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Why Your Best Experts Avoid the Camera | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP18
A lot of B2B companies don't struggle with a lack of expertise. They struggle with getting that expertise out of people’s heads and into the market.
In Episode 18 of Content Wars, we break down one of the biggest hidden blockers in B2B content: imposter syndrome.
We talk about why smart leaders and subject matter experts often resist being on camera, why silence creates real cost for marketing and sales, and how companies can help experts build confidence instead of forcing performance.
If your team knows a lot but hesitates to speak up, this episode will help you understand why and what to do next.
Key Takeaways
- Why imposter syndrome is often strongest in the people with the deepest expertise
- The hidden business cost of keeping experts off camera
- Why silence forces marketing into generic, low-conviction messaging
- How expert voices can shorten sales cycles and build trust earlier
- Why the goal is not perfection, but a low-risk path to confidence
- How leadership can model the behavior and bring others with them
Timestamps
0:50 – Why subject matter experts resist content creation
4:05 – What imposter syndrome actually looks like in B2B
6:55 – The business cost of keeping expert voices silent
11:20 – How to build confidence with low-risk baby steps
19:20 – Why leadership should go first
23:10 – The real solution: reps, guidance, and confidence over time
Transcript
Nathan Yerian: I'm confident in the way that I'm going to sound. I'm confident in your ability to edit what I'm saying. And I'm now ready to have a voice that I actively want to put in the market via whatever medium we're doing. I'm confident. I no longer have imposter syndrome. I'm ready because I have proof. I have building blocks that show me that I deserve to be here, that I have something to say, that I am the expert that other people should listen to. And now I'm ready to step into that role and be that expert.
Okay. So in the last episode, we talked about, I think the primary reason why companies don't really involve their team in creating content the way that they should is really the fear of, Hey, if we build up these stars that are going to leave potentially, and I think we did a pretty good job of kind of debunking that myth and gave marketing teams and executive teams a different way to approach that, that gets them over that hump and hopefully into a better space. But there's, there's another reason that companies don't create the content they probably should. And it's not that the company doesn't want to. It's that the knowledge leaders within the company aren't really wanting to. They're not wanting to have the spotlight shown on them. And I think if we can kind of give them a different perspective, a different path forward and maybe a starting point of how you might get those people from, no, not me.
I'm not the guy to, sure, I'll, I'll, I'll try that once. I think that's going to be a big win for a lot of the companies that we work with and a lot of people in marketing departments that might listen to this. Yeah.
Adam Marquardt: I think there's this big apprehension. Whenever people mentioned cameras and equipment and lights, they, they feel like they're going to be put on the spotlight and their ignorance is going to be highlighted and that they're not going to be able to complete it. And they're not going to be knowing what to say or what to do. We hear all the time of like these experts, these people who deal with this topic or this product or this service on a daily basis who've come up and they're like, I don't know what I'm going to say.
I don't know what I'm going to do. And we're always reassuring them that we're not going to ask you anything or you're not going to talk about anything that you don't already know. But I would say for 75% or more of people that we end up having on camera that have not done it before their very first time, there's a lot of fear or anxiety or imposter syndrome that they're not the right person. They're not going to be able to do it. And they're not going to look or sound intelligent on camera.
Nathan Yerian: Imposter syndrome is exactly what it is. And there's this reluctancy of being the guy or the girl that has the answer. Because what if I don't get it 100% right? So there's this tendency to say, oh, well, you know, I'm not going to be good on camera, you know, let this person do it or that person do it. There's this passing of the buck that happens when any executive thought leader, whoever it's going to be, starts to have this imposter syndrome where they're like, oh, they don't want to hear from me. Someone else is more qualified.
And I think two things we need to do is really define imposter syndrome. So everybody's working from the same knowledge bank there. But also, I think there's a realization that people need to have that if the company hires you and trusts you to be that expert, why would you not be an expert that's qualified to communicate that expertise to someone else?
And I think that's the big hold up. If I truly am an imposter and I know nothing, the big question is, why is the company paying you? If you know nothing, why is the company paying you?
Those people do know something. It's about how do we get them comfortable and how do we get them to understand that they know something that has value that's worth communicating? And I think those are the two things that we need to really break down is what are we dealing with and how do we get over that?
Adam Marquardt: So you mentioned kind of leveling the playing field and defining what imposter syndrome is. So we're kind of working from the same playbook here. And I think it's important to recognize that imposter syndrome is basically not feeling like you deserve a seat at the table, even though you do. And it's probably the most ironic aspect of this syndrome is that as you get older and as you gain more expertise, that is where you really develop the nuances of these situations.
And you can really identify like in this situation, we do this and in this situation, we do this and real expertise is depth in the subject or depth in the matter. And it's not just scratching the surface level. Anybody can talk surface level about certain topics, but there will become a point where your expertise runs out, right? But the longer you do something, the more experience, the more scenarios you come in contact with, you're going to be able to talk about that at a deeper level, which is where your value is going to come in and really shine. Sure.
