Omnichannel - The Hidden Cost of "Trying" To Look Like an Expert

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Send us Fan MailJoin Expressed here: https://www.dominikalegrand.com/expressed-programHow many of us actually enjoy watching and reading from imperfect humans?The more I observe this phenomenon, the more I realize that "trying" to look like an expert, the harder it is to maintain it.Not because we don't have actual expertise, but there is an invisible internal expectation of what that should look like.And when we follow that "invisible" expectation, it becomes this tiring facade to maintain. In this episode, you will learn about the hidden costs of "trying" to look like an expert.Learn More about the Human to Human programs here: https://www.dominikalegrand.com/programs-1

Hello, my dearest entrepreneur friends, welcome back to another episode on the only channel podcast. This is audio only. And we have to have sometimes those. Sometimes I post the audio versions of my YouTube videos. Sometimes I just like to come here and riff something and I like to share it with you. But in this particular one, I want to talk about being visible in your expression while you are in your process of becoming. And this is a topic that I was completely blind to until I hosted a master class this Sunday around the few of being seen. And I was walking through entrepreneurs on where do you need to shit your attention

instead of yourself? Like, we really tackle this issue. And before that, I actually survey the participants, whoever wanted to fill out on what it is that they are afraid of. And in my head, I'm reading those fears and I'm thinking to myself, okay, criticism, judgment, failure. Yes, like when we are visible online or in our own businesses, yes, those things can actually happen. And in that masterclass, I help them shift their orientation towards something that matters more than their own fears so that they can really focus on that thing instead of themselves. The message, the mission, instead of their own self-consciousness around it. And this methodology that I have in terms of where do I put my intention,

attention works either way, but I do want to dig deeper into this topic of, wait a minute, when it comes to being seen, the fear isn't so much about people seeing you, is that they are seeing a version of you that it's not quite the one that you wanted to show online. And the inclination of that version is to hide that version. And I think there is this idea that once you are ready and you are 2.0, now you can start sharing about what it is that you want to do. Now you can start putting yourself out there because this version is the cool version.

And the previous version, we should hide it and never show that. Now, I think that's fascinating and I understand it completely because why would you want to show an unfinished version of you that is still in the process of becoming, that is still in the process of building? like why would you want that to be seen? And especially if you are cringing by your own videos, you're cringing by your own pictures. And especially in the game of social media, you see it like everyone is posting their pics all the time and you're thinking to yourself, a god,

like that's what I need to do. Oh my God, okay, I guess, but I don't want to. And the more we get in our head about what we imagine we should do, because what everyone else is doing, And also thinking to herself, like, yes, but this version of me is still not quite fully, fully finished. We find ourselves, you know, holding back, either not doing anything or just like holding back around posting, holding back around expressing our opinions, our viewpoints, because, well, you know, it's, it's not perfect. Just like this version of me is still, you know, it's still kind of in the evolution process. And we don't want our clients to see that because we think, okay, if they see that I don't quite have the most competent or the most camera ready or the most articulated version of me, then somehow if a client sees that I'm not quite the expert or whatever expert means to you, then they won't buy from me. you know, it will undermine my authority. It will make people go, oh my God, buying from this person, are you kidding me?

Like, she's messing up. Like, don't you see how she made the grammar mistakes there? Like, don't you see that? Like, I would never put my money behind that person. Like, come on now. That's terrible, right? So that maybe even to me, I'm not a native English speaker. Maybe if you are not a native English speaker, you could think of yourself.

I also have an accent, by the way. You know, and I might not write with perfect grammar all the time. So there are all these things in our mind that we think that, oh, no, no, I cannot show that side of me or I cannot let people see me in that process because that would turn my clients off. Like, that would not make them trust me at all. And I am going to tell you how it's the opposite. And I'm going to tell you two things.

