Download Here: Download MP3 

Subscribe Here: iTunes | Stitcher | GooglePlay

This episode is brought to you by “Get Known” Summer Business Bootcamp, a 3-day LIVE Virtual Intensive.

In this episode, I cover 5 essential steps you need to get known and paid for your expertise. You’ll learn:

1. Two crucial mindsets you must adopt to show up and show out.
2. The importance of Clarity, Confidence, and Courage. Specifically, I share in what ways you need clarity.
3. The reasons you want to establish your thought leadership (and a few ways to do so).
4. The components of attracting, engaging and nurturing a community.
5. An outline of what’s required for paid clients.

End 2017 profitable and powerful, join us for the Get Known Summer Business Bootcamp: Click here to Learn more and register!

-Full Transcript-

To get known for your expertise, you have to be willing to advocate for yourself as much as you’ve been willing to advocate for other people, for your kids even or even causes?

That same energy that you’ve been giving to share your Facebook posts or advocating people at your job and all these other things like that, you have to be willing to give that to yourself so that you can promote your genius.

Once again, I’m talking from the space of being an entrepreneur, but you can even talk about the space of if you’re still in your field and you want to get known for your expertise in your field, this is what you still need to do, right?

Unless you have your own PR firm and you’re paying them, no one is going to advocate and promote you as a CEO of your company. You have to do that promoting. You have to be willing to promote yourself.

1. The first step to getting known starts with the mindset you need to really to yourself out there.

One piece of that mindset is you have to see yourself, one, as an expert. As someone who has unique knowledge, a unique take and knows what the hell they’re talking about and that people want to hear it. Right?

The second mindset, and I’m not going to say all of them, there’s about five core ones that I go over, but another mindset piece is that you have to think, I am willing to promote myself.

When I first started, in the entrepreneurship space … For those who don’t know me, I’m Quanisha Green, the Founder of the Black Woman CEO Collective, the Black Woman Rise Movement, where I particularly help highly educated, ambitious and purpose driven black women to have a smooth transition through the business startup and growth phases by teaching you the fastest and simplest path to cash. I’m able to do that because I own my expertise and I’m willing to promote myself.

When I started out on this journey of entrepreneurship, my background was in non-profit social justice, community and organizational leadership. I remember being in a course with one of my business mentors at the time and she told me, she said, “Quanisha, you have a unique story and people want to hear it.”

I instantly thought, “Nobody cares what I have to say.”

The social worker that I am, I was in my second year of my graduate program, a light bulb went off and I was like, that’s a problem. That sounds like a self worth issue.

Then I went on a path to solve that. Through my continued mentorship and business training, I realized that I have to be willing to stand for myself, I have to be willing to stand for what I know. All the information that I know…Like I know, like I know the back of my hand… and you do too, right? Stand in that expertise.

It was a no brainer really to do that because people were coming to me already asking me to speak on panels, to travel around the country, to teach the things that I was doing. I was in community organizing and social justice work and we were making some heavy advancements in my city.  People were coming to me to talk on panels, to share my knowledge, things that I kicked off, ideas that I had and that I tested and that worked. I had to almost catch up to where everyone else, as far as my

I had to almost catch up to where everyone else as far as my self perception, their perception of me and where they were. If people were up here thinking, “Quanisha’s an expert, let her come teach us.” I’m down here thinking, “Nobody cares what I have to say.”

Not that I wasn’t confident in my field, but particularly my background I have a history of suicidal ideation and attempt. How I took charge of my life and became this sister in charge, how that went into my leadership role and the work I do with black women. It all was important. Here I was like, “Well, nobody wants to hear that.” Actually, people were. They were saying, “Let’s hear your story.” I actually get paid nowadays, right, to do keynotes around my story and how it connects to knowing yourself, who you be and how that connects to

I  get paid nowadays to do keynotes around my story and how it connects to knowing yourself, who you be and how that connects to self-reflection, social justice and the cultural competency, right? I just did a training with the City of Philadelphia, the whole VISTA Corps, right? Rooted in this idea of being self aware, knowing who you are and how that connects to cultural competency.

Obviously, people care what I have to say, but I had to challenge that mindset for myself. You need to have this mindset. Some of this is a CEO mindset, but some of this is just a general that you are an expert. People are willing to hear what you have to say. You have to let go of that self-doubt.

Letting go of that unhealthy sense of self that is telling you otherwise. That is number one. That’s the first thing you need is having, you can say, an expert mindset so that you actually do the work to put yourself out there to get known.

