But is it really possible to maintain your integrity while positioning yourself as the preeminent expert in your field? Absolutely. Oz is definitely dubious when it comes to medicine, he is also a master when it comes to marketing, promotion, and sales. And when people are in the same in-crowd, they help each other attain status and achieve goals.īecoming Successful Like Oz Without Becoming a False Wizard Before you know it, you’ll be part of their in-crowd. Once you’ve gotten to know your mini-Oprahs, nurture the relationships. You'll be surprised by how often they say yes. Start an interview-based podcast and ask if they'd like to come on as a guest. Figure out where they hang out on social media and strike up a conversation about a common interest. A consultant for north Alaskan salmon fisheries? You get the point.įortunately it’s a whole lot easier to get mini-Oprahs to know and like you than it is to do so with the real deal. A life coach who specializes in career transitions in the organic food industry? Find the mini-Oprahs. And these days, niches can get really specific.Īre you a corporate wellness coach for BPO professionals? Make a list of the mini-Oprahs in that space. You just have to become well known and highly respected in your niche. One of the best parts of doing business in the age of the Internet is that success doesn’t require you to become well known and highly respected with everybody. That said, there are probably mini-Oprahs in whatever your niche you operate in. Most of you are probably not going to be able to get Oprah to tout your wares. What was good enough for Oprah was good enough for them.
Oz after his brush with disgrace, that was all many people needed to know. They view her as a force of pure good in the universe. It was by appearing on her show that Oz got famous in the first place. Having upwards of a thousand people in your field publicly state that you were a fraud would sink many careers. Despite how easy and available they are, self-publishing a book and posting content online will go far in establishing you as an authority in the minds of your audience and client base.Īlign Yourself With the Mini-Oprahs of Your World But at the same time, never underestimate the stupidity of the unconscious human mind. If you‘re able to get a book published, that will certainly help your career. Not only is he the author of six books, he even launched his own magazine. Oz supplements his television appearances with various forms of written content. And we give books more weight than articles. We give articles more weight than blog posts. We give blog posts more weight than tweets. And the more in-depth a piece of writing is, the more we trust it. We still tend to think of writing as something that bestows great authority. But our cultural assumptions about writing haven’t kept pace with the change.
These days the written word has become very cheap. As a result, literate cultures developed traditions and institutions to ensure that if something was going to be printed, it had to be of the highest quality. Paper, ink, printing, and distribution were all expensive and time-intensive.
And make sure your name appears on written content as often as possible.įor most of human history, it has been incredibly hard to get ideas into writing. Join associations with formal sounding names for the purpose of announcing that you are part of them. Prominently display any accreditations, degrees, and affiliations on your marketing materials, your website, on the walls of your office. So if you have a habit of being modest about your credentials, stop it. Your potential clients and customers use mental shortcuts to judge you all the time, whether they know it or not. So Mehmet Oz must be a trustworthy medical professional. To your brain’s unconscious, trustworthy medical professionals wear scrubs. As a result, it uses shortcuts-or heuristics-to help it make judgments. The human brain has to sort through a near infinite amount of information. But the reason Oz schmoozes with celebrities and pitches products clothed in hospital attire is because he understands that it immediately establishes him as a figure of authority. Scrubs are designed for optimal sterility in a medical setting, and no one in his studio audience has gaping wounds or open surgical incisions (or so we would hope). Oz regularly appear on TV wearing cheap medical scrubs?