Billy Keels  0:01  

How really proven leaders secretly destroy their expertise. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels advisory services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com. Once again, that's make it optional.com.

Speaker 1  0:19  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the going long podcast with Billy Keels,

Billy Keels  0:32  

how really proven leaders secretly destroy their expertise is for you. If you've ever felt like you are meant to be doing more bigger, and you can't actually get your head around why your side business isn't growing in the way that you want to grow. Like I'm going to share something that comes from an actual client story that is going to really give you some insight. Because if you feel like any of this stuff resonates with you, then this may be happening to you. I have actually noticed that it's happened to a couple of different clients prior to them working with me, but then as you leave like you go away with a better, increased awareness. So this is with a past client. So I was did ask if I could ask the question. And the reason I want to share today's story is it's really one of those things. This is a from one of my clients who's working in the media space, actually, as a EVP for, well, I don't want to say the name of the company, but, but here's the thing, he had actually been investing in real estate. He has some consulting, a non competing consultancy that he had going on on the side. And he was just to kind of paint the picture. In his day job, he was like the go to person. And in his business, he was having a lot of early success, like in the in the real estate stuff, he was keeping it small. He wanted to really keep it small. He had some personal reasons for doing that, but he really was passionate about this, about this consultancy that he was, that he was building. And when he came to me, he was basically, you know, like, like, I just mentioned he was enjoying his job. He's this real estate thing was going on. He was, he wanted to be really opportunistic about if he bought more or not, and he was really passionate about this consultancy that he was building, and consistent continuing to build. And what he wanted to be able to do was like, how does he bring it all together so that he can feel like he's scaling it and at the same time not being completely burn out one working 28 hours a day, right? That's not even possible, but you get the picture, because at the end of the day, he wanted to know, and he was looking to prove and show to his his spouse and his couple kids, that this expertise that he had, like you'd be able to to move the needle. He would be able to not have to completely depend on his corporate for forever, like for the life and the lifestyle of his family, right? And so the thing is, and this is something that I've seen, and it's not just with this particular story, this will personify, but it happens very, very frequently, even even happened to me, happened two weeks ago in a business association, if I remember, I will talk about that and one of the guest speakers that was there, but there's this certain point where, as you're continuing to build your business on the side, you want to continue to perform in your corporate Well, one of the things that's more than likely happened for you is that you've been a really good learner. You're probably a curious person, and because of that curiosity, it's helped you in your corporate role. It's helped you to be able to bring people around you and also get them get the most out of each interaction, each relationship that you have, and you're applying a lot of the same logic to what you're doing on the side. But, but there's also something that happens when you're in learning mode. And I'm a curious person, and I'm constantly in learning mode. And actually some of this even reminds me of myself, which is helps me to recognize it really quickly in others, but getting to a point where, yes, there is a moment where you should be learning, and especially when you're getting into something new, but as time passes on, like as things go on there, is a process that's happening where, through repetition and through mastery, you're going from learning mode to actually building up this expertise, which is the whole reason that I was talking about how really proven leaders secretly are destroying their expertise. It's usually in a way that you don't even recognize in today's Well, this will actually make it very concrete for you, because, like, the thing is, as you're starting to build and you're learning, the thing that's really easy, that that happens is you are learning and you're building expertise. But because you're in the in the doing mode, you're building this expertise, and you're not even recognizing it. But because the learner mode is the thing that got you there. You You remember that, and you continue to stay there. And so one of the and eventually, you know, as I mentioned, this is a client story. So we are talking about, in this particular session, his consultancy. And one of the things that we were doing, he came, he came to me. He wanted to, you know. Try, try something new for his consultancy, and in terms of the approach, and in, of course, in the session, I detected something. I recognize something. As someone who helps to recognize patterns. I recognize a particular pattern. So as we are beginning to go through this, the questions they want to ask, the positioning, how he's going to, you know, make the best, the best of the meeting that he has with the client. We start going through some of the like, I'm recognizing these questions that he's asking and the questions that he's asking. When I ask back, like I'm getting very some of the responses, or the way that he's positioning how he wants to ask the questions they they seem to me, like a lot less than what he actually knows. And so we're going through the whole prep, and we're getting ready, and I start recognizing, like, but you've got a lot more expertise than you're actually talking about right now. And something that he said, it stopped me, and I started recognizing I was like, hang on a second. We're reviewing this whole thing together. And so then we just kind of stopped right? We're going through the questions, we're reworking some of the questions, and as we're reworking the questions, I'm asking him more and more questions to really draw out what he knows inside of himself. And so as we go through this practice like this is over an hour long session, and so towards the end of the session, we've worked these