How to Build Expert Authority & Attract Clients Without Hard Selling with Christine Blosdale
In this episode, Christine Blosdale joins the show to discuss how freelancers, entrepreneurs, and experts can bridge the gap between their competence and public visibility. We explore why traditional methods like hard selling fall flat, how to overcome imposter syndrome, and why building genuine trust and clarity around your offers is the true key to getting paid.
Watch the Episode
Listen to the Episode
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- The Danger of the Hard Sell: Why treating networking and outreach like a “first date where someone jumps straight to a hard pitch” destroys trust, and how to build real, long-term relationships instead.
- Reframing Imposter Syndrome: Why feeling like an imposter often means you’re an overachiever pushing past your comfort zone, and how to shift your focus from yourself to the audience you want to serve.
- The Power of Authenticity: Why raw, transparent, and human connection cuts through the noise of polished AI-generated marketing and wins customer loyalty.
- Pricing Your Expertise: Why dropping your rates to get your foot in the door attracts the wrong clients, and how to charge what your decades of experience are actually worth.
- Where to Focus First: How to ensure your website and offers are crystal clear and ready for eyeballs before spending time and money chasing every social media platform.
Full Interview Transcript
Introduction to Media and Visibility
Al Calder: Christine, I want to thank you for coming on today. I really appreciate you being here.
Christine Blosdale: Thank you. I’m looking forward to it. Our conversation’s gonna be fantastic.
Al Calder: I know it’s gonna be.
Um, I want to start by asking—you’ve got twenty-five years in media. You’ve worked with companies like AOL and Microsoft, and—dating myself a little bit—yes, I know what AOL is, it’s America Online. Um, there’s a few of us left.
Christine Blosdale: Some of us.
Al Calder: You built a career around helping people become more visible from what I understand.
Um, what first got you interested in that connection between expertise and visibility?
Christine Blosdale: You know, it started a long time ago when I was in broadcast journalism. I was very lucky to have interviewed thought leaders, speakers, authors, and people that I thought were very interesting and wanted to bring their stories to my audience in Los Angeles, stuck in traffic as you always are.
And so I would have all the information, and I would do the interview. I don’t want to say I’m not psychic, but I use a lot of my intuition. I would be talking to them and come up with these ideas, saying, “Have you ever thought of…?” If they didn’t write a book and they were a speaker, I would say, “You need to write a book on blah, blah, blah.” Right?
Or it might be somebody who has a book, but I could see that they would do really well with having their own podcast or being a guest on shows. And so I would say this to them, and they would be like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you said that, because I’ve been wanting to do that, right? I just don’t know how to…”
Through all of that, and really making them look as good as possible—because to have them on the show, I would need to elevate their expert authority—they were blown away. They would ask, “Can I hire you to work on my bio? Can you come and look at my website?”
And that’s kind of how it started many years ago. I started doing that, and some of them became clients.
From that, I just love teaching. I always wanted to be a teacher. Back in my day when I was growing up as a kid in LA, we didn’t have business coaches or marketing coaches. We had football coaches and basketball coaches.
A coach was not the same thing as it is today, but I always wanted to be a teacher, I think is what it is. I wanted to teach people, and now I teach my clients ways that they can get seen and get trusted. That is very important.
We seem to try and skip that part as entrepreneurs, but you need to be seen and you need to be trusted in order to get paid, right? In order for somebody to hire you, you have to develop those things. So that’s my skill set.
Um, and I love it. I love my clients. They’re fantastic.
Al Calder: So it developed over time. It just kind of… not fell into it per se, but it seemed like a natural progression to you.
Christine Blosdale: It did. Just like podcasting became a natural progression from doing radio, you know? You do a great show in radio, and it’s—what do they call it? Terrestrial, I think is the word for it. It’s out there and then it’s gone and nobody gets to hear it again.
And a podcast—you know, a great podcast episode. I did one ten, eleven years ago with a master narcissist. Right?
Al Calder: He called himself a master narcissist.
Christine Blosdale: There’s a number of those around these days. I know!
But that show to this day gets so many comments. It’s on YouTube, and it’s not even a video, it’s just like a slideshow because I couldn’t videotape the person. And that show gets so much engagement. And that was like I said, eleven years ago or something.
Al Calder: Wow. And you never know what’ll take off. That’s why podcasting is so fantastic. This show is gonna go down in history!
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Claiming Authority
Now, as you’ve mentioned, you’ve interviewed a lot of people over the years. You’ve worked with entrepreneurs who generally know their stuff, but still struggle to put themselves out there. Not everyone is natural at that, right?
Why is it often easier, do you think, to become good at something than it is to actually claim authority for it?
Christine Blosdale: Because there’s a lot of really gifted, super talented people out there, and I come across them every day in my business. But what happens is we have a bit of imposter syndrome that can affect us.
And all that is, folks, is first of all, if you have it, congratulations, you’re an overachiever, okay? And there’s many overachievers who want to get the highest grade, you want to get A’s on your test, you want to make sure that you do things right.
We’re really worried about what people think of us and what they’re gonna say about us. That’s the human condition. And I think part of that is because way, way back, we didn’t want to get kicked out of the cave because we’d get eaten by a tiger, right? So we wanted to not stand out and we didn’t want to do something wrong.
So that holds back a lot of really creative, amazing, talented people. And so my job is to help you get over that. And how we do that is we focus on your audience.
