By Henry Brown
Have you ever sat watching a TED Talk by someone in a similar field and wondered how difficult (or easy) it might be to get to be seen as an expert in your area? Well, the truth is it takes dedication and time. However, as a small business owner, you are in a perfect position to expand your knowledge and use it to make big waves in your sector. Expert status usually comes with a nice income increase to match as clients are willing to pay higher fees to people who are viewed as industry experts. Also, paid speaking engagements and published materials you author can bring in money.
Research
Get into the habit of studying and reading every morning. You might only be a one-person blog, or you might even have employees. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you need to make sure you are trendwatching. Sometimes, all it takes is to be the first person to write about something, the first Instagrammer to share a photo or to write a case study about new technology. By getting in first, and using the information that you gather each day about your sector, you will begin to place yourself even higher up in the field.
Skills
You might think you have what it takes to go the distance, but you’re going to need to work on updating your skills regularly. If you only know one language, imagine what business and travel opportunities you might be missing out on. In the meantime, you can use a service like International Language Services, Inc. to help you. Social media changes weekly, the technology and builds we can use in our own homes is improving. We can manage our individual accounts, products, design work, social media management, and sourcing new products and contracts as a one-person business. But, to keep up that pace, we should be looking to sharpen those skills as often as possible. Take online courses, sign up for webinars on things like landing pages, funnels, and affiliate marketing so you can maximize your profits and create more than one income stream.
If you feel you’re going to need more than just a few webinars to get where you want to go, then you could look to study for a degree online around your work.
Write what you know
Once you have positioned yourself as an expert (and sometimes even before), it is worth putting pen to paper and creating some workbooks, printables, and other digital products. You can also self publish via Amazon’s Createspace, or simply put a PDF together and make it available on your own website. The point is to give people value added to the services that you already provide. And, like many writers and content producers, you might be tempted to continually push back publication, in the bid to get it perfect. Sometimes getting it done is more important than getting it perfect. After all, you can go back and edit, produce updated content or re-write it.
To stand out, you’re going to have to over deliver in all aspects. Longevity comes from diversification and dedication.
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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.
