235. What Does "Go-To" Really Mean (And How Do You Become It?)

Being the "go-to" isn’t about being the best at what you do. It’s about being the one people recommend and reach out to without hesitation.

In this episode of The Ramble Refinery, I’m breaking down the real difference between being an expert—and becoming the one people actually think of when the moment counts.

You’ll hear:

• Why most experts stay overlooked (and what sets the go-to’s apart)
• A spicy take on why trying too hard actually pushes people away
• What makes someone referable (hint: it’s not more content or credentials)
• How to show up in a way that actually sticks with people
• The mindset and messaging shifts that make you easier to talk about

If you’re tired of feeling like the best-kept secret—and ready for your name to come up first—this episode will get you thinking differently about how you lead your brand.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇
https://heathersager.com/episode235

📣 WORK WITH HEATHER  → https://heathersager.com/

📧  Get the Hint of Heather NEWSLETTER → https://heathersager.com/newsletter

Connect on Social:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermsager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

If this episode hit home, I'd be so grateful if you took a second to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.  Thanks for tuning in to the Hint of Hustle podcast! See you next week!

Transcript

Copy

0:10  

Well, hey there, and welcome back to another episode of The Ramble Refinery. I'm your host, Heather Sager and I'm excited to ramble at you today on a topic that I started thinking about on my walk early this morning. And it's this question, what's the difference between an expert and the buzzy term, go-to expert. You've probably said it before. You've heard it before. I've seen a lot of people use it in their marketing. In fact, I've used it in my marketing, where we talk about the coveted, go-to expert role. We talk about being the one that people look to, the one that people hire, the one that people, your name comes to mind when your topic comes up, the one that they say, Oh, you have to work with this person, the one that people save up for to work with you or one day I'm going to work with you. How do you become the one that gets invited to speak on stages, the one that people think of? I'm now getting redundant, but you know what I mean here? You know the one? I'm sure you have this vision of yourself, and if you think about it, you probably have quite a few go-tos that come to mind. Let's say, if I were to ask you, hey, I'm going to get into Pinterest. Who should I work with? Who should I be learning from? You probably have some names to come to mind. If I were to ask you, oh, man, I'm trying to figure out how to get a handle on my kids chore routine, maybe you have a go-to influencer or mommy blogger or someone that you follow online and you're like, Oh, you have to check out this resource made by this person. Maybe, if I were to tell you, Hey, I'm headed to New Jersey next month, where are the best places to eat? Caveat, you have to be either be in New Jersey, be from New Jersey, or visit New Jersey frequently, to answer this question. But what would be the go to spot that you would recommend? 

2:01  

Being the go-to is being top of mind for someone when they hear whatever it is that you teach your area of expertise, they correlate. Not just correlate, they remember to the extent of telling people about you when the conversation comes up. I think a lot of times in business, what we really hope is that when we talk about being referred, and we talk about other people doing our marketing for us, right, the best kind of marketing is word of mouth, having our clients talking about us. In fact, I experienced this very heavily this last month with my client, Brenna McGowan, who spoke at Social Media Marketing World just this last week. She had an incredible talk, and she did was so, so generous with telling anyone who would listen and even emailing her list when talking about it, that I supported her with that talk. In fact, she said, quote, I couldn't have done it without Heather, to which I replied, you totally could have. You just would have peed your pants a little bit and sweat a heck of a lot more and probably I've been a little bit more rambly on stage, but she freaking killed it. And the goal that we all have is we would love our clients, we would love people going out there in the world, just unprompted, talking about us, and that's awesome. And I will tell you that happens. It happens to me quite frequently, because my clients really love the journey when they book a really big speaking gig, and then I become their partner, helping them through that pressure some moment, and then they have that moment of, oh my gosh, that was amazing on stage. I'm paired with that, right? So they can't help but talk about it. 

3:37  

But the reality is, those moments don't happen all the time. I don't work with a lot of clients privately. So what we need to be thinking about is, instead of just hoping that people roam around this world shouting our names from the rooftop. I mean, that would be awesome. What is more likely to happen? And the thing that I want you to focus on is, how do you get your name on recall? what I mean by that is, how is it when someone asks for, hey, do you know of a speaking coach? I'm trying to get better at speaking. Your people come through and shout out your name in a Facebook group. When someone says, Hey, do you know of anyone who's really good at Kajabi templates. If you are a virtual assistant or a marketing assistant, or someone who builds landing page templates or does support behind the scenes of Kajabi, you better hope that you have an army of people going, oh my gosh, you have to work with X, Y and Z, whatever, whatever the name is, right?