You may have enrolled in business courses. You may have enrolled in speaker courses and all these other things that were meant to help you learn about business to get out there. Or you may be an entrepreneur and you find yourself, you’re in business, and you’re not maybe generating consistent income or the income to the level that you want. One of my first questions I ask my clients that do this is tell me how you’re getting out there? How are you showing up? They often are like, I’m not. You have to show up or show out and that all starts with your mindset.

2. The second thing that you need to get known is actually three things. You need Clarity, Confidence, and Courage.

You need clarity. You need to be clear on your message and who you’re trying to help. I’m going to come back to that.

You need to be confident, which kind of goes to number one, the mindset piece. Confidence, I define as having secure knowing of who you are, right?

• What are your strengths?
• Your weaknesses?

Then you have to be courageous. You have to show up no matter what. You have to feel the fear and do it anyway. Sometimes you have to act in spite of yourself. In spite of the doubt, the fears, whatever it is that you’re thinking that may be holding you back. That’s the courage, right? The courage to put yourself out there.

In general, you need clarity, confidence, and courage.

The second one I wanted to talk about, as item number two that you need to get known, is the clarity piece. This is another place where many entrepreneurs struggle, right? Is that you may be showing up, you may be promoting yourself, maybe the mindset piece is there, right? Maybe you’re actually implementing, but your message isn’t clear. This is a struggle of one my clients who

This was a struggle for one of my clients who has a Ph.D. She was in business almost a year and wasn’t generating revenue. Then I was like, “Okay, let’s sit down and look at this.” The way she was describing her work, she was describing it in very academic terms. Something I call jargon and professional speak.

She was like, “Well, my people are educated. They should just know.” I said, “Even if these are other educated people, you still have to say it in layman’s terms or as if you were talking to an eighth grader when you think about your messaging so that there’s not a brainer. so that it instantly clicks.”

When people are thinking about their challenges, and I’m talking about organizational challenges or even individual challenges, they’re not thinking, “Oh, let me do a SWOT analysis of my business. What are my strengths? Weaknesses? Opportunities?”

No, they’re thinking, “I don’t like my coworkers today. I wish I had better coworkers.” Or, “My manager sucks.” Right?

Those are the emotional thoughts that are going in people’s head. Say the problem you’re trying to solve and your messaging is how to manage up. How to better manage your manager so that you enjoy working with them, right?

Very simple language like that will attract people who are having that problem.

Just to break that down some more, when I say having clarity on your message: One, you need to have clarity on what is the problem that you’re solving whether for your client, whether it’s an individual or an organization.

You have to have clarity on the problem that you’re solving. When I say problem, it doesn’t have to be necessarily something bad that people feel a lacking that needs to be fixed. It can also be what people are trying to move towards.

If you help people get more happiness, if you help families create better meals, then the problem is they don’t feel happy now or they’re not satisfied or maybe they’re not happy with their meal planning so they want something more.

We’re often helping people with a pain or pleasure- To eliminate something, reduce it or to have more of something.

You need to be clear on what your message is: what is the problem that you solve your clients? Then you need to be able to communicate it in a way where there’s not a barrier and not a lot of thinking. They instantly can get it.

For those who are meant for you, they will get it. Like, “oh, I get it”  It’s that level of clarity.

That other piece of clarity that you need to get known is you have to be clear on your worldview.

Many people talk about niches or your client avatar. That’s not as important as actually knowing- Why would someone want to work with you.  There are thousands of people who do, say, coaching, right?

There are a couple who do coaching in my space of black women. I have a particular worldview, right? My worldview

My worldview is: one, that black women CEOs should be a standard, not an anomaly. My other world view of my business is you all need to master phase one of business before you go onto phase two. Phase one is one-to-one services. Phase two are the online programs, group programs, passive income.

Many of you are like, oh I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be a laptop-preneur and make money from the beach, which is a great vision. But first, we need to get you one-to-one clients so you start bringing in that cash flow and you figuring out if what you do works for people before we can then leverage it, right, into a group program or a passive product and all these other things so that you can make money while you sleep, right?

We need to build your confidence in what you do if you haven’t been doing this, right, and all the things that come along with that. That’s so much easier to do with one-to-one clients. Once again, whether these are individuals or organizations.

When I say one-to-one, I’m just talking about service delivery, not necessarily the type of person.

I just went over the first thing you need to get known is your mindset, right? Really claiming your expertise. Knowing that you do have something to share and you have to be willing to promote yourself. The second thing is you need clarity. Clarity on your message, clarity on the problem that you’re solving, right? Being able to communicate it without jargon and professional speak. Then you have to be clear on your world view.

The second thing is you need clarity. Clarity on your message, clarity on the problem that you’re solving, right? Being able to communicate it without jargon and professional speak. Then you have to be clear on your world view.

