Everyone is selling expertise. That’s exactly why so many businesses sound the same.
If your marketing is built on credentials, certifications, or years of experience, you’re competing with thousands of people who can make the exact same claims. The real differentiator isn’t what you know. It’s what you believe.
Lori breaks down why a strong point of view is one of the most valuable business assets you can develop, how it attracts the right clients while filtering out the wrong ones, and why AI can help you uncover the beliefs that already exist in your content instead of creating them for you.
If you’re tired of blending into your industry, this episode will help you build a business people remember.
What You’ll Learn
-
Why expertise alone no longer makes your business stand out
-
How to uncover and strengthen your unique point of view
-
How to use AI to identify the beliefs already driving your business
Schedule a call to discuss personalized coaching at TalkWithLori.com
Schedule your Profitable Path Blueprint call. If you’re considering working together and want to see if it’s a fit, book a Profitable Path Blueprint Call. It’s a simple, no-pressure conversation to decide whether working together makes sense.
Resources:
Download your Dream Business Blueprint workbook HERE
Join Lori’s private Facebook group – The Midlife Business Academy. A Facebook group for The Typewriter Generation! A community to share business growth strategies that work for us! Join now!
Connect with Lori Follow me on social media – grab other free resources of book a call – it’s all right here!
Apply for a “Hot Seat” coaching session to work through your business challenges live:
Chapters
0:00 – Everyone Knows What You Know
1:33 – Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy
1:53 – Expertise Isn’t a Differentiator Anymore
3:29 – Revisiting Episode 36: Why Point of View Matters
4:28 – Your “Why” Is Where Your Point of View Comes From
6:34 – The Deathbed Test: What Larry Winget Taught Me
7:53 – Lori’s Point of View: It’s Never Too Late
10:27 – The “Too Old” Rant 12:31 – Testing Whether You’ve Found a Real Point of View
13:46 – Why People Remember Perspective, Not Facts
15:57 – A Strong Point of View Will Repel Some People
16:45 – Using AI to Find Your Point of View
23:01 – This Week’s Worksheet: The Point of View Assessment
24:30 – Next Week: Message, and How to Book a Session
Everyone Knows What You Know
There are probably 1,000 people who know exactly what you know, have your same certifications, and offer your exact same services. But there is only one person who thinks about it the way you do, and that person is you.
So why does your marketing sound like a copy-paste of everyone else in your industry? Leading with your expertise is actually making you invisible. If you’re ready to stop blending in and finally stand out in a crowded market, you need to stop selling your credentials and start sharing what you believe.
Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy
I’m Lori Lyons, and welcome to the Midlife Business Academy. If you’ve ever felt like your business is running your life instead of supporting it, you’re in the right place.
Around here, I believe a dream business isn’t measured by its size. It’s measured by the freedom and the life it makes possible.
Expertise Isn’t a Differentiator Anymore
So here’s something that might sting a little bit. Being good at what you do is not a differentiator anymore. It used to be. Twenty years ago, if you were a great copywriter or a great therapist or a great financial planner, that was enough. People couldn’t Google or ChatGPT their way to confidence, but you could. And that’s not the world we live in anymore.
Now there are a thousand people who know what you know, a thousand people with the same certificate. And believe me, I know — there are marketing and business coaches on every street corner with the same framework and the same level of experience.
So what happened? Expertise got commoditized. And if the only thing you’re leading with is “I’m good at this,” you sound exactly like everyone else who’s good at it too.
So if expertise isn’t what sets you apart, what does? Your point of view. Not your niche, not your credentials, not your years in business — your point of view. The specific way you see the problem your clients are dealing with, and the specific way you believe it should be solved.
Revisiting Episode 36: Why Point of View Matters
I actually did an episode on this at the very beginning of my podcast — episode 36. Yeah, we’re on 344 now, so that was a long time ago. “Why Having a Point of View Is Important to Your Business.” And I still think it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever talked about on the show. And it clearly landed, because it’s still one of my most downloaded episodes. So go back and listen to it if you haven’t already.
Your “Why” Is Where Your Point of View Comes From
There’s this concept that Simon Sinek made famous. We’ve all heard about it. We’ve probably all read the book. Most people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And I think that idea is the foundation underneath everything we’re talking about today. Your why is where your point of view actually comes from.
