Many experts I speak with experience two contradictory emotions.
On the one hand, they feel very much like an expert. They have over a decade of experience, a track record of positive outcomes, and a network of clients and colleagues who truly appreciate them. They also have this deep frustration that they're not reaching their full potential. If only more people knew what their clients knew, they'd attract broader recognition in the market and enjoy all the opportunities that come with notoriety.
They get frustrated when they see people with half their experience and expertise getting all the credit. The speaking gigs, the social media high fives, the podcast interviews.
But at the same time they fear, "Is there anything different about the way I work? Have I done enough? Do I have anything unique to say?"
There's comfort in living in the ambiguity of possibility. You might never reach your potential, but if you never publish, you never risk discovering you never had "it."
Courage is required.
Delivering expertise is comfortable. You delivered it yesterday and the day before. You know what results to expect and how to counter objections.
Developing insights around that expertise is uncomfortable. You haven’t successfully done it before, you know you’ll make mistakes, you’re aware that you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re doing it in public.
Maybe you do have some gold up your sleeve that clients respond to, maybe you don't.
If you are an expert and you've been doing this long enough, you've collected valuable data through osmosis, though much of it lies dormant. Insight will not ferment organically. It needs stimulation.
Stimulation comes in the form of a writing and publishing practice. It's a forcing function to collect the data, distil it, connect the nodes, and concentrate thoughts to answer valuable questions.
So though you may be an expert, if you’re not writing with frequency and consistency, and you never have, it’s unlikely you have anything unique to say today. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have the capacity to say something unique tomorrow.
You don't write when you uncover an interesting insight to share. You uncover an interesting insight to share when you write.