1099 – Position Yourself For Success: Tom talks Invisible Expert

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

🎯 Core Idea
Being skilled or knowledgeable isn’t enough—you must actively position yourself so people see you as the expert.
Otherwise, you remain an “invisible expert.”
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🔑 Key Strategies to Become Visible
1. 🎙️ Podcast Guesting
• Appear on other people’s podcasts.
• Massive reach potential (possibly millions of listeners in ~90 days).
• Fastest way to get exposure in your niche.
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2. 🎧 Host Your Own Podcast
• Positions you as the authority.
• Powerful tactic:
o Interview admins of Facebook groups
o They promote your episode to their audiences (hundreds → tens of thousands)
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3. 📰 “Front Cover” Positioning
• At events, aim to:
o Be featured prominently (brochures, promotions)
• Use these placements in:
o Your website
o Future marketing materials
• Perception matters as much as reality.
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4. 📺 TV & 📻 Radio Appearances
• High credibility boosters.
• Post-COVID advantage:
o Remote interviews make this easier and cheaper.
• Display logos of media outlets on your site for authority.
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5. 🤖 Get “Cited” Online (Especially in AI)
• Your website/content should:
o Be discoverable
o Be referenced by AI tools and search engines
• This is becoming increasingly important for visibility.
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6. 🎤 Summits & Speaking Engagements
• Be strategic about participation:
o Negotiate top positioning
o Offer a bonus (e.g., free masterclass) to stand out
• Don’t be afraid to:
o Walk away if positioning is weak
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7. 🚀 Pre-Event Positioning Trick
• Offer a preview session before your main talk:
o No selling—just deliver value
• Result:
o Audience members promote you for you (“You have to see this person!”)
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⚠️ Important Reality Check
• Many people:
o Work hard to become experts
o But fail to market themselves
• Visibility is a deliberate strategy, not luck.
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💡 Bottom Line
You must engineer your visibility—through media, positioning, and strategic exposure—so people recognize your expertise.