4:33  

What we want to do is we have to shift from us being the person to always raising our hand of saying, like, great example, if I were to see a post on, let's say, in one of the groups I'm in, and somebody's like, Hey, I'm looking for a speaking coach. I absolutely could post and say, Hey, I'm a speaking coach. How can I help you? And that has worked, but what I find that works way freaking better is when other people become your calling card. When other people are talking about you, and I get it in the beginning, it's hard because there's nobody else to talk for you, so you have to be the one with the megaphone screaming, look at me, I do this. But what we need to start doing is prioritizing how do we generate more word of mouth marketing because other people promoting our brand is such an amplifier for trust. 

5:24  

I mean, think about it, you and I, we don't trust one people on the internet. We don't trust brands on the internet. We don't trust what people say, especially when someone's saying, Hey, look at me. I'm really good at this. I know this. We see, let's say, let's use the, I'm gonna use the hypothetical of Facebook groups quite a bit, because it's just so easy that we all relate to it, right? I would imagine you're in multiple Facebook groups, right from programs you've been in. I'm even in a Facebook group. This is so, like, geeky and random. Last year, yeah, last year, when we bought our house, we wanted to get a new couch. We've been waiting. We sold our we had a really fancy, like, Crate and Barrel couch that we bought years ago that my husband and I joked was our first, like grown up couch. It was the first piece of furniture that we spent 1000s of dollars on, but it was huge and we know couches are probably not going to move very well, because you don't really know what the new house is going to be or the space. So we sold that house, or we sold that couch when we sold the house. 

6:16  

So last year, we wanted to buy a new couch for a new house, and we had been into Airbnb a few months prior, and we experienced something called a cloud couch, which at the time we didn't know what it was. It was just this really like, oh my gosh, it's awesome couch. The couch was like, when we walked in this Airbnb, we were like, this is the most amazing freaking couch on the planet. Like, you could pull the cushions off. The kids would put them on the floor, they would play games, like the floor is lava and like hop from cushion to cushion to cushion. And our niece came with us, and she stayed and she went home talking about the couch. We're all talking about the couch, to the extent that I had to message the Airbnb host and say, hey, thanks so much for this day. Super awesome. Side note, this was like a tree house in Forest Park in Portland. It was, like, one of the most incredible experiences we had for a weekend stay. But I was, thank the host for that. And I was like, this is totally random, but can you tell me about the couch? And he replied back, and he was like, you're like, honestly, this is the number one question that I get. I probably should just put it on the list. Dude, it was a Restoration Hardware cloud couch, to which I then looked it up and realized it was like a seven, $8,000 couch, which I thought was like wild to put in an Airbnb. Also, there was no way in hell I was going to spend that amount of money, because I have three small children who are very messy and very dirty, because that's how kids are, right? And also I'm a klutzy person, so I don't trust myself with that expensive account. That's just not where I see my money going. So I then go on this rabbit hole of going cloud couches. I'm googling things online. I'm looking for alternatives, and those little internet cookies somehow tagged me to which a suggestion popped up in my Facebook feed of this cloud couch nation. That may or may not be the name of it, but it was a Facebook group of people about cloud couches. Kid you not, like a cloud couch Facebook group. 

8:13  

So I joined because I'm in that active phase of looking and researching and wanting to buy a cloud couch, and I can tell you, I was getting all the ads from all these companies around, where they ship you these things in a box, and you, like, put it together, and then you open up the vacuum sealed little part that has the puffy cushion, and you're like, whoo, and there's all these influencers talking about it. I don't even remember the names of the brands, but if you've ever looked for couches before, you've probably been stalked by these ads. And once you get one, and you click on it, you get all these other different brands, and you have this really skeptical perspective in your brain going, but is that actually really comfortable? But is that just gonna break in six months? Like they say, this was really good for their kids, but, like, honestly, is it actually washable, right? We all have these, like lingering skeptical doubts around a brand and whether it's exactly what we want, even if, like, influencers online are saying it, we all carry that, oh, I don't know if I believe you. It's the same reason when we go on to Amazon and we find a product that we're interested in buying, interested in buying, and we scroll down to the reviews and look if the reviews are all too clean and five stars, and you can tell they were like, this is an exemplary product. The product came in pristine packaging. It was easy to open. Your alarms go off and be like, this is not how a normal person talks. This is not an actual review of the product. This is somebody who was paid to review the product like it's glaringly obvious, right? So we're skeptical. 

