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we're gonna cover what I call the curse of the expert. Why you're the smartest person in the room, but you've got the slowest traction on your business. -

Why your buyer isn't actually the one who needs to be convinced, and why the two people on your email list are worth more to you right now than the 800 clients you're dreaming about. And my favorite, the reason you keep landing the plane and building a new one. So let's get into it

A box that you've been expecting arrives in the mail. It isn't big, so you glance at it from your doorstep and you decide without really thinking about it that it should be a certain weight, and you think it's quite light. And so you bend down to pick it up, but you're surprised that you nearly lose your balance.

You have enough strength to pick up the box. What threw you off is that you were expecting a light box, and what you actually held in your hands was a heavier box. That is the first year of an expert founder [00:01:00] business.

Welcome back to the Entrepreneur's Kitchen, where we have strategic conversations for Christian founders. I'm Priscilla Shumba. This one today is just me, because over the last three weeks, I've been writing a series about how to accelerate your expert founder business.

I shared 10 things that I've discovered from having a lot of discussions with founders. There are three shifts that every founder I know who's stuck will be able to see where exactly they are stuck

Here's where the trouble starts. You're an expert. You spent a lot on your education. You have the experience to back it up, like you know your stuff. You were an executive, you were a senior leader, you were a manager, you were a specialist. People came to you to do exactly that. You're brilliant at that.

And you've decided to go on this entrepreneurial journey. Every time you finally think that things are working, and then nothing happens, and you're back to square one.

Confidence knocked, ego bruised, and then those questions, you know, start [00:02:00] whispering, "Am I built for this? Is this even worth it? I was doing much better financially at the job that I held.

I'm here to tell you that, yes, you are built for this, but you're operating with an employee mindset. The employee mindset says you show up and you do great work and you call it a day. That's part of it. But once you become an entrepreneur and a founder, you need to start thinking like a CEO

So let's talk about it, the curse of the expert. The first mental hurdle is thinking that entrepreneurship is a continuation of your career.

It isn't. This is day one. Amazon has a phrase that they attribute to their success, and I love it, and it's day one mentality. It's worth looking up after this episode. The idea is that you have to behave like a company that just started every day forever it's the nimbleness. It's the adaptability your prospective clients don't know who you are. They don't know that you're a [00:03:00] genius at doing what you do, and they don't care until you give them a reason to care.

A lot of expert founders, because they carried some clout, in the corporate world because of what they did- and now they're in day one, they have to be willing to let people know what they do, who they are, what they stand for, and why they're doing what they're doing. A lot of times there's a fear of what people think that creeps in. You know it, you're on LinkedIn and your former colleagues are there.

You're thinking before you post something, "What will so and so who was my peer think? What will so and so who was my boss think?" And you have to let that go. This is day one. This is a different arena. The opinion of your former workmates or your peers doesn't matter. , If you truly believe in what you're doing, let it go.

Trust [00:04:00] me, they have enough of their own problems. They're not worried about what you're posting online. So go ahead and be about your business

Roll up your sleeves, like it's day one forever, and get known because nobody cares about your service until they've ticked some mental boxes about you. Show that you're credible? Display your competence. Are you trustworthy? Show the proof. Share the stories of the clients you've worked with.

Do not hold back. The fear of man will cripple you, and it will rob you of the opportunity to live your dream

So what does this mean practically? Talking to people about the outcomes that you create . Posting content that's high signal for your offer. Not sometimes, consistently. And showing up where the market already gathers. With those boxes ticked, your credibility, showing proof, sharing stories, telling people who you are and what you're doing.

Do not hold back because you are in day one fighting for people to care, and [00:05:00] they won't care unless you care enough to let them know what you're about. The second one , is a product problem. Take the time to find where your expertise and the market needs collide in a high value way.

I've seen people do the opposite so many times. I've seen a brilliant lawyer now selling copywriting, a genius marketer now selling social media management services, and to anyone who will buy. I know it's tempting to undersell yourself because underselling yourself, it feels comfortable.

Sometimes you just need the money, and that's the fastest way for you to get the money. I understand that and I respect that. But don't build a business that turns you back into an entry-level employee. You'll be underpaid, you'll be unhappy, you'll be working way too hard to earn way too little, and you'll definitely be on the highway to burnout.

Don't offer the lowest hanging fruit, and also don't offer everything you know,

You don't wanna be that [00:06:00] one-person show that's cooking up a whole buffet of things for bargain shoppers. Because two things happen when you do that. , The buffet ends up being average, and then you've traded your mastery that you've built up over the years for an all-you-can-eat crowd.

