What Is A Scalable Expert?

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. To kick off the Scalable Expert Podcast season number one, I want to just talk a little bit about what it means to be an expert and how we position ourselves using our expertise to become a business owner that has a thriving, scalable business. So let's just break this down because this is a unique skill set that you have as an expert that will help you actually grow a business that scales beyond you, saves you time when everything is working, and and you really get out of kind of being the center of everything that's going on in your business. So, so let's talk through that. So first of all, One of the greatest gifts that you have is that you have been able to develop an expertise. So first, I congratulate you on that. Whether or not it is what you have been doing in your career, whatever that looked like before, You've built that expertise within the business that you have created. Maybe it's an agency model, a service model, or you just have a passion for something and you want to help other people with it. So however you have developed your expertise, I just applaud you for not only developing that expertise, putting the reps in to get really good at whatever it is that you are an expert in, but you also have seen the value of how your expertise can help other people. So kudos to you because that is the first step. And so what happens is we become an expert and, and if it's about something that we have been doing, right, like our body of work that we have created, so often that something starts because someone's like, hey, you're really good at this, this is something that's natural for you, can you help me with solving this thing that I'm trying to solve or do this thing that I'm trying to do? And, and it's great. You're like, yes, I can do that. So you dig in and you help them, and that usually looks like you know, helping them one-on-one when you are starting to kind of bridge the gap between having this expertise and monetizing the expertise that you have. And that's awesome. And that's a great place to start. The problem comes into play when like you're a really good expert, right? Like you're really good at what you do. And so you're drawing more and more people to you so that you have a lot of people who are coming in, a lot of a lot of people who want your expertise. And that is where the challenge starts to happen, is that you're helping so many people, or trying to help so many people, that you're maxed out, and you don't have any more capacity, and you don't have any more time. So the question becomes, how do you help more people without maxing out your time, right? You, you love what you do, you love that you are an expert, and that you can help people with it, but you've kind of gotten to that place where you're like, okay this is great, but now what's the next step? And I'm going to tell you that like, you know, this is the path that I traveled and I got to that point and I was like, okay, well guess what? Everyone is telling me that the next step is to build an agency with employees and then I'm going to own the business and lead all these people and do and keep doing the thing. And there's a huge shift from, being the expert, to being able to build a business around your expertise. So if you're in that place, you know what I'm talking about. If you've passed that place, you also know what I'm talking about, but if you haven't gone there yet, like you have to go through the, through the shift, like identify for yourself, like do you love to do the work? Do you want to keep doing the work or do you want to build a business by having other people do the work? And then you're kind of leading and managing the work where honestly you start, you know, having to add different skills into your, into your skillset, which means you may not actually be doing that thing that you're an expert at anymore because now you're kind of operating at a different level. And so that's the first point is just like, really identify it. Like what do you like, what do you not like? What do you want to be doing? What do you not want to be doing? And can you use your expertise as kind of that starting point? So, so that's the direction that I went as I was like, great, like I, I am going to own an agency. I'm going to grow this agency. I'm super passionate about what we do and I'm going to have a lot of other people be doing it. And that worked for a while until it didn't. But that was the first sort of look at how to take your expertise and skill into a business. But there's another way, which is really looking at like, you know, look at your proprietary approach for how you do something. So within every industry, there's sort of a set of, of rules or guidelines that people follow, especially when they're new. So there's like a model or methodology for how things work, right? Like a kind of a step by step path in most industries. So if you go and look at marketing, marketing has an approach. Sales has an approach. Design has an approach. Everybody, you know, project management has an approach, right? So there's kind of ways that you, when you're getting started, you sort of take somebody else's framework and then you you start working on that framework. Well, when you become an expert, you start to have your own way that you are doing the thing that you're doing. And whether it's defined or not, you have an approach that you're using that's unique to you. It's why people are drawn to you. It's why you have complete sort of control over your expertise, right? That makes you an expert. And so we call that your proprietary approach, right? That's your IP, your intellectual property. That's what you have sort of created in, in order to go out and help people. So if you're in that place where you're like, well, I'm kind of just using someone else's framework. I'm, I'm certified in somebody's approach. Like, that's great. That's a great place to start, but I guarantee that you have a unique view in terms of how to apply that framework. Or if you don't yet, keep working with people one-on-one until you've figured out, like, what's your unique way of delivering that that process or that methodology. Cause it's there I promise. And and so you'll develop your own approach. So for example you know, in the agency model, we did a lot of instructional design for large corporations. And so what that is, is we would design and develop large online learning programs, and we would come in and we would kind of figure out like, what is it that that we need to create in order to teach people how to do the thing that they needed to have done? That's it. Instructional design in a nutshell. But in the instructional design space, there is a model, it's called the