Lee Milteer’s Millionaire Smarts® Coaching Program Authority Marketing

Lee Milteer Interviews Adam Witty

Transcript of Tele-Seminar

Welcome to this month’s issue of the Millionaire Smarts® Coaching Program for Profit and Productivity with your coach Lee Milteer

Lee: Hello everybody! It is Lee Milteer, and we’re back with Millionaire Smarts. I am so excited because I have a fabulous expert with me today. Not only is he very, very well-known, he’s all a dear personal friend of mine, and it is Adam Witty. We’re going to talk about today, Authority Marketing. We’re going to be sharing very specific ways to use this form of marketing in your business to hyper-grow and dominate your competition.

So, we’re going to talk about what authority marketing actually is today, and we’re going to talk about Mr. Dan Kennedy. Everybody knows Dan, and the reasons for authority marketing. We’re going to talk about the pillars of authority marketing, and examples of authority marketing in business and how to implement this authority marketing n your business for gain, fame and fortune.

Before we start, let me tell you all about Adam Witty. He is the founder and CEO of Advantage Media Corporation, The Business Growth Publisher. Now, Advantage helps busy professionals create, publish and market a book to grow their business.

Now, Adam was named to the Prestigious Inc. 30 Under 30 list of America’s Coolest Entrepreneurs in 2011. Advantage, his company, has also been named to the Inc. 500/5000 list, and the South Carolina Best Place to Work list for the past three years.

Adam personally is the author of five or six books and has appeared on USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and ABC and FOX. One of his books is titled Book the Business, How to Make Big Money with Your Book without even Selling a Single Copy, which he co-authored with America’s marketing expert, Dan Kennedy.

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He’s also the founder and chairman of Authority Marketing Institute, which is the place to be for information, teachings and strategies on that topic. He also published Authority Marketing Magazine. The book we’re going to talk about today is called Lead the Field. So, welcome to the Millionaire Smarts call, Adam.

Adam: Well, Lee, thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I call that the Burger King introduction, one whopper after another. So, as you’re reading this introduction, I’m thinking, “Who in the world is she talking about?” So, thank you for such kind words.

Lee: Well, my pleasure. Adam, you and I have known each other I guess going on ten years. Maybe not quite that long. I first met you in my Peak Performers Group when I was with GKIC. You were like the shining star of the group. You and I actually have published together with the Peak Performers an anthology book, which everybody, by the way, is still marketing on their websites, which I’m proud to say.

The first question I really have for you today is let me start with the big picture question. So, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been a book publisher. So, why in the world are we talking about authority marketing? Shouldn’t we be talking about books? So, exactly what is authority marketing?

Adam: Fair question, Lee, and candidly, it’s a question I get a lot. Everybody that has known me for some time knows me as the book guy, and of course, that’s because the company that I founded ten years Advantage Media Group, one of the areas we’re most well-known in the marketplace as being one of the largest publishers of business books in the country.

We’ve got over a thousand authors in 40 US states and 13 countries that are all business professionals that have done books with us, and the reason why we’re talking about authority marketing is this. The one commonality that all of our authors have is that they created a book, they wrote a book, not because they wanted to be a NY Times Best-selling author. Now, the truth is all of them would gladly take that accolade, but that wasn’t their end goal. Their end goal was to use the book as a marketing tool to position themselves as an authority, as a thought leader, as an expert, and really to use that expert position to market their business.

So, when we boil it all down, we say, “Okay, so why is it that Advantage authors wanted to do a book in the first place?” Well, it’s not because they

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wanted a book with 150 pages and ink printed on those pages to hand out to friends. It’s not because they thought they were going to make a lot of money selling books in book stores. They created a book because they wanted to distinguish and differentiate themselves by being seen as an authority and an expert on their topic. Of course, the topic is the subject matter of what their book is about.

So, when we boiled it all down, we said, “Really, at Advantage, we’re not in the book publishing business. We’re really in the authority making business.” What it allowed us to do is really step back, and say, “What business are really in?” I remember many years ago, they were talking with an executive at Hewlitt Packard, and it was an interview for Harvard Business Review. They said to the executive, “Why is it that Hewlitt Packard was able to make the switch from becoming a typewriter company to a computer company when all of your competitors have failed, are now out of business, and they’re names we’ve never heard of?”