Okay? It's your call, but I'd say think long term, think premium, think mastery. It's day one of business, but it's not day one of the expertise that you have. If you don't have the full skills to build out a high-value offer, then make a concrete plan to go and get them.

Make that plan aggressive, because the bottleneck in your business taking off is you

Now, oftentimes when we have that start where we almost lose our balance, the temptation is to constantly rebuild, and I've seen this so many times. You know, you've taken off with this new idea, with this new business you've started. Yay. You're being scrappy, you're getting known, you're doing all the right things.

You found your high signal offer, and things just aren't happening as fast as you [00:07:00] imagined. Look, it's day one every day. Do not land the plane and go and build another one because you lose your momentum. To keep with the plane metaphor, you end up back on the runway burning an enormous amount of effort to do the thing that you just did to get off the ground again, and this time to get known for something else that you're doing.

Just when a few people started knowing you for something, all of a sudden you've changed and you're doing something else. You're confusing everyone. You're confusing the few people that now knew what you were doing, and you're coming back and now you're doing something else.

I know the temptation is high to think, "Huh, this is taking too long. So and so who kinda has the same expertise as me is doing this, so probably if I do that, I'll be more successful." But don't do that because you're preventing yourself from the one thing that you actually need to understand which direction your business should go in.

You're preventing yourself from collecting any data, and when you start over [00:08:00] without any data, you get into a cycle of making decisions that are not informed. Make decisions that are informed. Get enough data to help you make a decision that is informed

It's not that the idea you start with is the idea, but it will lead you to the idea if you follow the data. Think about some companies that are well-known that we know.

Slack. Slack was a failing online game. The team built a chat tool to run their own company, and the tool turned out to be the business. Instagram had another name. It was called Bourbon. You know, it was a cluttered check-in app. People ignored most of it and only used the photo filters, and so the filters became the product.

But they had to push these products enough for them to realize the thing that people wanted in the product. It's the same thing with your service business. You've got to do it enough to understand the thing that is of most value to people that are buying your service, and [00:09:00] then you have some direction.

Then you can make an informed decision. So don't give up when you're still early in the game. Stick it out. So that's shift number one. The first three is about your identity. None of these have anything to do with working harder. You've got working hard covered.

That's not your problem. It's more about understanding that this is a different game and it's gonna require different mental models for you to create success in it

So shift two. As an employee, you stand on the quality of your work, but that's because you're within an organization. As a founder, you stand on the clarity of your message because you're in the marketplace, and of course, the quality of your work. But the quality of your message comes first.

That's the part that most people who are very good at doing what they do kinda tend to brush over, and yet it's really important if you're gonna start a business. Your buyer has to be able to sell you to their circle.

Think about it. A neighbor buys a Mercedes, and then a few months later, [00:10:00] there are five more Mercs in the neighborhood. What happened? A social signal. Permission. If that person can do it, so can I. The buying decision is never made by an independent mind. There's always a circle of influence. So what does that mean for you?

It means that your buyer has to be able to sell you and your offer to their circle, their spouse, their friend group, their boss. Nobody wants to look foolish for buying something. And big brands understand this completely. Apple isn't selling you a phone. It's selling you the identity of the person who owns the phone.

So three questions to ask yourself. Who is your client? Who do they want to become? And can you sell them that it's possible? Those three questions. The trap that many new founders fall into is we focus on features and benefits. I'll throw in a one-to-one. I'll throw in, , an e-book. I'll throw in an AI bot.

More value, right? [00:11:00] Yes, and no, because the identity is the motivation for the buy. The features and all the bells and whistles are what they use later on to justify or to explain that decision. Let me show you. If you're a lactation coach, new mothers don't doubt that your support works.

The issue is that hiring you can feel like admitting a failure at something that everyone keeps telling them is natural. And her circle is right there, her spouse, her mother-in-law, her mother. Her core motivation is to be seen as a capable mother. So if you have a message that says, "We'll help you bond with your baby and reduce anxiety for both of you

That message to the circle of the newborn mom is like, " You'll know how to do it. You don't need that." , Nobody wants to look like a fool for buying something. So a better message is, "Smart mothers get expert support in their first [00:12:00] six weeks."

That's a message that she can share with her circle. That's a message that she can feel good about buying Identity first to get the interest, and then you explain the features , to a buyer that's already in

Here's another tip. If you are in a category that kinda hints at you need this because you are failing, write your message in a way makes your buyer look good to their circle of influence. Nobody wants to tell people they had to buy something because they're failing at something in life.

