#147: How to Position Yourself as an Expert (Without Feeling Like a Fraud)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find the details show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 147 and those notes include a summary of our discussion here, as well as links to any resources mentioned during the show. Before I introduce today's episode, I wanted to let you know about something really cool I'm about to do. It's a new pilot program for writers and copywriters, and I'm looking for a few specific people. So if one, you already have at least one paying client, but you're not yet earning $2,000 a month consistently, two, you have time to work with a few more clients over the next few months, and three you're friendly and coachable and can keep a secret, Then send me an email eddwauncher.com put the word pilot in the subject line and I'll respond with all the details. Now for this week's show, as your business grows, it's important that you begin attracting prospects and building your authority. Prospecting is still key, right? Outbound outreach is still key, but there's nothing like having prospects knocking on your door instead of you having to do all the work of doing all the outreach. Especially when prospects have read some of your articles and blog posts and really liked what they saw there. In today's episode, you're going to hear from someone who built their entire software business on this idea. Always very purposeful about. Or was it kind of an accidental thing that you stumbled into something that started working really well and you realize there was something to this idea?

Yeah, so it started out of necessity, really. When I first started Interact, I tried doing the knocking on doors, going to people directly through email and calls, and that kind of stuff for about eight months. I poured my back into it and sent a lot of outreach emails, a lot of calls, went into things, a lot of back and forth, and it got us zero sales, which is really frustrating when you spend eight months really, really, really trying to do something and it doesn' and what ended up happening was I kind of switched back to what comes more natural for me anyways, which is the creation process. And I started creating content around something that I actually knew a lot about, which was quizzes, which is what our product pertains to. And it's a very, very small niche. But even within that niche, I started just writing about how to use quizzes for marketing, how to use quizzes for research and surveys and all this kind of stuff. I was just expressing the things that I had learned and putting them into a format that was easy to digest. And I was constantly creating more and more and getting fancy with it and doing graphics and all that kind of stuff within these blog posts. And that's what ended up working. And so we started getting people to sign up and pay for our quiz building service because I was creating content around the quizzes. And it's insane because some of those articles are from 2013 and they still drive paying customers, new paying customers this week. So four or five years later, they're still driving results.

I'm curious, were these articles at first, did you start on your website or was it blog articles? Were they articles in other publications? How did that start out?

Yeah, so the process for it, and we can kind of start to paint the picture because I think this is a strategy that you can really, really follow. So it started with a bunch of very generic type of marketing posts on our own blog. And the point of those was to start getting interest and backlinks to our site. So I did posts, like 72 blog posts, ideas that you can use, or 33 lead generation ideas to grow your business. Stuff like that, that's very generic but also always relevant. Like there's always a need for new blog post ideas, stuff like that. And those are very practical too. Yeah, yeah, Actionable, simple. You can just pick three or four and implement them in a month and you've got a good strategy going. So started with that because it built up our profile because before that nobody knew about us and we had no backlinks or anything like that. So those were on our own blog, but they were very generic to get interest. And then what I did was I switched to what I call the boring content strategy, which is where you write content that's boring to literally everybody except for the exact people that you want to read it. So I would do how to make a personality quiz for your food blog, and maybe five people would read that, but all five of them were trying to actually do that thing, which is what our product does for them. So they'd read the article, then go sign up. So once we had a little bit of authority established, I switched to this boring strategy where I started just making very Very specific articles. And the reason that we had to do the generic stuff first was so we had enough authority to where those new boring pieces would rank in Google search. Even though there wasn't a lot of competition, you have to have some sort of authority to get those to show up.

Got you. So you laid the foundation first. Once you were credible in the eyes of Google, then it's getting the really targeted stuff out there that's going to attract a handful of people that again, it's not huge volume, but it's extremely relevant and pertinent to them.

Yeah. And those boring posts, even though I was, let's see, I was either 19 or 20 when I wrote a lot of those and even though I was some 20 year old kid in college, I did actually know a lot about quizzes because I had trouble.

You need to do the same things, right? Prospecting, knocking on doors will only get you so far and you need to have people come to you as well. Before we get into some of the details though, tell us some of your reasoning behind that. How did that start? Is that something that you're always very purposeful about or was it kind of an accidental thing that you stumbled into something that started working really well and you realized there was something to this idea?

