The most foundational concept you must internalize as a post-corporate soloist is a simple one:

You. Are. An. Expert.

There’s no magic years-of-experience threshold to qualify.

There’s no governing body that grants you the title.

There’s no throne reserved for a singular Grand Daddy Master of your domain.

Rather, you – yes, you – have amassed a unique constellation of experiences, skills and insights over your corporate career.

That constellation is your expertise, and it’s highly valuable and transferable.

Coming out of corporate, I knew I had some interesting names on my resume. Worked on some cool projects. I could rev up plenty of stories during recruiter screens and interview loops.

But I always stopped short of the ‘expert’ title.

Consultant, analyst, project manager, product manager, program manager, instructor, content writer, strategy lead – those were all titles I could rightly claim. After all, they’d been given to me.

But ‘expert’? No way - that’s a title reserved for a select few with objectively more degrees, or more years, or more citable works, etc. etc. etc.

The flip only came when I realized I had deep knowledge and insight that someone else needed.

My first solo consulting client needed to extract and synthesize knowledge from their executive’s mind to better scale her time. I knew how to do that.

My first advisory client needed to know how to write a durable, marketable course for product managers on a tight timeline. I knew how to do that.

My first coaching client needed to find their positioning as a soloist after several years of reactive drift. I knew how to do that.

Expertise is relative. Not absolute.

And once you take a beat to recognize what you know intimately well…

And consider who needs you to apply that knowledge to their context…

You can begin to treat your expertise as the asset that it is…

And treat yourself as the expert that you are.

💡

-Wes

P.S. In case you hadn't heard - I wrote a whole book about this!

If you're still in corporate and eyeing the exit (or know someone who is), The Expert's Privilege lands next month. Check it out at wesbook.com