Everybody wants to buy something that says, "Hey, this is what the people who know what to do are doing, and that's why I'm doing it." Identity first, and then the features become the justification

The reason we work so much on the marketing message is that one, you want your buyer to quickly say, "Oh, yeah, of course. , That's a no-brainer. I need that." But you also [00:13:00] want people in your network to be able to refer you, and they can't refer you if they can't repeat what you do. How many times have you been to a networking event where someone tells you what they do? They go on and on , and you're genuinely interested. You want to know, but it's so complicated that you end up just nodding, you know, just to be polite and for the conversation to come to an end because you just don't get it.

As an expert, you have to come out of your professional bubble and reframe what you do for a person who doesn't live in that world, for a person who honestly doesn't care about that world because your network can't refer you if they don't understand what you do

Here's what a lot of us do. Someone asks you what you do, you know it's complicated, you haven't worked out your marketing message, and so you tell them to just go to your website. Now, let's be honest.

How many times have you gone to a stranger's website as a favor to work out what they do so that you can know how to refer them? Uh, probably never. [00:14:00] So

Work on your marketing message. Keep it simple, and keep it repeatable. If you're a marriage coach and someone asks you what you do, don't say, "Oh, I'm a marriage coach." I would say, " I help turn dying marriages into great love affairs. Short, concrete, you can picture the transformation And you can repeat it in a car park three weeks later.

It buys you three more seconds with that person because they're gonna say, "Hmm, tell me more." That question is music to your ears. That's permission to show your expertise, and there's nothing salesy about that because they asked, and this is the thing that makes you referable. Give the person a trigger because , typically no one says in a conversation, "Oh, I'm looking for a marriage coach," or, "I'm looking for a leadership coach." Typically, what they'll say is the symptom. You can tell them, "Hey, if you ever hear someone say You know, my marriage is beginning to feel like we're just two roommates living together.

Send them to me. That is [00:15:00] referable because the trigger is the problem in the client's words, not yours. What we often do is Oh, if you hear someone mentioning that they have got marital dissatisfaction, send them to me." Nobody uses the word marital dissatisfaction. Use the words that your prospects use to describe their problem, the trigger that shows that they need your services, and then that makes you referable.

Make everything about doing business with you easy. Finding out what you do, buying from you, , referring you. Any unnecessary step between a person being interested and actually taking action is costing you leads, sales, and referrals. There's a reason Amazon has a one-click to pay. They're removing any distraction that prevents you from getting to that checkout page.

Now, this is real work. You actually have to sit down and go through and experience your business like a client, like someone in your network, like [00:16:00] someone who's thinking about referring you, walk through your website, your own booking process, your own emails, and see where you're losing people.

And if you're not quite sure 'cause when you've just created something, you feel really good about it. It's hard for you to go and see where things are not right. Use AI, that extra set of eyes to evaluate what you're doing. The caveat is, look, AI is not perfect, but it can give you some direction.

But at the end of the day, go with your own instinct. You have to learn to trust your own instinct. Now, this is the homework I'd say after listening to this. Finish this sentence: If you hear someone say blah, blah, blah, that's me. That's your referral sentence. Send it to three people who've offered to refer you, but they never have.

They probably never have because they would've had to think about how to summarize what you do and share it with someone else. Make it easy for them to refer you

Okay. We've been sold a lie that selling is bad, that [00:17:00] self-promotion is embarrassing, and yet everybody I know, including myself, loves buying things.

So how exactly are people meant to buy if nobody sells? This avoiding being salesy thing, people buy things they need, things that solve their problems, and things that they just want for no reason at all. None of us are immune to that occasional impulse buy. So stop hiding what you have to offer and stop feeling bad that you're selling something.

Some of us, we've started selling, but it's like we're selling in a sort of kind of way. You know, we hide our ask in social language, and we hope that people understand that we're selling. We hope that it's obvious that if we're, a coach or consultant, that we're selling something. No. Be bold in making your ask.

I don't know about you, but I don't like talking to someone who's sneakily selling me something. I prefer for someone to boldly make an ask so that I can make a choice. - Your buyer wants to make a choice. Allow them to. Make your ask [00:18:00] bold Now you can borrow this as your standard. Spend 60% of your time promoting and 40% of your time on creating and delivering.

A lot of times as new founders, we actually have these numbers wrong. We spend maybe 90% of our time creating and delivering, and then quickly in 10% do a little bit promoting. But because we're doing so little promoting, we can never build up a pipeline of clients.