We focus on your potential clients. If you’re someone who wants to help young people, we focus on them. And if you don’t show up, how are they gonna be missing out?
We take the focus off of you and how you look and what you’re wearing, all that stuff, and we focus it on the people that you want to serve.
Al Calder: That’s tough there, getting to that point, right? I think maybe deep down we know the people we want to serve as you say, but it sometimes takes somebody else to kind of push us in that direction just a little bit.
Christine Blosdale: Yeah, and most people are open to that. They just need the skills, they need the strategies in order to get there. And sometimes they need to be reminded by a person like myself or a mentor who can look from the outside in and say, “Oh my gosh, you have this and you have that, let’s shine a light on that.”
You know, for the longest time in my bio, I did not have my work with America Online. I was like, “Oh, that was years ago, right? That doesn’t matter.”
Listen, working for America Online was crazy, and it was very fast-paced. My editor was on the East Coast, I was on the West Coast, and I had to get my copy—because it was all written columns—in by 6:00 AM my time.
And I also had to go to premieres and screenings. It was a very entertainment-oriented column, right? So I had to be in Hollywood in that whole pit of weirdness.
And I worked my ass off, but also AOL, or America Online, is a very recognizable brand. And I forgot about that for the longest time, and then I started putting it into my bio: that I was at AOL and then Microsoft MSN, they called it. People recognize that.
And so including that into the work that I’ve done, people go, “Oh, I remember AOL! I know that screechy sound and the ‘You’ve got mail’ guy, I remember.”
Al Calder: I was just thinking that as you were saying that!
Christine Blosdale: Yeah, everybody does! It’s a sonic brand, you know? That screech is emblazoned in our brain, I think, at this point.
I think there was a movie where it focused around it too. Was it When Harry Met Sally? Doesn’t that bring that up?
Al Calder: I know, it’s called You’ve Got Mail.
Christine Blosdale: You’ve got mail, yeah.
Al Calder: Yeah. And it’s part of the reason my own journey started to go from freelancing to more of this getting involved in podcasting. That is because ten, twelve years ago when I started, I was so frustrated at not having that guide, that mentor.
There’s plenty of people out there that were putting out these videos, but they were all selling something. Everyone’s gonna sell something, I get that, but the approach was so salesy, you know what I mean? And that’s what I wanted to get away from. So I think there’s a lot of people out there that can benefit from real knowledge, you know?
Building Trust and Avoiding the Hard Sell
I completely understand, and I’ll give you a quick example. I had a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn for a long time. Now I know what LinkedIn is for; I mean, it’s brilliant for networking and collaboration.
It’s not a place to sell stuff. In any of the social media platforms, if you just go and do a hard sell, people are gonna run. It’s like you’re the Titanic and they’re running the other way.
But what I use it for now is when I’m looking to connect with people that I think might even become a client of mine down the road, or I would like to work with them. There’s something interesting about them, so you’re starting a conversation.
I’ll make the connect request, but here’s the thing: I don’t do a connect request and then as soon as they accept, I try and sell them something. I have that happen to me, I know you’ve had that happen to you.
And when it happens, it’s like somebody who doesn’t even want to have a first date, they just want to jump in bed with you right away! And I will block that person, I will delete their… I’m like, “You’re gone, buddy, you know?”
So what I do is after I do that connect request with somebody that I think is gonna be interesting in my life, right, and they accept it, I don’t immediately hit them with the sale. As a matter of fact, I wait a couple days and I send them something along the lines of:
“I would love to get to know more about what you do. I like networking, I like collaboration. I have lots of resources that I can share with people, but if you’re interested in getting to know me and I can get to know you, maybe there can be some mutual…” I can help them in some way. It’s not a sale. It’s a genuine “I do want to get to know what people do.”
And the response is so much better from people. They’re like, “Yeah, let’s jump on a call, I’m curious too. You’re an interesting character, right?” Curiosity! They’re like, “Expert authority coach? What is that?”
And some people don’t. Some people say, “No thank you.” That’s fine, but it’s not a sell.
We don’t want to do that hard sales pitch because it’s not pretty. People don’t like it. I think that’s why a lot of freelancers stumble out of the gate, right? They think they have to do that hard sell.
Whereas what you’re talking about is exactly the right approach: build some relationships, get your feet wet, introduce yourself to people and see where it goes, right? And when you see an opportunity—”Hey, I have something that you might be interested in, this might help you”—then it just doesn’t feel like a sale. It feels like almost like a friend offering you advice or a tool that they can use, right?
Christine Blosdale: Well, and having that conversation—that 15, 20, 30-minute conversation—in that conversation too, you do not sell. The thing is that you need to develop trust with people and authenticity.
And so I will listen to somebody and they’ll say, “Do you have a website?” And I’ll go look at their website, and I’ll go, “Oh my God, this is so… you’re sitting on a gold mine, this is great!”
And they’re like, “Really? Am I?” And I go, “Yeah, this is fantastic!” I get excited for them, but I don’t ever say, “Oh, by the way, you need to sign up for my accelerator program or my momentum program.” No.
I leave them excited and they go, “Wow, that conversation was so good. It gave me ideas. She sparked something in me to consider.” And because I didn’t sell them, I’m in their rolodex as “This is a good one. Right? This is a good one.”
Okay? That is so important, because down the road—it might be six months, it might be six weeks, it might be six days—they’re going to think of you kindly. They’re going to either refer you to somebody that they know or they’re going to go, “You know what, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about, and you’re right, I do want to start a podcast. How do I do that? Can you help me?”
