Are You Building A Framework For Your Authority?

You wouldn’t build a house without framing it first.

Authority building is not so different.

You build your framework on top of your big idea, your foundation, the reason why you’re doing this: the transformation you’re jonesing to produce in your clients, your buyers and your audience.

Let’s just be clear: you need that foundation to ensure the framework you’re building won’t topple over when the wind blows (which it will).

Designing the framework for your authority is a bit like deciding on the outer edges of what matters most to you. Instead of deciding how many bathrooms you want and the size of the kitchen, you’re deciding which segments of the market you’re going to serve and what problems you most want to tackle.

And it all starts with defining your point of view, your belief system. What do you believe about your area of expertise, your big idea and the people you serve?

Because until you think it through completely—and commit it to writing—it will tend to be fuzzy and indistinct. Rather than the clarion call to action that a crisply written point of view will give you.

Let’s say you’ve become an expert on creating digital sales funnels for financial advisors: you have a methodology that consistently turns your clients’ marketing spend into new clients and higher revenues.

To develop your POV, you’d start by drilling down to the kinds of firms (clients) you serve best, their thorniest challenge and what you (uniquely) believe will solve it.

Your first draft might focus on financial planners (a subset of financial advisors) who are tech savvy or open to the creative use of technology (another subset).

You might further niche your message to owners of multi-advisor firms who are challenged with building a sustainable client base for their growing team.

Their thorniest problem? Feeding the beast: consistently driving good-fit clients to their firm (which means your POV will touch on their pain points).

And then you’ll hit on your (unique) belief system that is baked into your offerings.

Maybe you believe that embedding the authentic DNA of the firm in every digital interaction is a core piece of winning new clients.

Or that the most successful financial planning firms aren’t limited to local clients, but can build national practices by niching their offerings.

Can you picture how this framework would start to inform your authority building?

Focusing on financial planners with multiple advisors looking to grow digitally gives you a clear audience. A big, thorny problem. And a myriad of ways to form solutions that fit with your business.

Suddenly, you’ve gone from solving an important problem for a set of clients to building a system to transform a larger universe.

The beauty part?

That same transformation can also revamp your business model—maybe you’ll do more speaking, teaching or writing vs. one-to-one consulting. You may make more money working less.

But until you build that framework, it’s almost impossible to break out from expert to trusted authority.