Finding My Specialism, with Ian Anderson Gray

How to recognise the “thing” to be known for

I know your time is valuable. These show notes give you the gist of the episode, what is covered, any links or resources talked about in the show, and also gives you a few ways to listen or watch the episode.

This episode’s topic, in a nutshell…

In 2015, I attended a social media event held in Manchester which promised to have Mari Smith on stage. (She’s one of the front-running original thought leaders in the Social Media Marketing space). While I went for Mari, I stayed for everyone else! I was so glad that I went to that event, because the people I met there really kickstarted my deep professional relationships with some key people in my business lifeboat. One of those people is Ian Anderson Gray.

Ian, although a classically trained musician and singer, is known today for his specialism in teaching people how to confidently use Live Video. In this conversation I ask him to unravel how we got to choosing that specialism, and how he has evolved over the years in his personal brand to what he is comfortable ‘being’ today.

He openly shares the struggles he has had over the years, as well as the people who have helped him in the days when he really couldn’t see what he was “good at” – but they did and fortified his ability and confidence to become the expert he is today.

Highlights

In this episode we touch on:

• Ian’s Origin Story (where has he come from, to be here doing what he’s doing today)
• How “Live Video” entered his world in 2016 (and at first he was really very reluctant about being “the guy” to listen to about it).
• How by trying to make the use of the tools you had to use back in the early days easier for non-techy content creators/entrepreneurs – he found that he struck a chord with people (the ‘how-to’ blog post and little tool he created to help people – ended up generated 7million page views).
• Surprisingly – he shares too that he was actually nervous to go LIVE and when he was asked to talk at conferences about LIVE video – he felt like a deer in headlights and wasn’t sure he was the person to do that. This spurred his mindset journey to practice and learn to build his own confidence.
• How he has found using a personal brand to enable him to encapsulate the bits about him as a person which he was struggling to pigeon hole himself into a singular “message / kind of person”.
• The ways he has come to diversifying his income as a subject matter expert.

If you have really been struggling to nail down what it is that you can perhaps stand out on, in your industry. I’d urge you to listen to this episode, because Ian shares what he tried (and failed at) and how he too tackled with what you and I do…imposter syndrome, confidence to put yourself out there, standing up and sharing your expertise.

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A bit more about Ian Anderson Gray 

Ian is the founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy and is the host of the Confident Live Marketing Podcast. He helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority and profits by using live video confidently.

He is also the co-founder of ‘Select Performers’ – a family-run web agency and is the voice behind his ‘Seriously Social’ blog, which focusses on live video and social media tools.

He’s an international speaker, having spoken at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, Content Marketing World in Cleveland and many others. People can work with him  in a one-to-one capacity as a trainer and consultant, or inside his Content Marketing Academy in a group environment. He has a real passion for making the techno-babble of live video and social media marketing easy to understand.

Ian is married to Helen, and is Dad to two children all of whom are musical and makes for a busy household with lots musical instruments and technology in their house near Manchester in the UK. 

Find out more about him on his website at iag.me, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his podcast interviews on YouTube, join him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter. (Let him know you listened to him on this podcast). You can also listen to his podcast, whenever you listen to your pods. ‘Confidence Live Marketing Podcast’