The executive said something profound. He said, “We never thought we were in the typewriter business. We always thought we were in the communications business.” When we had that same moment at Advantage, we said, “We’re not in the publishing business. We’re really in the authority creation business. It just so happens that a book is one of the primary vehicles that we can help people authority.”

So, really the reason why we’re talking about authority marketing and not books is because there’s a much bigger idea going on here. The big idea, which is the subject of my book Lead the Field, is that by strategically positioning yourself as an authority, it gives you tremendous leverage over your competition and is a dramatic differentiator that can help you accelerate the growth of your business.

Now, one other comment that I’ll make because you said what exactly is authority marketing, and I want to give you a technical definition. The technical definition of authority marketing is a systematic and strategic approach to positioning one’s self and one’s company as a leader, expert, authority on their topic.

The reason I use the words strategic and systematic is because it’s all done with intention. It’s not something that just herky-jerky comes about to being.

Lee: Well, I really like that because you and I both work with Dan Kennedy personally and on many different projects, and if there was anybody on

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earth that is intentional about anything, that would be him. In your book, Lead the Field, you talk about Dan Kennedy’s four reasons for authority marketing. I would like for you to go into detail about that for our listeners today.

Adam: That begs the question of, “Okay, why authority?” What is it about authority that’s so special and so unique and why as an entrepreneur, and is it worth me pursuing? The four reasons made famous by Dan who of course is a dear friend of both you and I’s and a collaborator and business partner of both you and I, the first thing that he says and I think it’s so important is the reason for being an authority is one become known, recognized and respected as a true authority on a few kinds of expertise – and here’s the key part – to a very small and selected constituency with reason, willingness and ability to pay well for that expertise.

Now, let me boil that down into layman’s’ terms. I am not suggesting that anybody listening should go out and try to become the next Donald Trump. Now, putting Trump’s political ambitions aside, Donald Trump is a well-known business personality, many would say a well-known business celebrity.

The amount of money and time and luck that it would take to make yourself the next Trump will be very difficult if not impossible for anybody listening to this call to accomplish.

So, when Dan Kennedy says, “Be respected and recognized as a true authority to a select constituency,” what he’s really saying is, become what we call slightly famous, meaning I want you to be famous to the people that have the ability and willingness to give you money.

I’m going to tell you this story because it’s very instructive. One of our authors at Advantage, his name is Jim Zigler, and he is a consultant to automobile dealers. Jim Zigler, he said to me once, “Adam, when I walk onto an airplane, not a single person on that plane knows who I am. I like it that way, but when I step onto the tradeshow floor at the National Automotive Dealers’ Association annual convention, I’m a friggin’ rock star.”

Lee: Good strategy.

Adam: I thought about it for a minute, and I said, “Wait a minute. That’s what every single one of us should strive for because the random guy that he

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sits next to on the airplane probably doesn’t have the desire or ability to give him money.”

So, it really doesn’t matter if Jim Zigler is perceived as famous or not, but his target customer which is an automobile dealer, they are all the people that attend the annual convention, and it matters very much that Jim Zigler be seen as a celebrity, as an expert, as an authority in their eyes because those are the people that have the ability and willingness to spend money with Jim.

So, that is kind of a layman’s example. That’s a fun story that I hope illustrates point number one in Dan’s four reasons for authority marketing.

The second reason is to be the go to guy or gal for something of very high value, the go to guy or gal that everybody prefers if they can afford him or her.

So, let’s take the example of a doctor. If I open up a phonebook in Charleston, South Carolina, and I look for a general physician, there are hundreds of options to choose from, but if you’re a doctor in Charleston and you systematically create authority for yourself, you set yourself up on a different level at a different league, and you become the guy or the lady that everybody wants to work with assuming they can afford it.

We see it in all industries, whether it be medicine, whether it be law, whether it be finance. There are those people that have intentionally branded themselves as “larger than life.” Those are the people that literally have a line wrapped around their building of people who want to work with them.

All the time, Lee, when people say, “I don’t really think I need this authority marketing,” I always says, “Let me ask you a question. What kind of business are you in?” They might say, “You know, I’m a financial advisor.” I say, “Okay, let me ask you a question. Go to your window.” They say, “You really want me to get up from my desk and go to my window,” and I say, “Yeah. Go to your window.”

