Alastair McDermott (00:02.09)
So today I am joined again by my friend Alistair McBride. Al, you’re here to have a conversation with me about some of my best advice for building authority. And this is actually data based rather than kind of just opinion. So I want to talk to you about some stuff that I’ve shown you very briefly just beforehand. And we’re going to kind of dig into the insights and data a little bit from this.
Al McBride (00:25.838)
Absolutely. Yeah, no, really interested in this one. Because, as you said, this is, as I understand it, the transcripts of what a hundred and something 162 odd episodes analyzed with various AI tools, extracting what are the common themes, what are the common principles that keep popping up through all of these thought leaders that you’ve interviewed over the last 18 months, two years, maybe more. And so that we can see.
Alastair McDermott (00:39.338)
Yeah.
Al McBride (00:55.406)
what people are saying, what all these industry experts are actually agreeing on. Is that correct? Is that where I’m in the right ballpark?
Alastair McDermott (01:03.338)
Yeah, so if there’s one episode of The Recognized Authority that you have to listen to, it’s this one, because basically what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna run down through literally the best advice from all of these super smart people who I’ve spoken with. And I’ve been very lucky to speak with over 150 experts. The numbers don’t quite correlate because I’ve done some solo episodes. I’ve had some people come on for more than one episode. So I’d say this is the collation of advice from about 150.
you know, bestselling authors, thought leaders, super smart people. And so what I’ve done is I’ve taken all of the episodes. This is the nice thing about having a big data set like a like like, you know, 200 hours of podcast audio. And I was able to transcribe all of those. I took the transcriptions, pulled out all the key insights and advice from every episode. And then I processed that again with a eye to sort it and collate it and figure out like, what’s the frequency of the advice?
that’s come up, what advice are we hearing over and over and over again? And so what we’re gonna do is I actually have the top 28 piece of advice. I’m not gonna go through them all one by one with you, but we’re gonna go through kind of highlight some of the really important stuff. And we’re gonna, towards the end of this episode, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna talk like what are the top five pieces of advice that we’re seeing? And like some of these are.
very high in frequency, like there’s one piece of advice that’s been given at least 90 times. So that’s 90 different people emphasizing this particular piece of advice. So we’re going to go through that. So what I’ll do is I’m going to share my screen. And if you’re listening to this on audio, you can find the spreadsheet because I’ve got this as a spreadsheet, of course. You can find a link to download and to view that. And I will be putting that with the link in the show notes.
Al McBride (02:38.318)
great stuff.
Alastair McDermott (02:52.362)
And yeah, so what I’d like to do is just get your reaction to this and talk through some of those things. So I’m going to do a screen share here.
Al McBride (02:59.502)
Let’s go for it. So to the screen share there, I mean, I’ve just literally been shown this about five minutes ago. So it is quite interesting. I’m first of all interested in the different categories. Did you set those over those categories themselves picked out by the AI analyst?
Alastair McDermott (03:15.274)
So what I did was I used, and by the way, I used Google’s Gemini Pro 1 .5 for a lot of this because it has this enormous window which you can give it a lot more data. So I used that to process a lot of this. So we came up with these categories and I was working quite a bit back and forth with the AI to come up with these categories to try and make them logical. The high level categories, and this is kind of like the top, I think five categories.
Al McBride (03:29.902)
Okay.
Alastair McDermott (03:45.002)
The first one is branding and positioning. Second is content creation and distribution. Third is engagement and relationships. Fourth is professional development and mindset. And the fifth is value and impact. And there’s a bit about pricing and focusing on creating value in there. So, yeah, so where do you think would be a good place to start with this?
Al McBride (04:02.062)
Excellent. Well, we’ll start at the start where it’s talking about branding and positioning and we’ll have a chat through that. Some of these numbers are huge. 89 of your 150 odd guests talk distinctly and overtly about the importance of building authority. I mean, okay, they’re on your podcast called The Recognized Authority, but still.
Alastair McDermott (04:13.514)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (04:27.886)
It’s very much was a theme that they very much got behind. I mean, this is the whole theme of the podcast. This is your whole raison d ‘etre, if you want. Can you talk about further, give us a few more insights on that, particularly maybe in connected to the second one, which is the importance of specializing in niching down, which is what you’re talking about.
Alastair McDermott (04:33.226)
Hmm.
Alastair McDermott (04:44.65)
Yeah, well, I think.