ADDIE model, and it's a traditional model. It's the one you learn in school. It's the one that everyone kind of starts with. And it's A D D I E. And so each one of those stands for you know, something like analysis and design and development implementation and evaluation. And, and so, so the ADDIE model is the one that everyone follows when they are first in the space. And then there's been a number of people over the years who have sort of created their own iteration of the model. So now there's a SAM model, there's a a LLAMA model, there's different approaches, but basically it's, it's underlining like you're, you know, you're starting with kind of an analysis, right? Like kind of trying to figure out what the problem is, and then you're evaluating whether or not you've been able to solve the problem. So if you kind of look at like every single approach out there, it kind of starts, starts there, and then there's some stuff in the middle, and then there's an outcome. Again, there's one for marketing, there's one for project management, there's one for sales, everyone has a model that they're following. And so when we were in the agency, I was like, okay, well, we kind of are using a lot of different approaches. We're using our own proprietary method that we know works for the work that we're doing, the unique way that we show up and what our clients expect. And so our approach was the 5D model. And so we just created our own methodology, our own step by step path that was around the five D's. And for us, that took all the different models, it took our unique IP and and packaged it together, and that's how we served our clients. And then we could get really, really good at, at serving our clients consistently, getting consistent results and being able to really measure what we're doing, right? So that's an example of packaging your intellectual property in order to help customers. So the reason I'm spending some time talking about this is this is one of the cornerstone pieces of the INFINITE SCALE model, which is to really define your own Authority Strategy. What makes you stand out? What makes you unique? And what's the approach that you take all of your customers through or you can take all of your customers through to go from point A to point B. What's that standard approach? What's that framework that you use every single time to to go from from the problem that they have to the result that they're looking for? That is the very first piece of this puzzle because if you can do that, then you can deliver a consistent experience. So back when I said, like, it's great when you're doing one-on-one work, right? It's a lot easier to be able to take on custom work or ad hoc work or just do something different for every single customer that you have. But when you have ten, when you have a hundred, when you have a thousand or more customers, you can't do that anymore. Even, I don't even care, like, you could have a hundred employees, but you still can't do that. You still can't bring in a completely custom random project that has nothing to do with your proprietary methodology or your standard approach that you use and and be able to build a scalable business. So at the end of the day, once you can develop kind of a, a standardized way in which you help get your, your customers from point A to point B, then you know, you can start adding more and more people into it and start to deliver and serve in a different way versus just one-on-one custom. So that is the, like the very first thing to becoming a scalable expert is that you are able to really own and identify your proprietary methodology, which we call your Authority Strategy. And once you have that, then you can start consistently serving the people that you want to help and there's lots of steps of course in in there to help you identify that but that's the very first piece is to be able to do that. Here's the challenge is you've done that now you can consistently help people so you can bring a lot more people in at the same time, right? So instead of just being able to help one person or try and help, you know, as many people as you can fit in into the hours of the day that you have, then now you have a system that you can put them through that's fairly consistent. Then you could hire a team and they could run through a consistent system. You could start to package your signature framework, your methodology into something that can be delivered outside of you doing one-on-one work. That, my friends, is where the power and the magic shows up, and that's what we're super, super passionate about helping people do, is let's package up what you're doing so that you can help more people without the chaos of just manually trying to figure it out, ad hoc you know, kind of questions and problems and whatever else. It becomes the way that you take your expertise, all of the wonderful, like, you know, knowledge and skills that you've acquired over the years by doing the reps, by doing the work, and getting it out to a broader audience that allows you to increase your impact, your income, and build something that is going to live beyond you. And so that's how you start to become The Scalable Expert. And then what starts to happen is once you can package it into something that's consistent, then you can get super creative and and, you know, kind of put some ninja tricks in, in terms of like, how do you actually deliver what your expertise is to your customers because that's when the INFINITE SCALE Method really becomes powerful is once you have it packaged, you can deliver it in a million different ways, right? So it, then it becomes the match between like, how do you want to show up? Like how, what do you need in the relationship, right? And how your customers need you to show up so that they can get results. And you match that together and you create a super engaging yet scalable experience that helps your people get results and then you get to come in during the time that they need you. Instead of like pre scheduled or you know, just assuming it has to be one-on-one, assuming that they're not going to do the things that they want to do to solve their own problems, you get to come in and solve the obstacles and challenges that they're having along the way versus reteaching things or re-explaining things or redoing things over and over and over and over again. And if you have done this in your business, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Like, you get to that place of critical mass when you've helped enough one-on-one customers where you're like, I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over and over and again. Right? And that is when you know that you are onto something and you have that framework inside of you that's just ready to start to be