Nathan Yerian: A novice is going to step up to the plate and be like, Oh, I know the answer. Here it is. And you know what? People are going to look at that person with less experience on camera and be like, Oh, well, they know exactly what they're talking about. Whereas the person with real experience that has been to the show a number of times that has seen, as you stated, the nuances of what might be true in this case.
What are the different possible outcomes? They're not going to come to the table and be like, there's only one way. They're going to come to the table and know that there's multiple ways. And when they state a certain way, sometimes there's a fear of, well, someone else could contradict this or someone else could bring up this fringe case or someone else could show and prove that I'm not right. So there's this fear of being exposed for being wrong.
Even if you're not actually wrong, they're putting a caveat to a scenario that would potentially make you wrong. In that one instance, that comes from having a deep understanding of a subject matter. You understand that nuance. You understand the potential of what could happen in a thousand different scenarios. And it starts to make you feel like, Oh, I better not say it this way or that way. Cause I could be viewed as, even though I'm not, I could be viewed as wrong. And that, that perception that someone might think I'm wrong.
I feel like I may not be qualified enough here to answer your question because others could pick it apart and maybe I won't look as smart as I think I might be. So I'll just opt out. I choose not to do that. I'm not your guy. Someone else is more qualified and someone else needs to do this.
This isn't for me. So I think the reality is, you know, a lot of people within the company, whether you're on the marketing team or whether you're one of the subject matter experts, there's this idea that not creating content, not having a voice, not being seen, not being heard has no cost. We can just go on business as usual. Marketing continues to write things in a vacuum, pump out ads, manage our trade shows, and our experts continue to do their daily jobs and there's no harm, no foul, but that's not exactly true. There is harm in the absence of an expert voice from almost any company. There's harm that's being caused. There's an opportunity cost for that voice not existing in the ecosystem for their clients, their potential clients, their future employees, their investors.
That void has a cost to it. It forces marketing to choose a vanilla messaging. So they go in, they don't have a definitive voice in the market. They don't have an expert that's coming out and saying, here's what's happening here. They hear things. They get some knowledge and then they have to repeat that.
Well, guess what? Marketing is not the expert. They can't stand up and take a definitive stand on anything that they're saying because they don't know. They need experts to do that. So what happens when there's that lack of expertise, that lack of expert voice? It starts to sound like just some industry fluff.
It's just something the company has said many times. It starts to sound like the competition. If you don't want to sound like the competition, you need someone that's willing to stand up and say things differently. And usually that's going to be a leader of some type within the company or a subject matter expert within the company that actually has a position on what's happening in that industry or that customer environment.
Adam Marquardt: I think the impacts really go beyond just marketing, which is probably one of the easiest places that you would see the impact. I think that it also goes into sales and the sales team. If you're not saying things before a buying trigger, if you're not influencing the buying decision, when they come to you, you're going to have to then parade around the expert and share that insight, share that knowledge.
And this is the one and only time they've ever heard of that. You're going to have to take them through the whole sale cycle from start to finish, and it's going to be longer because they have no prior education. And I think that there is a big problem when you look at it like that of, okay, we're going to start off now and we're going to tell them everything that we can versus if you dripped out content in slow bite-sized chunks that soften the ground. So when they got to sales, they said, Hey, look, I know you guys do this. I know you communicate this way. I know you handle, you know, lead times like this.
I know that your differences in XYZ of product, we want to see this very specific application for us. Well, now it becomes more consultative than it does. We have to tell you everything about it in one big, overwhelming dump of information. So you're really doing the sales team also a disservice or an injustice by not giving the information to the audience, the prospective customer or the potential audience in advance and letting them little by little build that belief. You're really just trying to basically force it down their throat as much as they can over the whatever your sales cycle is and hope that at the end of the day, they remember it all and they remember the key points. So that way they come to you and they say, Hey, I've already heard what your experts have to say. It's really helped me understand and shape the perception or the belief about your company. Now we can really just focus on the things that are going to be vital or important to us being successful in this relationship and it can really shorten the lead time or allow it to be more prescriptive for the sales team to be able to say, Hey, look, here's exactly what we can do for you. Cause you already know the baseline. You already have the foundation of who we are and what we do and how we approach our work.
Let me tell you what it would look like exactly for you. And I think if you can soften the ground early enough in the buying process or even before a buying trigger, you really have an advantage over the competition because now you've elevated yourself, you've differentiated yourself and you've educated this prospect before they're ready to buy. So when they come to you, it's easier.
Nathan Yerian: So if they're not viewing your team as the experts in that space, who are they viewing as the expert? It's going to be research firms, analysts, the competitors. It's going to be someone that is not from your team. So all of a sudden you're robbing your opportunity to be viewed as an expert because you've outsourced that to some other group that honestly probably doesn't have as much expertise as your team does. So the big question, you have a group of experts. They know things.