Yeah, so it started out of necessity really. When I first started Interact, I tried doing the knocking on doors, going to people directly through email and calls and that kind of stuff for about eight months. I poured my back into it and sent a lot of outreach emails, a lot of calls, went into things, a lot of back and forth and it got us zero sales, which is really frustrating when you spend eight months really, really, really trying to do something and it doesn't work. And what ended up happening was I kind of switched back to what comes more natural for me anyways, which is the creation process. And I started creating content around something that I actually knew a lot about, which was quizzes, which is what our product pertains to. And it's a very, very small niche, but even within that niche I started just writing about how to use quizzes for marketing, how to use quizzes for research and surveys and all this kind of stuff. I was just expressing the things that I had learned and putting them into a format that was easy to digest. And I was constantly creating more and, and getting fancy with it and doing graphics and all that kind of stuff within these blog posts. And that's what ended up working. And so we started getting people to sign up and pay for our quiz building service because I was creating content around the quizzes and it's insane because some of those articles are from 2013 and they still drive paying customers, new paying customers this week. So four or five years later, they're still driving results.

And I'm curious, with these articles, at first, did you start on your website or was it, were they blog articles? Were they articles in other publications? How did that start out?

Yeah, so the process for it, and we can kind of start to paint the picture because I think this is a strategy that you can really, really follow. So it started with a bunch of very generic type of marketing posts and on backlinks to our site. So I did post like 72 blog post ideas that you can use or 33 lead generation ideas to grow your business. Stuff like that. That's very generic but also always relevant. Like there's always a need for new blog post ideas, stuff like that. And those are very practical too. Yeah, yeah. Actionable, simple. You can just pick three or four and implement them in a month and you've got a good strategy going. So started with that because it built up our profile because before that nobody knew about us and we had no backlinks or anything like that. So those were on our own blog, but they were very generic to get interest. And then what I did was I switched to what I call the boring content strategy, which is where you write content that's boring to literally everybody except for the exact people that you want to read it. So I would do how to make a personality quiz for your food blog and maybe five people would read that, but all five of them were trying to actually do that thing, which is what our product does for them. So they'd read the article, then go sign up. So once we had a little bit of authority established, I switched to this boring strategy where I started just making very, very specific articles. The reason that we had to do the generic stuff first was so we had enough authority to where those new boring pieces would rank in Google search. Even though there wasn't a lot of competition. You have to have some sort of authority to get those to show up.

Got you. So you laid the foundation first. Once you were credible in the eyes of Google, then it's getting the really targeted stuff out there that's going to attract a handful of people. That again, it's not huge volume, but it's extremely relevant and pertinent to them.

Yeah. And those boring posts, even though I was, let's see, I was either 19 or 20 when I wrote a lot of those and Even though I was some 20 year old kid in college, I did actually know a lot about quizzes because I had tried building a quiz company for a year before that. So those boring pieces ended up attracting clients like Forbes and the American Red Cross and United nations who all signed up in those early days because they read those posts and they didn't know I was some kid. They thought, this is an expert and we're going to trust their opinion and use their product because of that content. So that really is a huge testimony to the power of good content. Even if it's written for a very small, specific audience, it will attract all sorts of companies.

That is crazy. Here you are, you're in college right at the time and you're attracting these big name clients because your content is high quality and very, very targeted.

Yeah, it was, it was insane. Like Forbes signed up. When we were sitting in a college library like group study room, me and Matt, my co founder, were sitting there and they had read one of those articles and clicked on it and they came and signed up and they were using the product and we're just looking at each other like we don't know what we're doing here. Hopefully it works. It did work and they still use that quiz that they made like five years ago. But it's just, it's really insane how much you can just kind of pierce the shell of whatever authority and trust you feel like you have to have when you can just write really useful content for a very specific audience.

