Essays

Essays on authority, positioning, and expertise.

The focusing question criteria

“People seem to like what I'm putting out, but it's not leading to sales yet. How do I know if I just need to be patient or if this is never going to work?”

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Humans aren’t brands

"The minute we begin to see ourselves as brands, we become a commodity.” Debbie Millman

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Covert specialisation

How do you specialise further without losing business in the short term?

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Light in effort, heavy in substance

Email is the closest thing we have to a digital channel that the sender owns, and the best shot you have of people opening your emails is to make it easy to consume.

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50 clients or 5,000?

Both paths require different strategies that don't align. Without clear direction, you'll optimise for neither.

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Thought leadership is entertainment

Narrow your focus enough, and suddenly you’re seeing things nobody else sees.

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The beginner’s mind

Expertise becomes apparent when the expert adopts a beginner's mind, publicly.

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Why would my book be any different?

Markets aren't flooded with substance. They're flooded with average books.

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10 years and 1 hour

Ten years is the vision. One hour is the execution.

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The focusing question

Every authority has one focusing question that frames their entire body of work. Either implicitly or explicitly.

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Resurrection, not invention

Ad agencies hired psychologists from the 1920s to 1970s, then forgot. Rory resurrected it.

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Authorities don’t nudge. They move.

Three things move the needle: frustration, solution, communication. Everything else nudges. Authorities focus on movers, not nudgers.

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Intuition vs. data

Develop your intuition. Obsess over the problem and your craft. Then follow that intuition, not the data.

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Authorities aren't contrarian

Authorities aren't contrarian intentionally. They study one problem more closely than anyone else, and the contrarian insights form as a by-product.

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The library

Build a library answering the questions your clients actually ask. This content delivers value whether it goes viral or not.

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Which format?

Which format should you pick? The one you enjoy consuming. You can't make good content in a format you hate.

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Stumble

Successful authorities don't know what they're doing either. They stumble forward anyway.

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The authority vs. influencer dilemma

Is it possible to be an authority and influencer, simultaneously?

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When your ideal prospects don't congregate anywhere obvious

Your prospects don't congregate anywhere obvious, so how do you get in front of them?

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Dance with wolves

Reasonable advice leads to reasonable results. Figure out what reasonable looks like, then go to either end of the spectrum.

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An inconvenience

An average product targeting true frustration outperforms a superior product addressing mere inconvenience.

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Inside the jar

Under the Bridge was "just a poem" to Anthony Kiedis. Rick Rubin knew it was their best song. What gold might you be sitting on?

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Go dumber

What's obvious to you, the expert, is not obvious to your readers. Ask dumb questions. That's where the gold lies.

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Is the goal to get famous, however you can?

Every modern thought leader becomes famous by mastering their craft and refining their thinking in public. Simple, but not easy.

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Dog guilt

Dogs don’t feel guilt. They’re telling us what we want to hear.

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A perspective is the smoke, not the fire

Undisputed Authorities develop unique perspectives, but they don't chase them.

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Struggling to find your breakthrough idea?

Expertise comes from exposure to high volumes of data, which you'll never collect if you don't close doors.

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Sia or Amanda?

Make something that’s of little value to many or something that’s of high value to few.

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Half a business model

Analysing (and replicating) parts of a business model, without considering how it works as a whole, is a fool’s errand.

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The million-dollar content question

Forget followers, likes, shares, email opens, clicks, DMs, etc. It’s all noise when held up to the crux of that question.

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Frank knows when you’ll go to the bathroom

What happens if you become the best in the world at solving that one problem?

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How do you go deep while managing the day-to-day?

I have an answer to that question, but first, let’s acknowledge an important component behind the success of every Undisputed Authority...

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160 guest appearances in one year

Take a 10,000-foot view of thought leadership, and you'll see two core components.

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Filthy animal

The vulture's framing is so bad that the name of the bird has become a frame in itself

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Make a lot, publish a little

How often should a consultant publish content? Sparingly, waiting for the one piece that'll nail a home run? Or daily, throwing out every idea that pops into your head and seeing what sticks?

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A student in public

Love for the game, insatiable curiosity, and commitment to hone a craft beats expertise and experience, every time.

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A new frame changes the game

You’re not going to suddenly invent a new idea from nothing, but equally, you can’t expect to serve up the same ideas in the same way as everyone else and expect to get noticed.

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Job in a book

“People don’t buy products, they hire them to do jobs in their life."

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Small Audience, Big Impact

When it comes to audience size, influencers think big. Consultants should think small.

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Why do some people succeed early in life and others late?

Turns out, late bloomers and early bloomers are wired differently.

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I'd rather not tell this story

It starts with some very painful failure that would be easier to keep to myself, but it led me to a revelation. The business rather than religious kind.

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Creation or Curation?

When you think about world-class content is typically world-class curation

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A wide perspective, narrowly implemented

Most B2B content fails when it takes a narrow perspective, widely implemented. Thought leadership content does the opposite.

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The Pundit

A sports pundit watches the same thing we do but sees what we do not.

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The fridge changed the tomato

The invention of the fridge genetically changed the tomato. Or at least, the refrigeration process did.