So we have to switch those numbers. Spend 60% of your time promoting. . People don't know you. It's day one every day. Let them know. And then 40% creating and delivering

And I know a lot of us have this fear of, "Oh, you know, if I make that post again, if I send that email again, if I call them again, surely I'm annoying people with, everything that I'm doing." Not true. Let's do the marketing math. Say you convert at 2%, between 2% and 5% is actually the average that people convert at.

Likely when you're starting, you're probably even less than that. You're [00:19:00] 0.5% or you're at 1%. But let's just talk about 2% conversion. It means for every 100 prospects, 100, every 100 prospects that you engage, two will buy. So what about the other 98? All right. If you read Chet Holmes in "The Ultimate Sales Machine," it says at any given moment in time, only about 3% of the market is ready to buy right now.

Only about 3% of the people you're contacting are ready to buy right now. Everyone else is spread across either they don't know they have the problem, they're still deciding whether you're the one who can fix it, or they're genuinely not interested, which means most of the people you connect were never gonna buy today.

So staying top of mind is actually the job. Selling is a byproduct, but the actual job is staying top of mind, and consistency is the leverage. If you think about, [00:20:00] you know, some of the people that we really look up to, like Seth Godin in the marketing space, Seth Godin has published a blog almost every day for 20 years.

Hello, keeping top of mind. So when people think marketing guru, they're not thinking about the guy who published for two months and then disappeared and then came back and published another two months. Seth Godin has kept himself top of mind. Most expert founders, we underestimate how much we need to promote.

But after today, this will not be you, this will not be me. So that's shift number two, which is perception

I'll share a quote with you from "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" . It says that marketing is not a battle of products, it's a battle of perception. You form that perception with your message, with your referability, and by staying top of mind

Now shift number three is the part that most people don't talk about. As [00:21:00] an employee, , you were paid for the time you spent on the job. You turn up, you're gonna get paid

So those two things were tied together, effort and money. Now when you become a founder, you get paid when the work that you seeded weeks ago or months ago finally converts. Remember that 97% of the people that are gonna see your message, receive your email, receive your call, are not ready to buy today.

And so you need to seed so that you remain top of mind when they are ready to pay, which will do a total number on your mind, especially when you're thinking like an employee, which is why you need to stop thinking like an employee. This gap between effort and money is where most people quit.

You have a good start, but you now need to push until you break through. You know, your weekly post gets three engagements that led to nothing again, and you're like, "Ugh, is this even worth it?" And then you post nothing for 13 weeks. Momentum gone. [00:22:00] And after 13 weeks of no content, obviously there's no engagement, obviously there are no leads, and definitely there are no clients.

And then you think it's time to try something else. Don't do it. You are still at the beginning. Day one mentality every day. To make an informed decision instead of a panic pivot, you need data because a panic pivot is probably gonna put you in a worse state than you were already.

You need the data. So a lot of us, especially in the beginning, I know for me this was the case, , your emotions control when you start and you stop your marketing. But if you let your emotions control when you promote yourself and your offer, you will never collect on that effort

So this is the part that I want us all to really appreciate. If two people gave you their time and attention, and you turn around and ignore them for three months, you can't serve two people on your email list, what makes you think you're gonna be ready to serve [00:23:00] 800 or 1,000 people? You'll never get there.

There are things that you're going to learn at two people, at nine people, at 25 people, at 49 people that will build you up as a founder, and that's the entire reason why when you get to 800, you become a really great entrepreneur because you started at serving two people who showed a little bit of interest in what you were doing.

So do not despise small beginnings. Everything starts small. Consistently improving is what creates growth. Got those two people on your list. Celebrate those two humans for giving a chance to a nobody. Remember, day one, nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. Clearly, whatever you did they voted for you with their time, and so that's not nothing. The scarcest currency that people have is time. Talk to those people, get their insights, and a lot of times the people who don't buy but show interest, those are your business best friends. Business BFFs, okay? You need to [00:24:00] ask them, "What made you sign up but not buy?"

There's something that made them interested, but there's somewhere along the way where they lost trust. What do they wish you would offer? This feedback is worth more to you than them a buying client because they are giving you the foundation for you to have a good and thriving business.

you're an expert in your field, now you need to become a student of business. Study the signal that you're sending into the market and how it's landed. Tweak, test, don't be rigid, and don't obsess over the optics or the numbers. Be about your business. Steven Bartlett said something that I love.

He said, "Embarrassment is the price of entry, and most people just aren't willing to pay it." Yes, you were a big shot somewhere who had done all these things, but now you're a person who needs to prove themselves in a market where maybe two people show interest. You know what? That's day one success.

