salon business that he came from. So now he’s tightening that niche going into that, and that’s where he makes the big bucks because he’s kind of like positioned himself as the king of communication and sales in the salon industry.

0:19:42 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love those niches. I think that’s amazing. Do you help them find the opportunities?

0:19:49 – (Debbie Allen): I help them get the direction. So let’s say they want to speak at associations. I go, okay, go buy the association list. That is thousands of associations all over the US and all over the world. It’s like dollar 400 to go buy the list. It used to be a huge, thick book, and now it’s all online. So give them the resources. But we have to figure out, are they association market speakers? If that was the case, right?

0:20:13 – (Debbie Allen): If they are coming to me and they’re learning how to market themselves to get on podcasts, then I will suggest companies that will send them leads for podcasts and summits and things like that. But here’s the thing. You can’t get booked to speak and get paid. You can’t get big dollars from consulting clients or coaching clients. You can’t get on podcasts and summits. You can’t do any of that and do it well until you built yourself an expert foundation or go back and revise it, because that’s what’s happening in your marketing. You’re not getting what you want because you’re not doing something right online. With your marketing.

0:20:48 – (Brynne Tillman): Fabulous. Really, fabulous. I think you’ve had some real mic drop moments here for folks who are looking to leverage what they love and they’re good at. And so before I ask how everyone can get a hold of you, I have one last question, which is, what question should I have asked you that? I didn’t.

0:21:14 – (Debbie Allen): Oh, wow. How many times have you reinvented yourself as an expert? That would be a hard question. I have been an entrepreneur since I was 19 years old. I don’t even know what it’s like to have a job. I have to spell it. That’s how terrifying it is. But that has always motivated me to be successful in business. And when things got tough, then I would look at it and go, I need to reinvent. Or when I got bored or I wasn’t happy doing what I wanted anymore, reinvent.

0:21:42 – (Debbie Allen): And so if you’re listening and you go, I want to either reinvent or start side hustle, and I just don’t know what to do. You know, you got to get somebody to help you with that. I never. I barely passed high school and never went to college, but all of my professors in life and business were very successful entrepreneurs, and that was the, like, the speed-up train. Like, just hopped on that train and they want to learn something else. Hop on that train.

0:22:09 – (Debbie Allen): And there’s so much opportunity with experts out there now. And that’s another reason I like to create more experts, is to create that legacy that even beyond myself, like, all these people that I’ve worked with that have created expert legacy and just keep helping people. And that’s what fills my heart. That’s what keeps me going.

0:22:27 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. So, you know, it’s interesting you talked about selling from the stage, but in some ways, podcasts is this digital stage that people can leverage to attract their audience there, too, which there’s lots of ways to get on podcasts. So I love that. It just made me think we’re here, and if people are in love with you like they should be, and it’s something they want to do, you just, in a good way, just got to sell from the digital stage, right? Like, and it’s not about selling. It’s solving. Like, someone’s listening to this.

0:23:05 – (Brynne Tillman): Like, oh, my gosh, I’ve been thinking about this for years, and I just don’t know where to start. So with that, if that’s. If one of our listeners is thinking that, how can they get in touch with you?

0:23:17 – (Debbie Allen): They can check out my website. Debbie allen.com debbieallen.com dot. You can see my mentoring page, their consulting page, and, well, I just even put all the prices on there. Everything’s there. You can see every single thing I’m doing. There’s like, you know, I used to, like, hide all that get on calls with people, but it goes back to what you started with because it’s all about relationships and trust in them knowing you. So it’s like, hey, this is it. I just put it out there.

0:23:43 – (Debbie Allen): And then another thing, you can either get it from my website or go to another site. It’s called expert positioning success.com. that’s your bonus for being here today. Your. Your gift. Expertpositioning success.com dot. That is a $200 value where I have a 30-minute walk through how to create the expert brand and all the income streams. Like, I give you, like, 20 different ideas, and then there’s an action guide. And the one-page business plan I was talking to you about is in there as well.

0:24:10 – (Debbie Allen): And then. Yeah, and then I’m not done. Another thing, you’re going to get a copy of my book, expert positioning. So that’s at expertpositioning success.com. again, a $200 value. So if this resonates with you, start there, look at all that cool stuff, and see how many ways she can make money with what you already know.

0:24:28 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. I love what a giver you are. That’s amazing. Thank you. And I really, I got a lot out of today. This is absolutely got my wheels going. So I love it when that happens. So I thank you so much, Bryn.

0:24:42 – (Debbie Allen): Always my pleasure to be with you. You’re a true, true professional. If you’re not already working with Bryn, if you’re walking to listen to her podcast, go work with her, too. Somebody that I know cares from your heart about your clients and what you do, and that’s rare in today’s world. And so I respect that about you so much.

0:24:59 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, my gosh. That warms my heart. It really is. My mission is to help as many people as possible, and the money will come, but I don’t focus on it.

0:25:09 – (Debbie Allen): It shows. Yeah.

0:25:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So, anyway, thank you. So I appreciate that. So, for all our listeners, when you are out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social. Have a great day.

Outro:

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