Your Expert Position – Part 1
I hope you started working on developing/growing your expert position.
Just in case you didn’t start yet (or you missed it today)… CLICK HERE to do it NOW.
Remember – this week’s assignment is answering a different question in the process – each day.
- Did you give the process a try?
- Do you have any question about the process?
- Did you get stuck anywhere?
This is your opportunity to ask any question related to this week’s implementation assignment – to make sure you get the maximum out of it.
It’s also a golden chance to help someone else – by reading their question in the comments below – and offering them an answer, an idea, an encouragement…
If you have any question regarding this week’s implementation assignment or you need some support – let me know in the comment box below, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
If you can offer an answer or support to anyone – please reply to their comment below.
Top Commenters – last 30 Days
Your Expert Position – Part 1
I hope you started working on developing/growing your expert position.
Just in case you didn’t start yet (or you missed it today)… CLICK HERE to do it NOW.
Remember – this week’s assignment is answering a different question in the process – each day.
- Did you give the process a try?
- Do you have any question about the process?
- Did you get stuck anywhere?
This is your opportunity to ask any question related to this week’s implementation assignment – to make sure you get the maximum out of it.
It’s also a golden chance to help someone else – by reading their question in the comments below – and offering them an answer, an idea, an encouragement…
If you have any question regarding this week’s implementation assignment or you need some support – let me know in the comment box below, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
If you can offer an answer or support to anyone – please reply to their comment below.
I am looking forward to celebrate your progress and results on Friday (I’m curious to hear what solution you’ll come up with).
Until then…
Live fully, stay awesome,
Nisandeh
329 comments
Sorry, some last questions about measuring success:
In your video WHY Becoming an Expert you mention that building an expert position " takes about ONE YEAR of hard work". You also mentioned in your answer to Paul that after one year of doing whatever it takes, if it is not successful, you drop the project, no regrets.
When/what is it for YOU a success?
Sub-questions
Can you please provide an indication of success: what results should we expect (work for) after one year of hard work?
For example:
* How much money is it reasonable to earn after one year?
* How long did it take you to earn your first million? (apologies for this bold question, it is just that earning your first million is clearly a GREAT tangible measure of success...)
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I can’t give you an indication for success, as the definition and measurement of success is personal, and it changes with age, circumstances and phase in life… as well as dependent on the area on your life.
I don’t know how much is reasonable to earn after a year…
Personally, if I would start from zero - I would go for €100,000 in 12 months after achieving whatever simbolizas for me being known as an expert.
So, for example, if selling 1,000 books on my expertise would represent for me being known as an expert - then within one year from the moment I sold my 1,000th book, I’d like to see me generating €100,000.
Personally I have bad experiences from putting an income goal as a measurement for my success.
Not because it’s inherently bad, but because it doesn’t motivate me.
I was a lot more motivated to get results when my goal was becoming financially free, which meant just earning €3,000 per month passively. We made it within 15 months of setting that goal, and it took one more year to make our first million in Open Circles Academy…
But honestly… don’t look for the answer outside.
Look for what’s exciting for you, if it’s money, if it’s freedom, if it’s influence, if it’s impact, if it’s making a difference… define a goal around that… and go for it!
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Thank you Nisandeh! I promise I will create my own measure of success. It is just very valuable for me to ask about your experience/way of thinking because it gives me new knowledge, perspectives, and parameters. It is like watching Maverick (Tom Cruise) flying that impossibly dangerous trajectory in the newest Top Gun movie haha. You show that it is possible.
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I really like working on this topic.
In my chosen expertise, my target audience shines through. I support coaches and trainers to make their lifes and businesses shine. Is it okay to have the target audience in the expertise?
And what are your favorite expert topics that you met in your programs? Both in the results it got them, as in the creativity?
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Sure, Max...
Totally fine to include your target audience in your expertise.
Favorite expert topics?
Mmmh...
I'll need to think about it...
