I meet so many amazing entrepreneurs with stories I want to see them share with the world…but when we start talking about publicity I quickly learn they don’t see themselves as an expert and therefore aren’t comfortable becoming more visible.

You are an expert on your own experience. Yep, it’s really that simple.

I have a client who wants to be seen as an expert on the decrease of African Americans playing professional baseball. This man is black. He played professional baseball. And now he’s a coach.

I was doing a little media training with him ahead of interviews he had with USA Today and ESPN, and I had to remind him that he doesn’t have to be an expert on every stat and study out there about African American poverty or other issues that impact their ability to become an MLB player. All he has to do is be an expert on his own experience.

He grew up in a housing project. But he was drafted into MLB not once – but twice. And now he leads a nonprofit foundation in Atlanta that works with at-risk youth and has an AMAZING 100% high school graduation rate for its members, 95% of whom go to college on baseball scholarships. This is in a school district where the overall graduation rate is a dismal 58%.

Instead of stressing over memorizing every data point out there, I told him to take a deep breath and speak from his heart and from his own experience. He’s an expert because he’s been out there living this situation, not because he sat in a library somewhere and wrote an academic study on the history of race in baseball.

So, as you think about becoming more visible for your work, remember not to try being something you’re not.

All you have to be is an expert on your own experience.

Grab this free exercise I go through with all of my clients to position them like an expert so they can land top-notch PR opportunities!