I said, “Look outside. What do you see?” I say, “If there’s not a line of prospects wrapped around the building to get in to see you, that means that you need authority marketing.” Whether it’s a line physically at your building or whether it’s a line of people that want to get on the phone with you that want you to take them on as a client, it’s the same principle.

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When you are an authority and when others see you as an authority, it instantly creates demand for you, for your services and for your business.

The third reason, be the guy or gal that others of influence want to stand next to. So, perfect example is as you build up your authority status, people that have authority already want to associate with you, right? So, it’s Dan Kennedy. So, many, many years ago when Dan Kennedy was not the household name that he is today, what did he do? He broke his neck for ten years to speak on the Peter Lowe Success Tour, and what Dan Kennedy did was by sharing the stage with former president Reagan, former president Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Larry King, Norman Schwarzkopf, what happened is their fame actually kind of rubbed off on Dan. Now, Dan Kennedy is in the catbird position where anybody of authority in the marketing industry wants to stand next to him and have some of his authority rub off on them.

I’ll give you a great example. Yours truly. So, Dan Kennedy and I a few years ago co-authored a book titled Book Business. Now, I have a lot of expertise in publishing, but candidly, just between us, Dan Kennedy has far more name recognition, far more celebrity than Adam Witty did at the time.

So, when Dan and I collaborated and co-authored this book together, what happened is a lot of Dan’s authority and fame and celebrity, a little bit of that rubbed off on me. So, now Dan is in a position where other people that have authority want to associate, want to stand next to and want to be with him so that authority can sprinkle and rub off on each other.

The fourth reason, and I’ve got a story that illustrates this one pretty well, is leveraging authority for autonomy. Now, if you are an entrepreneur, it’s highly likely that autonomy is the prized position that you put above all else. Yes, as entrepreneurs, we know that there is significant income potential, but I would argue for most entrepreneurs, and I’ll speak at least for myself, the ability to be autonomous, to have no one telling us what to do, to make our own schedule, to do what we want, when we want, where we want with who we want is the most valuable and important thing to us. It’s the ability to create our own destiny, to write our own ticket and to do quite frankly whatever the heck we want.

So, when you have authority positioned, it puts you in a catbird seat that not authorities don’t have. One of Dan’s famous stories is about John Lennon. Of course, John Lennon was a very famous musician who was a part of the Beatles. John Lennon said this, he said, “I can sit down and

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write us a swimming pool.” I’m going to repeat that, “I can sit down and write us a swimming pool.”

Now, Lee, some people might be saying, “What in the world does that mean?” Exactly what it means is that at any time, if John Lennon needed to make Monday specifically because he wanted to put in a swimming pool, all he needed to do was write another song. You see, John Lennon knew that he had so much fame, he had so much authority and credibility as a songwriter and musician that whenever he needed to put money in his pocket, he could write a song.

Now, Dan Kennedy could say the same thing. Dan Kennedy can generate income at will by simply writing a sales letter. So, when you become famous in your niche for what you do, it gives you tremendous autonomy and literally the ability to create income at will. That is the big idea why this authority thing is so darn important.

Lee: I so agree. I always love that phrase, “I can write a swimming pool.” I always think that as entrepreneurs, we literally create with our mind out of thin air, we can create things. Everything that you’ve said is so powerful and particularly the who wants to stand next to you. The power of association, of once you make a name for yourself and people want a picture with you and they post it up on their Facebook, it helps you become an authority in that niche. That’s just so important.

Folks, remember, you can get this book Lead the Field. It’s a very tiny book, but it’s so powerful because it’s really to the point all these things that Adam is talking about.

So, in your book, you do also talk about the pillars of authority marketing, and I believe there are six or seven of those, but let’s just talk about what those are and how it effects the average business person entrepreneur.

Adam: So, at Advantage, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to take authority marketing and boil it down into a science that can be repeated in different industries for different entrepreneurs to create consistent and reliable results.

So, many people consider marketing an art. Our goal has always been to take marketing and try to make it more of a science, so results can be guaranteed and results can be predicted. So, as you just said, we believe there’s seven what we call key pillars to this thing called authority marketing.

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What I’ll do is I’ll quickly go over what the pillar is and give you kind of a brief overview of what it means. Then, if you want, Lee, we can go into more detail in any one of those pillars.

