How To Build More Authority Into Your Mindset

In my first entrepreneurial venture, we quickly outgrew our office space. Expansion wasn’t an option and to make things worse, we were in the midst of a booming commercial rental market.

We scoured the city with our broker for months, searching for the right mix of space, location and price.

When we finally found the perfect spot, it came with an outsized price tag that gave me pause. A very long pause.

As I sat with that contract—pen poised—the reality of signing up for a $639,000 debt truly hit me. No matter what else happened, I’d be personally on the hook for over half a million dollars.

There would be no turning back.

I signed.

Every business owner has had that moment.

When you stare down a risk and then pull the trigger—knowing full well that even all your careful homework may not prevent a colossal blunder.

That’s what it feels like when you’re committed to building an authority business.

It’s a mindset: that you’re gearing up to play on a bigger field.

It doesn’t mean you’ll go on a wild spending spree.

But it does mean your choices—across the board—will reflect your gravitas, your ideal audience and the business you want to build for the future.

Your alliance partners will be a step (or five) ahead of you—maybe their reputation will even scare you a little (in a good way).

When you hire resources—you go pro. You hire the writer who was the copy genius behind three sites that exactly capture the feel you want—even though he costs 3X what you’d planned to spend.

You find yourself a coach who will challenge you big time—maybe she’s worked with a couple of your big kahunas and is jazzed to help you too. And yep, she’s not the cheap option either.

You invest in a Virtual Assistant—even when you’re pretty sure she can’t do anything you don’t already know how to do. You let go—and before you know it, you’ve got new systems and more time to do the things only you can do.

Oh and just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with bootstrapping—but that’s designed for the initial stage of your business, not for the life of it.

Building authority for the long haul requires a mindset.

And that means consciously and strategically deciding where you want to take your authority business—and then taking calculated risks to get there.