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Episode 1099 – Invisible Expert
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1099. Hey, what do you think about that 1099? One more. We get 1100. Anyway, today's episode is called The Invisible Expert. We want to show you how to get better positioning for yourself so that more people know about your expertise. Hope you missed episode 198. That was a brainstorming. Plus, I threw in another cool AI hack, so check that out 1098. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to episode number, pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the latest. And check out my mentor program at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. And guess what? If you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school. IMTCVA.org, the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And you can use it yourself for extra training or gift it to somebody and it will be one of the best legacy gifts you could ever give someone, because they'd have a highly in demand skill. And as little as six months. So check that out. And it's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on higher education in Virginia. But it's you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning. All right. Let's get into today's topic. The invisible experts. You do not want to be the invisible expert like the old movie The Invisible Man. Okay. No, you don't want that. So let's say you are an expert, or at least you're highly knowledgeable and and you work in a particular topic area.
[00:02:15] What we're talking about here is positioning you so that more people know and see you as the expert that you are, or that the content person and the highly knowledgeable person that you are. We don't want people to go and not know about you. We're going to tell you about what to do about it. That's what I'm going to concentrate on in this episode. I'm going to give you a bunch of things here that you can do to improve that situation. One is podcast guesting. That's where your guest on other people's podcasts. And if you diligently pursued this, you could probably be in front of a million people in the next 90 days. See, because there's just so many podcasts out there on all different kinds of topics. So that's guesting. Now the opposite of that is hosting. If you're willing to to take the effort to make a podcast of your own, then you're perceived as the expert. And this technique actually got me invited to the White House where I would. And this is gold here, folks. If you have a podcast, you interview the admins of Facebook groups and make them look great on your interview. And then they put your podcast in front of their thousands of members. Some of them have tens of thousands of members. Some of them have only a couple hundred. But on any topic you can imagine, there's a Facebook group out there and an admin that will probably be on your show.
[00:03:47] So that's a really golden tip right there. All right. Next thing is front cover positioning. If you are at any kind of conference where you're part of the program, one thing I always have done for many, many years is I jockeyed for front cover positioning. Now in the early days that was a big deal. Now I get it naturally now. But in the early days I didn't. But what I did was I would do anything I could to have a really cool title to my program or, or I would do extra things for the promoter, like create a video for them. And I would want to be on the front cover of their brochure for the event. And then I would collect all the extra ones, and then I would use them in my promo for future engagements, speaking engagements. So try to get on the front cover. And even if you don't do a lot of speaking, get on the front cover and still use them. You can take pics or screen captures, not screen captures, but you can take pictures of them. Put them in your promo materials on your website that you appear to be the big honcho at the event, and whether you are or not is insignificant. It's the fact that you're on the front cover. Okay, so so this has worked just beautifully for me over many, many years. Okay. Radio and TV appearances.
[00:05:23] You know, if there's something, there's a few good things that came from Covid. All right. Not too many, but this is one of them. It used to be to make a TV appearance. I would have to go to New York, which I hate. I do not want to set foot in that place. It's expensive. It cost me a thousand bucks to do a three minute interview. Right? But since Covid, it just got commonplace to do remote interviews now so you can get on TV remotely because, I mean, TV is great and a lot of high credibility, but it's just a pain in the butt to go to the studio. Okay, I got to tell you, even the small studios, then they don't. Small studios don't have makeup people. And, uh. Oh, it's just, you know. It's just wonderful that you can do these remotely now. Set up a nice webcam and a nice background. I mean, even some of the biggest honchos have crap. I mean, they're doing them from hotel rooms and they're doing them from their house and their dogs are barking and it's just commonplace nowadays. So but you still want to get on TV appearances. And of course, radio is similar to podcasting, except radio has more exacting time frames because of commercials, right? Podcasting is, you know, more laissez faire. All right. Now when you're on these things, you can put the logos of them on your website that increases your credibility. And speaking of websites, you have to start paying attention now to getting your website cited.
[00:07:07] And that's, I guess it's a kind of a combo word here. C I t e d or S I g h t e d cited. You want to be found in AI and there are certain things you got to do. I'll probably do an episode on that for you. And summits. You may have seen me on a summit where I'm on other people's summits, and I have my own summits too. Usually I'll partner with somebody to run the summit. But this way, and even on the summits that I'm on, I mean, I got kind of a little argument with one guy because he wouldn't put me at the head honcho position that I wanted. And so I said, I ain't coming then. I mean, and they get a lot off of me. I mean, I've sent tens of thousands of, of subscribers to these places. So if they don't want to play my ball, you know, heck with them. I don't need them. But if I'm on a summit, I say, look, I got to have a master class of mine given away as a bonus just for signing up. That positions me as something special, and I have to be the number one position on the program. And if you don't like that, okay, take a hike. I don't care. I'm already really up there because I hold my ground on these kinds of things. Same thing in speaking engagements. Now you can't do it.
[00:08:34] Maybe when you're first starting. But you got to try. For these things and keep pushing yourself where you're seen in the best light and speaking engagements. I would, uh, if people had to fly in from everywhere the night before, I said, I must do a preview seminar for the people that flew in and, and I wow them with no selling. And then the next day they're telling everybody, oh, man, you got to watch this guy. You know, when he's on because he was great last night. Blah blah blah. Right. And I'm not trying to say, okay, I'm Mr. Great, but I position myself to look like Mr. Green. As for sure. And then you got to come through. You can't, you know, you can't be pitiful. And, you know, there's been so many people like that. They're great hipsters, but then they suck. I'm talking about you as an expert or a great speaker and so forth. How to make sure everybody knows about it. All right. So that's some tips that you you really need to think about. How am I positioning myself? I'm killing myself to be great at what I do, but do people know about it? And what can I do to make sure they do know about it? So that's my little story for today. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. And my school at IMTCVA.org and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.