9:49  

Michael Muslansky, the author of the Language of Trust. It's one of my favorite marketing books of all times. I had the pleasure of hiring him to speak at one of my conferences years ago. He really ingrained this into me. He's like, we live in a world of skepticism, absolute skepticism. So as brands, when you're talking about how great you are, how relevant you are, how awesome you are, you have to understand that people are going to be skeptical AF. So coming back to it in a Facebook group, I joined this cloud couch nation, and I was watching people have conversations around like this brand versus this brand. And okay, people are asking, all right, you got it, but now, anybody have it for more than a year, two years? So I actually got to see real people in real conversations. And you can tell because y'all, we all write differently when it's two thumbs in our Facebook group app at 11 o'clock at night, right? We don't make coherent sentences. We don't check for spelling, the auto correct takes over. Like you can tell when someone's really giving their opinion versus when they have curated it and tried to make it sound really good, really persuasive, right? There is a difference to that. And so we believe peers, we also believe, well, more so than peers we believe are like friends and our network. 

11:02  

So coming back to the point of this is as a brand, the more we get people talking about us organically, not just testimonials on our website or our sales page or screenshots, right? Those things are nice, right? They amplify it, but we still live in a world of skepticism where people are like, but I don't know, but when you're in a Facebook group, imagine this. You go in and you ask for a recommendation on a certain topic. When other people start shouting you out and not, let me just say this very clearly, not in a way where you have texted all of your friends or posted in your peer mastermind and said, Hey everyone, they're asking for a speaking coach. Please jump on this post and comment. I'm gonna pause to make sure you're with me. You understand what I just said. First of all, disclaimer, I've done that before. At the beginning, you're just trying to get some traction and do whatever the frick you can to get some momentum, so I've done it. I've actually texted my personal friends and family members to go comment on a post for me, because I'm like, for the love of God, nobody knows who I am. Somebody say it, and that can be helpful but I will tell you, when you ask people to review your podcast, like your friends. And say, do me a favor, let's do a swap. Let's whatever or you have people hey, go comment on this post and tag me. Remember those Amazon reviews that I mentioned before that you can tell is someone writing a curated review around, this is, the packaging was smooth to open. This was an exemplary experience, high quality product. I recommend. This is the voice I imagine it being in.

12:48  

I hate to tell you this, but your besties and your peer friends and your family members, when you ask them to go tag you in the post or say something about you, they're writing like those fake Amazon reviews, totally unintentionally, and it's because there is a difference between a genuine like, Oh my gosh, you have to meet my friend Rebecca, who talks about stress and the power of sleep. Like, oh, she freaking changed my life. I've never slept better. That's different than Oh, there is a you. I don't know, I don't even know how to say that differently, but you know what I mean, right? Like, there is a difference between someone who writes like that, perfectly professional, curated, quote, unquote review or like recommendation, versus like when you're shooting from the hip and replying right between taking toast out of the toaster and trying to catch the coffee pot before it starts dripping because you forgot to put the mug under the Keurig, like you're firing off a message, and you're not really thinking about it when it's genuine. When someone has truly come top of mind for you, you're not trying to articulate that recommendation in the perfect way to make them look good. You're just saying, oh my god, you gotta f*cking meet my friend, Heather. She's freaking awesome at speaking, and she changed my life on my last keynote. I could have done it without her. There is a different vibe in that. 

14:05  

Okay, so what does this all relate to with you? What does this mean for you? We talk about this really buzzy phrase, and I'm going to continue to use it in my marketing, because it pulls people in, the go-to expert, the go-to authority. The greatest example of that is when people are actually shouting you out. People are doing your marketing for you. Now, should that be your only marketing strategy? Probably not, to achieve your goals, but it is one of the most powerful marketing strategies that you can do and the biggest thing, though, is you can't force it. You can't force it, because when you force it, it's like, you, okay, you know this. Let me get my thoughts together real quick. Hello, rambles and Heather. Good thing I named the show rambly Heather show. I used this example before, before my husband and I had kids, I like, loved babies and loved kids, and they were like, fine with me. I mean, I would play with kids, but for some reason, when we'd be around kids, the kids all loved and obsessed with my husband, like they climbed on him, like a jungle gym. My nieces and nephews, like, thought he was the coolest. And I'm like, he's not even, like, particularly interested in children, like, I'm the kid one, like, love me, want me, play with me, and it comes back to this whole idea, like, if you want it too hard, you can't force it, like the more you force the more other people will be turned off by that energy. When you just settle in and you just allow yourself to be great and allow people to amplify that greatness, as cheesy as that sounds, that's what becomes magnetic. 