They should be sharing things. They're reluctant. They have imposter syndrome. They don't believe that they deserve a seat at the table. What you can't do is walk right in and be like, well, just toss that to the wind, get up here, belly up to the table and start telling me what it is that that's not going to work because they don't feel like they should be there. You have to create an environment that gives them hints and clues that being there is the right thing to do, that they do have answers that matter. They do have perspectives that matter.
They do have expertise that could and should be shared with their market. And you can't do it in one big bang. It has to be some sort of baby step to give them the building blocks of confidence. and then someday they'll be able to run. But you can't start out running. You gotta start out crawling.
Adam Marquardt: So if somebody's watching right now and you're talking about these baby steps to be able to kind of introduce them and soften the ground, where would someone start with that? Whether that's the executive team trying to kick off this initiative, whether that's the marketing team trying to lead this initiative, how do you introduce your baby step, these experts into building their confidence? Because their confidence is gonna come with more at bats.
It's not gonna just show up on day one. But if you can ease them into the process, it should help alleviate some of those nerves or some of that imposter syndrome that we've been talking about.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, so the reality is they know the subject matter. That's not the issue. Many times what the issue is is cameras, lights, microphones, things that are awkward to them in their daily lives, it starts to feel very permanent. It starts to feel, oh, if I say this, then they're gonna parade that out there in front of everyone and that might not be right. So you have to de-risk that situation for them.
You have to let them know we're going to have lights, we're gonna have cameras, we're gonna have microphones, we're gonna have things to record you saying these things. But let's make it a more natural environment. Let's not make it a true or false session. Let's make it a discussion.
Let's make it feel light. Let's let them know we might talk to you for 30 minutes. We're gonna create two 30-second posts, maybe. Let's just talk about what's happening.
We need you to have the same conversation that you would have at a trade show with a colleague. What's happening? I haven't seen you in five years. What's going on with your role? What's going on with your company? What new exciting stuff are you working on?
What customer problems are you currently solving? How is that going? Why is it going well?
Why is it going poorly? You know all of these things. They're surface level, but the depth that you could choose to go on in any of these areas is within your control. You decide where you go with the answers. All we're doing is having a conversation. And when an expert has a conversation, they're going to show their expertise in their answers. They're going to reveal the right information at the right time to carry on a conversation. That's the way conversations work. If you were going to have a conversation with an expert and they didn't have any of the answers, you would soon figure out the next question isn't worth asking.
This guy doesn't know shit. So the key is how do you de-risk that situation, get them comfortable knowing we're not looking for the square root of 4,652. They don't know the answer to that. You're asking basic questions that are teeing them up to say something within their expertise. You're not grilling them. You're not quizzing them. You're not trying to gotcha. You're trying to give them the space to display expertise and the one extra thing that you can add to that is you always have the gift of edit. Oh, they said the wrong thing or they don't like the way they said something or whatever it is.
Guess what? It never has to be used. It can be cut. That's the brilliant thing with video. This isn't live. We can cut anything. We could say the most ridiculous thing in the world right now. And guess what?
Adam Marquardt: The audience would never hear it. So you actually took one of the things I was going to say and really hit on it well because I think that that is one of the things that when we go to a shoot that we constantly are reminding people, hey, it doesn't have to be perfect. If you need to say that again, if you need to say that a different way, if you want to correct yourself mid sentence, stop and start over. That is the gift of editing. That is the gift of what we are able to do.
We're not putting you on a stage for a live Q and A panel that's live streamed to a million people, right? Like what you say can be edited. It can be cut out. It can be strung together in a different way.
You just have to understand that you have the information and all you have to do is get it out of your head. And I think that one of the things that you said and we touched on a little bit earlier is you might sit them down for 30 minutes and get two short form videos out of that. And that's great. In the beginning, it might look like that. In the beginning, it might be really rough, but as time goes on, you're going to see that same 30 minute session might produce four or five or six, right? The more comfortable they get, the more confidence they develop, the more that they understand what is being asked of them. And hey, you know what?
This actually isn't so bad. I know everything that you're asking me because you're not trying to trick me. You're not trying to stump me. You're trying to take the things that are locked away in my expert brain and pull them out and share it with the world so that we as a team can grow the organization and who we appeal to and help educate that market.
That's all we're trying to do. It's not trying to trick you. This is not a 2020 interview with Barbara Walters where she's asking you the really hard-hitting questions that you have no idea what she's talking about. If there's any point where you say something that you don't want in there, it can be taken out really easily. And I think that that's something that we have to remind people of who get inside their head with this imposter syndrome or this fear of showing up and really just help calm or allay their fears of, you're going to be fine. All we're doing is documenting the things that you are already in expert in. It's how you got here. If we can take those things and we can communicate them to our audience, we'll be in a better position.