For example, if you were a writer and you think the problem that you’re solving is, say, people have a hard time writing. Your world view might be, well you’re a writer once you start and it’s so easy to get consistent. Someone else may have worldview that only people with degrees should be writing, right?

Simon Sinek, some of you may have seen his Tedx Talk where he discusses starting with your why. Your worldview is your why. It is what’s going to make people resonate with you. Or let’s think about a common example of, like, Apple.

When Steve Jobs started Apple, it wasn’t just like, hey come get these nice computers because they’re … Let’s say when the whole iPhone, Mac craze started. It wasn’t like oh, look, they’re colorful and they’re white. Come get them.

No, they talked about a worldview like do you want to think differently? I don’t know if you remember that commercial, they were said they were for the nonconformists. The misfits and all these other stuff. All the people who were feeling that way, who resonated with that worldview, were to going to go get a Mac. Right? He wasn’t like,

He didn’t say, here’s our specs, even though they did share that for people who needed to know it. They talked about a worldview. That’s what you need to get clear on yourself. What is your world view around the problem that you solve? Do you think it should happen a certain way? Do you think people should go about solving this problem a certain way, right?

There are so many ways to think about a worldview and people who will resonate with that worldview or desire that for themselves will be attracted to you. They will choose you over somebody else. That’s going to become your unique selling proposition.

3. The third thing to get known is that you need to establish your thought leadership.

This very much compliments what I just said about the clarity of your message, know your particular take on it.

Establishing your thought leadership means you’re going to start creating content to share this world view with other people.

Another worldview that is that black women should be proactive contributors to their success. That we shouldn’t wait for the system’s bias and unconscious bias to change, because it may not ever, right? We’re underrepresented in corporate leadership, political leadership and with a social justice, most of the attitude is well, let’s go change those systems and then the problems will be fixed.

Yes, we need to change those systems, but while we’re waiting why don’t you go be a proactive contributor? Go learn how to create your own business so that you can be self-reliant, work towards your own economic security, justice, and all these other things while we’re waiting for these systems to change, right? It’s a both and. We need to work on that, but I need you to also have the self-agency and self-empowerment to do it yourself. I know that there are levels to that.

There’s the mindset and there’s the actual know how around strategy and systems. Having support and all these pieces like that. That’s my thought leadership. Or you can say that’s my worldview.  I started writing and sharing that worldview. I established my thought leadership.

I established it by writing articles. I established it by writing guest posts. I established it by writing speaking.

Ultimately, you have to create your own platform. A platform that you own to first start getting this thought leadership out.

Many people start that with their own blog, but then you also have to get this thought leadership in front of groups of people, right? It’s almost like you could say the passion that stands on the corner where people of the Main Street giving their message, right? Start getting your thought leadership out in front of groups of people. Out in the arena. I love the way Dr. Brene Brown, she says, “Standing in the arena.” You have to start standing in the arena.

There’s a number of ways to do that. Guest posting, podcasting, sharing your ideas on LinkedIn. There are so many places that you can share your thought leadership, but you definitely want a home base, right? A platform. Even on those other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you still want to have a space under your name or whatever your brand is so that thought leadership is attached to you.

Then there are some other systems you want to have in place so that you start capturing people. That’s actually the next thing.

4. The fourth step is that you have to learn how to attract, engage and nurture potential clients, which ultimately means you need to know how to build a tribe.

As I said with step number two, through the clarity on your worldview, you are attracting people who resonate with this worldview. We talk about my worldview that black women should be proactive contributors for their life and that we need to look at our historical, cultural and familial influences on how we show up.  I attracted women who resonate with that world view because I started sharing it, articles.

I had the invitation where I could invite them into my space, right? My email list, my communities. I was able to capture that and build audiences, right? My email list has about 3,500 people plus. The Facebook group has about 3,500 people plus. LinkedIn, every day is growing. I have like 1,800 followers. Of course, not all of those are Black women because some of them are other connections.

The Black Woman CEO page now has 1,000 followers. My personal Facebook page has about 2,700 followers.

I attracted more and more I share my thought leadership. I even pay for marketing, right, so that it gets in front of more and more people outside of just depending on viralness.

Get your thought leadership out there. You have to learn how to attract, engage and nurture clients.

You attract them by sharing your worldview, sharing the articles, and engaging them. I have free things, the blog, resources that engage them and people often, you can say through permission marketing, they may share an email so it comes in. Then I nurture them.

Through the email list, the podcast, other things on a weekly basis, sometimes more, I am continuously sharing content, engaging people and building relationships with my community. You’ve got to build effective relationships, but ultimately the larger part of that is building a tribe.