15:43  

So I want you when I'm when I'm talking about drumming up referrals and getting people talking about you. Let me make sure I make it clear. I don't want you going out there and now trying to create those contrived forced text. It just, I've just seen it over and over and over again. It is not going to get you the result that you want, right? It might feel good in the moment. It's going to give you the ego boost. Like, look at all these people tagging me, yeah. And here's what happened. Some people, like, might click on it. It might work, right? It might get some people to click on your profile and be like, who's this bitch? Let's go check her out and we go down that rabbit hole, and so it could work. But you and I both know there is a difference between a genuine shout out and a contrived one, and I really want us to focus on getting out of the force contrived and into the genuine. But I do get that there are times that you might need to encourage people to talk on your behalf, but let's talk about what can you do to actually get people shouting you out? Because the difference in being an expert and being the go to expert, it has literally nothing to do with your knowledge and expertise and everything to do with the way other people see you, the way other people look to you, the way other people refer you, the way other people recognize your expertise or not. 

17:11  

I'll say that again, simpler you becoming the go to authority has nothing to do with you learning more. It has nothing to do with more certifications. It has nothing to do with you proving how much you know or how smart you are. It actually has very little to do with you and everything to do with your ideal clients and audience. And that is going to be something that I need you to sit with for a minute, because so often I see people who just want validation. They just want to be seen as the go-to authority, not, I mean just literally, because they want to feel validated, the I do know what I'm doing, I am damn good at what I do, I am smart, I know things, I have experience, I am not the whippersnapper on Instagram or Tiktok that literally just started talking about this a week ago, or did it three times and now built a whole brand around it. I make that voice that I laugh, because we're all freaking annoyed at that. Our elder millennials and Gen Xers especially, we're very, very annoyed about the whippersnappers on Instagram who literally have very small experience, but then have some how positioned themselves as this go-to and that is an example in itself. They have done everything to be able to build a brand around them, build an audience around them of people who see them as an expert, even when they're not. Oh, which is freaking annoying, but it also hopefully lights some freaking fire in your belly to say, okay, if they can do it, so can you but it's going to require you to shift the focus. You need to shift the focus off of trying to be super smart, trying to jam people with more value, trying to show off what you know, trying to fire hose your audience because you think if you give them more information, if they just knew, if they just understood, then they would take action, then they would finally do the damn thing. And I'm here to tell you, that is not the case. If that were the case, you would already be seen as the go-to expert. But instead, you're this like hidden little gem backstage or on the sidelines or in an arena on the field, but there's no one in the stadium. Pick whatever metaphor works for you that I just fired off. 

19:44  

What I really want you taking away from this is you have to get comfortable understanding that becoming the go-to expert isn't about your expertise. It is 100% around your positioning. And your marketing, which, if you've ever said the phrase, but I'm not a marketer, but I hate marketing, but I don't want to do social media, but I don't want to do that email. Can I just outsource that shit and do what I like doing? Man, I'm making a lot of voices today. This is a really fun and spicy episode. Is it? What we have to realize is, if you just want to sit on your little expert couch and spew what you know and just do the behind the scenes, that's fine, but you got to give up the dream of being the go-to expert. That is might be a tough bill for you to swallow, but right now, I need you to sit with that today. I need you to make a choice. When you say you want to impact and help more people, when you say you want to be the go-to expert, when you say you want to be an industry thought leader, when you say you want to truly make an impact and help more people, you have to ask yourself the question, am I doing what I need to do to make that a reality, r am I just hoping that my clients will go out there and do my marketing for me? Am I just hoping that someone will stumble upon my post about quantum physics impacting our brain fog? I have no idea. Like, if those don't have to do with anything, right? But like we're hoping that people come across their content saying, wow, that's genius. I've never thought about it that way, and then they fall in love with you, and then they start spewing about it. 

21:29  

That could happen, but if you're relying on these one off magical moments of people like hopefully discovering you and then hopefully talking about you, it's not going to work. So what do we need to do? What do we need to do instead? I'm going to share with you. I'll just make this quick here, four things that I would start thinking about if I were in your shoes back like when I first got started. Like, what would I want? What did I focus on? If I were starting over right now, what would I focus on to start making the shift of going I know my shit. I have great experience. I know I can make a big impact in this niche that I'm in but the problem is, nobody knows me. So what would I do? There's kind of, maybe I'll do an episode, if this resonates with you. If you're like, Heather, give me some tactical of, like, literally, what are some of the things you'll do? Shoot me a message on Instagram. I will totally make that episode and here's exactly what I would do from like the moment of now. But what I'm going to give you is actually categories of thinking. This is where I would think to start brainstorming, and if you want a tactical episode, just let me know, and I'll do a follow up. 