Al Calder: And I think that’s a good one you mentioned there: sometimes it might not even be that person you’re connected with right there and then that leads to a business lead. It could be someone they know.
Christine Blosdale: Exactly. That’s happened a lot, that’s happened many times. Exactly.
Al Calder: So back over to the imposter syndrome idea: when someone who is actually competent, but they still feel like they’re somehow faking it—what would you say to them?
Christine Blosdale: Oh, darling! I’m gonna tell you right now, the hottest commodity that you can have, the most valuable thing that you can convey to people, is trustworthiness, truthfulness, and authenticity.
And authenticity is not being perfect. Authenticity is being you, yourself. It is so refreshing, because we as human beings right now, we are so tired of people lying to us.
Everywhere we look, our government lies to us, the media lies to us. We see it over and over again, and the veil is being lifted—not to get woo-woo, but we are able to discern things now.
We’re able to look at it and go, “That’s… you’re lying. That’s not being truthful. You’re sitting in a Learjet, but it’s AI, and you’re pretending like you’ve made six figures and you’re gonna help me make six figures if I just download this guide.” Come on now! We are becoming very discerning.
So when you come across as being fresh and authentic and real and truthful, then you become somebody that they go, “Okay, this one’s a good one. This one I can at least believe.” Right? And that is gold in business right now. That is gold.
Al Calder: I think how many times you watch videos and some of these productions, they look so smooth, and right away three seconds in you’re like, “Ah, it just doesn’t feel right.” And I think you’re right, there’s so many people right now that just want to watch something authentic, they want to be exposed to something authentic, right?
Christine Blosdale: That’s the most popular channels on TikTok: people that are just people. They’re real, they’re raw. They’re like in their kitchen making dinner for their kids and the kids are in the background screaming and they’re like, “Can you please, I’m filming right now?”
And people love it! They’ll sit there and watch it forever because it’s reality. We all have had that. We’ve all had the kids in the background when we’re trying to do something, yelling.
Al Calder: Kind of the next step from the reality show craze that came in the 2000s, 2010s. It’s like the next step in development for that almost.
Christine Blosdale: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Finding Your Niche and Unique Value Proposition
Al Calder: So for a freelancer who’s still sitting there going, “Who am I to call myself an expert? There are thousands of people better at this than me.” How would you respond to that?
Christine Blosdale: There’s nobody like you. There’s nobody like you. And my job is to find a way to make you stand out, right, with a unique title or unique angle on what you do—your passion, what your passion is, what you do really well.
Sometimes when you just take a different angle with it, you can go really far. The “Expert Authority Coach”—that’s my title, right? And I even trademarked it, okay?
Because when you trademark something, people go, “Oh, they invested time, money, energy. They freaking trademarked that, okay?” So you’re raising their level of expert right, because you did that professionally.
But the Expert Authority Coach is really just a very unique business coach. Now, I could have called myself Christine Blosdale, a business coach, right? There’s a gazillion business coaches out there, right? There’s a whole bunch of them. But that’s not what I’m about.
I’m really about expanding, developing your expert authority, and showcasing it for the world so people know right away I’m not just a business coach. So that’s the thing is that we want to nail you down to a really cool title and niche so that you can stand out.
An example too of that is I’ve had different clients from all different backgrounds. I had one gentleman who wanted to help men who have ADHD in their social skills and just to be a coach for men with ADHD that they can feel comfortable coming to, right?
And so he was like, “You know, what do I… I’m not a therapist, I’m not this, that, and the other. I’m just a guy. I’m just a guy who wants to help other ADHD guys.” And so he was trying to come up with this very fancy, very formal title, and I just said, “You’re the ADHD guy. That’s what you are.”
And he was like, “Yeah, I like it!” And it’s simple, but it’s easy to remember, and it just encompasses who he is. And he’s got a podcast, he’s got all kinds of different things for that.
So knowing somebody and having that conversation with them, I’m able to pluck out those unique qualities. I have another client—I have a lot of psychics for some reason, I have psychics and mediums and clairvoyants.
I have a client, and for the longest time she was going by “PNW Psychic Medium.” That was her website as well. And I was like, “What is PNW?” And she’s like, “Pacific Northwest.”
And I said, “Wait, do you only work with people in the Pacific Northwest?” She goes, “Oh no, no, no! I would love clients all around the world, I would love clients in different parts of the world.”
I said, “Okay, well let’s get rid of that PNW, because that doesn’t make any sense and nobody knows what PNW is.” And so I said, “Let’s just make it really simple. Your name’s Julie, right?” She goes, “Yeah.”
I go, “You want people to remember you and go to your website?” She goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay, here it is: JulieThePsychic.com.”
It’s easy for you to remember. There’s no PNW, there’s no… it’s just direct. It’s super direct, but people will remember it, right? And she loved it. She’s like, “Okay, we’re going with it.”
So sometimes you need somebody from the outside looking in. Inside the jar, we don’t see what’s on the outside of the label, right? So sometimes you need someone outside to help you find your unique angle, which everyone has, they just don’t see it themselves sometimes.
Al Calder: Exactly.
Christine Blosdale: I have a woman that I want to be her coach so badly and help her develop her podcast—she needs a podcast for this! She needs a podcast because this podcast that I see for her, it’s already there, I see it.