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Hi Nisandeh,
I'm struggeling with the day three assignment.
The last two days I thought about the Why and What of becoming an expert. I would like to become a known expert in my field of expertise (Scrum - Product Ownership). I thought for me it was clear.
For day three you asked us to come up with a specific commitment. This question makes it a bit unclear for me :-(. Especially because the day four and five are about goals and how to achieve these.
What kind of commitment do you mean? Do you mean what kind of expert I want to become and when? Or for example what I'm going to do to become this expert.
Can you give me a little bit of clearity or maybe an example?
Thanks!
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Henny - please have a look at the way Maru explored that question, HERE.
I couldn’t have given you a better example…
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Thank you Nisandeh for this tip!
I just tried to put into words what commitment I can and will give. Helped and inspired by the comments of Maru and Max
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Dear Nisandeh,
At Day 2 assignment you asked us to choose two areas of expertise that are the most important for us. This was such a big relief to me. I want to become an expert in two topics (Eternity and Parenting) because:
My WHY?
* I deeply believe in eternal life. In my experience life gets a new meaning, beauty, and purpose when one lives to prepare for eternity. It is a topic that provides me with endless motivation. Since I can remember I am fascinated, passionate, and even obsessed with it
* At the same time Eternity is my biggest fear. Becoming THE expert on it is a great way for me to deal with this phobia
* Parenting is becoming my passion. Becoming The Parenting Expert will help me to accomplish my goal of creating a business that empowers my motherhood, lifestyle, my pursuit of contribution, and financial prosperity
My Questions
1. Why did you actually ask us to choose two topics of expertise?
2. How can I grow two expert positions simultaneously? (I do have a crossover in mind: Parenting for Eternity)
Many thanks in advance for your answer,
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To answer your questions, Maru:
1. I asked you to choose two areas of expertise exactly in order to get you the experience that you just got…
Although for most people, the two expertises they’d choose would be in a similar area - so they might be able to combine them both…
2. I don’t think you can develop two different expert positions simultaneously…
But what you can do is working on one full-time, and on the other one as a hobby.
OR… what I would do is developing one expert position and record everything I learn from the process (what worked and what didn’t), so when I’m ready for the next one - I have my own blueprint.
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Thank you Nisandeh! It makes totally sense to me to build the Eternity expert position as a hobby. After all, it is about my spiritual belief system and somehow it does not feel right to earn money from it. It would be purely done for contribution and out of love. Now I know what to do! I am eternally thankful 🙂
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And off course, I will do the recording exercise and build my own blueprint for the next expertise (when the right time comes).
I wonder, how many expert positions do you have?
As far as I can see, you have just ONE (Business expert) and you skillfully combine other expertises and passions with it (for example, your Become Resilient program).
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Week 10 - Day 3
Yesterday I had some kind of 'breakthrough' by realising that I do not want to be an expert in animation, but I could see myself becoming an expert in creativity.
I got very exited about that and it felt as if this could realy be something.
Now, 1 day later that feeling is totaly gone. I think I am creative but giving talks about it or creating courses about becomming more creative seems now something stupid or meaningless. I don't know if I believe that people can learn to become creative.
This getting trown around in how I feel about something is very familiar. One day I want to stay in my relationship, the next day I want to leave.
One day I think this is my purpose, the next day it's gone.
Question: How can I make a decision in what path to choose if how I feel about it changes every day?
Do you have any food for thought about this?
Thanks.
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That’s a fantastic question, Paul, and I’m sure many others can relate to it.
I’m gonna give my 2 cents, which might or might not be the answer you’re looking for.
It all comes back to the same question… WHY?
What’s your purpose in becoming known as the expert.
I went over the list you wrote in the other post with all your reasons to become the known expert about creativity and I found some really powerful WHYs.
I especially loved these two:
* I believe all people are born creative but we unlearn this in school. I want to reconnect people to their authentic creative potential;
* I could help hundreds or thousands of people, instead of 1 at the time, like with animations.