Alastair McDermott (04:51.338)
Yeah, I knew this one was going to come up because like I know just from experiencing the conversations that it comes up so often. So I think people talk a lot about building authority because, you know, it is the premise of the show. And I brought on people who, you know, who believe in that. But I think why it’s important is because if you can establish yourself as the go to person, as a recognized authority, you are going to have increased trust credibility in sales. So you’re going to have more people.
coming to you, those people when they come to you, they’re going to believe in your credibility and they’re not going to be quibbling about price. You’re going to be able to command higher fees. You’re going to have inbound leads, which means that you’re going to have more, that you’re going to have, when you’ve got more inbound leads coming in, you can be more picky and choosy about the clients you decide to work with. So you can decide to work with the clients who you prefer to work with.
And usually what that means is that you have more free time as well. So there’s so many different benefits that come from that. The best one for me is the ability to turn away bad fit clients. That’s the number one thing. It’s something I always hated having to do.
Al McBride (06:00.878)
kind of the dream for a lot of people. Yeah, it’s the dream. And just to say on that specializing in Easingtown, and we can talk about it again, but I have to report, even just last night, I was talking to a friend of mine, I have a book coming out here that Mr. McDermott here is, as a good friend, has been excellent at helping me edit it as part of Authority Press. But what’s important is this is that I just mentioned it to someone, they didn’t even read it yet. And you have the next updated proof there.
But they didn’t even read it yet. And they’re already going, you need to talk to this person. Let me introduce to that person. So from this individual’s current job, right, she is thinking of bringing me into her team, into the wider company. Then from there, she’s introducing me to people in her previous role in a different company and potentially getting me on the speaker circuit. All of this different stuff. This is literally inbound.
Alastair McDermott (06:34.602)
Hmm.
Al McBride (06:58.03)
She’s sending these emails to introduce me to these things in the next couple of days. So this is all from the authority, for example, in this case of having a book, but it equally could be from just being that authority. This is inbound, live as an example of what we’re talking about. I actually couldn’t believe how forthcoming she was. On like I didn’t even ask for this stuff. She’s what are we up to? I’ve just finished publishing a book. It’s about to go live.
and this conversation rollout is kind of breathtaking actually so I have to say this is very much proof in the pudding it is very cool very very cool
Alastair McDermott (07:32.042)
Isn’t that so cool, though? This this is one of the things and I think it’s it’s one of those things about having a book. I mean, literally we have the phrase he wrote the book and she wrote the book on it as this indicator of being the go to expert. And what you’re seeing there is somebody sees that you’ve got a book and they they know what the topic is, but they don’t they don’t even bother to read it. They haven’t gone through the process of reading it.
Al McBride (07:46.126)
Absolutely.
Alastair McDermott (08:01.866)
And they’re able to say, okay, there’s a certain level of legitimacy, credibility, you know, now you already have some trust built up with them, but, you know, and, you know, the book isn’t, you know, like,
Al McBride (08:08.91)
All of that.
Al McBride (08:12.622)
A bitch, yeah. But again, you’re talking about niching. I’m not a coach, I’m a negotiation communication coach. So niche down, expertise. It’s not any old book on negotiation, it’s the psychological side. So people who have their 10 ,000 or people who are new to it are going, yeah, there’s loads of psychology stuff applied to it that I don’t really get, that I’m missing a lot of this. Yes, this is what I need.
Alastair McDermott (08:17.706)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (08:39.214)
That’s the niche we’re talking about. That’s that niche benefit right there. Anyway, sorry, I’m waxing on here, but it was just it was kind of mind blowing. I didn’t even have to ask for leads. None of the sales stuff, you know, just like, that’s brilliant. And all these ideas flown from them. Unprompted. Amazing.
Alastair McDermott (08:43.242)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (09:00.586)
Yeah. So this is this is like what we’re talking about here is we’re talking about the number two piece of advice in the branding and positioning category is to niche down. And that’s come up at least 65 times. So approximately one in every three episodes, my guest talks about the importance of niching down. And I like this just comes up.
Al McBride (09:12.718)
Tony.
Alastair McDermott (09:29.866)
over and over and over again. And I don’t even, you know, I don’t prep people for it. Like I am interested in what people say about this. But most of the time they say it unsolicited that, you know, they think that it’s super important. And it’s just it comes back to this for me. If you want to be the recognized authority in your field, then you have to choose your field. And that sounds really logical and clear. But a lot of people don’t choose the field. They want to stay. They want to float in this kind of more generous position and.
