Why You Need A Point Of View To Be An Authority

Your audience wants to know what you believe.

They won’t care enough to listen, read or watch your stuff regularly until you viscerally grab them with your belief system.

I call it your point of view.

Think of it as building connective tissue between you and your ideal audience.

Make your point of view distinctive AND emotionally compelling to give yourself another path out of the “expert” zone to authority.

And, put it in writing, even if you never share it directly with your audience.

Why? Because it will be your guide to all sorts of big and small decisions around building your authority.

Should you write about x? Align with y? Sound off on proposed legislation z?

Your point of view becomes a prism for your clients and buyers to differentiate you from the dozens, hundreds or thousands of choices they might make. To connect with you. To believe in you.

And so you must answer their pivotal question: why should I listen to you?

Here are a few questions to get your juices flowing:

Who do you really want to work with? Know that narrower is better—the more tightly you describe your ideal tribe, the easier it is to recognize each other. Here’s a link to my Client Avatar BrandSheet to help you hone in on your perfect audience.

What do you believe? Set the tent poles of your work. If you’re a leadership consultant—what do you believe about the role of leaders in organizations? What distinguishes great leaders from the merely good? How should organizations develop their future leaders? Get clear on the belief set that underlies every assignment.

What outcomes are you striving for? Think big—how will you get there if it’s not on your radar? If you’re a financial advisor, your goal may be to help clients live the life they’ve always imagined. Look at the work you’ve done—your best success stories—and look for the commonalities in the end result.

How have you structured your work to deliver those outcomes? This is about real, tangible aspects of how your service delivery is designed to mesh with your promise. Drill down to exactly the aspects that form your DNA. A financial advisor who wants to help clients reach their dreams should not be opening a conversation asking about their investment mix.

Once you’ve filled a few pages with your thoughts on this—preferably in two or three sittings—you’ll have the building blocks of your point of view.

Hone it down to a page, so it represents your thinking at its crispest.

Whether you share it is immaterial—it’s an exercise in clarity and commitment.

What do you believe so profoundly that you’ll fight for it?

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