Why You Need to Become an Authority

HBO is currently airing a documentary entitled Fake Famous. The movie’s premise is to see if the filmmakers can take three ordinary 20 somethings and turn them into Instagram Influencers. Without explaining the entire film of the documentarians using fake bots for followers, likes, and comments, they succeed in turning one woman into an “influencer” – which the film explains is someone with a tremendous number of followers. As a result of this perceived authority, she received a lot of free stuff from companies just to mention them on her Instagram account and enhanced her acting and modeling career.

This brings me to the subject of this Rainmaking Recommendation: Authority.

Creating authority is one of the most critical aspects of your becoming a Rainmaker. And while I do not believe that you can fake it for long because people will find out whether you know your stuff or not, even creating perceived authority (as demonstrated by the movie) can help you in your career.

But let’s talk about creating real authority for your career.

Ian Brodie, a marketing expert, has defined authority as expertise + influence. He goes on to write:

“For me, the key is that while an expert is defined by what they know; an authority is defined by who listens to them.

In other words, you can be an expert by knowing a lot. But to be an authority, people have to listen to your expertise and act upon it.

An authority is the expert people turn to for guidance. When they speak, people listen.”

Or, as eloquently put by my friend and colleague, Cordell Parvin:

“It’s not what you know; it’s not even who you know. It’s who knows what you know.”

Establishing yourself as an authority allows you to create a sense of trust from others. And if you have been following me for any length of time, you know I am always using the old chestnut: people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Once you have created this trust, it becomes much easier to grow your book of business.

The next few Rainmaking Recommendations will go into the tactics you can use to create authority. And, before you begin to worry about how many Twitter or Instagram followers you have, how many connections you have on LinkedIn, how many likes you get, actual authority comes from understanding everything about your ideal clients, what are the issues that are plaguing their lives or their businesses, and how you can help solve them.

Then you have to let them know you have the solutions.