Al McBride (09:35.726)
No.
Alastair McDermott (09:59.05)
And I understand that too. I understand why people want to do that because you feel like you’re more adaptable. You’re working in many, many different problem areas. But the problem is you don’t develop this deep expertise and you don’t develop this reputation as being an expert in one single field. So, and that’s why it’s come up so often on the podcast.
Al McBride (10:17.486)
Absolutely. As you see, just from this, then the next points down, develop a strong point of view and, you know, have a clear positioning statement. They kind of flow from that niching down in the first place, that if you’re niching down, you usually have particular viewpoints or opinions in that. And of course, that’s very much what came across with mine, that, you know, compassion, human interaction can be a huge part of negotiation in a balanced way, not leaving yourself overly vulnerable.
But building an extra trust, basically trust leads to huge value. It’s part of part of my positioning statement. So I’m loving the way that’s flowing right from there. And as I said, it’s just proof in the pudding as a lovely example, just from literally last night. So let’s move on then into the content creation and distribution, because this is kind of a big thing that you’re talking about. You need to actually use your voice in some media, whether it’s video or podcast, whether writing a book, whether you’re blogging.
You need to actually get your thoughts down and then thoughts out there, right? So 90, 90 people, over 90 people said to create content consistently. So first of all, there’s two points there I’d love to raise to everyone is to create content, right? And then to create content consistently. Why do you think the consistency matters? Or is that a silly question?
Alastair McDermott (11:39.562)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
So there’s a couple of different parts to it. And by the way, in this in this particular subsection of content creation, distribution, there’s there’s kind of this one huge piece of advice and then everything else is kind of supporting to it. So this one is stand out that creating content consistently is so important. And it’s the consistency that is is crucial because there’s two factors that first off, you’re creating more content.
So when you’re creating more content, you get better at it because when you start out, you’re probably going to suck. I’m sorry, but that’s probably the case. The first YouTube video you make, the first blog post you write, it’s not going to be great. You know, unless you’ve been, you know, unless you’ve been doing something, you know, unless you’re in like in video, you know, in video production already as an industry or unless you’re already specialized as a writer.
you probably won’t come out the gate with something brilliant. And so what you need to do is just like going to the gym, you need to build up your publishing muscles, your writing muscles, you’ve got to figure out how to do all the things that you want to do with video. You know, it could be to do with how you set up your camera, getting closer to the microphone, you’re putting in your scripts, having better call to action. You know, there’s so many little details, and particularly with video.
Al McBride (12:59.182)
Right, right.
Alastair McDermott (13:05.93)
But there are so many details in all of this and that’s one of the things that came across from a lot of the interviews that I did is there’s so much nuance that when we’re not specialists in an area when we haven’t got a lot of experience we don’t see all the nuance all behind the scenes what’s going on like the way I think about it it’s a bit like if you’re watching the you know the hundred meters final at the Olympics and Every little detail from how they place their feet how they put their fingers on the ground before they start running
the way that they hold their hands, every little detail. Sometimes we look at it and we say, okay, that’s somebody running fast, but there’s so much more to it. Like there’s all those little details that have gone into, you know, years of prep to that point. And it’s, it’s, it’s very similar when it comes to like, when I talk to people, for example, about YouTube, and I’ve spoken to, to Cy and Cooper recently about that and just the detail and the nuance. I was talking to David Newman about sales conversations. And again, the detail and the nuance in,
what he’s doing and how he’s prepping and the way that he words the conversation. All of that, you know, is fine tuned over time. And so this is just applying that same thing to creating content. You have to create content regularly over time, create a volume of it. And a major part of that is just to get better at it. The other part is you’re creating this body of work, which is out in the world helping people discover you. So it’s creating a bigger surface area.
So what’s happening is, you know, I’ve got a hundred and a hundred and seventy odd episodes of the podcast. Tons of those are on YouTube. People can discover those in YouTube. People might find them through search engine optimization. They might do a search on Twitter or LinkedIn and they might come across one of those. So you’re creating this mass of content, which is which is getting better and better in quality.
Al McBride (14:51.31)
sure.
Alastair McDermott (14:59.338)
and is sitting out there for people to stumble across and find you and say, Hey, I’m interested in what this person has to say. So you’ve got this big surface area.