Well, I want to underscore an element of what you just discussed here because this is key and this is the idea that you weren't just making this stuff up, you weren't researching it and then writing about it. This is stuff you knew really, really well. So you had immersed yourself on this topic for, you said over a year, even before you started your company, and you knew it well and you knew it better than most other people out there because when you think about any kind of customer or prospect, they have to be an expert in all kinds of things. Right. A marketing director has to know a little bit about a lot of different things, so they're not really even an expert in all those things. You, on the other hand, are a real specialist in one specific area. So it goes back to this whole idea that to a sixth grader, a ninth grader is a really big knowledgeable kid. You were that ninth grader. In fact, you're probably more like a 12th grader.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a super good way to Put it. And I think that's something that I never really realized about myself before I started writing those posts. I was like, I know about this stuff, but I'm sure a lot of other people do. And then you look around and no one really does. And I think that's profitable, probably true with a lot of companies where you're good at some stuff that really nobody else is and there is an audience out there. If you express your opinions on things, you express your strategy on how you do certain things and you write about it and you document your process, all that kind of stuff. And it's really amazing what you can do when you just talk about the things that you're actually, actually really, really good at. Because as long as you're better than most other people and you're practicing expressing your viewpoint and your way of doing things, you can really break through and get to people.

So I want to just kind of take things back to our world just for our listeners real quick, guys, in terms of, well, how does this apply? If you are a specialist white paper writing or case studies or web copy for tech companies, you name it, it could be across different types of specialties. That is an area you own and you could definitely write a lot about. One thing I discovered, Josh, is when I was getting started as a writer and copywriter, it only took for most of these projects, doing three or four or five of them for me to become kind of a mini expert. Maybe not a world leading authority, but definitely a more of an expert than most of my clients because that's all I was doing.

Right.

And it didn't take that much. And I think many of our listeners are in a similar position where they know a heck of a lot more about writing business to business ebooks as lead generation tools than their clients do because they've written 12 of them. And that's enough to give you expert status because expert status is kind of a relative thing. So that's super, super cool. And again, just to be clear, these are articles that you were writing and posting on your website, Right? So you're still not out there posting in other third party publications?

Yeah, so this was all still on our own site. And eventually I did get to doing a lot of other writing for other publications, but yeah, this was still just on our own site. And I think you made a really good that it doesn't take a whole lot to become an expert at something. If you put some time into it, you are already a level above and then you can kind of speak to the People that are just behind you in terms of their knowledge. And then as you write, you become more of an expert, which is an interesting part of this, is that the more you talk about something, the better you get at it. So you just continue elevating and you continue to get better at explaining. And as those things come together and just really makes a nice ecosystem where you're just kind of continually evolving yourself and you're getting to be a higher and higher level in terms of your own content.

So it's just self perpetuating, essentially. Right?

Yeah.

How do you. And I definitely want to talk through. And I know you have kind of a specific way you've gone about this, but we get to that. Do you remember how did you break through? You know, because there was a point when I'm sure you felt like you knew a lot about it, but you, you may have been fearful. And I'm just guessing that. I don't know, I don't know if I know enough to put something out there to feel comfortable and confident doing it. Because of course, once that happened, you gained a little bit of traction, which fed your self confidence, which of course gave you the tools to do even more and so on and so forth. So that was that self perpetuating chain. But that first step early on, how did you get past that fear of I don't know if I'm really good enough to write about this stuff.

Yeah. And it is fearful and it's a tough thing. And for me, it took getting to a point of desperation really, because at the end of eight months of email outreach, we had no results. And then I switched to writing those very generic blog posts that were getting us some interesting. But I spent three or four months doing that and we still had no results in terms of paid signups. And we were getting close to graduation. It was April of 2014 now, and we still had nobody who had signed up for the product. Matt and I were about to graduate, so we had to make some money somehow. And I got to a point where I was like, all right, I just need to go for it and try this. So it was Friday night, which was when we used to work on our product because we were still in school. So we'd meet up in a startup room and sit there for a few hours working. And I was just like, all right, I gotta try this now because I'm out of ideas. Nothing else is working. All the things I'm reading online are not working. So I'm just gonna talk about this thing. We've been working on and I'm gonna tell people how to make personality quizzes for marketing, even though I don't feel super confident that I even know what I'm talking about. I wrote that post. It was pretty short. It was like 700 words on a Friday night. Published it Monday morning. Three paid signups after 12 months of nothing. So it does sometimes take getting to a head where you have no other options and you just have to try it and throw it out there and see what happens. And that's what it was for me.