22:31  

But number one, I want to ask myself the question, how am I making things more relevant to the people I'm talking to? Relevant. The number one mistake that I see experts make over and over and over again is they are not connecting the dots between how their content directly relates to the person that they're talking to. They think, of course, it relates. Okay. So let's say that you are a weight loss coach and you're like, oh, people want to lose weight like, oh, I'm going to start talking about macros, or I'm going to start talking about water because, of course, everybody knows that your water intake has a lot to do with your blah, blah, blah. I'm just making shit up here, right? But you need to make it so relevant to where your audience is in the moment. The power of context is the most important thing you can do if you want people to listen to you. If you want people to be like, Oh my gosh, you have to meet X, Y and Z. You have to be relevant. Every story, every message that you share, you have to have relevance to the audience. Okay. You have to shift from trying to prove value to owning what people and talking about, what people actually need. You have to shift from trying to prove value, right, to owning what people actually need. 

23:46  

The second thing that I would focus on, and that I do focus on, is we have to be resonant with our content. We have to be resonant. And what I mean by that is one you have to have a more bold point of view. You have to start bringing in more of your unique stories, your point of view. I was having a client call yesterday inside the Speaker Society, and we were talking about storytelling. And one of our Speaker Society member, Cheryl, she writes email, and she's really, really into systems and strategy and helping people create their automated emails machines so that their emails are working for them, even when they're not. And we were talking about how she got into it, and I found out she was actually a former destination wedding planner, which seemingly has nothing to do with email or strategy or any of those types of things with business and funnels and such. But one of the lines Cheryl had said when she was describing what she did, she was talking about how so many people focus on the launch, and then it's like, after, what happens, right? We put all this like energy and preparing for the launch, the launch emails, the cart open, all those pieces and then after, we just kind of send these like random emails. What about all the people that don't buy? Maybe we do aittle scrub sequence or follow up sequence, but like, there's this huge missed opportunity to get your email working for you. She says it a lot better than I just did. 

25:08  

But what I saw was this really interesting juxtaposition between now, like, okay, let me go back. She used to work in destination wedding planning, which was literally all about the wedding, but if you have been married in your life, you know that you spent all this time planning for a wedding, but what you really didn't prepare for was marriage, and that is where you spend your entire relationship and like your life, like marriage is not the wedding. And then I saw the parallel of, okay, in launch marketing, right? The launch is kind of like the wedding. We put all this pressure on it, but it's what happens after. It's like serving the clients after. It's like this whole experience after, it's the marriage. So coming back to this whole idea of resonating, can you bring in your stories to bring in things that other people identify with and resonate with, and then draw parallels of how that pertains to your work and pertains to their lives. We need to start resonating with our audiences more, and I think story is the most powerful way to do that. 

26:08  

So we got relevance, we got resonance. The third piece I really want you to focus on is we really have to be reliable. And what I mean by that is we have to, we have to stop like we need to beef up our credibility. We need people to start talking about us. So in the beginning, this might be you asking for testimonials. It might even be something as simple as, hey, if you hear anyone talking about X, Y and Z, can you name drop me? You might have to drum it up a little bit. But what I also think that might be helpful for you is start being the type of referrer that you want to have in your audience. So can you be a really good person that tags? Can you shout out people that you know? I see this really happening a lot on threads right now. It almost feels actually a little clicky. That is a little bit of a turn off for me at times where, like, the same people are always tagging and referring the same people. But there's something to be said that if you be generous with your referrals, other people be too but the reliable piece speaks to the credibility. And of course, credibility is what I've been saying, is other people talking about for you, but it is paired with, does your website and does your social media also have social proof? Does it actually demonstrate your credibility expertise? Because even though I said that brands don't necessarily trust you right out of the gate, we do scope you out on your website. We do Google you. We do look at your LinkedIn profile. We do look at some things and we vet it and check it. So your website and your like footprint on the internet should demonstrate that expertise status that you aspire. So that reliability, credibility piece. Think about it in two parts. It's what other people are saying about you, but it's also your footprint online. Are you the legit pro? And that doesn't mean you have to have a super freaking fancy website, but have you done a great job having real social proof on your website and demonstrating your competency through the language of your website, showing not just jargon language, but sophisticated language that your ideal client would be like, holy, she knows her shit. 