If you don’t know WHY you want to do something, or that WHY isn’t compelling enough - then you’ll drop the ball every time the path becomes a little difficult.
So the first step you already did - figured out your WHY.
Now make this list into a big poster and small post it notes and put them everywhere…
Make sure that you intentionally read the list, connect to it, update it, and share it - EVERY SINGLE DAY (at least until the day you reached your goal of becoming that expert).
The second step is to commit to become that expert.
The way I commit for something I have no idea if it will be successful, is to give myself a deadline.
Normally it will be one year.
And then I commit that for one year, I will do whatever it takes, to achieve that goal.
I commit to take a step (big or small) EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. For the next 365 days to get me closer to that goal.
By the end of the year, if I choose to drop the goal - I do it in a heartbeat without any regret, because I know I gave my 100%.
But, in my experience, after 365 days of committed, focused action, there’s rarely a goal I don’t achieve.
…
And now, to your question:
If you can make a WHY list that excites you, and make a positive difference in your life and in the lives of others AND you’re able to make a strong 365-day commitment to that choice… then you have a winner.
If not… you might either want to find a new path (and do the same process for it), or ask yourself - what is it that you really want out of life…
I hope that helps…
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Thank you Nisandeh,
So, what you say is to actively connect to and refine my why every day. In other words I am going to actively manufacture my Why?
Until now I have been 'hoping to find' my Why, and that hasn't worked for the last 30 years or so.
This might work the same for love. Instead of hoping to find love, actualy start creating it by investing in it every day.
This is a new way of thinking about it, for me.
I will make a poster about all my Why's even though I am not sure what it is I want to become, but I will look at it a growing towards Happy, Healthy and Wealthy.
Thanks!
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I think you got it, Paul…
Both for your WHY and your LOVE…
And probably anything else that you value in your life.
Great insight.
Go for it,
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I love Nisandeh's answer and you definitely should do. Now is a good time to share my own experience with you and the group. Maybe this will add something to get you started.
In 2010 I started my company Authenticiteit in beeld and wanted to portray entrepreneurs authentically with a Youtube video. I went to the Business Bootcamp in 2011 and grabbed the microphone to ask Nisandeh a question from the audience. I don't remember the question, but the answer all the more so: "My product is not good!"
That was a bit of a swallow and it hit hard. Did I come here for a whole weekend? However, in the conversations during the breaks with the participants, I heard more and more what the participants were struggling with. Developing a vision and a mission. During a filming assignment for an entrepreneur, he complimented me: "How well I managed to capture him authentically.
My focus changed by focusing on the person and no longer on the recording. Suddenly I saw the common thread running from the past through my career as a communication consultant. I was already doing that in supervising directors and senior officials: to portray them authentically in front of the camera.
Over the past 12 years I have increasingly specialized in developing authentic behaviour.
Last Zoom session, Nisandeh managed to open my eyes again. During my time as an employee I had become a specialist in communication and suddenly had to lead and I had no clu! I was then in the same place where my virgins are now and missed then what I am going to offer now.
In 2011, I developed a system to provide answers to develop a mission and vision based on authenticity. I gave the training Jouw authentieke hand in 2011 and after and the people went home with their authentic hand and their mission and vision.
Make your own authentic hand:
thumbs up for what you think is good and important.
the index finger for which you are very good.
the middle finger for what your most important value is.
the ring finger for what your biopsy is (the environment where you come into your own the most).
the little finger with which you can turn others around your finger.
What would the long-term effect be if you left your handprint every day (your mission) and where do you want this path to eventually lead (your vision)?
If you have any further questions, please contact me.
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Hi Paul, love your idea of becoming an expert in creativity. Just a suggestion: maybe you'd like to connect with Bob Zadok Blok jr on LinkedIn? He dedicates his professional life to bringing creativity back into the classroom. He is a connection of mine and you may mention my name.
