When considering all the expertise you’ve accumulated throughout your career, it can be overwhelming to start to identify what exactly would be valuable to other people.

In fact, “What do I have to share?” is the most common blocker I hear that keeps people out of the expertise business (consulting, writing, speaking, advising, etc.)

It’s a pretty wild phenomenon considering we think, talk, read, and interact all day in our domain, but we clam up and downplay our expertise when it comes to articulating what we know.

To start to triangulate a client’s unique expertise, I like to start with two questions:

1. [FAQ] What’s the most common question you get asked about in your domain?
   • Or, the first question people ask when people hear what you do?
2. [Soapbox] What’s a “soapbox” POV you have on a topic within your domain?
   • Your hot take you’ll share unprompted with anyone who will listen
   • That topic that when you’re done saying your piece, you jokingly say “Thank you for coming to my TED talk.”

These two questions establish your “domain expertise wingspan” that’s already in motion in your everyday life.

Take a few minutes to think about your answers to each of those questions for your domain. It’s ok to have more than one for each!

Tomorrow, I’ll lay out what you can do next now that you’ve created this frame of reference.

💡

-Wes