Now, most of us are never going to explain it or state it as clearly as Apple does, because we don’t need to. We’re not going to have a two-minute keynote where it all comes together in one perfect line, and that’s fine — you don’t need Apple-level polish. But what you do need is to start doing the work of figuring out what yours is. Because your clients are looking for it, whether you’ve said it or not. And that’s different than it used to be.
Clients used to hire you because of what you could do for them. Now, more and more, they want to know what you think — not just your services, your thinking, how you see a problem, what you believe about it, and whether it lines up with how they see it too.
The Deathbed Test: What Larry Winget Taught Me
So years ago, I was in a speaking program, and my coach at the time was Larry Winget — a really well-known keynote speaker and TV commentator. I loved Larry. He’s retired now, but I love Larry. And he spent an enormous amount of time teaching us point of view — not facts to say on stage, but fine-tuning our point of view. It wasn’t really something any of us stated outright in our talks, but it was the thing our entire business was quietly built on. And he said it’s the thing you want people to know when you’re on your deathbed. What is the one thing that drives you?
Now, I have to say, this was during COVID, so six years ago, and my point of view has changed as I’ve changed, and that’s okay too. Because what I’ve come to believe is your point of view isn’t fixed. Mine has changed as I’ve grown, and as life is handing me more experience, more perspective — more scar tissue, quite frankly. It’s not something I necessarily announce every episode, but I do say a version of mine every single week, whether you’ve noticed it or not.
Lori’s Point of View: It’s Never Too Late
It’s never too late to build a life of your dreams. That’s mine, ’cause I firmly believe that’s the hill I’ll stand on. And I believe that, barring physical or mental incapabilities, you’re never too old to do whatever you want to do. And then for this show, I twist it toward business: it’s never too late to build a business of your dreams. That belief is under everything that I record. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to say it. It’s just what I actually think is true, and it’s been the undercurrent of every one of my episodes for the last year.
And here’s the thing about a real point of view. On the surface, “it’s never too late to build the life of your dreams” sounds like something nobody could argue with. It’s warm. It’s encouraging. It’s soft and fuzzy. And who’s against that? But you’d be surprised.
There are people who genuinely believe that 50 is the beginning of the end, not the middle of something new. That you had your shot — you missed it or you didn’t — and now it’s somebody else’s turn. There are people who believe the money has to come first, that dreaming is a luxury for people who already have the resources, and if you don’t have the resources, the dream isn’t for you yet. There are people who believe wanting something for yourself at this stage of life — after the kids, after the initial career, after taking care of everyone else — is just selfish. That your job now is to enjoy what you built, not go for something new. And there are people who believe that dreams are for your twenties, that there’s a window, and if you don’t walk through it, it’s closed, and the responsible thing to do is be realistic.
Every one of those is a point of view. Not one of them is mine, but some people do hold them. And I don’t think, honestly, that they’re true. I never have. But I understand why somebody would believe them, because I know people I love deeply who hold various versions of those beliefs. It doesn’t make them wrong as people. It just means we see things differently.
The “Too Old” Rant
And can we talk about “too old” for a second? Because that makes me want to throw something. When somebody says, “I’m too old to start a business now,” or “I’m too old to go rock climbing,” or zip lining, or travel — too old to do what, exactly? And too old according to who? Did a governing body issue a memo I didn’t get? Is there a secret committee somewhere that reviews applications and stamps “denied, too old” right before your 60th birthday? I’ve never once seen the actual rule book. Nobody can produce it. And yet people quote “too old” like it’s a federal law. Too old to start a business, too old to learn an instrument, too old to hike the Appalachian Trail, too old to go back to school, change careers, move to a new city, fall in love again, learn to surf — whatever. Meanwhile there are 70-year-olds climbing mountains and 80-year-olds getting their first tattoos. And somewhere, a four-year-old is telling me she’s too old to start an online business.
How’s that for a point of view rant? You know what mine is now? So here’s what I believe at the core of everything that I do: you’re never too old to do what you’re physically and mentally able to do. That’s it. That’s my whole point of view. Not what you feel like doing on your worst, most tired Tuesday, but what you’re genuinely capable of. And if your body and your brain are willing, age is not the thing standing in your way. It never was. It’s just the easy excuse to grab onto, because nobody argues with it.