Let's talk a little bit about your process or if we were to kind of systemize this for someone listening, saying, yeah, I get it, this makes sense, but where do I start? How do I go about this? How do I make this repeatable so it's not just a one time thing and I just publish one article and then that's done. Because let's face it, this only works if it's consistent. How can we think about this in a more methodical way?

Yeah, so there's specifics to the writing which I won't get into because I think the bigger part of this is how do you start in the first place? You know, as a creator, you know, you always have ideas, but putting them out in the world is scary, especially if you're more introverted and you're not necessarily the type that wants to go out and shout from the rooftops about whatever you're working on. So I think the way that really helps build confidence and also build quality within whatever work you're doing is to start out before you do anything. So let's say you haven't written a single post yet. Before you write any posts, put yourself out there and ask for advice from some writers. So reach out to people that write the way you would like to and ask them what their process is like. So that's what I did when I first got started. Before I did any of that was I reached out to just ask for some help. I ask questions about how do you write? Like what's your process? All those types of things. And I recommend four to six of those conversations because it really helps you understand what the world is like. You know, when you look at somebody who is writing for Inc and Forbes and stuff like that, it's very nebulous as to how they actually do it. But they'll probably tell you if you just ask them. And that's been my experience. So that is what I do at the very beginning. And then I spend time reading and specifically for writing, reading is the absolute best thing you can do because stories and the vocabulary and all that kind of stuff just emulates in your mind and you're able to put it down on paper. So you want to read a bunch of books about writing and the process of writing that kind of stuff. I went a little crazy on that. I think I did about 30 books because I was very apprehensive about actually starting. So I read a lot of books. I recommend only 5 or 6 before you start and try to read them quickly. So don't spend more than a couple weeks. So before you do anything, build your foundation. You build your foundation by talking to people and you build your foundation by reading. So those are the two things that you do. And then when you actually get into it, you have to commit before you start. And the way that you do that is you say, I want to be a good writer. I am going to commit to writing X amount of words per day, or I'm going to commit to writing X amount of hours per day. And for me, when I was in college, it was a thousand words a day, which equated to about two hours every single weekday. Take weekends off, that kind of stuff. And when you do that, it sets aside time to where you're going to work on something, even if you're really bad at it. And the way to get from being bad at something to being good at something is to practice. You set aside that time and you commit to writing during that time and you publish when you're done with that time. And you just do that every day. And then the key to that practice is to having, is having a coach. So if you're writing my generic process, three step process for getting good at.

Writing, I'm curious about where you get your ideas, because I know one of the challenges if you're going to commit to writing every day is, oh my gosh, where am I going to come up with ideas? Everything's already been covered. You know, all these ideas, everyone's. Somebody's written about this already. Why would anyone want to read, you know, another article on. So where do you get good ideas for articles?

Yeah, so with the boring strategy, which is the one that actually works really well where you're writing for your specific audience, it comes from conversations with people. And a lot of the initial blog posts I did were just directly answers to questions. So I'd talk with potential customers, with actual customers, whoever, and they'd ask me random questions like, how does this thing work? How does this thing work? And I just do a blog post on it. And you can turn any random question into a thousand word blog post by bringing in a lot of different resources and all that kind of stuff. And the key to the consistency there is to stay within that realm of whatever it is you're an expert at. Because when I try to branch out and write about something other than quizzes, I'd get kind of stuck because I was like, ah, I don't really do this all the time, but I'm in the quiz world every single day. I'm talking to people about it every single day. So it's super easy for me to say, oh, that person asked a question about whatever. Today I'll write a blog post about that. So I think the best place is questions specific to whatever it is you spend most of your day doing.