It would make an incredible book or book series as well, right? So the podcast, the episodes—you turn them into chapters for this book. It’s a bestseller, I know it is.
And she’s been in the bra-fitting industry for forever. Bras, right? And she does luxury bras and stuff like that, but it’s all about the fitting, because it’s really important to have that proper bra, right?
Well, I said, “You have a gold mine here. Instead of just doing the bra-fitting business—which is time-intensive—you have a podcast, and it’s called Bra Stories. And you ask your guests, who are your clients, and what are their stories about getting their first bra?”
We all have different ones. Me personally, it was the worst day of my life. My grandmother said, “Christine, it’s time to go…” I think we went to Sears or JCPenney or something, I don’t know. She goes, “Christine, it’s time to go get your first bra.”
And I thought it was somebody saying, “Christine, we’re going to have to amputate all of your limbs,” because I threw myself on the floor, I was kicking, I was screaming. It was the world had ended for me, little Christine, about getting my first bra!
Now, you have other stories that are so cute and amazing, and I said, “People would tune in for that kind of story! And then you turn that podcast with those stories into a bestselling book.” But she doesn’t have confidence in herself. She’s like, “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t think I could do that.”
I’m like, “Oh my god, she’s got a great personality as well!” So I can build the boat for you, but you gotta get on… you gotta row it, yeah.
Al Calder: Yeah, oh, you don’t have to row it, you just have to jump in!
Christine Blosdale: Yeah, and it’s such a unique angle, right? But I think maybe some people think it’s too niche, right? There isn’t an audience for this. But there’s an audience for everything out there. There really is.
Half of the population are women. Half of the population are women. I think slightly more women have to get bras. Yeah, exactly.
Overcoming Growth Pains and Pricing Your Services
Al Calder: That’s a great one.
Um, so there’s an interesting paradox here: the more knowledgeable that somebody becomes, the more aware they are of what they don’t know. And do you think expertise itself can actually make imposter syndrome even worse? It’s like you’re awakening that imposter syndrome inside yourself.
Christine Blosdale: Well, people who do suffer from the imposter… there’s levels. It’s kind of like there’s a spectrum, right? And so we all have… I’ve had imposter syndrome hit me many, many years ago.
But the difference is that when I have that happen to me—this was in the beginning of my broadcasting career. I was a producer, I was behind the scenes, I never wanted to be on the microphone, I never wanted to be on stage, right? That type of thing. Behind the scenes, I’m like a private investigator, Sherlock Holmes. I’ll go figure it all out and then I’ll give it to a host, this beautiful package of yumminess.
And then I was asked one day—I had to be the host of a show. I had to go on air in a very busy drive-time show, and I was petrified. I was terrified.
I said, “What if I mess up? What are people gonna say? That I’m stupid,” you know, all kinds of… all the negative stuff, right? All goes through your head. Because we’re putting on the puppy brakes, we’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, this is not…”
And it’s when we’re asked to stretch, it’s when we’re asked to do something that we’re not comfortable with, we haven’t done, and it might bring judgment. So we are immediately on guard for that.
Now, if I allowed all that fear to overtake me and not take that opportunity, I would not have had this very successful, lengthy career being on the air, being on the microphone. I would still be behind the scenes.
So after doing that, and the “On Air” light goes on, and I’m in… I’m like, “This is brand new to me, I’ve never done this, but I’m gonna give it a good go.” And as soon as I started talking, it was like… it was like the heavens opened up and the angels were like, “Oh!” It was so… I said, “Oh my God, this is my zone, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
But if I kept myself from that, I would have kept myself from all of these great experiences. My career would have not taken off the way it did. And also the listeners, the people that I impacted—to this day, I have people say, “Oh my God, I remember listening to you for 15 years, you know, and you brightened my day and you were so funny and you were so…”
You don’t know who you’re impacting really, but you are. So that’s why showing up is so important, even if it’s uncomfortable and even if you have that imposter syndrome.
And the more expert you are, then you need to also have confidence. Confidence, authenticity is important, trustworthiness is important, but confidence is sexy as hell!
And confidence is not ego, it’s not egotistical, and it’s not arrogant. Confidence is saying, “You know what, I’m really good at what I do. Let me do it.”
Al Calder: Yeah, you’re not bragging. You’re just saying, “Hey, I know what I’m talking about.”
Christine Blosdale: There is no bragging. There is no bragging in it. It’s just saying, “I’m really good at what I do. Can I do everything for everybody? No, I don’t want to. But what I do, am I really good at it? Hell yeah.”
Al Calder: Yeah, I like to say too—I mean, sometimes you just have to be a step ahead of the person you’re talking to, right? I mean, you’ve got something valuable to say, you don’t have to have all the answers, but you have some answers that can really help some people up.
Christine Blosdale: And like I said, there is nobody like you. So whatever it is—if you are a business coach or a plumber or heck, an organizer! You know how many people… I need an organizer! Yeah, somebody that can come in and just… just do it. Just do it. I’ll take one of those, right?
Because we’re so busy. I’m so busy that, um, I would love that. I would love somebody to come in and just organize my life here at the house and just make sure everything’s all good. Okay, all good, I will pay you handsomely for that.
And also it takes confidence. I don’t want somebody who goes, “Oh, I’m… I’m okay at organizing, I guess I’m all right. Um… I’m really inexpensive here, I’ll lower my prices.” No!