So the next time you catch yourself thinking you’re too old for something, I want you to picture me, personally, mildly annoyed on your behalf, asking who told you exactly that. Because I guarantee you, it wasn’t anyone qualified to decide.
Testing Whether You’ve Found a Real Point of View
So that’s what a real belief does. It’s never just a nice sentence. Underneath is an actual disagreement with how some people see the world. And that disagreement is exactly what makes it worth saying. Who’d have thought that “it’s never too late to build the business of your dreams” would be a disagreeable statement? But as you saw, it was, and it can be.
So when you’re developing your own point of view, don’t stop at the sentence that sounds good. Ask yourself: what would someone have to believe to disagree with this? If you can’t answer that, you probably haven’t found your actual point of view yet — you’ve found a nice sentence that hasn’t been tested.
And this connects back to something I said earlier: your point of view isn’t fixed. It can sharpen and grow as you do. Mine has, over the years. And even while the core of it — that positivity is a choice worth making every single day — has never wavered, that’s what it looks like to keep growing instead of just repeating a belief because you said it once.
Why People Remember Perspective, Not Facts
So think about the last piece of content that actually stuck with you — whether it was on TikTok, Instagram, someone’s Facebook post, or even LinkedIn. I bet it wasn’t a list of facts. It was someone saying something you hadn’t heard quite that way before. Because information is everywhere now. It’s free, it’s endless, and a lot of times it’s forgettable. You can Google any fact I know inside of 10 seconds. You can ChatGPT it, and so can your clients. Nobody remembers the seventh tip in your carousel post, and nobody’s rewatching your webinar for the statistics. But they remember the moment you said something that felt like you were taking a stance — something with an edge to it, something that made them stop scrolling and say, “wait, say that again?” Or they hit rewind ten times because they didn’t catch it the first time on the podcast or YouTube video. That’s what the rewind button’s for.
So here’s why: information asks people to learn something. A point of view asks people to agree or disagree with you. And agreeing or disagreeing is an emotional response. It’s personal. Learning a fact doesn’t require anything from anyone except a little bit of time. Reacting to a belief does. And whatever requires something from us is what we actually remember.
So when you lead with information — five tips, three steps, the ten things you need to know, which is very popular these days — you’re forgettable by design. When you lead with a belief, even a small one, you give people something to have a reaction to. And a reaction is what turns a stranger into someone who remembers your name, and a possible client.
A Strong Point of View Will Repel Some People
Here’s the part that scares people, and some will say it very clearly: a strong point of view will and should repel some people. It has to. If everyone agrees with you, you haven’t said a thing. But the people who do agree — the ones who read what you believe and think, “well, finally somebody said it” — those are your best clients. Not the ones who found you and thought, “hey, you seem nice enough,” but the ones who found you and felt like you were speaking directly to something they already believed but hadn’t heard anyone say out loud. That’s not a coincidence. That’s your point of view, and how you can make it work for you.
Using AI to Find Your Point of View
So I want to give you a practical tool here, because “find your point of view” can be a little abstract. And it’s one of my favorite uses of AI in my entire business.
Part of why I lean on it is that I have undiagnosed adult ADHD — all the classic symptoms. I passed it on to my son, which is genetic. I know it’s there; I was just at an age where they didn’t test for it. We were just “scattered.” It doesn’t make me wishy-washy about what I believe — I know exactly what I believe. It makes me task-oriented in the most chaotic way possible. And it drives my husband absolutely crazy. He’s a one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy. So is Vanessa, my VA. They like to work on one thing, and I’m all over the place. My husband picks a task and focuses on it till it’s done. Drives me crazy, just as I drive him crazy.
I don’t do that. I love my garden. I love to go out and water the plants. On the way, I might notice the roses need deadheading, so I start on that. Halfway through, while the deadheads are still lying on the ground, I might spot some weeds and go pull those — so there’s another little pile. While I’m pulling weeds, I glance over and my petunias in the hanging basket need a haircut, so I’ll go give that a trim, and now there’s a little pile of petunia clippings too. Three hours later, I’ve worked all over my garden and have all these little piles of unfinished stuff lying around. If you walked into my garden at any given time, you’d have no idea what I was doing out there.