Yeah, just talk to clients, right? Talk to clients, talk to colleagues, save emails. One thing I do is every time I get questions, or sometimes they're not really questions, but you could tell they could be turned into a question. They're like an objection or something like that, or a concern, I save them into a notebook in Evernote. And it's just for article ideas. And I don't even need to put context around it. Most of the times I just know if they're there. As soon as I start reading what I forward it to that notebook and then I know exactly what the question or concern was and how I could turn that into an article because I'm not really good at. Okay, it's time to write. What should I write about when I'm going to sit down to write? I need to have some ideas at my fingertips.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think, I mean, maybe there's people out there that are just like, oh, I can start writing right now. I think most people need something to go off of. And I do a similar thing. I've got a Moleskine notebook I carry around. Then I've got my notes on my phone and I'll just write down ideas throughout the day. Somebody asked me a question, an interesting anecdote comes up and I'm like, oh, that's a really perfect idea. I'll turn that into a blog post and then run with it from there.

So I'm curious, with your Moleskine notebook, how do you identify, how do you mark or highlight those so they're easily referenceable?

Yeah, I like drawing shapes and stuff. So I'll draw a box around it and then when I'm flipping through, I'll know like Every little box is a blog post idea.

Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Tell us a little bit if we can maybe get into guest posting. I know that's a huge, huge topic, so I don't intend to get into all the specifics, but I'm curious if you have any advice for listeners on okay, you're writing for yourself, I think that should be the first step. But once you're ready to kind of venture out and put your expertise out there in front of people who have never heard from you or about you before, how do you start that process?

Yeah, so it definitely starts with writing for yourself. And I don't know if there's a set amount of posts you have to do before starting to reach out, but for me it was about 100 on our own site to where I felt really comfortable with a couple of the pieces I had written that were very exemplary of my style. They were well put together, they were very in depth and thorough and that kind of stuff. So I picked two of my best pieces as examples. And then when you start to pitch blogs, the very most important thing is to understand how your piece is going to help them. And so you can use a tool like BuzzSumo to find the most popular posts on that blog and see if anything in their most popular is similar to your area of expertise. And then reach out and say something along the lines of, hey, I saw your readers really like posts on this type of topic. I can write something similar. Here's a couple examples of my work. Would you be interested in a piece on X? So that's one way to go about it. Another way to go about it is simply to go straight into your idea and then explain how it can be useful to their audience. So again, it really is important to understand who that blog is trying to reach and how your area of expertise can be helpful to the blog's audience. And then when you pitch, you simply explain how the piece can be helpful and also give those examples of your best pieces from your own blog as reference for your writing style. And then just see if they're interested and leave it at that. Don't be overbearing or annoying, but if you come at it from the perspective of this is what I'm an expert at. Here's a couple good examples of my writing. Here's why I think your audience would enjoy a piece on that. It's so much different than saying, hey, do you want me to come on as a guest blogger just out of the blue? So do your research and then have some good pieces queued up you can use as examples.

There's something that really annoys me as a podcaster is people pitching to be guests on my show with a message or an idea that's completely irrelevant to my audience. And you could tell that it was just basically not an email blast, but it was a copy and paste job and they're contacting 100 people and it's just annoying. And from being on the other side of the fence, what I can tell listeners is, look, I can assure you that most of the pitches that guest publications or publications out there get are very generic. And it's a copy and paste job. It's the economics of the business are such that, you know, many of them are written by PR firms that don't have the time or the resources to do it right. Or. And just people are just lazy. And so you can stand out if you just take three, five minutes, three to five minutes. That's it. Just do some research. You can actually put something together that's going to stand out.

Yeah. And I mean, it's just a better way to go about it. Right. Like those relationships you form are so much more positive if you're genuinely trying to be helpful with the content that you can create for that blog. You're co creating content, you're the one writing it. But it goes on their blog. It's a win, win for everybody. And if your pitch explains how that will work, that's so much more effective than going in cold or just sending some blind outreach that has nothing to do with the actual site. All you have to do is explain here's how we can work together and why it's good for both of us. Are you interested? And that's just a way better way to jump into things.

I wanted to ask you about your approach to writing these blog posts and articles because I love the fact that they're kind of micro topics. They're really, really focused on a very specific topic to a very specific audience. You call them boring. I think that's fascinating, actually. Are you more of a proponent of shorter, very, very focused and targeted pieces as opposed to really long articles that try to cover a topic much more deeply?