I want somebody like, “I am so good, I’m so good, I’m going to do videos on it and I’m going to tell the world how amazing my organization skills are, right?” Then I’m going with that person.
It’s the same thing with a heart surgeon. If you have… if you need heart surgery, you’re not going to go with the doctor, the surgeon who’s like, “I’m okay, you know, I’m all right.” No, you want a board-certified… you want like all the credentials, and you want them to be the best heart surgeon you can find, right?
Al Calder: I think that’s a great analysis for freelancers too, because there’s a lot of freelancers out there that say, “I’ll just keep my rates low, I’ll drop my rates and, you know, I’ll get my feet wet.” It doesn’t work that way. What you end up with is clients that you really don’t want to work with.
Christine Blosdale: That’s one of the first things when I bring in a client into my world: the very first thing is I’ll look at their offers. I’ll go to the website—first of all, I’ll go to the website and I’ll just get a hit off of the website immediately and I’ll go, “Oh god, okay, we got it, we gotta work on this.”
But it’s the offer. And then I’ll look at it, and if it’s super confusing too—that’s the other thing, clarity is really important when you’re a freelancer, when you’re a business owner, right?
But I’ll look at it and I’ll go, “Oh my God, you’re spending an hour or two hours with people and you’re only charging this?” And they’re like, “Is that too much?” “Like, oh my God, no! You know, fifty bucks?”
Fifty bucks for… I said, “That’s… now you have to pay taxes out of that, you know? If you’re a full-time freelancer, you’re paying for your own healthcare benefits, you’re paying for everything. And if they paid with a credit card, there’s a fee, there’s a transaction fee.” So you got the transaction fee, you got the… all these things.
And one particular client I was working with—oh my god, she’s here in Australia, and her rates were so low. And I said, “Think about it: also, if an American, if somebody from the US was looking at your fee for your specialty here, they looked at it…”
I said, “It’s not the $50 Australian, it’s like $30 American,” because of the US dollar/Australian dollar difference. I said, “So they’re gonna look at you as, ‘Oh my god, why is she so cheap?’ Right?”
And it all depends upon what you do. Like, it depends on the job that you’re doing. If you’re bringing decades of experience, expertise, and it’s an hour service that you’re providing, but you’re bringing 20, 30 years with you of your knowledge and expertise, and in that one hour you can change somebody’s life or their business, then it’s worth something, right?
Al Calder: Very valuable, yeah.
Christine Blosdale: It’s not an hourly rate. It’s a… don’t go by the minimum wage scale, please don’t. Please don’t.
Mastering Visibility and Making it Easy to Pay
Al Calder: No, that’s… there’s a lot of freelancers that they’re perfectly comfortable with doing the work, but they’re uncomfortable talking about themselves. So why does visibility feel so uncomfortable for so many people, do you think?
Christine Blosdale: It’s that fear of rejection. It’s that fear of what people are gonna say and think. That’s probably the number one thing about how we’re gonna be perceived, right? How we’re gonna be… how people are going to… yeah.
And I think that confidence that you gain is from what I call “time in the saddle,” right? How long you’ve been doing it. If you’re brand new and it’s fresh for you, then you’re gonna feel a little on edge because you haven’t done this, right? You maybe haven’t started billing people or offered a program or a service and a fee.
So you’re just—especially when you’re just starting off, you definitely need somebody in your corner to help guide you. First of all, to make it easier for you and so that you can avoid all the pitfalls and the mistakes that people make when they’re starting their own business, right? So you don’t spend all this time and money and frustration.
Work with somebody that knows how to set that business up and how to create important communication messaging through your website or your social media. That’s really important.
And if you’re just starting out, another great thing is: have a few people that even maybe you can even gift them your service in exchange for a testimonial or a review. Say, “Hey, you know what, I’m just now building up my clients and I’m building up reviews and client testimonials. Can we do a little exchange here? Can I do this for you? And in exchange, could you write—or even better, create a video, a short little video on your phone—just saying what your experience was, how you liked working with me or what I provided for you?”
A lot of people would do that. A lot, especially if it’s something that they need, right? They’re like, “Oh my god, of course!”
And for you at that point on your journey, it’s just as valuable as getting paid, because it’s leading you to something else down the line. That’s money! That’s potential money.
Because it’s one thing for us to tell the world how great we are—”Oh, I can do this and I can do that, blah”—it’s way better when somebody else can say it for you, right? As a client or somebody that you worked with.
Al Calder: So we talked a bit about it earlier—the idea of confidence and whether it’s bragging or not. When you’re trying to build credibility, what’s the difference between self-promotion and simply demonstrating your expertise? How, if someone’s looking at it, do they know if I’m doing too much one way or the other, you know what I mean?
Christine Blosdale: I always… I tell people, we tend to put out content—if it’s on our website, if it’s our bio, if it’s our social media—we tend to just plop it out there. And especially with AI now, we have ChatGPT writing everything for us. Please don’t do that, okay? Because you’re gonna sound like everybody else.
I use AI—I use AI a lot to help me. It helps enhance who I am; it doesn’t replace who I am. But what really helps is that when you have something written—let’s say it’s a description of your services or your bio, like a brief biography of you—read it out loud.
Like print it up, whatever, or sit there in front of your computer and read it out loud. And even better, record it. Then listen to it. Don’t watch it so much—don’t watch a video of you talking about your bio, ’cause that’d be weird—but actually just play the video if you want after your recording and just listen.