So, the first pillar is what we call branding and omnipresence, and I’ll put it this way. If you want to be seen as an authority, you have to have a larger than life brand and literally be everywhere. When you think of a business person in the world today who is omnipresent – and again omnipresents are everywhere, everywhere I go I hear their name, I see them – so who do we think about? We think about people like Richard Branson. We think about people like Donald Trump.

Branding begins with a logo, your look, your feel, your color palette, your website, the design of your collateral materials. Omnipresence is really the act of deploying that brand into the marketplace so it shows up in a lot of different places. By the way, any authority has spent lots of time carefully crafting their brand. It’s not a willy nilly thing that just happens.

The second pillar is content marketing. Authorities that are seen as experts are constantly publishing new content for their consumer public. That content can come in a lot of different ways. It can come in articles. It can come in authorship of books. It can come in blogposts, podcasts, white papers, special reports, webinars, teleseminars, audio CDs.

What we’re doing right now, Lee you are creating highly valuable content for your tribe of followers. The leading thought leaders today, the leading authorities, they are prodigious creators of new content, and because they have such a loyal following, their people consume their content.

The third pillar of authority marketing is lead generation, and the reason this is so important is ultimately in order to make an ROI, we need to take your authority position and turn it into new customers. So, how do you do that? Well, remember given the choice, people would always prefer to work with an authority than a non-known entity that’s a commodity.

We prefer not to work with commodities when given a choice, and if we do work with a commodity, the only reason we’re working with that commodity is because it’s the lowest possible price. So, it’s really a matter of how do you use and leverage authority position to effortlessly generate more qualified leads. That’s really using your content and your brand to prequalify people on the front end then move them to you predetermined and ready to buy what you have to offer.

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Something that goes hand and hand with lead generation which is the fourth pillar is referral marketing, and that is using authority position to persuade and leverage existing customers, to recruit their friends, family and colleagues into your business.

I put it this way. I always to like the question, and it’s a legitimate question, do your customer brag to their friends and family about working with you?

Lee: That’s very good.

Adam: Do your customers feel that it is an honor to work with you? If the answer is no, then you don’t have this authority thing down pat. Three more pillars – public relations and media, think about any authority – Trump, Branson, Martha Stewart, all of them are on TV, on radio, making headlines all the time. Part of that is omnipresence, but the other thing to remember is that the media who are very selective of who they interview, who they feature on their TV show, who they feature on their radio station – the only people they want to interview and feature are the people that they think are authorities on that topic.

So, when you have been seen on ABC and CBS and FOX, when you’ve appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the USA, the New York Times, when your perspective customer hears that, they immediately straighten up and say, “Holy smokes. This Lee Milteer must sure as heck be an expert. Otherwise, how in the world could she have appeared in all of these prestigious newspapers and television programs?” So, PR and media is one of those pillars in authority marketing.

The last two, speaking, not everybody wants to be a professional speaker, and I’m not suggesting that the people listening should want to be a professional speaker, but authorities are often times invited and asked to present in front of large groups.

Now, whether you’re presenting to get paid a speaking fee or whether you’re presenting to influence people and by influencing people, you generate leads for your business, it doesn’t matter which of the two you fall into, but true authorities are speaking and presenting to various groups with some volume.

The last events, Lee, you and I were just talking about this a few minutes ago. You’re putting on an event this summer, highly successful. The event

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is four months from now, and you’ve already sold 75 percent of the room. Why is it that people are so willing to spend lots of money to come to a multi-day event that you’re hosting? The reason you have the ability to do that is because you have created authority position in the eyes of your customers and prospects who are the people who have the ability and willingness to give you money.

So, when you have true authority, you can put on events and people will travel for thousands of miles to come and see you, to meet you, to learn from you. When you have the ability to do that, that gives you tremendous leverage as an entrepreneur. So, those are the seven pillars of authority marketing, and of course, my book goes into far more detail about more on those seven pillars.

Lee: I know you have some examples in your book that are very good about authority marketing. Let’s just talk about a few of those.

Adam: Yes, so let’s start with some famous examples, and then we’re going to talk about some less famous people. Famous examples, obvious and because of what’s going on in the world right now, it would be completely foolish of me not to mention Trump. Love him or hate him, it doesn’t really matter.

We cannot deny that he is a major celebrity figure. Now, here’s the interesting thing about Trump. There are at least 500 people in the world that are far more wealthy than Trump is, but if you ask most Americans who is the number one expert on business, I guarantee you eight out of ten people will say Donald Trump because he has strategically and systematically positioned himself in that light.

Now, what did he do? Well, originally, he wrote The Art of the Deal, and that was the first book – which now Donald Trump has authored at least ten different books. The Apprentice, by the way when he did the Apprentice, there was not any guarantee that it was going to be a success. It was not a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination.

You look at the speaking that he’s done. Even before he was running for president, he was on TV, he was on the radio all the time, all the time. He was literally a magnet to a television camera or to a radio microphone. He had his brand. He’s been very, very careful about how he has built the Trump brand. What does the Trump brand represent? It represents extravagant luxury. Literally, his airplane which has his name

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emblazoned on it, every building has the name emblazoned in big bold letters.

So, Trump has been very deliberate on building his authority position, and Lee, let’s be honest with each other, if Donald Trump was just any other entrepreneur that said, “You know what? I’m going to run for president,” he wouldn’t have made it past the first primary state.

The reason why Trump has had so much success running for president is because of all of the authority that he has built over the last ten years, hands down.

Another example is Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, which interestingly, Trump and Branson have something in common that is extremely instructive. Trump and Branson have built so much equity in their authority position that they biggest piece of their business is simply licensing their name to other people.

In fact, there are many, many studies where when Trump puts his name on a building, the price of units in that building immediately increase by 20 to 25 percent. There was a story, there was a residential condo tower in Miami, Florida, and units were selling for half a million dollars. They did a deal with Trump, so it now became Trump Tower Miami Beach, and literally overnight the price of condos went from 500 to 625 to 650. So, they just added 20 to 25 percent on the top line for an apartment because of the Trump name, not a single other thing had changed. So, Branson and Trump have tremendous ability to do that.

One other famous example that I’ll provide because this is extremely instructive, Suzie Orman. Suzie Orman is the famous lady who is the financial advisor that for about a decade had her own television show on CNBC. Suzie Orman started her career as a broker for Merrill Lynch, which by the way, if you have a pulse and can pick up the phone and cold call people, you can practically get a job with Merrill Lynch.

At the time, it wasn’t a position that required extreme qualifications. So, started with Merrill Lynch years before, moved to Prudential, opened up her own shop, and the turning point for her, she self-published her own book and literally just gave the book away to prospects. That turned into books two, three and four, and then she had the gumption and she had the ambition and she sent a copy of her two most recent books at the time to a producer at CNBC, and she made a compelling argument. She said, “You guys have a problem. Your problem is that most of your viewers are

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old white men, and you need somebody like me to appeal to a much larger demographic, women that you’re not currently attracting.”

Suzie Orman got her shot. She did well because the program stayed on the air for ten years, and of course now the rest is history. You say Suzie Orman, and everybody has heard of her.

Now, the truth is, is Suzie Orman the most knowledgeable financial advisor in America? Probably not by a longshot, but the authority positioning – key word “positioning” – the authority positioning she has created for herself is undeniable. Remember, perception is everything in marketing, and the reason why you want to engage in authority marketing is to position yourself as the expert, as the authority, as the leader that everybody wants to work with.

Now, let me quickly go through a couple of non-famous examples because you don’t have to be Orman, Branson or Trump in order to make this work for you. Dr. Steven Hotze, a guy that you never heard of. Steven Hotze is a medical doctor in Houston, Texas. He runs the Hotze Health and Wellness Center, and about eight years ago when Dr. Hotze started working on a deliberate and systematic authority marketing program, he had a staff of eight people and his medical practice did about two million dollars in annual sales.

Dr. Hotze wrote a book. So, that was the first thing he did. He wrote a book. Then, he deliberately got the book into the hands of Suzanne Somers, and the reason he did that is because Dr. Hotze, his MO is natural approaches to medicine specially hypothyroidism, specializes with working with females. Suzanne Somers who is an advocate for natural approaches to medicine, natural hormones, saw his book and mentioned Dr. Hotze in her book. Now, that was luck, but Hotze created his own luck by getting in front Of Suzanne Somers and aggressively trying to make himself known to her.

Now, remember, Suzanne Somers who is really famous, her fame and celebrity rubbed off on Dr. Hotze. Suzanne Somers sprinkled a little bit of her fairy dust on Dr. Hotze. Then, Dr. Hotze takes his book and working with us, he said, “Adam, I want your team to get me on television. I want your team to get me on radio.” We blanketed the state of Texas, and we got him on over 25 national and cable television shows in the state of Texas. He did 40 radio interviews. We create for him a weekly radio show, and we got him featured in 12 dailies in the state of Texas.

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Now, why the state of Texas? Because 88 percent of his patients come from the state of Texas primarily within a 50 mile radius of Houston. So, Dr. Hotze in this eight year period, has gone from a two million dollar practice to a 20 million dollar practice, a staff of 114, and he is now the CEO and has a full-time medical staff of six people.

So, Dr. Hotze has gone from being the doer of his thing, which was the practice of medicine, to the marketer of his thing, and he has used the authority position to help do that.

I’m going to give you one more example. One of our authors is a lady named Mary Adler, and Mary Adler owns a bagel shop in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Mary Adler owns a bagel shop. It’s called The Georgetown Bagelry.

I don’t know how you get any more commoditized than selling bagels. A bagel is a bagel is a bagel. So, she realized this, and she was referred to us and she said, “Adam, I want to differentiate myself. I want to write a book, and I want to tell the story of I as a female entrepreneur, how I started this bagel shop from scratch, how I’ve marketed it, how I’ve grown it to be a very successful enterprise, and I want to inspire other women to do the exact same thing.”

So, what we did is we helped brand Mary Adler as the Bagel Lady. The title of her book was Who Scooped my Bagel? We did a big PR event at her bagel shop, and every time somebody buys a dozen bagels or more, they get an autographed copy of her book in the bag.

So, literally, Mary gifts the books as premiums to all of her customers. She does this big PR event at the bagel store, and she gets a full-page write-up in the Washington Post. She gets a feature in Washingtonian Magazine which is like the hoity toity magazine for upper crust DC, and as a result of that. The White House calls her and says, “We would like to serve your bagels in the White House.”

Now, you think that isn’t marketing ammunition? So, here’s a lady who simply owns a bagel store. It’s a commodity and deliberately follows an authority plan to make herself larger than life in Georgetown. Lee, you’re in Virginia Beach. I’m in Charleston, South Carolina. We don’t know who Mary Adler is, but the truth is, we don’t buy bagels in Georgetown on a regular basis, so it doesn’t really matter. It matters to be famous right where you are to the people that can give you money.

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So, trust me, if a doctor in Houston and a bagel lady in Washington, DC can do this, it can work for anyone in any industry. We just have to be very deliberate about how we do it.

Lee: So, we’ve got a little time left, and I can go on forever, but how to implement authority marketing for gain, fame and fortune. This is so important because people are listening today and you’ve answered a lot of their objections of, “I’m a tax guy here in Portsmouth, Virginia. How is that going to affect me?” You’ve answered that a lot. So, let’s talk about implementation.

Adam: So, a couple of big secrets I want to share before we get to implementation, three principles. The first is there’s a big secret, and that is that the higher you go in income, it becomes more important as to who you are as opposed to what you know. So, the higher up in income you go, the more you get paid for who you are rather than what you know.

When you think about that for a minute, Dr. Hotze, he’s a medical professional. He knows a lot about hypothyroidism and natural hormones. The truth is he now because of his authority position has patients that fly to him from 17 different states.

So, why is it that a lady in Baltimore four times a year flies to Houston to be seen by the Hotze Health and Wellness Center while I guarantee you that there is a hypothyroidism natural hormone doctor within a twenty mile drive of her house in Baltimore, Maryland? Why is that she gets on a plane four times a year?

It’s because of the authority position Dr. Hotze has created and as you go higher up in the food chain, people are more willing to spend money for the who than the what.

The second thing that I want everybody to realize – and I ask this as a rhetorical question – must you sell or can you prescribe? You see, a salesman has no ability to prescribe because the prospect knows the salesman is trying to get one over you. The salesman is trying to convince you to spend money when it may not be in your best interest.

Whereas when you’re seen as an authority, when you’re seen as a trusted advisor, you literally prescribe and dictate what your prospect should do and they happily and willfully follow your orders. That is the power of authority.

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The final piece is what I call the irrational reaction to star power. You don’t have to be Trump to have an irrational reaction. I have to be at conferences and events where people will come up to me and ask if they can take a selfie with me and post on their Facebook or their LinkedIn page. Lee, I’ve seen you at GKIC events in the past, and you’re mobbed. Everybody wants their picture with Lee.

The reason is we are stars in their eyes and people irrationally react in the presence of stars. So, you the butcher, you the candlestick maker, you can become a star in the eyes of your prospects and in the eyes of your customers, deliberately and systematically it can be done. So, how do you do it? How do you implement all of this?

The big idea is this. If you want to become an authority, you have to view the process as a marathon not a sprint. This is something that takes time to accomplish and candidly, it’s never completely done because you’re always adding and enhancing it.

Trump began doing it years ago and to this day, he’s still doing it. In fact, there’s many people who believe that the only reason why Trump ran for president was simply to build his brand even bigger. So, the question is what are you doing?

The first thing that we always recommend is building a strategic plan. Now, we call it an authority marketing blueprint, and one of the top ways that we work with our authors, with our clients, is the first thing we do before anything else is we spend a day with them systematically building their authority blueprint. Literally, the authority blueprint is the strategic plan that they follow, that we follow together to make all of these things happen.

So, the first step is you’ve got to envision where you want to be and the build a tactical plan of all of the authority building activities you need to do to get there.

Now, I gave you the seven pillars. There’s a lot of tactics within those seven pillars. One of them might be, “I need to write and publish a book.” One of them might be, “I need to start a blog.” One of them might be, “I really need to get some press and media attention to credentialize me.” One of them might be, “I need to give some talks and give some speeches and presentations.”

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So, all of these things are part of authority building. The first step, begin with the end in mind, and then literally build that one year blueprint of, “Here’s all of the things I want to do in the first year,” and then from a prioritization perspective, “Here’s the most important thing. Here’s the second most important thing. Here’s the third most important. Here’s the fourth most important.”

Now, the reason Advantage exists is because most people don’t have the time or even the desire to do all of these things themselves, so we do it for them, but the point is it can be done. You can do it on your own, but you have to start by building that big plan with all of the tactics underneath it first.

Lee: One of the things that you said Adam that I wrote down among many things, but you said, “You must create your own luck,” and that is really, really true about this. I know my career, I started off with this whole thing of, “I am nobody. I want to become a professional speaker and an author, and I have to build a platform of somebody knows me.” So, I did my own PR and all of the stuff to build my name up, and it is great if someone goes to someone like you. You have a shop that can do everything for them. So, they can find you at AdvantageFamily.com?

Adam: They can. AdvantageFamily.com, and if they visit that website, on the homepage of our website, they will actually see a special offer to request a free copy of my book, Lead the Field, and then as we also mention, Lee, the special interview that I did with Dan Kennedy on authority marketing is going to be available to them on your Millionaire Smarts website that members can download and get as well.

I want to leave with one last idea. The last idea is this that if you are waiting or hoping that someone will come along and crown you king or crown you queen, you are going to be waiting a long time. The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that have the guts and the gumption to literally bend over, pick up the crown, dust it off and squarely place it on their own head.

If you don’t want success bad enough and if you’re not willing to proactively market yourself as authority, then don’t even try to think about doing this because it won’t work. You’ve got to be willing to reach over and put that crown squarely atop your head. Dan Kennedy did it. You did it, Lee. I’ve done it. Trump’s done it. Branson’s done it. We can go on and on. If you want to be an authority in your field, you’ve got to be willing to do the same thing.

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Lee: Very well said, Adam. I really want to thank you so much, and everybody we’re going to take some small excerpts from Lead the Field, but you can also get it free if you go to AdvantageFamily.com, and I do want to personally say that I’ve worked with Adam. I have recommended people do books with him, and they’ve come back to me with just glowing, glowing remarks.

I’ve been to Adam’s environment and his beautiful offices, and he certainly does walk his talk. So, Adam, thank you so much for your time, and we sincerely appreciate that.

Adam: You’re very welcome, Lee.

Lee: We’re going to call it a wrap. We’ll talk to you next month. Have a great prosperous month, and go out and promote yourself!

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