Yeah. So I am a fan of the upside down tree approach, which basically means that your content should start. If you think about an upside down tree, the trunk is at the top and then the branches are at the bottom, so it's flipped over. Your content should start very narrow, like here's the topic, here's a three sentence Synopsis. Here's what you can do with it. If you're done reading here, goodbye. But then it expands into the trees and your article can get really into each element of this piece. So if you take those first three sentences almost as like an outline or a table of contents, and you break down each one of them, you bring in stories, you bring in examples, you bring in studies, research, your own research, all this kind of stuff, and build out a really, really long, in depth article after the fact, which is kind of the branches and all that kind of stuff of this upside down tree. That's how I prefer to write. So if you just want to read this thing in 15 seconds, good for you. Go for it. There's an action item for you to follow. We're done. But if you want to go into the weeds with me and get into the psychology of things and look at the numbers, I'm here. I've got this whole thing. Those posts will turn out to be 1500, 2000, 5000 words. Really, really in depth on stuff. A lot of graphics, a lot of anecdotes, a lot of stories, that kind of stuff. Love building that into the piece. So upside down tree approach.

I love that. Yeah. So these are the three ways you can do X and then that's it. You gave me some insight. That's fantastic. But for the one who really wants to go deep into one of those, all three of those, then that's the rest of the post. Exactly. And what about this approach where you kind of go skim the surface on all those three and then you do a series, let's say, and then the next three pieces are going to be going deep into each one of those individually.

Yeah, I love that as well. I think there's often opportunities that come out of stuff. And when I'm writing one post, I'll have my notebook ready because something will pop into my mind. It's like, oh, this little piece should be its own post. So I'm going to write that one down. That's a new idea. And they'll just kind of build off of each other.

So here's just a quick tip for listeners. One thing I found is if you're looking to go really deep in one area of expertise, and let's just take white papers, for instance, I mean, go visit people who are writing and organizations that are writing on that topic and look, and the ones who are doing a really good job are finding all kinds of great opportunities so you can really niche down in terms of your topic and provide all kinds of insight on something really, really granular. You'll never really run out of ideas. And like Josh said, if you are out there talking with clients, asking questions, talking with colleagues, and then, of course, reading, if you're constantly reading books and publications, especially anything tangential to what you're doing and what your customers are doing, then you'll never run out of ideas and insights that you can. That you can write about.

Yeah, I mean, reading is an awesome way to get ideas, and it's one of those things where a lot of people aren't willing to spend the time. So if you do, you can distill a lot of that stuff down. And then asking people questions and listening to the questions that they have is another amazing way to pull in ideas.

There'll be many times I'm reading a book or an article, and I just bookmark it or send it to Evernote because I have kind of a different take on that. Or, you know what? I could write about the same thing, but I got a different angle or hook to this that I think would be really engaging. So nothing wrong with that. Right? You're not stealing the content. You're just stealing kind of the idea. Like, ideas are not patented. This has been great, Josh. I really appreciate this. Very inspiring. You know, this might feel like a boring approach, but I think you've taken us back down to fundamentals. You know, the fact that the way you can become an expert is by making that first leap. You need to recognize it first. You know much more about a specific topic than most of your clients and prospects do. Once you make the leap, the more you write about it, the more of an expert you will become just automatically. And a lot of it is a confidence issue, but you got to take that first step. And then just that daily discipline of just writing either a certain amount of time or a certain number of words and committing to that before you start. I think that's very, very wise advice. So I appreciate you coming on today. Before we disconnect, I want to make sure that listeners know where they can learn more about you and about Interact.

Yeah, so you can check out my stuff. I share a lot of the things that I do on LinkedIn. So you can search for Josh Hanum. I'm the only Josh Haynum in the world, so you'll find me. And then if you want to check out Interact, check out the blog. That's where I write. So you can kind of check to see if I'm making all of this up. When you look at what I actually do in terms of my own blog post. So that's tryinteract.com blog tryinteract.com blog and then from there there's a link to check out the actual product if you want to do that.

Awesome. We'll make sure to include all those links in the show notes. And Josh, thanks again for coming on.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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