And you’re gonna hear if it feels good, if it hits, if it lands with somebody. And you’ll also hear if it sounds a little off-putting or too much, right?
People don’t need to know where you went to high school, or that you married your high school sweetheart. I mean, that’s nice unless you’re like a relationship coach, right? Unless it’s something that’s pertinent to your business. If it fits in the mold, yeah, for sure, exactly.
So I think that’s a really important thing to actually listen to it and get a feeling for what you’re putting out there, what your messaging is. That’s very, very powerful.
I do the same thing with my books. I will create the book and then I will print the manuscript and I will read it out loud. And man, as soon as you read it out loud, you go, “Oh, that sentence sucked! Okay, let’s get rid of that, right?”
Al Calder: Yeah, it really does sound different when you read it out loud than just reading it on paper. I mean, you can read it five times and then to say it out loud, it sounds totally different.
Christine Blosdale: Yeah, 100 percent. Makes a big difference.
Turning Content and Expertise into Books
Al Calder: So let’s suppose I’m a freelance writer or designer, developer, consultant, whatever. How do they start becoming more visible without suddenly turning themselves into this big online personality? Because a lot of people, they don’t want that, right? They do want to be visible, they just don’t want to be the next big thing.
Christine Blosdale: There’s so many things that we can do now that are free. I mean, you know, I like to say: find those things that you can do that can raise your expert authority that you really love doing. Don’t do stuff that you hate, right? Okay?
So, I love publishing books. I love creating books. I create books on podcasting, on being a podcast guest, on social media, on developing your expert authority—that’s my last book that I did, right? So, but I hate writing. I hate sitting there in front of a blank Word doc, like it makes me creepy-out. I hate that!
But I’m a talker and I’m a speaker, as you can tell. And so I can take my webinars, my workshops, my master classes that I teach—and they’re all video-recorded—so I can take those recordings… and don’t do a transcript, ’cause that would be boring to read, but I can take that content and turn it into chapters for a book, right?
My interview with the narcissist that I did so long ago—I took that, that was 11, 12 years ago—and I just recently, just this year, created a book called The Interview with the Narcissist. And it’s a little tiny book, and it’s told from the narcissist’s perspective, right? And I just did that as a passion project, it has nothing to do with my business, I just was like, “This is fun, this is cool.”
And so I created the book, and the audiobook is probably the best part of it because it’s done through the narcissist’s perspective, so the narcissist is speaking to you in your car or wherever you’re listening to your audiobook. So, but I love that. I love that whole feeling.
That is going to give me the juice, like I get excited about it. And then there’s always the challenge of making it a bestseller, right? So, but the more that I do that and I’m having fun with it, then the more that builds your expert authority.
How many books have I published? Seven. How many of them have become bestsellers? Five. Okay? Because one of them was in a very tight category that is like impossible to get number one anyway. But I love that, right?
So if you love something—if you love grabbing your phone and being in your car and just talking to who your potential client might be, whoever that is, your avatar—then do that. Other people, they hate the idea of being on video, they hate the idea of writing anything, and I gotta tell you: you have to be seen and heard in order to be hired.
If you’re hiding in your basement and you think somebody is going to drive down your street—never seeing you, never hearing from you—and they’re going to knock on your door, you’re delusional! Nobody’s going to find you.
Talent just isn’t enough. Talent is not enough. Being an expert at what you do is not enough. You have to be seen, you have to be heard. That helps get you trusted, and that trust gets you paid. Simple.
Al Calder: Walk me through your process a bit, because you said don’t do the transcript thing. So if someone out there decides they want to write a book, what do you do exactly? You just listen back to your videos and start writing down ideas as you go? You don’t use the transcript?
Christine Blosdale: I do a lot of workshops. I do a lot of master classes and workshops, okay? Especially in October, because here in Australia it’s small business month and it’s like my busiest time.
So I do… I have webinars on ChatGPT, AI for beginners type thing. I have webinars on why you want to create a podcast to promote your business. I’ve got a webinar on why you want to be a guest on podcasts to promote your business. I’ve got them on how your website is killing your business, right? So these are all subject matter that I know small business owners want to know: “Why is your website killing your business?” Right? It’s really important.
So I do all of these workshops and webinars—many of them are free for people—and afterward I have it all recorded. And then afterward, I take that content—again, not using a transcript, because just seeing “Christine said…” would be boring—I use an AI software called Video to Blog.
And Video to Blog takes what you say and turns it into, like, a blog. And you can extend it and have it be a bit longer, but it can be informative, it can be a bit of a listicle or summary of what you’ve said, right? It takes all that content and puts it into a format that’s extremely enjoyable.
And it does a pretty good job. It’s fairly accurate.
Al Calder: It’s so good, it’s ridiculous, yeah!
Christine Blosdale: I use it to create blogs for LinkedIn and for my website. I’ll do that.
I can take this interview—I can take this interview that we’ve just done, and I can throw it into that system, and it will take all those little gems that I’ve said and it will put it out and put it into like a story format or a book format. Nonfiction—not, you know, it’s not gonna be a fiction story, but it’ll be tips on how to expand your expert authority, how to establish that. I won’t have to throw that in the notes for anyone who’s interested, for sure.
Blog. If a freelancer is finally at the point where they’re starting to feel comfortable with being visible, how do they turn that visibility into actual clients and opportunities without becoming overly salesy, like we’ve talked about?