new questions. We're worked on how he's asking the questions and things like that. And we in we recognize like we're going through these questions. He's asking me these questions as if I were the client that he was going to be meeting with, or the prospective client he was going to be meeting with, and as he asked the questions, I literally stopped, and I was like, I'm going to now ask you a question. I'm going to read these questions back to you, and I want you just to think of one thing. I want you to think of, how would you describe the expertise of the person that's asking this question as you listen to it? And so I read the questions back to him, and I could see like this light bulb go off in his like head, because he's always listened to himself, but he never listened to someone as if it was him. And so in this particular thing, what we both realized was he never had a problem with his expertise. He what he allowed me to see was he wasn't actually transmitting, giving off the expertise because of the way that he was approaching, even the questions that he was asking like he had enough, he had enough of a profile to be able to get in the door, but he felt like he should be able to, like, Why was his his consultancy not moving forward? Well, we kind of detected it, and what I realized was it wasn't even an expertise problem. It was really literally a mindset issue, because he continued to see himself as the as the lifelong learner, versus because he's outside of his corporate role, he's into this whole like new learning mode. And as he's in the learning mode, he's not giving himself the credit of the expertise that he's building. So being able to work through these questions, be able to work through the approach that he was having, we were able to recognize what the challenge was, and so we rebuilt everything from scratch that he was doing. And no, and this didn't mean like changing his website, and we weren't definitely changing all of the external communication, LinkedIn, profile, all that stuff. No, it was literally just starting with rebuilding the internal positioning that he has for himself and recognizing that there is an expertise even outside of his nine to five. This is he's building an expertise in the five to nine, and he just has to recognize it. And it's as simple, like it's just a very simple thing. And so of course, as he goes through this process, and we're continuing to and as we were continuing to work on that process, while we were working together, each and every time that he came back, he recognized that, yes, he had more expertise, and that expertise led to even more confidence in the five to nine. And guess what that led to? Yes, it led to more clients along the way was this, was this something that happened overnight? Absolutely not wouldn't even pretend that it did. But there was a moment in the one on one session where we recognized that the reason that he wasn't getting the clients that he was wanting was because he was approaching it from the perspective of someone who was junior, where as he had this massive expertise that he had not yet walked into. And that's the point, it's he didn't recognize it, because up until we started working together, he was pretty much doing most of the things on his own. He didn't have that sparring partner, he didn't have that thinking partner, and so he was able to recognize it. It wasn't an expertise problem, it wasn't that. It wasn't a pricing problem, it wasn't any of that kind of that kind of stuff. He just had to walk into it, believe it. Will recognize it, believe it, and walk into it. I mean, that was the thing that was all it was. Now, like I said, Didn't change overnight, you know, pricing model still continues to work. And as far as I know, he's, you know, he's continuing. To build his business and continuing to go on. But the thing that is really, really important is, as he's walking in, or found and was able to walk into the version of himself that he was actually truly expecting, that's where he gets to actually tie into the fact that the the expertise that he really had, it's continuing to move the needle, because his side business is continuing to grow and grow and get closer to his optionality number, right? And, you know, even a couple weeks ago, I was in a business association meeting. I mentioned it, and I had someone who was there and was presenting an expert in an area, and the expert gave a call to action at the end of the at the end and produced and showed, well, when I looked on the expertise, it showed like three years of expertise. And I thought, well, you'd mentioned that you had a lot more expertise. Well, that expertise, in terms of number of years, was not placed on a profile because it didn't align with the specific business. But there's a lot that goes into the expertise and allowing you to be recognized by others. When you walk into the strength of your story, when you walk into not the theory, but the practice, the expertise that you've built up, you've you've you've taken time, you've invested time to be able to do that. And you know, and that's, that's the thing. So I don't want that for you. What I do want for you is yes, continue to be curious. Yes, continue to stay in the in the learner's mindset, and yes, continue to recognize that you're building an expertise. And heck, if you need help with that, if any of this is resonating, you're like, Well, you know what? This is kind of happening. Feel free to reach out on on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to talk to you. And if it's not you, if you know somebody else that's struggling through this, they're an expert. They just don't want to recognize themselves as the expert when they look in the mirror, then guess what you can do. You can share today's episode, and as you share today's episode, make sure that you show them that you care and share it and then follow up with a call, go meet for coffee or your beverage of choice and be able to talk about today's episode. Go from theory to practice. It's not by accident that I say that every time at the end of our at the end of these sessions or these episodes, but I really do want for you that you can embrace your expertise, be able to build the business on the side that you want, continue to excel in your corporate role and be the most in the best that you can at home, right starting there. So while you're going through today's episode, once again, guess where I'll be? I'll be right here preparing for the next episode. So until then, go out and make it a great day. A great day. And thank you very, very much.

‍