5. Then the very last thing, the fifth thing you need to get known for your expertise and genius, particularly if you’re using this for entrepreneurship, you need to be focused on income.

Some people want to build influence and impact. That’s great, but as an entrepreneur, what I advocate for in this whole CEO world because I want you to achieve that financial freedom that you’re desiring, you need to be focused on income.

If you go BlackWomenCEOpodcast.com, Dr. Monica is our kickoff podcast speaker,  she’s an Inc. 500 winner and she talks about income being the life blood of your business. Many entrepreneurs focus on impact and influence first and they wonder why they’re not making any money…Because they’re not focusing on income.

You’ve got to have the income coming in first. Obviously, if there’s income coming in, then you have paying clients. So you’re going to have impact and influence over your paying clients.

That fifth part includes knowing how to close the deal.

You’re attracting, engaging and nurturing potential customers, but how do you transition someone from being a community member or a browser to an actual buyer and a client?

There are certain ways to invite them into your space to explore working with you and then have an effective sales conversation to see if and how what you have to offer is appropriate for them. Actually, there should be a 5(A) and a 5(B). 5(A) is you need to know what you’re

Actually, there should be a 5(A) and a 5(B). 5(A) is you need to know what you’re offering.

5(A) is you need to know what you’re offering. Some people do all this and don’t even have a product or service offer. I’m assuming you do, that you have a product or service to offer.

Then, 5(B) is you have to know how to sell that product or service, which is really having a conversation where you and the person are exploring how to work.I advocate the sales at Cheat Sales, right? Where you get to have authentic selling where you’re not feeling sleazy or

I advocate and teach sales where you get to have an authentic selling conversation. You don’t feel sleazy or salesy.  You can have a conversation that enrolls someone into your work. They become a client and then, of course, you deliver and delight.

The five things to get known were:

1. One, mindset. Knowing the expert. Having the expert mindset and being willing to promote yourself. Ther ares some other ones. There are about a good five of them, but those are the two core ones.
2. The second thing was having clarity. You have to have clarity, confidence, and courage, but it starts with the clarity around your message and world view.
3. The third thing was establishing your thought leadership through building a platform or leveraging existing platforms so that you get your message in front of people.
4. The fourth thing was to attract, engage and nurture clients, which is ultimately building a tribe. Attracting people into your tribe and then building a relationship with them.
5. The fifth thing was closing the deal: Getting clients. Enrolling clients and starting to work with people.  Having an offer, then knowing how to present that offer and making sure that it’s a fit for people so that they work with you.

Those are the five ways to help you get known and paid for your expertise. They are what you need to have.

If you’re interested in going further into this work with more detail, how to and instructions, this is going to be the focus of our Summer Business Boot Camp that is beginning on August 15th.

If you’ve been struggling in this area, you are making consistent income, or maybe you’ve been taking this piecemeal approach where you’ve been doing webinars and courses and you’re like, “I need a clear system or someone to help me understand,” come join us.

Let me help you walk you through this process so that you can actually end 2017 profitable and not doing more of the same that’s basically giving you the results that you’re getting right now.

To register for the Boot Camp- we currently have an early bird rate-You can go to www.QuanishaSmith.com/bootcamp 

Come get unstuck and on path to a profitable business. Okay, sis? I’m your Home Girl in this. I’m right here with you. You’re not alone. You don’t have to be alone. That’s one thing that we have in our Black Women CEO Community is community. That’s what I wanted to say. Community, the research shows, particularly for black women is a protective factor. If you’ve been doing this by yourself or maybe you’ve been in communities who don’t speak to the experiences of black women or understand that, come into our bootcamp.

I’m your Home Girl in this. I’m right here with you. You’re not alone. You don’t have to be alone. That’s one thing that we have in our Black Women CEO Community is a community.

Community, the research shows, particularly for black women is a protective factor. If you’ve been doing this by yourself or maybe you’ve been in communities who don’t speak to the experiences of black women or understand that, come into our bootcamp.

Go and read more information about the Boot Camp,  and get yourself registered. No more excuses. This is Quanisha Green signing off and I will see you soon. Actually, I hope to see you during our Boot Camp, which starts on August 15th. Bye.

THANKS FOR LISTENING! PLEASE RATE, REVIEW AND SUBSCRIBE…

Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast this week! Be sure to leave me a note in the comments below with your #1 takeaway from the show.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show to get FREE automatic notifications when each new episode goes live!

• Subscribe via iTunes (for iPhone)
• Subscribe via Stitcher (for Android)
• Subscribe via GooglePlay

Finally, please consider leaving an honest rating and review for The Black Woman CEO Podcast on iTunes, GooglePlay or Stitcher to help spread the word about the show and help more Black women find our community!