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Hits and garbage

With content, hits have a transformative impact on your business. But, there's a catch.

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LinkedIn is usually a bit of a cesspit, but this guy's content was different

How do you take all the interesting ideas from your long-form content and successfully translate them to short form?

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How do you get distribution if you don’t repurpose?

Experts don’t cut, paste, and blast their thinking across social. But if you don't repurpose, how do you get visibility?

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I was wrong, and it's time to come clean ...

I was wrong on repurposing, and if I want to emulate the thought leaders I admire, I'm gonna have to come clean ...

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Why do so many smart experts 'fail' with content?

I've worked with a lot of smart experts who write good content but struggle to get any traction or positive business outcomes as a result. Often, it's down to one fundamental error.

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Putting it all together: Marketing Fundamentals 7 of 7

How do all these marketing fundamentals connect to one another?

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Subconscious Calculations: Marketing Fundamentals 6 of 7

You need trust to win the engagement, but is it something you should be trying to earn?

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Narrative Instinct: Marketing Fundamentals 5 of 7

If storytelling is an innate human ability, why would anyone need help building one?

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Principle of Least Effort: Marketing Fundamentals 4 of 7

The ability to pay attention isn’t the problem. That's a myth. We pay attention to stuff we care about all the time.

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Relativity: Marketing Fundamentals 3 of 7

We’re all programmed to incorporate bias, based on our existing worldviews, into our thinking. And at the same time, we each overestimate our ability to empathise.

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Desirable Contrast: Marketing Fundamentals 2 of 7

When it comes to growing a business beyond your network, every expert consultant and founder is faced with the same challenge: how do I get new buyers to notice me?

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Are you an Unsung Expert? Marketing Fundamentals 1 of 7

Every customer you've ever worked with loves what you do. But, for some reason, that’s not coming across in your marketing copy. Why?

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Free advice is outrageously expensive

How do you figure out good advice from bad?

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The secret behind fast-growth B2B socials

I grew an audience of 17,500 followers, in three months, then quit...

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Ignore Trends

This is the special ingredient missing from 99% of content strategies...

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Can content help you sell a 5-figure client engagement?

Sure it can help you sell a $150 course, but can it really help you sell a high-ticket consulting gig?

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Why are Tigers Orange?

They're just like marketers. Here's why...

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A Lesson from Spotify

The music business model has changed, and that change is making it's way to every B2B market.

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Is 'Just speak with Customers' BS?

You hear 'just speak with customers' all the time as an antidote to solve all marketing problems. Is it really the solution to all problems?

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What are Aesthetics for?

Sure, you want your brand to look great. But what are aesthetics really for?

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Telling your Story: Act 5 - Connect the Dots

This is the part of the story that, when you execute it just right, will have your reader yearning to take the next step forward to working with you.

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Telling your Story: Act 4 - The Process

Now they'll start to see what you see.

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Telling your Story: Act 3 - The Twist

Here's the critical part in your story. The moment you share the twist. The reason why your prospect has been failing all along.

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Telling your Story: Act 2 - The Nightmare

They'll try, they'll fail, and things will seem worse than ever.

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Telling your Story: Act 1 - The Destination

What happened when you quit a TV show 2 minutes in?

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Finding your Story

In the previous article, I covered the core story ingredients. Here, I'll show you how to find your own.

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Your Core Story Ingredients

Before you start building this sales story, you need to gather your core ingredients.

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Story to Sell or Story that Sells?

What are you working on? A story to sell or a story that sells? There's a big difference!

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Selling Squirrels to dogs

How do you sell an old idea that's already been done before?

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The Underlying Power of Familiarity

Why is it that we're drawn to familiar concepts, and how do you sell familiarity with a highly innovative product?

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Packaging New Ideas

You're selling something new, but do prospects buy new-looking things?

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A Tight Niche isn't Permanent

As a startup, it's easier to build momentum on a budget with a tight niche, but a tight niche doesn't have to be permanent.

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The One Why

What happens when you stop asking questions after the first why?

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Telling your story, drip by drip

Stories sell ideas, but how do you fully share your story when you have little time to tell it?

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Dialogue

When dialogue seems real, the story feels authentic, and the audience gets lost in the film. Your copy is your dialogue.

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The Supermarket Aisle

If you were creating a new product to sell at a supermarket, you have several (literal) positioning considerations...

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Positioning 5 of 5: 5 tactics to communicate your brand positioning

Without communicating effectively, having a positioning is useless. Here are 5 of our favourite tactics when it comes to positioning.

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Positioning 4 of 5: What makes you different?

Their Perception of You is Based on What You Tell Them Like it or not, your communication today is your positioning.

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Positioning 3 of 5: My business cheat code

To solve the positioning puzzle, we’ll have to put on our detective hats and explore the 3Ws:

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Positioning 2 of 5: The core principle of positioning

Life is constantly asking us to make decisions. And it gives us a plethora of options to choose from.

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Positioning 1 of 5: Don't be afraid of closing doors

How is it that someone less capable, less smart, and less knowledgeable than you can come along and crushes it at the thing you've been working away at for years?

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