How to become known as an expert or authority in your industry
When I leapt out full time and started this iteration of my business, I felt a little like Liam Neeson’s character in Taken.
I had a particular set of skills from corporate, McKinsey consulting, engineering, business school, learning how to build and market a life coaching business…
For the first few years, I had a lot of skills and knowledge but wasn't being recognized for it outside of my personal network. I didn’t have a structured way to demonstrate my expertise, build my authority in my industry, be recognized and sought out for what I do, and ultimately charge in line with that expertise and value.
If we do our job of positioning your firm well, you will be irreplaceable or non exchangeable, and that power translates into a pricing premium. Call it whatever you like, but we don’t want a prospect to find too many viable substitutes for your expertise. - David C. Baker
I was doing everything for everyone (”You need help with anything related to strategy or ops? I can do that!” “You’re a big business? You’re a soloist? I can do that!”).
Posting generic Canva templates with generic sayings on IG.
Never sure what topics to pitch or what to say in podcast interviews or speaking gigs.
Struggling to even GET those invitations to speak, watching others get the spotlight.
So I dove in for myself: how do you create authority? How do you become recognized for the work you do, so that ultimately marketing and sales just becomes less hard?
You build an authority system.
An authority system allows you to go from an expert with a set of skills to an expertise-based business with authority, who is the obvious choice to hire when you need them.
This system requires two parts:
Defining your Expertise and Building Your Authority
This article reviews all of the components of an authority system that I’ve observed and researched and gives you a set of questions to assess your system’s maturity.
So let’s dive in.
Phase 1: Developing your Expertise through Pattern-Matching, Your Point of View, and Differentiation
To really build expertise and authority, you’ll need to get radically clear on who you serve, how you work, and why they should choose you.
Expertise comes from having a point of view, seeing patterns, and more quickly being able to help others because you’ve got such deep knowledge of your clients, stakeholders, and how you specifically help. It’s much harder to do this as a generalist.
Premise: “Inside Out” Point of View
The premise is the specific, defensible purpose for your project or platform, pulled from your personal perspective on a topic, idea, or industry - Jay Acunzo
Jay talks about premise being from the “inside out” - aka your message, your mission, your “Big Idea”, your voice, your internal ideas from your internal perspective.
Your rally cry. As Dr. Michelle Mazur calls this, your “three-word rebellion.”
Developing a premise means developing the internal philosophy of what sets your perspective or approach apart. Knowing why you do your work the way you do, having a clear frustration around the problem/state of the market and having a personal vision for your clients or customers that you can rally them around.
Why is it inside out? It comes from you.
Voice of customer and competitor analysis is part of expertise development as well, but the premise serves as your spiky point of view and how you approach the problem differently.
You already have a one-of-a-kind idea inside of you that will not only spread like wildfire but will also change minds, incite action, and leave a legacy you can be proud of. You just need help excavating it, shaping it, and launching it into the world. - Dr. Michelle Mazur
Positioning: Your Differentiated Value
Positioning is shaping the perception of where you stand in the market and your differentiated value from your competitors and alternatives.
“Positioning is context setting. We will attempt to make sense of it by gathering together all of the little clues we can quickly find to determine how we should think about your work.” - April Dunford
“Positioning is an exercise in relativity. Our goal when endeavoring to position ourselves against our competition is to reduce or outright eliminate them.” - Blair Enns
When considering your positioning, identify three factors:
Your Market Category: your category frames up the solution you provide. We have an anchor expectation for that market category that informs how our customers expect to think about pricing, payment terms, session arrangements, and delivery models.
Your Alternatives and Competitors: what other solutions do consumers have to address this need? Who are your indirect and direct competitors? This is often determined by your category:
Differentiating Factors: What are the key attributes (pain points, approach, features) of your solution and how are you differentiated from alternatives across those attributes? How does that bring differentiated value for your clients?
You can even map you and your alternatives/competitors, based on your key attributes, and see who occupies which spaces.
This is an example positioning the Masterclass service.
Were they in the entertainment category or education category?
What are the differentiating factors, and how do the competitors map on the landscape?
For example, if I position myself as a operations and systems expert, that puts me in the market category with OBMs and Director of Operations, who often charge a much lower hourly rate and don’t deliver the level of strategy that I do.
However, if I’m positioned in the Business Strategist category - with the differentiated value that I work with you in a long-term 1:1 capacity AND help you implement tech and tools as needed?
