A year and a half ago I was invited to sit at a workshop and be a guest expert at a conference. The event was Hardware Con, and because I had just been invited briefly before, and have never been a “guest expert”, I had no idea what to expect. So, because I had no idea what to expect, I didn’t think much of it until I got there. While sitting in the room 5 minutes before our workshop session started a small feeling of anxiety began to creep into me.

Thoughts popped up like: What kind of answers would I give that would even be helpful to these guys? Am I gonna tell them what camera to buy or what the difference between a grip and a gaffer? Would it benefit them for me to give feedback on the videos they’ve made?

Nothing out of the ordinary happened. They didn’t ask me questions that we’re related purely to the technical aspects of video production as I had initially worried about, but instead asked me to give feedback on some video ideas or to give feedback on their video strategy. This is all good and logical enough, but for some reason I felt like the advice I could in this domain wasn’t enough and wanted to give higher level advice, so I asked them about their overall marketing and what their funnel looked like. This was 2014, mind you, and internet marketing was still somewhat an obscure thing to learn, and because I was so interested in it at the time (still am) I felt like there was a lot I could give input on.

As so, when I transitioned the conversation to talking about internet marketing, things started to go south. People started getting uninterested and confused. One person even felt provoked by his skepticism and and asked, “Wait, what expert are you a field of again?"

“Video production"

“So why are you talking to me about internet marketing?"

“Um. Because your internet marketing determines how you should strategize your video and what kind of concept your video should have depending on what channels you’re promoting it on"

This sounds like a good answer because its true, I still believe in this answer that I gave him, but he didn’t like my answer.

“Okay, but, what makes you an expert? Why should I listen to you?"

“I don’t claim to be an expert. I could know less about this stuff than you, I was just invited to be here"

He let out a sigh of dissatisfaction and left the room.

After this incident I had an older gentleman ask me about my services, but as I left the conference, I still couldn’t help feeling like I f’ed up somehow. I drove an hour and a half to get to this conference, and now I felt like a fool. Am I regretting this? I thought to myself as I drove the hour and a half back home. The entire rest of the week I would think back to that event and feel embarrassed. This feeling slowly, slowly dissipated as I comforted myself telling myself It’s okay, you will realize something important one day and it will be because of this failure.

And finally, a year and a half later I did realize something important. I can accept that people will label you and box you in to the domain that you’re in. And this makes complete sense because this is the domain you’re known for. If you try to force your expertise on them outside of your positioned domain, people will be thrown off, so you have to connect with them where they’re at first, earn their trust and then transition to a different domain.

Very tactically, it looks like this:

1. Connect with them on what they want to talk about
2. Provide a “crunchy solution"
3. Transition to a still somewhat relevant but different topic
4. Qualify the transition you’re making
5. Transition to a still somewhat relevant but different topic (this time closer to the topic you actually want to talk to them about)
6. Qualify the transition you’re making
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you’re talking about a topic that you actually want to talk about (authentically, either because you think this will help them, because you can add the most value to them in this area, or just because you’re interested in this topic)

Why is this important enough to write about? Because when you start to understand this you start to understand how to get someone to let you do higher level work rather than the current work you’re boxed in to. This pain point seems to be very common among people who are very good technically, but want to move onto having more influence strategically — Personally, I want my area of expertise to move from video production to video strategy and then to advertising campaign strategy — Additionally, you begin to recognize this in marketing content everywhere. I remember going to a Creative Live class about “Getting more trust from your customers” and the speaker transitioned it all the way to what the talk was actually about: “Setting up your website’s privacy policy”. Here’s the link if you don’t believe me. I was kinda mad at the end, but my friend that I went with didn’t catch this at all, and said “yeah she made a lot of sense, I want to work on our privacy policy now”.

To take this post full circle and tie it to the story, it was because of that experience at Hardware Con that emotionally compelled me to pay attention to this stuff. Had I not been as embarrassed as I was at the time, I’m not sure this concept of “being boxed into my domain” and “transitioning out” would have really stuck out. So I’m glad for it. And I write this hopefully to inspire you to keep faith in the failure experiences you’ve had and to encourage you to keep an eye out for the revelation that that experience can give you years down the road.