Like, now we just discussed how people don't like to be seen in mid-process as they are building something, right? You as a person in mid-process have this inclination to hide all of that, put it under the rug, and do two things. Either keep buying courses and investing to yourself and learning and learning and thinking, okay, I need to improve myself. I need to improve myself. perpetually improve myself until I be ready to finally show up more fully in my expression and then clients will come to me. If I do that, if I do that before I'm ready, what if I got overwhelmed and what if I'm going to be a fraud or what if I'm going to be an imposter like all of those things, you know,

come up to you. And or the other thing that you do is, okay, okay, okay. I kind of want to hide that I'm still made process with some of the things and I'm not quite perfect in the way I express or show up online or write. So I'm going to make sure that's hidden. So I'm going to hide it. I'm going to ask chat GPT to run through everything I write. I'm going to make Chachypdi right for me. I'm going to just put out the Polish picks or I'm just going to hide the fact that I, you know, I don't have it all. all together. I have things that I'm still in my process and evolution because who would

want to buy a person who's not writing with perfect captions and using chatypity to do that. So I'm just going to conceal, conceal, conceal and hide all those versions. I'm going to show up with my best of my best. And that's, that's when I'm going to present to people. And the rest, I'm going to hide it. And so, yeah, why would they want to see that? They would cringe. They would think I'm, you know, not reliable. So I'm going to hide. Or I'm going to put a bit of a persona. Like, I have it all together. I've got to figure it out. And that's what's going to be my thing. Or on the extreme cases, I'm going to lean into vulnerability so hard because, but that's a different question. Let's not go there because that's a different question to me. That's like

getting into some sort of manipulation tactics around how you're shaping your perception. So, on the first front, what I've noticed, like, we are learning, learning, learning. I don't want to show that side of me. That's cringe. People don't trust me. Here's the thing. I actually trust humans more than perfectly polished experts. And I have so many examples of that happening where I actually liked trusted and, if not

straight fell in love with someone's personality because I see those cracks in their delivery sometimes. The speaker who is slipping on the line, the person who is speaking on stage and then forgetting a line, or the performer who is laughing at themselves and cracking under their own jokes. Like the human moments, you guys, are actually what make people trust you. and the human moments, not the perfect Polish things that make people go, oh no, this person, I actually think, yeah, the fact that she or he can owe those parts and not try to conceal them makes me like them even more. And I'll tell you this because I'm in full congruence with myself. to me that's the most important thing is to be how I feel is how I express and that's exactly

what I'm showing to people. I don't try to hide those parts. I work with those parts. And by the way, I'm teaching this deeply inside of my program called Express that starts June 17. If you want to comment, I'm going to put a link in the description of this episode. but I'm actively in this in a way that if I was just hosting this masterclass I just talked to you about and in the master class there were moments of humanity so for example when I was trying to find the unmute button at the end of my master class and I was struggling you guys was like oh my god I can't seem to find a mute button hang on and bear with me I'm going to unmute you and I didn't try to hide the fact that I was not knowing what's up.

People did not go, oh my God, this is a terrible webinar. No one said, Buddhist, get out of here. I don't want to see that. Like, actually, no one said anything bad. On the contrary, I got some positive feedback from the attendees. And some of them even said, actually the fact that those signs of you were making, me more reassured that you're not trying to be someone that you're not. And that's exactly what is happening when we are showing ourselves in our mid-becoming process.

So when you're showing that you are in your becoming, you're in the building, you are in your own process, and let people see that, and that to be sincerely how you are, and genuinely how you are, genuinely where you're at, so you're not doing it to put in a show for people, but that's actually how you feel, then people actually find that more trustworthy, because here's what people ask all the time. Even if you may not be aware of it, but that's what people ask. People ask, can I trust you? Can I trust you? Can I trust you? That's what they want to know. So when you are selling an offer or when you are presenting an idea or when you are posting something, people are unconsciously when they're looking at your content, ask themselves, can I trust this

person? Can I trust this person? And if the answer is, if the answer is no, then they are not going to buy from you because I don't trust this person. I'm not going to put money behind this person because I actually don't trust the way they show up, right? That is why we're working. We're on congruence deeply in the express program because I studied the people and I studied what makes me trust them and I also studied the people that made me go, there's just something about this person I don't trust. And I studied the leaders who led master classes when I went, I don't quite feel it. Like there's something off. And I studied the people when I went, yes, this is it. I trust this person fully and I ask myself, why, why, why not, what's going on?

