Hey there,

I've spent the last several months building something outside my usual B2B world, and it goes live Sept. 1.

It started with a question that's been rolling around in my head since 2022:

Who do you trust when everyone online sounds like an expert?

It's easy to look like an expert in post-pandemic society. Buy followers, run ads on a high-value offer discounted to pennies, or ride an emerging viral niche with really good content, and within a year you can have the kind of digital footprint that makes it look like you're a subject matter expert.

Most people are too busy trying to survive their own chaotic lives to dig below the surface.

But there are three ways to develop expertise:

1. You can buy it (courses, coaching, research, strategic partnerships)
2. You can earn it (lived experience)
3. Or you can do some combination of both.

The problem is it's hard to tell who bought it from who earned it. And because we live in a "bigger is better" climate, we assume whoever has the biggest audience has the most experience.

That's far from true. I'm in a community of social media managers who run accounts for brands like the NFL and Duolingo, and we joke constantly about how you'd think we were complete newbs if you saw our own personal social accounts. Those who can, do — just not always for themselves.

That thought crystallized last year at Mary Williams' CEO Summer Rebellion, during something called the Dino Club Panel — a room full of people who've been in online business for decades, comparing notes on how invisible we've all become in our own industries.

I know because I'm one of them.

The first community I ever moderated was a listserv in 1997. I watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone at MacWorld 2007. I piloted a brand-based MySpace platform in 2006 and started migrating communities from message boards to Facebook groups in 2012. I livestreamed press conferences on Periscope and navigated online crises I'll never forget.

During the pandemic, I started facilitating virtual conferences originally designed to be in person, while coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs trying to build expert-based businesses online. There was a week in 2022 when I moderated 17 two-hour live events in 10 days.

And despite all of that? My Facebook group has fewer than 1,000 members. My podcast gets about 200 downloads a month. My social following across every platform combined is under 10,000.

When you spend 20 years under the hood of other people's businesses, there's not much time left for your own engine maintenance. And there are several like me in every industry.

That's the whole premise behind the Dino Collective — and why I bought dinosummits.com​

Been There, Homeschooled That is the first summit in our series. It's three free days, Sept. 1-3, built entirely around veteran homeschoolers who've actually lived through the hard years, not people with the biggest followings.

More on why I picked homeschooling first is coming soon. For now, two things, if you're curious:

1. ​Register for free and look around. You don't need a homeschooler in the house for your opinion to matter.
2. ​Sign up as an affiliate. If you know anyone loosely connected to homeschooling, you could make 40% commission on the paid upgrade.

Talk soon,

Tonya

This email was written by Tonya Kubo (not AI). If you're receiving it, it means you have signed up for one of my offers in the vast expanse of the internet. Some links here are affiliate links, meaning I might make money if you use them to make a purchase.