28:11  

So we got relevance, we got resonance, we got reliability. The fourth, and I think this is one I talk a lot, whoa. Let me say that again. This is what I talk a lot about, but you have to be like recognizable and there's so much to unpack here. But this idea is you actually have to show up and be seen. You can't just wait for people to remember you. This internet world that goes really, really fast all the time. People don't remember, like, you have to keep showing up. So this can work in a couple different ways. It's you showing up on podcast episodes, whether or not you do your own show. It could be you showing up on social media, which, to be honest, I don't, a lot of people put a lot of weight in that. It's not how I build and attract leads. So I don't put a ton of like, wait on posting every single day. I mean, I do pop in my stories, but for me, I'm thinking about showing up on stages, showing up on my stages, showing up in inboxes, right? Being consistent in email, I show up to stay on people's radar. 

29:15  

Quick side tangent on that note, I know there's a lot of people who send email that put a lot of weight in open rates and conversion rates, click rates, all those things which I know those are important, but honestly, what I look at is whether or not you open my email. If you're on my email list. I do a lot of this. I get a lot of emails in my inbox that I never actually open, but I see those names every week popping up, and I'm not, when I'm done with them, I unsubscribe, right? But the idea of having that name be top of mind every single week, even if they don't read it, it's just that subtle reminder, oh, that Heather Sager, oh, there's that Heather Sager, oh, there's that Heather Sager, and it just makes it more likely that I am on your radar when an opportunity comes where somebody's talking about speaking coach, and you're like, oh, you should talk to Heather Sager, being top of mind, being recognizable. 

30:07  

Now, the other lens of recognizable as being going is you have to be more unique. You can't be rambling off the same things that everybody else is saying. This is where the storytelling comes in. This is where your own delivery style comes in. That we talked about last week or the week before when we were talking about your signature style and talking like yourself. You really have to start thinking about, how am I actually going to stand out and be remembered. But these are the things that we need to focus on if you want to shift from just being an expert to becoming the go-to expert. You got to be relevant. You got to be reliable, aka credible. I wanted to do Rs here. You have to resonate, right? Tell more storie and you have to be seen. You have to continue to show up. We can't just expect that other people are going to do our marketing for us, but if we are strategic with our marketing, if we are really powerful in what we talk about and how we show up, then it's like a, it's like momentum, right? In the beginning it's hard, but then we have to keep moving. 

31:00  

I'm going to end you here with this quote. I posted this on my Instagram stories this morning as I was recording this, but you won't see it now. I'm reading one of Robin Sharma books right now. He's the author of the 5am club. I'm reading a different book. I don't remember the name of it, but the quote in the book, he talks about this all the time. It's one of his most powerful quotes in his keynote. It's this, all change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. I thought this would be a really great reminder for you if you were in that transition right now where you know your shit and you're really trying to make a name for yourself in the industry, that you're really here to make an impact in the world. But right now, things feel really messy, my friend, you're just in the middle, and the beautiful part is you have found a space here in the Ramble Refinery. That's what this entire show is about, about helping you navigate that messy middle. Because it's one thing to take that bold courage to get started with this, to declare that not only am I an expert, but I'm going to use that expertise to drive my own personal brand and my own business. But then as you get rolling, we discover that it's not as easy as someone told us it would be, and we discover those struggles, and maybe we start questioning ourselves of whether or not we're actually as good as we thought we are. I'm here today to remind you that you are as good as you know you are, but now it's time for other people to recognize it too, and that's going to take some work, and it's going to be messy and it's going to be uncomfortable, but I can promise you this, it will be worth it, because one day, or one days when you start getting those messages of people shouting you out, when you get tagged in the story of saying, oh my gosh, you have to work with this person, or, hey, that podcast episode, he did an X, Y and Z, y'all, you have to listen to it.  It was fire. 

31:01  

When people start reflecting back on you and in the beginning and even in the middle, it's going to be far and few. Live for those moments. Celebrate those moments. Screenshot those. Put yourself in a folder to remind you of when shit is not moving as fast as you want it. Remember it is working. You are connecting with people. And if you're in those early stages that you're not getting those yet, remember those are coming. Focus and service. Be relevant. Be reliable, be resonant. Start focus on getting seen and being recognized. You have to start getting the momentum going, because at first it's hard, then it gets messy, and in the end, it's gorgeous. And my friend, something really gorgeous is coming your way. Okay. I hope this episode met you exactly where you needed today. I'll catch you the next one. Bye, friend. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai