The Eight Steps to Authority Status
There's multiple leaps to take on your path to becoming an Authority Entrepreneur. Here they are.
It might be tempting, if you’ve seen messages about the death of social media, personal (un)branding and society reaching ‘peak content’, to question whether becoming a ‘known’ entity in your field is still a valid strategy.
It doesn’t help with LinkedIn reach being throttled lately. A lot of people are thinking, “What’s the point?”
But thought-leadership and Authority-building are absolutely not dead. They remain the most powerful way to differentiate yourself from everyone else doing and saying similar things.
Authority isn’t about shouting louder, being the most popular, or being the most beautiful. It’s not about posting endlessly or being remembered simply because you’re consistent.
Authority is being remembered because of your depth of thought.
….Original thinking. Commitment to your craft. Insights others aren’t sharing.
Your frameworks, signature processes and long-form content demonstrate this. They shape people's minds and, in some cases, change hearts. And creating these assets accumulates into growing your Body of Work. These assets prove to clients that your business has depth, which makes you trusted and chosen.
But the act of doing this, work helps you out more than you might think.
Authority-building is a savvy strategy
When you codify your ideas publicly, you consolidate how you work.
That gives you clarity on your methods, that allows you to iterate intelligently (not blindly) and in time, create leverage.
Leverage is what allows you to:
stop relying solely on selling clients “time with you”
charge based on outcomes rather than hours at your desk
deliver results without doing everything yourself aka subcontract or use IP
Authority helps you build a business that’s scalable, profitable and rooted in your actual expertise, so you can spend time living and not just working to keep the lights on.
It’s tempting to feel like you’re “cheating” clients by offering group or self-serve elements, but having run six scalable containers, I’m convinced: these can be far more valuable than endless 1:1 calls with no process.
I’m more and more convinced of this as I run my group programmes (Authority Club and Authority Letters). Here’s a message from the community this morning.
Frameworks allow clients to get value not only from me, but from sessions with each other, too.
If you’re nodding, and you’d love to create something simliar in your business or are already creating this leverage, here’s a map of this path I hope can help you make sense of this exact process.
The Authority Entrepreneur’s Journey (in 8 steps)
So many new founders take inspiration from Authority Entrepreneurs (who are 10-20 years in front of them) with multiple offers, courses, books, and assume that's the ticket to success. But every stage requires an identity uplevel and a skills-based leap.
At first, earning just any money on your own terms, without an employer.
Here’s how it goes:
Without an audience or experience earning money for themselves, you likely won’t succeed by launching a passive-income digital course. It’s why on discovery calls I often have to bite my tongue when someone wants to skip five steps and hopes paying me will make the jump magically happen.
But then even becoming an Authority, whose ideas and expertise status is what grows their business, has a journey of its own. A journey that I too, am walking, and by no means ‘finished’.
Here’s the second half of that journey: what happens as you continue rising in Authority:
I’m still doing some bespoke work, some scalable delivery and some “IP delivers results” work myself. As a (very-meta) Authority on Authority, I’m here sharing what’s working with my clients, community and readers to help ease the mental load.
My coaching and mentorship has completely focused on this Authority Entrepreneur path.
Today, I’m best suited for guiding freelancers, business owners and early-stage Authority Entrepreneurs through these stages. Supporting the skill building and the emotional shifts required. My coach training helps you do things in your way and tune into your intuition and my business mentoring helps you leverage shortcuts, frameworks and momentum.
I also help those further along the journey, too, because at each new level, tweaks, more clarity and identity upgrades need focus, too.
If you want to build a sustainable, profitable business, moving through this journey, then I know this work takes an external perspective. Structure, process and moral support makes all the difference in crossing each threshold.
I’m taking applications for new members of Authority Club once again, to do exactly this. We start 12th January. Join the waitlist for first dibs on spaces and bonuses. Doors won’t open again until July 2026 earliest!
What keeps us stuck
Without a clearly defined message, offer or process, you’re in the ‘winging it’ stage. Taking on clients at whichever rate you can, just to win the business. That’s often an hourly or day rate, where your time soon becomes capped by how many hours you can physically deliver. Or associate work for another business, which is also capped based on their rates. Or you’re doing everything custom, which is also capped because custom work doesn’t scale.
Authority is the antidote to custom, unscalable work which so easily burns you out. There is no shame or judgement here, I’ve been there and know that the reality is we just need to keep the lights on at times.
But it requires hard choices: positioning and business model choices, and boundaries. It requires sticking to your guns and not changing everything, bending into shape to please the client who wants it their way.
Which is where a framework to follow, and a coach to well, coach you, helps massively.
Where to begin
I’m a firm believer in creating long-form content because not only will it elevate you above the noise and help clients get to know you when you’re not in the room, or share with their stakeholder “Look, they really get it!” saving you endless unpaid consultations…
It is also a virtuous cycle.
Writing helps you think, which helps your insights, which shapes your positioning. Which attracts better clients. Which sharpen your IP.
Writing is one way to sharpen your ideas, but so is talking them out loud, and committing to them, sharing them, and building processes around them.
All of this forms the backbone of the work we do inside Authority Club.
I believe (though do not necessarily advocate for) a more entrepreneurial future of work. That many more people will soon enter self-employment, and follow similar path. Many people in their 9–5s are plotting their leap already, and will be building businesses around similar authority areas to those of us already in the field.
My encouragement is to move along this path now. Not to get famous, but to do meaningful, well-paid work you’re proud of.
I’m passionate about this because most people have to figure out entrepreneurship without a map, and I’m offering you one that has worked for me and many others.
Join me inside Authority Club this January, for six months of dedicated support, a structured programme, a smart peer group and a bonus 1-1 with me — by getting your application started now.
This Authority Entrepreneur process (and my coaching) have been designed to best fit you if you are:
A coach, consultants or expertise-focused founders who want to be known in your industry
Still consolidating your Authority, frameworks, body of work and identity or rebuilding after a pivot
Doing something complex, mission-driven or rooted in years of prior learning or building
Not yet operating at the level of clients, income or impact you know you are capable of
So, if that’s you, and you’re seeking support in the year ahead, I hope to see your name come through on that waitlist.
