How To Become A Force To Be Reckoned With

“Brandon” had a vision.

He wanted to become a force to be reckoned with in his specialty. He described it as being at the top of a very short list when his sweet-spot clients went searching for help.

It meant charging high-end prices that allowed him the luxury of time. Time to invest in building and sharing new content, to spend on his business or just to indulge in living his life.

It meant transforming his working expertise into market authority.

Today, Brandon is the authority he set out to become. His income is up by almost 75% (and still climbing) and he has a pipeline that he can actually measure.

It wasn’t magic—in fact he would argue it was some damned hard work—but once we positioned him properly, the rest was all about execution, about working his plan.

You too can move further on the curve from expert to authority—here’s how to get started.

Declare your niche. Let’s be 100% clear on this: you will not become an authority, much less a sought-after expert, without picking a niche. You’ve got to slice and dice your specialty, your ideal (paying) audience and your market into a niche that’s big enough to hit your goals but small enough for you to own it.

Position yourself within that niche. Carve out a space for yourself with your sweet-spot clients that no one else owns. For example, if your niche is PR for tech start-ups, your sweet-spot might be working miracles with getting founding engineers media-ready. Develop positioning that show your ideal clients how you transform them.

(If you haven’t pinpointed your ideal clients yet, try this client avatar exercise).

Getting yourself to this point means 90% of your tough decisions are made. Now, you’re ready to make and execute a plan for the rest.

Align all of your content—stories, actions and visuals—with your positioning. Once you’ve got clarity on where you’re going, it’s all about alignment. Start with audience-driven content—e-mailings to your list, articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos. As you find your voice, switch up the messaging on your website and marketing collateral.

Reach out and engage your tribe. You can’t build authority in a vacuum. This means connecting and having conversations with other experts and authorities as well as the folks reading, watching and listening to your stuff. The beauty part? They’ll tell you what you’re missing—where the cylinders aren’t firing—to keep your content relevant and pushing the envelope.

You may have to rinse and repeat a couple times, but if you apply what you’ve learned, you’ll be getting closer to the bulls eye each time.

And if you’re not, then it’s probably time to work with a pro (uh, that would be me) to get you unstuck.

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