A few hours ago, I was standing at the back of Ballroom A in the Palm Beach Convention Center.
Seated in the ballroom were a few hundred people, watching the breakout session of a larger conference that’s been going on since yesterday.
Up on stage, two doctors were talking about continuous glucose monitors.
Suddenly, a girl working for the conference picked me out of the crowd at the back. She walked up to me, leaned into me, and whispered, “Are you John?”
“Why yes,” I said. “Yes, I am in fact John.”
“Great,” she said. “I’ve been trying to call you. We’re gonna need you near the stage so we can just transition smoothly. As they finish up, they’ll walk off the stage, and you can go up.”
I was set to host the next breakout session. At a health conference. Talking about health.
I and another cohost got up on stage, talked for 15 minutes, then fielded questions, then called it a day.
People applauded.
The other guy and I walked off stage. As I tried to snake my way to the door, a few people from the audience called over to me. “Thanks so much for that.” “Great info.”
That’s quite odd when you think about it.
My credentials for speaking at a health conference are very near zero.
I didn’t study anything related to health. The closest I ever came to working in a health field was writing sales copy for supplement companies.
And yet, there I was on stage, at a health conference, mixing and mingling with medical doctors and CEOs of health startups.
The only thing that set me above total zero for credentials to speak at this conference, the only thing that separated me from the thousand or so people in the audience and gave me a place on the stage, is that I write.
For the past year, along with this daily newsletter about marketing, I’ve been writing a weekly newsletter about health.
In the process, I have learned a ton, and I have discovered lots of worthwhile things to share.
Writing a newsletter is how I could get on stage today and pretty much riff for 30 minutes while sounding authoritative and even reasonably smart.
Writing is also how I got invited in the first place to appear on stage at this conference.
All that’s to say, if you have zero expertise in a field, but you would like to develop expertise, then start writing.
And if you already have expertise but not enough people know it, then start writing.
A weekly email newsletter is good.
A daily email newsletter is better.
And if your objection is, “Sure, easy for you, but I don’t know exactly what to write or how to write it,” then I have you covered.
I’ve created a quick and easy course all about writing, specifically writing daily emails, in a way that entertains and informs your audience, while secretly building up your perceived and actual expertise. For more info on that: