Granting Authority Model

We will be looking at the key areas in building authority and discuss some key tips/strategies to help use the areas effectively. Now this is by no means in-depth just organised with key ideas to help you get started building authority fast instead of taking months to research.

Overtime I will update this article with links and more helpful tips/strategies

Here this model looks at the way you treat others they are:
Persuasion/negotiation
Networking/teamwork
Coaching/mentoring
Public speaking/PR
Writing and general participation

Contents:
Quick overview
The benefits of authority
Persuasion/negotiation
Networking/teamwork
Coaching/mentoring
Public speaking/PR
Writing and general participation
Key action steps

Persuasion/negotiation

This is your ability to sell an idea and this is number 1 when it comes to building authority, if you cant sell an idea all the other ways wont work for you. Selling your idea is fundamental in building authority. Whatever methods you use your ability to persuade increases your chances of doing well.

Networking/team-working

This is about selling people on an idea that they want to work with you, when you have people working with you you are leveraging their resources which will help you grow faster.

Coaching/mentoring

With coaching/ mentoring theres two very important concepts the skill of your ability to coach/mentor and then there’s getting and retaining clients

When people want to become your clients you can guide them to their success, doing this will help build your authority through case studies.

Public speaking/PR

This is all about getting featured in the media, most people want to do public speaking, as that is one of the best ways to show your an expert in your field, other forms of media such as getting in the news, on a pod-cast and even a webinar helps build your authority, and if your the interviewer you can get authority by association.

Writing and general participation

This is all about any subject where you educate people such as anywhere you write, type or talk. such as a blog, discussions in forums, when you answer questions in Q&A websites, free video lessons etc.

This is the first way you should focus on at first to build some authority to help you persuade others so you can get onto another channel such as PR

The benefits of authority

The benefits of authority

1. Build your brand
2. Can raise prices
3. No longer seen as a commodity
4. Landing gigs such as public speaking is much easier
5. PR channels such as interviewers and journalists want you
6. Building your website authority is easier due to the mentions of your brand
7. People know you can solve problems
8. You can create raving fans that market for you
9. Helps you build connections with other authority figures
10. Getting other authority figures to interview is much easier
11. You can influence industries and even the masses such as Napoleon hill did
12. People will try to network with you so free dinners etc
13. You can attract talented people
14. You build trust
15. Overtime your thoughts become more concise
16. You can start a conversation on a subject
17. Easier to differentiate yourself
18. Its easier to sell anything you endorse
19. Customers are more likely to approach you with little marketing effort needed.
20. You can sell others products and get a big commission

The Start-up authority process

Generally the start up process to building authority best goes like this:

Writing and other participation

This could be an authoritative report or book. Make sure its free and is very high quality. (here your after authority not sales)

Coaching and mentoring

This helps you build case studies to boost your authority and include in you free report/book which you will update.

Networking/team-working

You should have an up-sell of your freebie thats turned into a course that includes items such as recorded interviews, video tutorials, outlines, audio files, recorded consultations with clients, (basically add stuff to it)
The commission on a high priced product(£100) should help drive lots of traffic to your site, which helps you build an authoritative brand.

Now with some proof of authority you network with others and work together to get onto a PR channel such as someones webinar. Now ts possible to get PR with a free product,

Usually webinar interviewers are after authors of a big authoritative book or something amazing (no 30 page report)that they can get a commission off of or promote their brand. (50% is a good start)

Public speaking/other pr

If your new its usually an interview such as a webinar, doing this allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader and overtime you grow more. Eventually landing better gigs such as public speaking events.

No cycle

The good news is after you get some good pr you can keep getting more from others and build up your authority quite fast. Whenever its multiple small Webinars and eventually landing on a big news site. Or keep getting on your local newspaper all this helps you establish yourself as the go to expert.

Persuasion negotiation

The importance of selling an idea

Its literally ideas that can change the world, so selling your idea to the point people want it can end up being a game changer, whenever its the idea of the automobile changing the world or something less important like the way to cook amazing food.

Your ability to persuade and negotiate is based entirely on selling an idea.

How to structure arguments

Put the most important overview in he beginning,then have less important points after. Some key points needed are why the story is important, why the story is interesting to anyone.

Don't fixate on logic

Convincing is never only about logic its mainly emotion. Our most dominate part of our brain relies on feelings and emotions. So getting the emotional part happy is essential first.

If its hard to absorb the idea the emotional part of our brain gets threatened and logic will stop working, imagine when people get emotional and stupid this is it in action.

Don't be complex- aim to turn any complex language into simple understandable messages, this may include doing the maths and problem solving for them.

By default if we can we tend to take the easy lazy path instead of the hard way, you can persuade people by letting them be lazy.

Break it down- have you noticed how most big blogs and novels don't have a wall of text? This scares readers and anything big whenever written or presented should be broken down into easier chunks.

Talk to the emotions close with logic- With every point start with the emotions in mind and talk about that and use logic to help you close that point. “Are you scared of doing a webinar, well you should because of xyz”

Fire up the emotions- if your not moving them they will get bored and your message will fall on deaf ears. Surprises work great for this “BANG and as you can see

Tell it in a story- work on communicating your ideas and messages through stories and analogies such as “banks are like a rock they are cold and stiff”

Strength and warmth- there's two key types of persuasion ones that come from compassion such as love and care and generally feelings, while there's those that come from the ability to get something done, whenever its ability or will.
You want to have both the ability to get it done and connect with others feelings.

Dress well- humans key survival ability is our ability to discriminate, is it prey or predator? We make snap judgements on each other in seconds which is why you should dress very well.(I plan to write a whole article on this)

Networking/teamwork

If you haven't already refer to the pillars of leverage (coming soon)

When you connect with individuals they can possibly put you in contact with a key influencer say another blogger that has an audience that is similar to yours.

Generally you should always be looking at ways to work with others, the fact is they will help build your status as their trust in you makes your audience trusts you.

Build some social proof- when people look you up they will be able to see the likes, followers, shares etc that you have, the more you have the more status and authority you are perceived to have.

Imagine your social proof as the backbone of your authority the more you have the stronger your core is.

Hacking social media- there are some ways to help boost your social following on each network
Facebook- global likes campaign, group participation and selling goods through likes.
Linkedin- using a program which can open multiple links such as Linkclump (they see you viewed them)

Places to find partners-the places you can find partners are:
Social media sites such as Google+ and Facebook
Multimedia sites such as youtube and Pinterest
Forums such as Warrior forum
Affiliate networks such as clickbank and JVzoo.

Focus on them- you want to tell them the benefits of working with you, even if that means at first you have to give up a lot to get a partner that you can help you build up fast.

Be willing to sacrifice- this means giving up a commission if it means landing a partner which can help change your business, maybe its your first webinar guest or a key affiliate you have.

Build a relationship before you need them- theres nothing worse than some person pleading, it makes us generally uncomfortable. Its best to build up a relationship with contacts first before you want a favour.

Be generous- its quite simple give and give, in this economy the winners are those that give away lots of value. When you give away time effort and energy to help someone they will remember you.

Become wise on health wealth and relationships- most people don't have all 3 o it makes sense to learn about them so you can give genuine good advice to contacts, helping others with no payback is what forms friendships.

Follow up dont forget- forgetting to do what you promised is a sin in networking if you said you would do it then do it, how can contacts trust your opportunities when you haven't done what you said before.

Start warm- cold calling is a numbers game for a reason its so ineffective, you need to warm a person up to the point your more of a friend than a stranger, this can be anything from offering to help them, to coffee or just talking.

Find something that affiliates you with them- here its about finding some common ground such as if your in the same group, if you liked their post, have the same interest, have a friend in common or even live in the same area. By nature we attracted to those that are similar to us.

Con men use affiliations to gain trust and trick people you can do it to build a relationship and grow your brand.

Effective not massive- when building your network your after relationships with connectors, influencer's and anyone that can help you massively, not just anyone.

The gatekeeper bane or asset- you can either get them to help or you can get around them, generally you want them to like you and get the connection your after to know that the gatekeeper likes you.

Coaching/mentoring

Coaching and mentoring is best used for getting clients that can help make a high powered case study/testimonial. When people see how you changed someones life around due to coaching it acts as social proof on steroids.

Start coaching aim for testimonials- when you first start coaching/mentoring perhaps you should offer it for cheap or even free. The main reason being that they become your case study which helps you sell.

Price affects seriousness- have you noticed that when you give free advice its taken with no worth? Most people do this even if you are the expert, if you charge they are more likely to pay attention.

Never stay free/cheap for long only do this to get quick testimonials and case studies.

Base price on dreams not features- to many coaches price on features such as phone calls, meetings and reviews, people want coaching to change their future into the dream they want.

If a client comes to you for business/life coaching they don't care about features because they want to know the change in their lives you can make for them so sell based on that.

Give out the wow experience- instead of a typical pitch show them what part of the program is like, this is easier for certain programs such as fitness.

With educational stuff give them enough in the pitch that they can get results before they join your program

Imagine if this happened to you you will be wondering how much value the paid program will provide for you if he gave you free powerful advice for free.

Give away your best ideas for free- to many people are scared to this the truth is many people want help implementing ideas which is what your paid for.

As a coach become a trusted adviser- this is what you want to become, when your clients only discuss business problems you have only established basic trust, its when they discuss personal matter that you know they trust and respect your opinion.