Nathan Yerian: And I think it's worth pointing out too, it's not just one isolated person on the team that is a little bit camera shy. This is almost anyone. We work with a lot of companies where the CEO is perfectly fine standing up in front of a room of 500 people and giving an address, but you whip out a camera and he gets a little bit nervous, a little bit awkward. And we've worked with CEOs through this type of content where we just say, hey, you know what, just sit down.
Let's just have a conversation. Pull out paper and they've got all this stuff that they've written down and they're trying to go in a certain direction. It's like, dude, you don't need any of that. Just, let's just talk. You're going to put on the show that we need because you're you. We don't need the fake you that you're trying to script there. What we need is you, the authentic you that knows things.
That's it. And you know what, the first time to your point, sometimes it is a little rough. Sometimes they're still nervous. They're still in their head. They're still, what's the right answer? They're still, I don't deserve to be at this table. But by the second time or the third time or the fourth time, they're loosening up.
They put down the garg. They saw what happened on time one and said, oh, I can make some improvement in time two they did. In time three, they improved a little bit more from there.
By the time it's time four, they're going, you know what, I got this. Let's talk about that thing that we were talking about last time. We've made some big developments since last we spoke. Let's get into that. Let's roll through this because I'm confident in the way that I'm going to sound. I'm confident in your ability to edit what I'm saying. And I'm now ready to have a voice that I actively want to put in the market via whatever medium we're doing. I'm confident. I no longer have imposter syndrome. I'm ready because I have proof. I have building blocks that show me that I deserve to be here, that I have something to say, that I am the expert that other people should listen to.
And now I'm ready to step into that role and be that expert. So one of the things that we've seen be successful, obviously teams are like, oh, where do we start? And how do we actually make this happen? You need to start small and you need to start with the right people. So you can't go in and be like, hey, we got
Speaker 3: this new program and there's so many things that we have to do and so much time and so many people.
Nathan Yerian: That's going to turn people off. Make it small, build confidence the way we talked about. Also, when you're starting, start with someone who is a leader in the company because a leader in the company that's doing it can lead other people to do it as well. The goal is, how do we get more than one person? Not one person, but if you have somebody nailing it, they can start to include other people in that exercise or in that program that you're developing. So if you're starting a program, don't start with the lowest person on the totem pole because nobody's going to follow the intern, but they will follow a leader that has a voice that they saw maybe wasn't 100% confident on day one and now is confident, is leading, has a authoritative voice and is being successful. That person also has the opportunity to bring in those other people for little bits of information from time to time.
They have the opportunity to calm the team down, to say, hey, man, I was nervous too, but you know what? I went and did it and here's what I'm doing. It's great.
Why don't you come and try it? No big deal. If it doesn't work out and we don't have a single thing that we could use from you, just what? No harm, no foul. We use nothing. It doesn't matter.
We can record the whole session and throw it away. It doesn't matter. What matters is if you have a leader, they can bring other people into it and set an example for what the company starts to expect of people in an expert role in the company. Also getting leadership involved starts to set the tone for what that conversation needs to be.
The point of view from the company, the direction and tone of the content in general. There's an example. It's not just that, hey, this person is doing it. It's this person's doing it. Here's what they're saying. Here's how they're saying it.
Here's the points that they're making. As an expert, I can see that and I can model it and now lightens up some of the dark areas of what I wasn't sure about. If you can make me sure, I now start to become more confident.
I see what they're talking about. I might even know more than they do in that particular arena. I might wanna step in and correct something or expand on something, right? So getting leadership involved, setting the tone for what that is. It's a great example of how it should be done, but it's also a great example of how content could be delivered or the topics that you would be covering in those particular sessions.
Adam Marquardt: And what you're saying is definitely spot on. We've seen this with our clients who do start with the leadership side of things and the way that it trickles down. Because when it starts from the top, it really gives an initiative to the people that are looking up to leadership or following leadership and they're able to look at that and say, hey, look, that's the standard of what is expected from us, of what we're moving towards, of how we're communicating. And it really not only gives confidence to the rest of the team, but it also gives direction and gives guidance. And it's a really powerful thing because when you see leadership involved, it makes it not so intimidating and it gives you the ability to talk to whoever that leader is and ask for guidance.
And then if your chance arises where you're gonna be the one that is asked to be on camera or talk about a certain subject, you know the angle or the direction that the company is going on that subject or on that topic, which can really help expand the initiative of the company.
Nathan Yerian: We talked to a lot of different organizations that have a lot of different reasons why they're not gonna do content. And I think the more we can kind of expose some of those reasons as not necessarily the right thing to do and give instruction and guidance of how would we possibly overcome that?
I think that's the goal of these conversations. And I think, you know, what I've seen and what you've seen repeatedly from the clients that we work with is this imposter syndrome coming in. And I can't think of a single example of someone that we started with that had imposter syndrome, had all of the symptoms and in some cases even literally said, man, I feel like I have imposter syndrome. There hasn't been a single instance where we haven't been able to lead them through that and give them a different perspective and allow them to step into their own expertise and really become the expert they are outwardly.