Why it's a no? Why don't I feel it? And it always, always came back to that same phenomenon of are people masking or are they putting on a persona or are they just letting themselves be where they are, who they are in their own process? because and I actually this is something we're going to go deeper inside of the express program but I actually genuinely think that it takes much more energy to kind of keep a persona up than be who you are like actually show up as you are with your thoughts where you're at and let that be seen even if you don't think that people would like that version of you

it takes more energy to scotch tape together a persona that is I'm fine oh this valhagos how are you yes of course yes I have this program I'm running like I'm so excited this is great you guys should come to express this is perfect this actually this is insane but the fact that I had to slip into the I don't know five six lines I just said to you that I immediately felt my energy is like drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop because that's not how I feel in the moment. If I genuinely felt like chirp, chirp, and I would speak from that energy, it wouldn't need any kind of, it wouldn't spend so much energy to keep it up because that's how I would generally feel like most of the times when we are putting those things on, the show what we think people buy for. If we look at other people and I

everyone is an expert and they'll have it all figured out and it's they're all perfect and they're all doing the thing and that's what i need to do because you know that's what people apparently buy that's costly that's not just costly in terms of disconnected to yourself but that energetically is costly it is and and there are eight other ways of being that are costly and we go and explore there's an entire module around it in the express program that I'm going to show you like what are the things the eight energy expenditures where people fall into doing that is actually draining them so much when they express one of the things I noticed after I was and doing the webinar I was hosting our master class this Sunday is how

much energy and aliveness I felt the entire time. I was recharged and you guys I'm an introvert. I got recharged by engaging with the people at the master class. I was buzzing. I was so buzzing that I couldn't even sleep until 2 a.m. and I was up bright and early 7.30. I was like, holy shit. When is this going to, am I going to crash? Like is this? Is this going to be a crash? And it wasn't a crash. I was just so energized because I didn't have to hide anything. I was just me.

And I want you to think about this because the fear is that your current version is going to be rejected. And I want you to think about, think of someone that is actively putting themselves out there and trying. think of someone like that would you not like that person would you think boo that's terrible you trying how there you're trying no you would be either thinking oh that's so cool they are trying

or you would think actually I want you to win keep going and you would feel like oh no no this keep doing it like yes keep trying you go like those are the things you feel for the people yet we think that if people see us mid-process

that would be a huge turn-off for them and it's not many times i think that's the fear and i had conversations with the people doing the master class many times the fear is really that oh no no what if they ask me something i don't know and then it will turn out i'm not so much of an expert because I don't know every answer to every question. And I said, well, if you don't know, then you can say, well, that's a great question. I don't know. But let me think about that. Let me research that and get back to you. Like, wouldn't that be the truth? No, no, no. You're supposed to know every answer to every question because if you don't know that you're not an expert and you're supposed to like almost like make up an answer and scrum.

something on the spot out of anxiety because otherwise they're going to question your expertise and then you're going to get all nervous about it and somehow they would like an answer that's coming from that energy of scrambling nervousness blurting out something yeah that would totally make you an expert rather than go hmm great question let me think about that which one would you trust more so there's just so much filtering that's going on. And here we are online, we want to create connections with the people. Because if people connect to you, then they can buy from you.

But if they feel that, first of all, you feel disconnected, because you're doing all kinds of things that you think would work, they can never actually get to the human core that actually makes them go, oh my God, that's actually endearing. That part of you, like, that's so sincere. I trust that. The more I am doing the thing that I'm doing,

which is expressing who I am, how I think, what I'm about, the more I realize, no, no, no, no, people don't want people to be perfect. On the contrary. On the contrary. And it's not the fact that you need to be, intentionally imperfect. No, no, no.

That's not twist the knife. Let's not swing the pendulum that far. What I'm trying to say is, what you have, this version, is a version that's worth showing. And if you want to go deeper into this and work with this and see how you can match that version

with the way you show up, come to Express. You will love it. You already have people coming which I'm excited about. But if this speaks to you, then I'm going to put a link in the description of this episode. This program, like all my program starts from $47.

It's a three-week program and five modules. And it's going to be delivered live on Zoom. And you will get access to replays if you can't make it live, although I would love if you could. If you're coming, consider actually showing up. I would love to work with a group together and tackle these things together. That would be awesome. I don't like monologuing.

I love actual dialogues with people and working through this thing together. So if you want to come, we start June 17, which is on Wednesday, 6 p.m., Central European Time, 12 p.m. Eastern time. And yeah, I think that's all you need to know. When you register and save your seat, you will receive an email from me. And in that email, you'll get a link to a Facebook group where you request to join,

you put the email that you used, and then you will be approved by me. And then we're going to start working June 17, which is tomorrow it's going to be one week from now. Okay? So if you want to come in, if you want to come in, I'm going to put a link in the description of this episode. And yeah, I think that's it.

That's it. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching and listening. And until I see you guys next time, bye.