Look after them- to many advisor's aim to please their clients by agreeing with things which hurt the client, you need to be firm and looking after the clients best interest this builds trust and is great for getting referrals.

Be a challenge to work with- the idea behind coaching/mentoring is to help them grow, you need to push them and challenge them, whenever its uncomfortable questions or commitment to a hard goal.

If they don't commit sack them- you only want committed clients you figure this out through challenging them, as long as they give real genuine effort you know its commitment.

Be firm about the rules- there are certain things you do not want to do maybe its not to coach/mentor on Sundays. Some clients will try to get you to bend them, stick to them the ones that get you to bend tend to be the clients you don't want in the long run.

Less email more high paying clients- emailing only is a grave mistake, if you get lengthy emails get the client to call you instead this helps you build a stronger bond.

When you email provide free value- if you do email potential clients add something valuable for them such as an e-book, always make it valuable such as ideas and resources your much more likely to win clients this way.

Public speaking and PR

Public speaking and the media is one of those routes that helps put you as a thought leader in the eyes of others, after all there is very little entry barriers for the other methods.

The main channels are:

• Public speaking
• News outlets (Journals, magazines, news etc)
• Webinars by authorities 
• Podcasts 
• Radio

Webinar trading- this strategy is simply when you and another company do two webinars where you are each others guests, this helps build your authority and theirs.

Solo ad trading- this is highly effective if you can get partners within the same market, persuade them to display your ad to their market whenever you pay them or show their ad in exchange.

Use laziness to your advantage- generally the smaller news outlets are lazy with quality, this is due to the reporters not being assessed on quality, instead its mainly on getting a report by a deadline and the amount of reports.

You essentially climb the ladder through guest blogs, to authority blogs and then news outlets from very local, to regional then national. Remember on-line reporters/bloggers are pressured to churn out content.

They are paid mainly on how many views content get not on actual quality, so guaranteeing page-views etc helps.

Bloggers dont make much- bloggers that don't sell their own stuff make very little money compared to how many people follow them.

Imagine this for every 1000 Youtube ad views on average you get less than £1 that means you need over 1 million views a month to make enough to live off. So if a person has 1000 fans they make under £1 a video basically, so 'help' them out.

So give them stuff and help them out so they promote you, after all its very hard to make money with just ads so use their limited revenue system of just adverts to your advantage. 

Give them something that causes a stir- most pr want to cause commotion so if your making content look into how you can get people to debate and get all wiled up about the article.

Writing and general participation

You must be participating consistently to build your authority, whenever your unknown or an established thought leader.These are the key types of methods

Write a book- This is the number 1 thing you can do to help put yourself as an authority. You may have noticed a lot of guests have their own authorities book.

Use social media- you should build a social media presence and engage with your market on there. For example put excerpts of your blog posts on your Facebook page.

What can you do for the community- whatever you provide make sure its highly relevant information that people will absorb and enjoy

Talk about your challenges and how you overcame them- people want to learn from those that struggled and eventually got very successful not someone that had the right upbringing etc.

Be inflexible with your work- this is very important with your writing don't do changes just because its been suggested, you should have pride in your work, this attracts people due to the fact your confident in your work to say no.

Influence without trying- when you write don't influence them to do something which clearly benefits you, instead just give away high quality for free if they want more they know how to contact you.

Have very high standards- with your quality make sure its high and with no obvious errors. People want the best so be the best.

Blog- The best way to stat building your authority is through a blog, there is little restraints and if you work on very high quality content you can build your status within your industry.

Comment on other blogs- Putting insightful comments on popular blogs can help build your credibility and traffic, perhaps even help you land pr opportunities such as a guest poster.

Go into forums- participating in forums helps you build relationships and exposure make sure you give away high quality information, don't try selling directly.

Answer questions on Q&A sites- similar to forums except this is more geared towards showing you can solve problems which can attract customers with a specific problem.

Use Udemy- have you considered putting a short course on Udemy? This participation can put you clearly as a teacher and get traffic back to your main platform.

The key action steps

The key action steps you should take are:

• Set up a blog
• Go through it and make your content high quality (set up a way to collect leads as well)
• Start an outline for an authoritative book (around 25K word length)
• Plan some time each week to work on your book
• Participate in communities
• Build a small easy product such as a collection of interviews, a 10 page blueprint etc anything that targets a specific problem in great detail, build enough small products and you can put them in a recurring membership site
• Use the product to get affiliates to promote you, eventually have a recurring membership site that they can promote for you
• Get some clients you can coach, make sure you get great results and collect testimonials and case studies
• Build up proof and use it to help convince joint venture partners to work with you
• Use a book launch to get marketing opportunities such as Webinars
• Look into how you can create your own frameworks, models etc

Now that is just a general idea of the process you could take to build your authority.