Al McBride (15:05.582)
Well, the other thing is. Yeah, big surface area is absolutely key. The other thing is it’s a soft, gentle and value add way to be relatively top of mind to a lot of people. So if you’re publishing on, say, LinkedIn amongst other places on a weekly basis or almost a daily basis, so you’ve one episode and maybe then you have a poll quote like I have for my episodes or a wee clip that you put up or again mentioning something about the speaker.
Alastair McDermott (15:17.418)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (15:34.67)
all of these sort of things which direct people’s attention because people aren’t on it every day and if they are they’re not going to see your post but when you’re there regularly with something of value to offer that’s what you get known for you’re that person you’re the such and such guy or the certain such and such gal you know that’s what you get you are then associated in people’s head with your niche because you’re continually publishing which is again that very soft value add kind of way of being.
which is super. So that’s very good. And as you said, down in the second, there’s a bit of a distant second, use podcasting to build authority because it allows you to do that very well. So should we pop on down to the next section then? So engagement and relationships. okay. Even.
Alastair McDermott (16:14.282)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, I want to I want to I want to I want to briefly just talk about those those sections. Those are the piece of advice around content creation. So they are used podcasting to build authority, repurpose content, use video marketing, use storytelling. Now, storytelling, I probably haven’t had enough people on the podcast who’ve been talking about that. I do think it is very important. Using video marketing and using podcasting. I think that those they’re just two channels.
Al McBride (16:23.566)
Yeah.
Alastair McDermott (16:45.29)
that I think are two media that are really important, to get good at using video and using podcasting. I think it’s actually going to be more and more important now with this kind of Dawn of AI generated content that we’re actually using video content and making video ourselves. cause I think that’s going to help us to stand out. but that’s, that’s a whole different conversation. So, but.
Al McBride (17:06.958)
It is a whole different conversation, but just to touch on that about the repurposing content as well as that, people think, well, I don’t have all the time in the week to be doing this stuff. And the beauty, as you said, of doing something like a podcast or writing a book, we have a book. That’s like what? 60 different blog posts right there. And I haven’t even read the book. That’s a whole year’s worth of content that you could potentially put out in different formats. As you said, doing the video marketing or the podcast, it’s video and audio.
Alastair McDermott (17:15.978)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (17:36.238)
And you can make blog posts out of it, you can make clips, as we said, you can do all these sort of things. So it’s being able to very quickly, once you have the one thing, being able to disseminate that into multiple different channels so different people can find you on their more preferred platform or more preferred way.
Alastair McDermott (17:56.394)
Yeah, one of the things I think that’s important here is you just need to create the content one time. And then we have AI assistive tools that can help to repurpose and you can hire people, you can outsource and delegate, you can have somebody on your internal team. You can hire, there are VAs and companies that do this professionally. And so for me, this is why I think that doing stuff on video is important. And that’s why, why we’re recording video now, even though this is
Al McBride (18:04.046)
Exactly.
Alastair McDermott (18:25.194)
primarily an audio podcast. But the reason why I want to do the video is because you can repurpose video in more different ways. And so, for example, so when we have this, we can take this video, we can put it straight up on YouTube as a self -contained video. Then we can also cut snippets out. So cut these short videos out. We can also take the transcript of the video. We can take the audio of the video, put it out as a podcast. We can take the transcript of the video and we can process that with AI tools and turn that into a blog post.
You know, we can turn that into, you know, LinkedIn posts. We can turn that into a carousel document on LinkedIn. There’s all sorts of things that you can do once you’ve got the original source. And you as the expert don’t need to be present for that repurposing. Once you have shown people what it is that you want created from that or once you set up the correct prompts and the correct workflow in AI, you can create these things. And that’s what’s really cool about, you know,
Al McBride (18:56.302)
A link to an article. Yeah.
Alastair McDermott (19:24.778)
you create your original piece of content and then everything else comes from that. I think that people think I spend a huge amount of time creating content because they see the amount of content that I’m publishing. But actually I’m only spending one or two hours per week. And that’s the like I just show up and do a podcast interview and then everything else is taken care of for me. And I think that’s that’s really crucial because you’re not spending huge amounts of time here. So I have a book called Efficient Content Creation. It’s up on Amazon.
It’s either free or it’s 99 cents or something like that. So go check that out. You might find it interesting. But it talks about the actual workflow and the tools that I use to do this. So you might find that interesting.
Al McBride (19:58.478)
Excellent.
Al McBride (20:03.438)
Very good, very good. So we’re ready to move on to the next exciting section.