Anyone can do that. We're not magic. We're not sprinkling with fairy dust and letting them fly. We're just giving them the stage to develop confidence in their expertise and we're giving them the ability to say what they need to say well. Any marketing team can do that. Any communications team can do that.
If they have the right tools, the right approach and hopefully we gave some guidance, some help to their path to success with their subject matter experts and their leadership team.
Adam Marquardt: So next time somebody asks you to be on camera, take the step forward and try it and worst case scenario, they edit it out. But as you're gonna be able to go on and hone that talent, you're going to get better. Your content's going to get better and it's gonna have a positive impact. Baby steps to confidence is the solution. The solution.
Okay. So in the last episode, we talked about, I think the primary reason why companies don't really involve their team in creating content the way that they should is really the fear of, Hey, if we build up these stars that are going to leave potentially, and I think we did a pretty good job of kind of debunking that myth and gave marketing teams and executive teams a different way to approach that, that gets them over that hump and hopefully into a better space. But there's, there's another reason that companies don't create the content they probably should. And it's not that the company doesn't want to. It's that the knowledge leaders within the company aren't really wanting to. They're not wanting to have the spotlight shown on them. And I think if we can kind of give them a different perspective, a different path forward and maybe a starting point of how you might get those people from, no, not me.
I'm not the guy to, sure, I'll, I'll, I'll try that once. I think that's going to be a big win for a lot of the companies that we work with and a lot of people in marketing departments that might listen to this. Yeah.
Adam Marquardt: I think there's this big apprehension. Whenever people mentioned cameras and equipment and lights, they, they feel like they're going to be put on the spotlight and their ignorance is going to be highlighted and that they're not going to be able to complete it. And they're not going to be knowing what to say or what to do. We hear all the time of like these experts, these people who deal with this topic or this product or this service on a daily basis who've come up and they're like, I don't know what I'm going to say.
I don't know what I'm going to do. And we're always reassuring them that we're not going to ask you anything or you're not going to talk about anything that you don't already know. But I would say for 75% or more of people that we end up having on camera that have not done it before their very first time, there's a lot of fear or anxiety or imposter syndrome that they're not the right person. They're not going to be able to do it. And they're not going to look or sound intelligent on camera.
Nathan Yerian: Imposter syndrome is exactly what it is. And there's this reluctancy of being the guy or the girl that has the answer. Because what if I don't get it 100% right? So there's this tendency to say, oh, well, you know, I'm not going to be good on camera, you know, let this person do it or that person do it. There's this passing of the buck that happens when any executive thought leader, whoever it's going to be, starts to have this imposter syndrome where they're like, oh, they don't want to hear from me. Someone else is more qualified.
And I think two things we need to do is really define imposter syndrome. So everybody's working from the same knowledge bank there. But also, I think there's a realization that people need to have that if the company hires you and trusts you to be that expert, why would you not be an expert that's qualified to communicate that expertise to someone else?
And I think that's the big hold up. If I truly am an imposter and I know nothing, the big question is, why is the company paying you? If you know nothing, why is the company paying you?
Those people do know something. It's about how do we get them comfortable and how do we get them to understand that they know something that has value that's worth communicating? And I think those are the two things that we need to really break down is what are we dealing with and how do we get over that?
Adam Marquardt: So you mentioned kind of leveling the playing field and defining what imposter syndrome is. So we're kind of working from the same playbook here. And I think it's important to recognize that imposter syndrome is basically not feeling like you deserve a seat at the table, even though you do. And it's probably the most ironic aspect of this syndrome is that as you get older and as you gain more expertise, that is where you really develop the nuances of these situations.
And you can really identify like in this situation, we do this and in this situation, we do this and real expertise is depth in the subject or depth in the matter. And it's not just scratching the surface level. Anybody can talk surface level about certain topics, but there will become a point where your expertise runs out, right? But the longer you do something, the more experience, the more scenarios you come in contact with, you're going to be able to talk about that at a deeper level, which is where your value is going to come in and really shine. Sure.
Nathan Yerian: A novice is going to step up to the plate and be like, Oh, I know the answer. Here it is. And you know what? People are going to look at that person with less experience on camera and be like, Oh, well, they know exactly what they're talking about. Whereas the person with real experience that has been to the show a number of times that has seen, as you stated, the nuances of what might be true in this case.
What are the different possible outcomes? They're not going to come to the table and be like, there's only one way. They're going to come to the table and know that there's multiple ways. And when they state a certain way, sometimes there's a fear of, well, someone else could contradict this or someone else could bring up this fringe case or someone else could show and prove that I'm not right. So there's this fear of being exposed for being wrong.