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Thank you!
I have contacted him.
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Hello Nisandeh
Can you please give me advice and direction? I come up with a whole list of aspects where I am expert in. In fact I could even prolonge that list. How do I destilate in that one sentence the essence of all that? Or that one keyeword?
I am like a snake biting my own tail in this. Cirkeling around.
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I’m not sure, Maria, what you mean by “destilate in that one sentence the essence of all that”…
But if you mean that you’re trying to create ONE expertise to be known for - from all the different possibilities, than I probably wasn’t clear in my instructions.
The idea is that you write down everything you can become the known expert on…
And then pick up one area of expertise, which you’re willing to commit to build that authority and expertise on.
For example, you might be able to become an expert on brain surgery, heart transplant, and sports massage - but in order to be a known expert - you would have to choose, commit and focus on one of those.
However, if all the different areas you wrote down are all parts of the same “whole”, then what you might need to do is to step above it a little and choose to become an expert on the end result.
For example, I can show you the path on living off-grid - including generating your own energy, growing your own food, having your own water, taking care of security, community, health, protecting your wealth, and some other factors…
I won’t be able (nor would I be interested) to become THE expert on any of these, but I can easily (and successfully) become THE expert on personal resilience, and even take it further to becoming THE leader - as I explained in my answer to Matthias (see below).
I hope I answered your question…
If not, please let me know, and I’ll try again.
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I hope you'll be teaching living off-grid in about 10 years from now 🙂 Will be happy to become your client then...
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Not to get you stressed, Rens...
But I don't know if we have 10 years...
Especially that the process of becoming resilient takes years to accomplish (Vered and I working on it for 7 years now, and we're still not finished in all 12 areas).
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WOW , Nisandeh! Reading you makes me a bit scared and wonder what is going to happen. Can you please share a brief summary of what is coming and what are the 12 preparation areas for becoming resilient?
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That’s not the place and time for that, Maru…
I think if you are to look at what’s going on in the world, with an objective view, without fear or burying your head in the sand - you’ll be able to easily notice patterns that are shaking our world as we know it… in pretty much every area - from climate, to economic, to health (both physical and mental), to social unrest, to wars… and I predict that those will intensify in quantity, intensity and frequency…
I don’t think it’s a bad thing… I think the world and us humans need a serious shakedown.
The only thing is that I prefer to be resilient when it happens, so I can “watch” the show and transcend it, instead of panicking and suffering… like most people would.
I tried several times to collect enough people for a one-year resilience program - but never succeeded to get enough people that were actually aware that things are happening and accelerating and wanted to actually do something about it…
Maybe in the future…
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Awesome!
78 comments
Thank you Nisandeh
I have to reconsider.
I need time for that
129 comments
I'm looking for a bit of direction on how to get the assignment from day 2 of this week. What examples should or can I think of?
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I don’t understand your question, Alexander.
This was the assignment for Day 2:
Come up with at least 10 specific ideas for WHAT you want to be known for as an expert and choose the one or two that are most important for you;
Here are a couple of examples to get you started:
1. Keeping your parents/children/dog/plants/business happy and healthy;
2. Bringing more happiness/joy/love/awareness/playfulness into your life;
3. Using your creativity/communication/IQ/cooking to make the world a better place;
Etc… etc…
Just come up with as many ideas what do you want to be known as an expert for…
129 comments
Thanks Nisandeh. I really got stuck (maybe in the translation). I think now I get it and give it a try.
Today I do the work of all the assignments of this week.