I’m positioned to charge higher rates based on my market category as a consultant/strategist.
And I can articulate my differentiated value from many other business strategists who only offer short-term intensive models, only work in group settings, or don’t have the interest to get in the guts of your business with you.
Persona: Your Customer’s Needs and Patterns
How in-depth is your team's understanding of what makes your stakeholders (read: your donors, customers, the board) tick? - NobiWorks
To develop our expertise, we need to narrow in on the patterns for our customers and clients, so we can clearly speak to their problems and their solutions.
“Vertical niching” is going in-depth on a particular industry/target vertical with a focused understanding of the problems, the patterns, the needs, and the motivations of your clients and stakeholders. “Horizontal niching” is about honing in on one specific skill that spans industries - potentially harder to ultimately scale but still establishes patterns for your clients.
It’s not completing some Ideal Client Avatar worksheet to identify that your customer shops at Lululemon and listens to Taylor Swift (unless that’s relevant to your business!).
Having a tight customer niche allows you to tailor your messaging, your solutions to a specific audience or step in their journey. Your marketing becomes more effective, because you know exactly who you are looking for, exactly what problems they likely have, and the applicable solutions to those pain points. With deep expertise, you can offer more value and make it more possible to charge more money and streamline delivery because you’re only solving a narrow set of problems.
Process: How you do what you do
A methodology is a specific way of getting to an outcome. In a business context, a powerful methodology is also a compelling reason for people to engage with you. Sometimes a business will openly share its methodology with the market as a way of cementing its uniqueness, and sometimes the methodology will be kept secret so no one knows how the result happens perfectly every time. - Daniel Priestley
Whenever we embark on an uncertain journey of change, we want the person with the map. The person who knows where we are now, where the roads are going, what the final destination is, the delta between here and there, the challenges we might encounter along the way, and ultimately the map to get from where we are to where we want to go.
We’re looking a trusted path and clear steps, particularly when we ourselves have no sense of direction or structure.
And you can really only develop that map when you see the patterns with your clients and formalize those insights into a clear process, framework, or methodology for your work.
Having this as a documented artifact (a written or visual framework) gives potential clients confidence that you have a path forward and builds the trust that you can help them, even if the specific actions or sequence for every client are different.
And as you start to codify your approach into the tools, templates, and skills that you repeat regularly, you can start to scale or delegate aspects of delivery.
The Deeper Foundations course I teach is a demonstration of this - after guiding a number of businesses, I kept going back to these core teachings as a starting point. Codifying that into a course and templates means I can be actually more effective for me (because I don’t have to remember what to say!) and more effective for my clients because the structure is clear.
Combined together, these four components make up the foundations of your expertise. However, if you’re an expert in the forest and no one hears you, are you going to be booked and busy? Nope!
So it’s time to turn that expertise into public authority.
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Phase 2: Demonstrating your Expertise to Build Authority
Published Thoughts and Approach: Your Holistic Body of Work
Authority comes from having public proof of thinking and body of work. Because if no one knows about you and can interact with your expertise except for in a conversation with you, it’s hard for others to spread the word and for you to establish your authority.
Published content is an immensely valuable asset. It confirms you as an expert and thought-leader in your field, establishes your credibility, brings you business, attracts more income, delivers impact and spreads your influence. - Daniel Priestley
Experts have a public body of work that goes beyond quick hit and ephemeral social media posts.
The body of work might be on your own platforms:
Longer-form pieces about your methodology that live on your website (that also generate search traffic)
A YouTube channel or podcast showcasing your expertise
A portfolio of finished products
A signature workshop, e-book, or intro course
A book! (Being an author is really an authority flex)
You may be published be on other platforms:
Published in the media
Collaborations with other business owners, where you and your work is powerfully positioned
A TedX talk or other speaking engagements
This body of work takes a while to build, but you can start developing this over time, especially when you dedicate your creative energy and attention for this specific purpose. Publication sharpens your thinking, which attracts the right clients to help you hone your thinking even further.
For example, this blog post and ongoing series will serve multiple purposes.
Published as a newsletter
Turned into a visual framework for my site
Turned into an assessment
Developed into a YouTube video series
Ultimately, developed into a course
This content establishes my expertise for anyone who lands on my site without having to interact with me live.
Polish: Consistent, Coherent Visual and Written Brand
Can your client identify you from the crowd and are all of your materials coherent and consistent?