Crafting Clear Offers and Conversion Funnels
Al Calder: I think the important thing is: way before worrying about social media and promoting this, that, and the other, and getting and trying to get sales and clients, is you have to really take a look at your offers.
And make sure that it’s extremely—again—clarity. You need to be so clear on who you are, who you serve, and how you do it. And in your offer, you need to be super, super clear so it’s not confusing for people.
If it’s confusing—and that’s probably one of the biggest mistakes I see freelancers, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs do—is I’ll go to their website and I don’t know what the hell they do. I don’t know. I don’t know how it pertains to me.
They have this long laundry list about “I’m so… you know, I’m really successful, I’m such a great whatever person…” blah, blah, blah, and I don’t see myself in that story. So we also need to make sure that we are making the potential client the star, right? They’re the focus, not us.
Yes, you do need to have something about your credibility by the way, right? Have something on that, but it’s about the person that you want to serve. It’s not about you.
The clarity of what you offer… and again, if you can give people just a couple options—you know, plan A, B, C, D… not a long laundry list of this, that, the other, all these different things. Because if it’s too many choices, people don’t choose, many times.
So if you can whittle it down as much as you can, bring people into your world first, and then once they’re in there with you, then you can say, “Oh, you know what, I also have… you might be interested in this as well.” Right? It helps.
So you gotta get away from this whole “I do this and I’m great at this,” and you got to show people more of the outcomes that you can actually help them with. That’s what they want to see, yeah.
And that’s why testimonials are so… you know, like before-and-after kind of testimonials are so powerful, because then people can see themselves in that other person: “Oh, well, they had this issue, they had this problem before, and they worked with Christine or they worked with Alan, and look at the result that they had!” So then they can see themselves in that as well.
Christine Blosdale: So we talked earlier about getting seen, trusted, and paid. Which of those three tends to be the biggest stumbling block in your experience? Where do you think people fall down the most?
For people who have imposter syndrome and who are really worried about putting themselves out there, getting seen is the big… is the big thing. I would say the part that most people skip over and they don’t realize they need to develop is the trust factor, right?
And so you think about it: think about yourself. Like, what helps you? What makes you trust somebody a bit more? If it’s on social media, if it’s a professional that you’re hiring to help you with certain things, what’s the trust factor that they offer?
If people don’t trust you, they’re not gonna hire you. They’re not gonna pay you. Yeah.
And make it easy. That’s the other thing: we gotta make it easy for people to pay you. Don’t do this thing of, “Oh, if you want my service, then you email me and then I’ll email you an invoice and then blah, blah, blah.” No, just make it easy!
On my website, people can book in—they can book a free consultation with me, absolutely free, so I can get to know their business. But when they sign up for my program, it’s super easy. They push a button, they sign up, and there’s a credit card or debit card—there’s a pay thing, you pay, boom, it’s all easy!
There’s no, you know, step on one foot and turn around and then… or “I only accept PayPal.” No, stop it! By the time you’ve done all that, they’ve already left. They’ve gone. They’re gone.
Most people too, if they’re going to use you as a service, you’re gonna be a tax deduction for them, you’re gonna be an expense. So they want that on their credit card or their debit card. They’re not gonna want that on Venmo.
Okay? We love Venmo! We love them. But, you know, let’s be legit. The more legit you are, also the more trustworthiness you have, right?
Focus First on Your Target Audience and Core Offer
Al Calder: So let’s say somebody, they’re comfortable with the visibility, they figured out their offer—you know, they’ve got a decent offer ready to go—but there are so many options out there, right?
Podcasting, social media, speaking, writing, appearing in regular media, and all of that can build authority. If a freelancer with limited time doesn’t want to be everywhere at once, where would you tell them to focus first?
Christine Blosdale: Where your audience is. Your audience, your potential clients. Maybe they’re on LinkedIn, but your potential audience, maybe they’re not on LinkedIn and they’re spending more time on TikTok, right?
So where your audience is, is where you want to go. And you want to be in their feed. And don’t worry about… don’t put so much stress and pressure on it, because people feel that.
We are energy; we all bring energy to the table. And you know, you’ve been to parties, you’ve been to places where somebody comes in the door and you immediately go, “Oh, I don’t know who that is, but there’s something about them, I wanna get to know who they are.” Right? There’s a magnetism, right?
And then there’s other people that will come into a party and you’ll be like, “I don’t know what it is about that person, but I actually want to leave now.” Right?
Al Calder: Making you feel uncomfortable. Yeah, they make me feel uncomfortable, their energy makes me feel uncomfortable.
Christine Blosdale: Well, we all bring an energy to the work that we do. If you’re a writer, or if you’re on camera, if you’re on video, if you’re a podcaster, anything that we create, we have an energy to it.
And we have to be very aware of that energy that we’re putting out. So some people put off—I call it a desperation stink, or desperation, you know, it’s stinky, it smells like desperation, it sounds like, “I have to get this sale, I need to make money.” Then people run the other way, right?
So we want to be very, just very much aware of what we bring and the energy that we’re bringing to that content, if that makes sense. And just start with one thing at a time, right? I think a lot of people try to do that everywhere all the time.
Al Calder: Yes, start with one thing. But again, do not spend a lot of time and money and effort on other things until your website and your offers are crystal clear.