packaged. Because wouldn't you rather, instead of just repeating yourself over and over again, wouldn't you rather come in and have really meaningful coaching or strategy conversations with your customers that helps keep them on the path and moving forward? I don't know about you, but that is a much more fulfilling way to share my expertise than just repeating kind of the basics over and over again. Early in my career, I had my very first job out of college was was so much fun. I should say my first corporate job out of college since I have an undergrad in education, was with Kinko's Corporation. At that time Kinko's Corporation, which is that they do I don't know what the proper term is, but at the time they were doing a you know photocopies and printing and and binding and all of those kinds of things. They're a little bit different now. Well now they're not around, but, but back in the day I worked in their corporate office, which happened to be in my town. And my job was to do onboarding training with all of the new hires every single week. And it was a, it was a great job. I had a ton of fun. I got to meet a ton of people. And so we would teach them how to make notepads and how to make bound documents and how to make photocopies and how to do graphic design and like all the things that we used to do in the Kinko's offices back in the day. But here's the deal my job was to deliver onboarding the orientation, the onboarding training. It was a week long. I would go into all of the stores and train all of the people and all the machines. So, and if you see me in person, do not ask me to do any of that 'cause I don't remember any of that, but like how to change the toner and all of the things, and of course we did customer service and all the other kind of training that, that needed to be done, but, of course, in my mind, I just remember all the fun we had with all of the machines that were there. But my point is, I did that training every week for, I don't know, maybe a year or two. I can't remember how long I actually did that. It seemed like it was forever. But by the end, I literally could be planning my weekend. I could be like doing all sorts of other things in my head and still delivering the training. And I was just like, ah, you know, there's got to be a better way to of doing this than my just repeating myself every single week to the point where I don't even need to think about what I'm delivering anymore because it's so automatic for me. I could like literally read the script without even thinking about it. It's kind of like when you, you know, are either driving your kids to school or you're driving to the office or you're driving to a store that you go to all the time or whatever, and all of a sudden you get there and you're like, oh! I didn't even like, I wasn't even paying attention. Like, how did I get here already? That feeling, that was how it was. And so I could be doing other things. And that was the moment honestly, and maybe at some time I'll tell you my full backstory, but that was a moment for me that I was like, all right, listen, like, we got to get this e-learning thing going, because there's no reason why we need to be delivering this every single week, the same exact thing. We need to package it and get it out there. And that was like before e-learning was really a big thing. And I was thinking about packaging back then. But that is the problem that you are going to run into either you or your team or other people is once you standardize what you're doing and you really package it and go, oh, well, this is how I helped solve this problem. Right? Like we, we start here and we go here and this is the step by step path which is great, that's what they're getting from your expertise is that simplified step by step path for them, you're going to have that moment where you're like, oh my gosh, like, I don't think I can deliver this again because it's the same thing, right? Like, especially those of us who are entrepreneurial in nature where we have a million different ideas. And that's when you know, like, that the power of packaging can do so much for you and your business. That it unlocks unlimited potential for how you can scale. So you can do a book, you can do a kind of a worksheet or a workbook or a kit or something like where it's all kind of packaged with templates and all the different things. You can create a course, you can create a mastermind, you could create a membership, you could create a certification program. You could create a live event. You could create a recorded event. Sky's the limit, right? Like there's a million different ways that you can deliver to, to provide value for your customers, to put out different offers that, that your customers can interact with you or your proprietary approach once you have it in as a packageable asset. And that is so powerful when that happens because then you have choice in when you are showing up. You have choice to be able to come in at a high level and help people. You have choice to be able to deliver it in whatever way you want to show up and deliver it. And you have choice in helping people be able to, to get that proprietary system on demand so they can access it whenever they need it. And that is when instead of creating like random offers or different things that are going on all over your business, you're starting with your proprietary approach, packaging it, and then that's how you're growing is by offering it in different ways. So that, my friends, is the beginning of the journey of becoming a scalable expert. Once you become a scalable expert, then you start unlocking the power of your expertise. So instead of only being able to deliver it one-on-one and not be able to get your message out to impact more people, to be able to help more people solve the problem that you uniquely are able to solve, you are able to package into an asset that lives and breathes outside of you and your time so you can help people at the highest level in different areas than you probably even have imagined up until this point, and it puts you in a position where your expertise becomes scalable. So I welcome you in. Hopefully this is something that you start to think about, like, how do I do this? How do I show up as an expert and scale a business that not only provides you with the income that you want, the impact that you want, but also gives you a little bit of time to reap the rewards of all of the work that you have put into becoming an expert. There you go, my friends. Until next time, enjoy working on how do you package your expertise. If you love this episode, I would love it if you were to give it a review, share it with your friends, and check out all of the other resources that we have for you out on taralbryan.com. All right, take care.