Part of building authority is looking and sounding consistent both online and in person. And having a distinct visual and written identity that others can pick out from a crowd.
When we get associated with a set of words, or imagery, that increases the stickiness of how we show up and distinguish ourselves as experts. I love when my clients quote me back to me, or use my sayings. What are the words and phrases you always say? What would you never say? Is this consistent in your writing, your sales pages, your social media posts?
And this translate to the visual brand itself. Do you have a visual brand identity that goes beyond fonts and colors, with design elements that you consistently use and set your brand apart? Does that branding align with your target market and your positioning?
Proof: Endorsements that Establish Your Credibility
Social Proof: we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. We view an action as correct in a given situation to the degree we see others performing it - Robert Cialdini
As you build your expertise and authority, a critical way to quickly establish your authority is using the shorthand of social proof.
When you know I went to Harvard Business School, that name does a whole host of heavy lifting for me to establish my authority. Or if you see someone was published in Harvard Business Review, or was a keynote speaker at your favorite conference or has a TedX talk, you figure they are someone worth listening to! And if you’re a coach with a MCC certification, that instantly connotes a high assumption of expertise.
And showcasing your results and work portfolio for your clients and customers builds credibility. Who hasn’t been enticed by the long page of testimonials on a sales page? That’s why referrals work so well to bring leads, as the person referring you is lending their social proof. But testimonials should also showcase why you’re different and how you work, not just the client results.
These endorsements and social proof serve as a trust transfer, because we assume that if someone or some institution is vouching for you, we can trust you as well.
You can establish credibility with three types of social proof:
Built: Having testimonials, referrals from customers and clients that showcase your results, value, and expertise. The “Wall of Love” of testimonials on a sales page or 5-star Google rating shows that you’ve created results! (Let’s avoid sampling from only the top 1% of our testimonials through, shall we?).
Borrowed: Displaying the credentials, certifications, accreditations, or past experience, etc. that show you have some external body signaling that you’re trained in your skill. I call this “borrowed” proof because you are trading on the reputation of the institution and essentially borrowing that reputation to bolster your own expertise.
Earned: Being published in the press or media, or having received any industry awards or special honors. A lot of press and awards can be bought, however those that are earned can really change the perception of your expertise.
Protection: Safeguarding your Authority System
As you’re developing this authority system, you want to safeguard it.
This looks like registering all your social media profile and business related URLs.
Or creating the proper legal protection with your initial business setup, trademarks and copyrights for your intellectual property.
Bringing it all together in an Authority System
At the beginning of your business, you will be a seed and sprout across every level.
You don’t have much social proof beyond any credentials you might have.
You don’t have a process, a clear client you serve, or a tight positioning.
But this is where repetition comes in, and thinking of authority as a system to be built.
Serve the client in front of you.
Write and think deeply about that client, the tools you’ve used, the work you’ve done.
Shape that into an initial hypothesis for your process, premise, positioning.
Test your thinking, patterns, and tools with your next clients.
Publish your thinking frequently through writing, speaking, or teaching.
Build case studies, capture results / testimonials / client feedback.
Reflect on your differentiating factors.
Continue to publish to refine and narrow your point of view.
Use that premise/point of view to publish your thinking for other audiences or on borrowed channels.
Serve new clients. Revisit your messaging and positioning.
Repeat over time.
Assessment Questions:
Persona: How in-depth is your understanding of the problems, the patterns, the needs, and the motivations of your clients and stakeholders?
Premise: How clearly defined is your personal perspective, your message, your big idea, or what sets your perspective apart?
Positioning: Can you articulate where you stand in the market and your differentiated value from your competitors and alternatives?
Process: Do you have a clear process or methodology for how you work with clients, illustrated by a visual framework?
Publication: Do you have a public body of work, including books, a portfolio or lookbook, pillar-content blog posts, downloadable assets (like case studies or white papers), free courses, videos, or a podcast?
Polish: How easily could your ideal client pick your messaging and visual branding out in a crowd?
Proof: Do you collect and display testimonials, reviews, credentials, and awards/press mentions on your digital properties (website, social media, search engines)?
Protected: Have you legally protected all of your intellectual property?
If you want to strengthen your authority system, I can help. I work with clients to build their foundational systems for growth and scale, including the systems for turning that authority into profit. Learn more and inquire about working together.