Even if you're not actually wrong, they're putting a caveat to a scenario that would potentially make you wrong. In that one instance, that comes from having a deep understanding of a subject matter. You understand that nuance. You understand the potential of what could happen in a thousand different scenarios. And it starts to make you feel like, Oh, I better not say it this way or that way. Cause I could be viewed as, even though I'm not, I could be viewed as wrong. And that, that perception that someone might think I'm wrong.
I feel like I may not be qualified enough here to answer your question because others could pick it apart and maybe I won't look as smart as I think I might be. So I'll just opt out. I choose not to do that. I'm not your guy. Someone else is more qualified and someone else needs to do this.
This isn't for me. So I think the reality is, you know, a lot of people within the company, whether you're on the marketing team or whether you're one of the subject matter experts, there's this idea that not creating content, not having a voice, not being seen, not being heard has no cost. We can just go on business as usual. Marketing continues to write things in a vacuum, pump out ads, manage our trade shows, and our experts continue to do their daily jobs and there's no harm, no foul, but that's not exactly true. There is harm in the absence of an expert voice from almost any company. There's harm that's being caused. There's an opportunity cost for that voice not existing in the ecosystem for their clients, their potential clients, their future employees, their investors.
That void has a cost to it. It forces marketing to choose a vanilla messaging. So they go in, they don't have a definitive voice in the market. They don't have an expert that's coming out and saying, here's what's happening here. They hear things. They get some knowledge and then they have to repeat that.
Well, guess what? Marketing is not the expert. They can't stand up and take a definitive stand on anything that they're saying because they don't know. They need experts to do that. So what happens when there's that lack of expertise, that lack of expert voice? It starts to sound like just some industry fluff.
It's just something the company has said many times. It starts to sound like the competition. If you don't want to sound like the competition, you need someone that's willing to stand up and say things differently. And usually that's going to be a leader of some type within the company or a subject matter expert within the company that actually has a position on what's happening in that industry or that customer environment.
Adam Marquardt: I think the impacts really go beyond just marketing, which is probably one of the easiest places that you would see the impact. I think that it also goes into sales and the sales team. If you're not saying things before a buying trigger, if you're not influencing the buying decision, when they come to you, you're going to have to then parade around the expert and share that insight, share that knowledge.
And this is the one and only time they've ever heard of that. You're going to have to take them through the whole sale cycle from start to finish, and it's going to be longer because they have no prior education. And I think that there is a big problem when you look at it like that of, okay, we're going to start off now and we're going to tell them everything that we can versus if you dripped out content in slow bite-sized chunks that soften the ground. So when they got to sales, they said, Hey, look, I know you guys do this. I know you communicate this way. I know you handle, you know, lead times like this.
I know that your differences in XYZ of product, we want to see this very specific application for us. Well, now it becomes more consultative than it does. We have to tell you everything about it in one big, overwhelming dump of information. So you're really doing the sales team also a disservice or an injustice by not giving the information to the audience, the prospective customer or the potential audience in advance and letting them little by little build that belief. You're really just trying to basically force it down their throat as much as they can over the whatever your sales cycle is and hope that at the end of the day, they remember it all and they remember the key points. So that way they come to you and they say, Hey, I've already heard what your experts have to say. It's really helped me understand and shape the perception or the belief about your company. Now we can really just focus on the things that are going to be vital or important to us being successful in this relationship and it can really shorten the lead time or allow it to be more prescriptive for the sales team to be able to say, Hey, look, here's exactly what we can do for you. Cause you already know the baseline. You already have the foundation of who we are and what we do and how we approach our work.
Let me tell you what it would look like exactly for you. And I think if you can soften the ground early enough in the buying process or even before a buying trigger, you really have an advantage over the competition because now you've elevated yourself, you've differentiated yourself and you've educated this prospect before they're ready to buy. So when they come to you, it's easier.
Nathan Yerian: So if they're not viewing your team as the experts in that space, who are they viewing as the expert? It's going to be research firms, analysts, the competitors. It's going to be someone that is not from your team. So all of a sudden you're robbing your opportunity to be viewed as an expert because you've outsourced that to some other group that honestly probably doesn't have as much expertise as your team does. So the big question, you have a group of experts. They know things.
They should be sharing things. They're reluctant. They have imposter syndrome. They don't believe that they deserve a seat at the table. What you can't do is walk right in and be like, well, just toss that to the wind, get up here, belly up to the table and start telling me what it is that that's not going to work because they don't feel like they should be there. You have to create an environment that gives them hints and clues that being there is the right thing to do, that they do have answers that matter. They do have perspectives that matter.
They do have expertise that could and should be shared with their market. And you can't do it in one big bang. It has to be some sort of baby step to give them the building blocks of confidence. and then someday they'll be able to run. But you can't start out running. You gotta start out crawling.