This is what I tell all my clients, because they’re like, “I’m thinking about putting an ad out on Facebook,” and I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, pull it back. Let’s go look at your website and let’s look at your business. What’s your business plan here? How do you want to make money?” And we’ll look at it, and I’ll go, “This is so confusing, darling. It doesn’t make any sense. Let’s fix that.”
And then all of the work that you do on the outside of that—whatever it is, social media, podcasts—you’re always directing them to that website, but that website’s all what’s waiting for them, right? It’s ready for the eyeballs to go on it. Right now your website’s not ready for eyeballs on it.
So don’t do all that extra stuff and say, “Visit my website, ExpertAuthorityCoach.com! Come on down to ExpertAuthorityCoach.com!” Don’t do that until you have a really clear message for people of who you are, who you help, how you do it, and a clear offer or offers. Make sense?
Christine Blosdale: So, just a couple more questions. But before we do that, um, if someone is looking to hire the Expert Authority Coach, how would they go about it?
The first thing is I need to have that conversation with you. And I have a complimentary discovery call strategy session. And for those folks who want to book that in right away, you can go to my website, which is Expertauthoritycoach.com, and you can see all of the stuff that I’ve been talking about today.
But if you want to get on my calendar and book it in for tomorrow—that free consultation—just go to ChatWithChristineB.com (like Blasd… ch-ch-ch-chat with Christine B dot com). That is my calendar, that’s my booking calendar.
And you can get in like I said, uh, well, tomorrow’s a little bit busy, but you know what, I’m booking in right away there. Um, but you can also access that from the website, so both places: Expertauthoritycoach.com and chatwithchristineB.com.
Okay, perfect. That’s the first step, because I gotta talk to you first and get to know what it is that you want to do. Yeah.
Al Calder: Okay, we’ll include that in the notes too so that everyone can find that.
Final Action Steps for Freelancers
Let’s say there’s a freelancer listening right now who’s genuinely good at what they do, but they’re kind of hiding. What’s the first thing you’d have them do this week to start claiming their authority?
Christine Blosdale: Oh, I love doing this. So one of my favorite things is—and it’s a challenge for some people, but listen—when you go to your website, most people just have gabs of text and copy.
So what I make my clients do—what I ask them to do, and they’re fine with it—is I want you to create a 30 to 40-second video. You could do it on your phone, it’s better if you record like in Zoom or on your desktop.
Thirty to 40-second video welcoming people to your website, to your world, right? And you’re going to introduce yourself. So it’s kind of like that elevator introduction, elevator pitch type thing, right? But it’s done on video.
And not that you’re gonna post that on your website until you feel really confident about it, but you would be amazed at the transformation that can happen by doing that. And then doing it again and again and again, and getting it to a point where you can watch it and you can go, “Yep, that’s what I want to say. That’s how I want to be perceived, right?”
The first time you do it, might be like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe…” Exactly. But after a while, after you do it—and I do that for my clients, I actually edit them, I put captions and I do music, all of that great stuff—but for you, for right now, just try doing that simple thing: 30 to 40 seconds, right?
Al Calder: One more question: so ultimately, how does someone go from “I’m afraid people will discover I’m not as good as I think I am” to “I know I can help these people, and I’m willing to let them see me”?
Christine Blosdale: The ultimate destination, I guess… yeah, so much of that has to do with the person’s self-confidence, right? And again, you don’t have to… you’re not being arrogant or braggadocious.
Um, it’s knowing—first of all, it’s knowing that you have the capability to help people. And also knowing that if you don’t know—cause we’re worried about having to know everything—it’s okay not to know everything, right?
There’s new technology that comes out every single day that I’m like, “Whoa, like, wow, that’s crazy that you could do that, okay?” So I’m learning, I’m growing every single day, it leaps and bounds.
So to know that you don’t know everything, but you are willing to learn, you’re willing to grow along with your clients and to discover things—that’s honesty, and that’s refreshing. And that’s what’s gonna help keep you growing as well.
We’re not stagnant. Our brand is not a McDonald’s arch, which stays the same, right? Your brand is you, and you as a human, hopefully grow and continue to grow and learn. You’re not stuck in a vacuum.
So I think if you give yourself that grace, that will help you go a long way. So you’re constantly evolving. Constantly! I’m constantly changing my branding, and I’m going and massaging my website and my copy. I just did that yesterday.
I just went in yesterday and did that on my front page. And hey, these days with AI tools, that becomes a lot easier too, right? That’s the kind of thing it can really help you with.
Al Calder: Yeah, just don’t let that replace you.
Christine Blosdale: No, it needs to be as if you said it. If it’s something that comes out of your mouth… and I know, because I’ll go to people’s websites, and the way that they’ve written it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s so much her! That’s so her, that language, those words, right?”
I always recommend: get everything that you have in your head on whatever the topic is down on a traditional piece of paper first. And then you have your thoughts down, and you’re not going into searching AI—whatever your choice is, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever—you’re not going into it with your own ideas, you’re not letting the AI’s preconceived concepts cloud your judgment, you know?
So, absolutely. And the AI will lie to you too, tell you what you want to hear, uh-huh! Definitely.
Al Calder: Really enjoyed this conversation today, Christine. I want to thank you for coming on today.
Christine Blosdale: Thank you, I appreciate the platform and the time that you spent with me. Um, I hope your audience got something great out of it.
Al Calder: Thank you so much, I think they will. Thank you very much.
Christine Blosdale: All right.