That’s how my brain approaches a business idea, a piece of content, or honestly, probably the talking points for this episode. At the end of the day, when I clean up and I’m finished with my garden, all the tasks are done and all the little piles are picked up. But in the meantime, it looks like a scattered mess. I just go back and forth — deadhead, then weed, then trim, then back to deadheading. That’s my brain on ADHD.
And for years, that really made it hard to pin down my point of view. Not because I didn’t know what I believed, but because I’d start writing it one way, then wander off to something else — “oh, that sounds good, let me go down this rabbit hole” — and circle back and add three more talking points. My point of view was technically in there somewhere, buried under whatever else I wanted to say.
And here’s where AI changed that — how AI can help you write your point of view. Not because it’s going to create your point of view for you, but because it’s an incredible pattern solver. That’s when it really became clear to me how my point of view could actually become concise, because I’ve been using ChatGPT since almost the beginning — I think it debuted in November of 2023. That January, I was on a cruise and people were talking about it, so I went back and started playing with it, and actually took a seminar about a month later. So I’ve been using ChatGPT in my business for a long time.
What I found is: if I dump all of this stuff into ChatGPT — or now Claude, I’m using Claude a lot more — and say, “here’s where I am, what’s the thread that runs through it, what’s the pattern here, what do I keep circling back to, what am I actually saying under all these little piles of stuff I have laying around” — that’s a really good way to use AI. Feed it the last ten posts or emails you’ve written and ask what you seem to believe based on the patterns, not just the words. Ask it where you’ve been neutral when you actually have an opinion. Ask it to lay out the through line it’s noticing across everything you’ve said, even when you didn’t say it directly.
And here’s a bonus that’s happened to me more than once: sometimes it points out a pattern I’m unconsciously promoting that isn’t actually true. If it says something like, “you keep implying X,” and my honest reaction is, “wait, no, I don’t believe that at all” — that’s incredibly useful information too. It means that somewhere along the way, your words started saying something your beliefs don’t actually back up. And that’s just as valuable to catch as the patterns that are accurate.
So when it’s used that way, AI isn’t writing your point of view for you. It’s doing what a great editor or a great coach does — it takes the scattered version of you and hands back the focused one. And that, to me, is worth every bit of the $40 a month I pay between the two of them. It’s remarkably good at finding what’s inside the noise, especially if your garden looks anything like mine, with all those scattered piles lying around.
This Week’s Worksheet: The Point of View Assessment
Because here’s the thing: people don’t remember expertise. They remember perspective.
So if you haven’t grabbed it, make sure you’ve got the Dream Business Blueprint, because this week’s worksheet is the Point of View Assessment. It’s built to help you actually pull out what you believe, not what you think you’re supposed to say. Go through it honestly, because some of the answers might surprise you.
Inside the workbook, you rate yourself one to ten on five statements — things like: I have a clear point of view. My audience knows what I stand for. People can explain what makes me different. My perspective attracts the right clients. Add those up and you’ll land on your blueprint score out of 50.
The lower that number is, the more your business is running on expertise and information instead of an actual point of view — which, if you’re listening to this episode, you know is a problem worth fixing. The higher the score, the more your point of view is already doing the job — attracting the right people and repelling the wrong ones. Either way, your score is your starting point, not a verdict.
If you haven’t grabbed your blueprint worksheet yet, it’s waiting for you at midlifebusinessacademy.com/blueprint.
Next Week: Message, and How to Book a Session
So next week we’re talking about message, because you can have the clearest point of view in the world and it still won’t matter if you’re saying it to the wrong person in the wrong words. Marketing is all about the right message to the right people, at the right time, through the right vehicle.
And if you did the workbook and your blueprint score is less than, say, 35, that’s not a bad grade — it’s just information. It usually means your point of view is somewhere inside of you; you just haven’t found your way to talking about it in your business yet. That’s exactly the kind of thing we work on together when you’re coaching with me. Head to talkwithlori.com and book a Dream Business Session, and we’ll see if we’re the right fit to get it out of your head and into your business.
So until next week — it’s never too late to build a business of your dreams. We’ll see you next time.