Adam Marquardt: So if somebody's watching right now and you're talking about these baby steps to be able to kind of introduce them and soften the ground, where would someone start with that? Whether that's the executive team trying to kick off this initiative, whether that's the marketing team trying to lead this initiative, how do you introduce your baby step, these experts into building their confidence? Because their confidence is gonna come with more at bats.
It's not gonna just show up on day one. But if you can ease them into the process, it should help alleviate some of those nerves or some of that imposter syndrome that we've been talking about.
Nathan Yerian: Yeah, so the reality is they know the subject matter. That's not the issue. Many times what the issue is is cameras, lights, microphones, things that are awkward to them in their daily lives, it starts to feel very permanent. It starts to feel, oh, if I say this, then they're gonna parade that out there in front of everyone and that might not be right. So you have to de-risk that situation for them.
You have to let them know we're going to have lights, we're gonna have cameras, we're gonna have microphones, we're gonna have things to record you saying these things. But let's make it a more natural environment. Let's not make it a true or false session. Let's make it a discussion.
Let's make it feel light. Let's let them know we might talk to you for 30 minutes. We're gonna create two 30-second posts, maybe. Let's just talk about what's happening.
We need you to have the same conversation that you would have at a trade show with a colleague. What's happening? I haven't seen you in five years. What's going on with your role? What's going on with your company? What new exciting stuff are you working on?
What customer problems are you currently solving? How is that going? Why is it going well?
Why is it going poorly? You know all of these things. They're surface level, but the depth that you could choose to go on in any of these areas is within your control. You decide where you go with the answers. All we're doing is having a conversation. And when an expert has a conversation, they're going to show their expertise in their answers. They're going to reveal the right information at the right time to carry on a conversation. That's the way conversations work. If you were going to have a conversation with an expert and they didn't have any of the answers, you would soon figure out the next question isn't worth asking.
This guy doesn't know shit. So the key is how do you de-risk that situation, get them comfortable knowing we're not looking for the square root of 4,652. They don't know the answer to that. You're asking basic questions that are teeing them up to say something within their expertise. You're not grilling them. You're not quizzing them. You're not trying to gotcha. You're trying to give them the space to display expertise and the one extra thing that you can add to that is you always have the gift of edit. Oh, they said the wrong thing or they don't like the way they said something or whatever it is.
Guess what? It never has to be used. It can be cut. That's the brilliant thing with video. This isn't live. We can cut anything. We could say the most ridiculous thing in the world right now. And guess what?
Adam Marquardt: The audience would never hear it. So you actually took one of the things I was going to say and really hit on it well because I think that that is one of the things that when we go to a shoot that we constantly are reminding people, hey, it doesn't have to be perfect. If you need to say that again, if you need to say that a different way, if you want to correct yourself mid sentence, stop and start over. That is the gift of editing. That is the gift of what we are able to do.
We're not putting you on a stage for a live Q and A panel that's live streamed to a million people, right? Like what you say can be edited. It can be cut out. It can be strung together in a different way.
You just have to understand that you have the information and all you have to do is get it out of your head. And I think that one of the things that you said and we touched on a little bit earlier is you might sit them down for 30 minutes and get two short form videos out of that. And that's great. In the beginning, it might look like that. In the beginning, it might be really rough, but as time goes on, you're going to see that same 30 minute session might produce four or five or six, right? The more comfortable they get, the more confidence they develop, the more that they understand what is being asked of them. And hey, you know what?
This actually isn't so bad. I know everything that you're asking me because you're not trying to trick me. You're not trying to stump me. You're trying to take the things that are locked away in my expert brain and pull them out and share it with the world so that we as a team can grow the organization and who we appeal to and help educate that market.
That's all we're trying to do. It's not trying to trick you. This is not a 2020 interview with Barbara Walters where she's asking you the really hard-hitting questions that you have no idea what she's talking about. If there's any point where you say something that you don't want in there, it can be taken out really easily. And I think that that's something that we have to remind people of who get inside their head with this imposter syndrome or this fear of showing up and really just help calm or allay their fears of, you're going to be fine. All we're doing is documenting the things that you are already in expert in. It's how you got here. If we can take those things and we can communicate them to our audience, we'll be in a better position.
Nathan Yerian: And I think it's worth pointing out too, it's not just one isolated person on the team that is a little bit camera shy. This is almost anyone. We work with a lot of companies where the CEO is perfectly fine standing up in front of a room of 500 people and giving an address, but you whip out a camera and he gets a little bit nervous, a little bit awkward. And we've worked with CEOs through this type of content where we just say, hey, you know what, just sit down.
Let's just have a conversation. Pull out paper and they've got all this stuff that they've written down and they're trying to go in a certain direction. It's like, dude, you don't need any of that. Just, let's just talk. You're going to put on the show that we need because you're you. We don't need the fake you that you're trying to script there. What we need is you, the authentic you that knows things.
That's it. And you know what, the first time to your point, sometimes it is a little rough. Sometimes they're still nervous. They're still in their head. They're still, what's the right answer? They're still, I don't deserve to be at this table. But by the second time or the third time or the fourth time, they're loosening up.
