Don't be afraid to shake things up
Industries evolve as new people start showing up, speaking up, and sharing their ideas.
Last week I shared some thoughts on the way societies built on exclusion inevitably curtail their collective expertise.
In my many years of working with women in business, I’ve seen the impact of this firsthand. It looks like women deciding not to build businesses or shake up their industries out of concern that they’re ‘not expert enough’.
The women who express such a concern are rarely lacking in knowledge or skills. They haven’t decided to start a business teaching people how to build a house without any background in construction, for example.
More often, what’s happening is they’re comparing themselves to people who occupy traditional roles in their industry and although they don’t want to perform those functions, they feel inferior or inadequate.
Sometimes this is because:
they’re not 100% clear on the role they want to play in their industry, or the value they’re bringing to the table, or
they feel anxious about disrupting an industry (the safer option always being to uphold the status quo). They know they’d like to offer an alternate perspective to the accepted way of doing things and they’re concerned about potential backlash.
Focus on function
If you’ve ever asked yourself questions like, ‘Do I belong? Is there space for me? Does my voice even matter? Do I have the authority to share these ideas? Will I be attacked for sharing this? Will people dismiss me as not knowing enough?’ here’s what I recommend; focus on function.
Let’s say you have the idea to build a business around postpartum care for new mothers. It’s essential to start with an understanding of where your expertise lies and where it doesn’t. To do that, you want to focus on the function or role you want to perform.
Let’s assume you don’t have qualifications in some of the traditional services that women and birthing people require when they’re pregnant, labouring, and in the postpartum stages. You’re not a doctor, a nurse, a registered midwife, a psychologist, a physiotherapist, or a lactation consultant.
That doesn’t mean there’s no space for you in the industry. Nor does it mean there aren’t important gaps to fill, and roles to play, in the maternal health space. In addition to the services I’ve mentioned, many postpartum parents need:
help in managing their time
information about local services they may need
a shoulder to cry on, or a person who will listen and make them feel less alone
help in caring for their physical well-being (whether that looks like getting a massage, or finding new clothes to wear, or developing a gentle exercise regime)
sleep assistance (for themselves and their babies)
support in connecting with other new parents, and
assistance in the home, be that with cooking, cleaning, or managing other dependents.
Knowing this, here’s a step-by-step process for any potential or pivoting business owner to follow, to determine the role they could play in their industry:
Step 1: Map out the customer’s needs
Start by mapping out the needs and wants of your potential client base, as I have above. Remember to think not just about the needs already identified by your industry, but also of the unspoken or often ignored ones.
Step 2: Map your skills and experience
Now map out your skills and experience. Be expansive with this. Don’t discount any of your skills or experiences at this stage, even if they seem irrelevant. The gold in this exercise is often found in the places you least expect.
For instance, perhaps the person wanting to move into the postpartum space is:
a yoga teacher who can bring yogic practices and wisdom to the postpartum experience,
excellent at community building and can bring postpartum mothers together to support one another in ways that aren’t currently happening in other parenting groups, or
an energy healer, therapist, or life coach who can assist with a person’s energetic and emotional well-being (without crossing the line into clinical diagnosis).
Step 3: Bring the two maps together
Now bring the two maps together and identify the places of overlap between the needs of your potential customers or clients, and your skills and experiences.
It’s easiest if you draw this as a Venn diagram and look for the spot of intersection.
You are the intersecting point.
Finding that point clarifies the boundaries of what you have to offer and what you don’t. You’ll gain clarity around the areas in which you don’t have expertise, whilst identifying the unique set of skills and experience you do bring to the table.
NB: Sometimes this exercise reveals a very obvious business focus for you. Sometimes it clarifies the skill set or training you need to acquire. Sometimes it gives you the confidence to own your value and sell your products with conviction. Stay open to what the exercise will reveal to you.
Step 4: Positioning is everything
Now that you understand your blend of special sauce, you’re able to think about marketing and the promise you’re making to your potential clients or customers. It’s important that the promises you make stay within that intersecting spot on the Venn diagram. That way you’ll position yourself in the market in a way that’s authentic, unique, and not misleading.
Once you’ve positioned yourself appropriately, you’ll be well set up to have conversations with other experts in your industry. You’ll feel much more secure about sharing your wisdom, knowing that you’re not veering into fraudulent territory.
And each time you have these conversations, you’ll build self-assurance about your knowledge and skill set.
You’ll also discover something that experts have long known; expertise isn’t given, it’s claimed.
It’s time to claim yours.
Visibility Practice: What do I really want?
I was born with a passion for social justice and equality. I don’t remember ever consciously cultivating this passion. It feels ingrained in my DNA.
In my youth, I didn’t know how to harness my passion productively. So I ended up in a good number of arguments.
They were rarely initiated by me. I was just enthusiastically sharing opinions that I naively, and mistakenly, assumed to be universal.
As it turns out, in many circles my opinions were considered controversial.
Hence the arguments.