Be An Expert Without A Lot Of Degrees

Many home-based entrepreneurs would like to be considered experts in their field. However, most of us do not have PhD.s or other advanced degrees.

Consideration as an expert would make it easier to sell your ideas and products; in addition, there is great inner satisfaction when one feels his expertise is recognized by his peers. How do you achieve expert status without years of experience or an advanced degree? In this article, we'll show you some successful ideas used by others to acquire expert status that could help you improve your own position in your business network.

IDEAS FOR BECOMING AN ONLINE EXPERT

This article gives a plan for gaining expertise among customers as well as getting recognized by search engines like Google. Here are the basic details:
Develop a point of difference (POD). Your first problem is to become known to the Internet. To do this you have to exploit anything about you or your business that is different. This difference must affect your audience in some helpful way. Being different and telling everyone about it will help to get you noticed by customers or clients as well as search engines.

Create and tell stories about what you do that incorporate your point of difference (POD). Use the largest players in your field as characters in your stories, emphasize major issues, and show how your brand offers solutions.
Create relationships by becoming an expert at networking. Connect with everyone you know who knows someone else. Cultivate relationships with bloggers in your field by comments on their blogs and possibly offering help to them on some issue. If you can’t help them, direct them to someone else in your network who may be able to help them. By helping others, you will eventually help yourself when some of those you helped come to you with solutions to your problems.

Rather than always talking about your business or yourself, talk about your industry in general and include issues that concern your customers and your network. Become a thought leader and establish yourself in the various conversations that are going on around you.

After you have identified what you wish to be known for, make yourself seen and heard as often as possible. Be a guest blogger on other sites, participate in online conversations, and generally make yourself seen anywhere you can. Much of being an expert results from just being seen talking about things.

You must prove to others that you are a success. Do this by posting case studies showing how you have helped others, and post testimonials from those you have helped. Write about tips you have learned that have helped others.


When you have attained some level of expert success, don’t forget to keep on learning about your field. Only by obtaining and talking about new information can you retain your expert status and keep your customers trusting you.

Don’t pat yourself on the back for becoming expert. Instead, realize you did not get where you are entirely on your own; many others helped you some where along the way. Recognize your network for what they have done to help you, and they will continue to help.

BEST PRACTICES FOR BECOMING EXPERT

This discussion from the blog, Expert Enough, tells more ways to elevate yourself to expert status. Here they are in brief:

You don’t need to be the world’s foremost expert on something to benefit from your expertise. If you are expert enough to accomplish your goals, then you are expert enough. You can also help people at your level accomplish their goals. Expertise is relative to what want to do; you really don’t need to be more of an expert than you need for your own purposes.

As a true expert it is necessary to have both learning (from books and research) and the experience of real-world practice in your field. The general tendency is for people to spend too much time doing one or the other. To be an expert, you must strike a balance between learning and doing. This idea is similar to what many people say about researching a new business opportunity—you can spend so much time investigating before making a decision that the opportunity passes you by and is gone forever.

Focus is how you attain balance between learning and doing. To avoid distraction you must stay focused on the very next thing you must do; don’t become confused with the over-all picture. Focus on one goal at a time.
At some point in the process of becoming expert, learning and performing will get you only so far. You will need someone outside your organization to critique what you are doing. This is why most experts have coaches, mentors, or a dedicated group of friends.

The road to expert is filled with mistakes. You can’t be afraid of embarrassment, so you must be willing to practice what you want to excel in, and that means you must be willing to make mistakes. After your mistake, simply move on to your next step and leave the mistake behind.

YOU CAN BE EXPERT WITH NO EXPERIENCE


This article is about being an expert with no experience. Here are some of the ideas about learning on the fly:

Make a plan; this makes your life easier and ensures that you will succeed in your new drive to become an expert.

Don’t hesitate to ask for help. You will achieve your expert goal much quicker if you ask others to guide you along the way. This will reduce your struggle to achieve.

OJT, On the Job Training, presents a tough learning curve, but it almost guarantees that you learn the lesson as required. Hands on experience is the best way to learn anything new.

You only increase your knowledge when get outside your comfort zone. When you hit the ground running, with little knowledge of where you are going, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It will surprise you at how willing others are to help if you ask.

Count on your life experiences to help you with your new learning experience. They may be the most valuable assets you have.
 
CONCLUSION

We have discussed several ways to become seen as an expert in your field. You may not like all the things in any one of these plans. What you need to do is pick the ideas that will work for you from each set of actions. Put them together and make your own program to attain expert recognition.

Whatever you do, do the things that will cause you to be recognized as an expert in your field. It will not only make you feel better about yourself, but it will cause your customers to trust you more. Your network may also reward you for your efforts.

Just go out and try to become an expert. You never can tell what this will do for you unless you try.