They put down the garg. They saw what happened on time one and said, oh, I can make some improvement in time two they did. In time three, they improved a little bit more from there.
By the time it's time four, they're going, you know what, I got this. Let's talk about that thing that we were talking about last time. We've made some big developments since last we spoke. Let's get into that. Let's roll through this because I'm confident in the way that I'm going to sound. I'm confident in your ability to edit what I'm saying. And I'm now ready to have a voice that I actively want to put in the market via whatever medium we're doing. I'm confident. I no longer have imposter syndrome. I'm ready because I have proof. I have building blocks that show me that I deserve to be here, that I have something to say, that I am the expert that other people should listen to.
And now I'm ready to step into that role and be that expert. So one of the things that we've seen be successful, obviously teams are like, oh, where do we start? And how do we actually make this happen? You need to start small and you need to start with the right people. So you can't go in and be like, hey, we got
Speaker 3: this new program and there's so many things that we have to do and so much time and so many people.
Nathan Yerian: That's going to turn people off. Make it small, build confidence the way we talked about. Also, when you're starting, start with someone who is a leader in the company because a leader in the company that's doing it can lead other people to do it as well. The goal is, how do we get more than one person? Not one person, but if you have somebody nailing it, they can start to include other people in that exercise or in that program that you're developing. So if you're starting a program, don't start with the lowest person on the totem pole because nobody's going to follow the intern, but they will follow a leader that has a voice that they saw maybe wasn't 100% confident on day one and now is confident, is leading, has a authoritative voice and is being successful. That person also has the opportunity to bring in those other people for little bits of information from time to time.
They have the opportunity to calm the team down, to say, hey, man, I was nervous too, but you know what? I went and did it and here's what I'm doing. It's great.
Why don't you come and try it? No big deal. If it doesn't work out and we don't have a single thing that we could use from you, just what? No harm, no foul. We use nothing. It doesn't matter.
We can record the whole session and throw it away. It doesn't matter. What matters is if you have a leader, they can bring other people into it and set an example for what the company starts to expect of people in an expert role in the company. Also getting leadership involved starts to set the tone for what that conversation needs to be.
The point of view from the company, the direction and tone of the content in general. There's an example. It's not just that, hey, this person is doing it. It's this person's doing it. Here's what they're saying. Here's how they're saying it.
Here's the points that they're making. As an expert, I can see that and I can model it and now lightens up some of the dark areas of what I wasn't sure about. If you can make me sure, I now start to become more confident.
I see what they're talking about. I might even know more than they do in that particular arena. I might wanna step in and correct something or expand on something, right? So getting leadership involved, setting the tone for what that is. It's a great example of how it should be done, but it's also a great example of how content could be delivered or the topics that you would be covering in those particular sessions.
Adam Marquardt: And what you're saying is definitely spot on. We've seen this with our clients who do start with the leadership side of things and the way that it trickles down. Because when it starts from the top, it really gives an initiative to the people that are looking up to leadership or following leadership and they're able to look at that and say, hey, look, that's the standard of what is expected from us, of what we're moving towards, of how we're communicating. And it really not only gives confidence to the rest of the team, but it also gives direction and gives guidance. And it's a really powerful thing because when you see leadership involved, it makes it not so intimidating and it gives you the ability to talk to whoever that leader is and ask for guidance.
And then if your chance arises where you're gonna be the one that is asked to be on camera or talk about a certain subject, you know the angle or the direction that the company is going on that subject or on that topic, which can really help expand the initiative of the company.
Nathan Yerian: We talked to a lot of different organizations that have a lot of different reasons why they're not gonna do content. And I think the more we can kind of expose some of those reasons as not necessarily the right thing to do and give instruction and guidance of how would we possibly overcome that?
I think that's the goal of these conversations. And I think, you know, what I've seen and what you've seen repeatedly from the clients that we work with is this imposter syndrome coming in. And I can't think of a single example of someone that we started with that had imposter syndrome, had all of the symptoms and in some cases even literally said, man, I feel like I have imposter syndrome. There hasn't been a single instance where we haven't been able to lead them through that and give them a different perspective and allow them to step into their own expertise and really become the expert they are outwardly.
Anyone can do that. We're not magic. We're not sprinkling with fairy dust and letting them fly. We're just giving them the stage to develop confidence in their expertise and we're giving them the ability to say what they need to say well. Any marketing team can do that. Any communications team can do that.
If they have the right tools, the right approach and hopefully we gave some guidance, some help to their path to success with their subject matter experts and their leadership team.
Adam Marquardt: So next time somebody asks you to be on camera, take the step forward and try it and worst case scenario, they edit it out. But as you're gonna be able to go on and hone that talent, you're going to get better. Your content's going to get better and it's gonna have a positive impact. Baby steps to confidence is the solution. The solution.