Also Marcel and I had a good buddy session this Wednesday. Just so you know where I am in the process of this week. 😉
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Hi Nisandeh,
I am struggling with getting my expert position + added value for the client on the front side of the product (or "around" the product). So to say on the soft side (investment 2, value 10). Let me explain: I am working hard and make perfect solar projects + mostly in an ordered way with minimal failures. Afterwards clients are really happy and ask me if they need to pay more as of the extra work etc. I am convinced I add massive value by keeping my client completely out of stress, but at the same time I work hard to put more value in the physical product. I would love to hear from you any ideas on how to make this shift to a more "extended" product where clients see the value of me/my company, and are willing to pay for it, next to the physical object we realize. What actions would you priorities/take/advise me to take asap?
Tnx!
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Let me start with an example, Matthias…
I think it will be extremely valuable for you and EVERYONE else - when you really grasp it.
Later I’ll try to answer your specific question.
If you’ve been to the Business Bootcamp - you know that we brought you there in order to help you as a small business owner overcome your biggest, most pressing problem - being OVERworked and UNDERpaid.
That was our promise, and we did everything in our power to deliver on that promise.
BUT… Any other business coach/trainer could deliver on that promise (each from their own point of view, experience, skill set, knowledge, etc…)
What made us/me unique, remarkable and THE leader of the pack is one little session in the morning of the second day of the training. A session you might remember about becoming “Enlightened Millionaire”.
This session started by drawing a graph on the flip chart where I showed you where you were before you joined the Business Bootcamp, where you would be when you implement what you learned in the Business Bootcamp AND the next two steps in the journey:
* First - Become financially free;
* Second - Become an Enlightened Millionaire.
I gave you a new vision for life (which you have never thought of before), a path to get it, and a promise that when you “stick” with us - we’ll take you on that path.
NO ONE IN THE WORLD offered (or is offering now) anything even remotely close to that.
How’s that for an expert position?
How’s that for a whole new level - it’s not anymore about being the expert.
It’s about becoming the LEADER.
NOW… I suggest you meditate on this story for as long as it takes you to understand it deeply.
Because when you do - everything would change for you…
…
As a solar project designer/installer - you’re offering me a solution to the problem I know I have.
But what if you’ll tell me what is the ultimate destination for me… something I never thought is available / achievable…?
What if you’d be able to excite me about that ultimate destination and make me believe you know how to get me there?
And what if you tell me that you can show me exactly how to get me there (or even take me there by the hand…)?
Wouldn’t that transform you instantly from being an expert to being THE LEADER?
Personally, I already figured out that final destination, and I’m pretty much there.
We are living almost completely off-grid - not only energy, but also water, food and the rest of the off-grid parameters…
But I sure would be happy 7 years ago when I started that path, if someone would have told me of it’s existence, what it entails, and how I should get there…
I hope that helps.
105 comments
That is an inspiring answer Nisandeh.
I will meditate on this as well.
Thanks.
189 comments
Thanks for sharing the example of expert vs leader....very inspiring
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So enlightening! Thank you, Nisandeh for this clear answer. I wil rethink my steps and refine what I am planning to do.
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Nisandeh, thank you so much! This is really a BIG vision, and I am nearly/almost brave enough to think about such a vision..! 😉
And indeed there is work to do to make it happen but it is feasible.
Also it is enormously necessary and interrelated to three areas that have my attention and to which I would love to contribute:
- threat of clean water
- housing craziness, need for biobased building
- new forms of social security/independence of "the system" with it's ugly and unhealthy standards
I will meditate on your example, as it sinks in more and more, I get completely excited...! haha, great feeling 🙂
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Brilliant, Matthias.
Go for it.
576 comments
whoa. This. Thank you! I get stuck in the expert thing while being the leader is a whole different area....
I wonder what will come up if I think of this. it's just.... for my "side hustle", the thing that I am very passionate about, I can totally see where I would want to take people. But for my topic of online meetings (where my WHY is mainly to make enough income so I can manage my own time and spend my time on the things that are important to me while doing something that I enjoy (giving trainings and writing)? different challenge... I will need some time on that- that one is not so easy. (I feel it's not different enough from others (it will be somewhere in the "teams" area), than focusing on the niche of meetings)