Somebody's interested in what you're saying. You just need to ask them some more questions to understand [00:25:00]which part is interesting and what would move them from interest to buying

The next thing that we often underrate is relationships. Building relationships is the goal. If you build relationships, transactions become inevitable. If you're the kind of person who only has an interaction when they're trying to sell, no good, no bueno. People often sell being self-made, and self-made is a scam.

Like, how is it that everybody who's self-made knows everybody else who happens to be self-made from back in the day? Mm. Nobody accomplishes anything alone, and relationships start with one question: How can I help you? Be generous with your expertise. I love Gary Vee's jab, jab, jab, right hook. Give, give, give, give, then ask.

Generosity leaves an impression. Remember that perception? Generosity leaves an impression. It also allows you to prove your competence because now you can demonstrate how [00:26:00] good you are instead of it being a claim. Your business is gonna flourish on relationships.

Nurturing a network is what gets your name in rooms where you are not present, which is what you want. Allow these things to compound. At some point, you don't wanna be the only voice out there talking about what you do. Build relationships.

Other people will talk about you in rooms probably that you can't even get into And people don't recommend someone they sort of know. People recommend people they actually know. So invest in relationships because that person referring you-- And this is the thing, the reason people don't refer people is because in order to refer you, I have to put my reputation on the line, I have to risk a relationship in order to refer you.

And so think about that, that that's how the person is thinking

So share your expertise generously. And you know what happens? And not only does your confidence grow, there are some people who weren't quite sure about you, and you get to win some skeptics along the way.

[00:27:00] Now a lot of us feel this way at some point. I'm so busy doing things for my business and I have nothing to show for it. Action on the right things beats busyness

We all know what the high impact activities are. We just need to decide to do them because the tendency is to do what we enjoy. You know, the comfort zone, the place our brain sends us to when we're overwhelmed. We're so overwhelmed that we sneak back into doing the things that we love doing.

The only problem is that progress doesn't usually happen in your comfort zone. , If we keep doing what we've always done, we'll keep getting what we've always got. The real growth is gonna happen outside of your comfort zone, and

For a lot of experts, knowledge is a comfort zone. You know, if I just learn a little bit more, then... But the problem is you haven't even used what you know. So be honest with yourself. Is this course, this program, this certificate, is it critical to delivering your current offer? [00:28:00] Or is it something that you'll need further down the road?

Do what needs to be done now. If you're learning, learn to execute on what you're doing right now. Don't try and learn everything. There's too much to learn. It's a journey Business is a whole field of study. You can learn everything

And don't allow, the one more thing to learn masquerade as being busy while you're avoiding doing the work that is gonna make your business work. Marketing and selling to real people daily, promoting 60% of the time. We're getting out of excusesville today. I hope you're with me on this respectfully

Now the last one is recalibrate so that you're reinvigorated to stay in the game, which brings us back to that idea of the box. You thought it would be easy. You thought it would be a light lift because I'm good at what I do. But you went to lift it and you nearly fell over your expectation didn't match the reality.

Not that you're [00:29:00] not capable of doing it. You're strong enough to lift the box, but that mismatch between expectation and reality is what knocked you off. Business is hard. The failure rate is high. There is so much more to building your business than the genius or service that you offer. If you carry the right expectation, "I'm doing the thing that is really incredibly hard, a lot of people fail at doing it," and you carry a strong belief in who you are why you're doing what you do and the outcome that you create for other people, understanding that this is bigger than you, there are people that are depending on you getting this right, then you'll find a way to make it work.

If not in this business, you'll be a little bit more wiser as you start the next one. Remember, we're all about , getting to that informed decision, not giving up before we get the data to make that informed decision. Now, if you're in it for the long haul, then do every single [00:30:00] thing wholeheartedly.

Those small little things are building blocks of your name in the market. I tell you, there are , articles that I wrote six years ago that I can still share today if someone asks me about it, and those articles sell me. If I had done a shoddy job on those articles six years ago because I had no clients, I would always be starting from zero.

Do everything heartily so that your efforts actually compound. Don't do anything half-hearted because half-hearted efforts don't compound, and that's the whole reason this shift is about compounding. Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold."

Create a good name for yourself in the marketplace. It will compound. Do not cheat yourself out of your own dream. Set down that expert ego and become like a child. Become curious, audacious, eager, not afraid to ask for help. Feel free. [00:31:00] Experience that freedom of being an entrepreneur. This journey is the adventure of your life, so work hard, do it excellently, and enjoy the game.

I hope this has been of some value to you. Check out my Substack, the link is in the description, where I write a lot of things to help founders with their marketing, with their messaging, with things I've learned from other founders on this podcast to help you on your journey. Enjoy this journey. Enjoy this adventure.

Thank you for listening