Alastair McDermott (20:09.578)
Yeah, let’s talk. So the next section is engagement and relationships. And so this is talking about understanding your clients. And it’s also talking about, you know, your your audience, the people who you’re connected with on LinkedIn, relationships with all of those people. Because even though we’re like we want to build authority and be seen as a thought leader, the human connection here, just like with your book, the human connection is the crucial piece of the equation. And so.
The number one piece of advice that stand out in this section is understand your ideal client.
Al McBride (20:43.374)
absolutely key because otherwise they don’t feel like you’re talking to them simple as that now it’s one of those things where people say understand your ideal client It sounds obvious But I have to pose you there because so many people end up essentially not understanding their audience where they don’t have that connection and it’s not necessarily Understanding your audience in the sense of knowing what they have for breakfast of this kind of level of minutiae But it’s understanding their needs their key pain points where they’re coming from how they see the world
how they see their problem and then how they probably take in your potential solution. So no wonder it’s absolutely key. No wonder it came up a whopping 87 times. That’s massive.
Alastair McDermott (21:25.482)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And for those who are not looking at the spreadsheet, I do have the episode number that it was that it was in. So you can you can check this out and you can go and listen to those episodes. So we have the episodes in the spreadsheet, which will be linked in the show notes. You can actually see which episodes each of these piece of advice was mentioned in. I did that in part because I wanted to be able to cross validate what the AI was telling me. But it’s useful to have so people can go check out. OK, I want to.
Al McBride (21:51.598)
That’ll be good.
Alastair McDermott (21:54.666)
I want to learn more about this particular topic. You can go listen to all the episodes and that if you want to. But yeah, so understanding your ideal client. So I think for me, this comes from or this like how I do this is I like to talk to people on calls and I really like to record those calls. So I did this at the start. I did this as like Zoom interviews. So it was like a telephone interview.
but I said, look, I want basically I want to pick your brain on this. I’m doing some research on this. And the way that I framed it was my intention is to write a book about marketing to and the problems that people are facing in this area. And I would love to get in a call and just pick your brain about this. I don’t have anything for sale. I’m basically just doing this like a like a telephone survey. And I just want to get to understand like the problems that you’re facing and understand more about that. Now, that’s one way you can do it.
Another way is you can literally just have conversations with your clients. And so your existing clients, you say, hey, can we get in a call? And I just want to understand things from your perspective. So I just want you to tell me about the problem that you’re facing and the outcomes that you’re trying to achieve and interview them in that way. And what you’re doing is you’re learning. And I know I’m using the word interview here because I think that that’s effectively what you’re doing here is you’re not just talking to them.
for the sake of building a relationship. You’re talking to them to learn because having.
Al McBride (23:22.158)
It’s very much what we used to call a discovery conversation. You’re discovering.
Alastair McDermott (23:26.602)
Yeah. Yeah. Having having this deep understanding of how they see this problem that they’re facing and why it’s important to them and very specifically the language that they’re using to describe it. And this is super important, like particularly from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective, the language that they’re using, that’s what you want to be using on your website. That’s what you want to be repeating back to them. You want to take the language that they’ve used to describe the problem.
and just say, hey, if you’re facing this and you feel like this, and you’re repeating that word, those words back to them, because you know that’s the way they feel, that’s the language they’re using. So I think that’s why this is really crucial. So A, you have this deep understanding of what they want and what they care about. And B, you’re able to use that in your marketing as well. And all of that will help you to have a stronger relationship and connect better with people.
Al McBride (24:22.702)
Absolutely. I mean, I just add to that, that when your aim is to build relationships, the fact that they, as you said, it was the fact that it was mentioned as an undercurrent so much was, was that you’re, you’re, you’re moving from the transactional to something more. And that’s when people aren’t comparing you.
Alastair McDermott (24:42.666)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (24:46.734)
Apples to apples, suddenly you’re apples to oranges, which is what you want. That’s where you can justify the fees. You can justify various different things because you’re not compared to people on a one -to -one basis. They see that there’s something else there that you’re trying to build a relationship that you have more what we used to call the fiduciary responsibility that you’re putting their interests and good health and well -being personally and business -wise.
ahead of your own economic interests is the key principle there. So it’s non -transactional, which is absolutely key. Is there anything else you want to just quickly say about that?
Alastair McDermott (25:19.146)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (25:22.666)
That’s a great way to summarize it, non -transactional, yeah.
Al McBride (25:26.638)
Is there anything else you want to say about that area before we move on to the next one?
Alastair McDermott (25:29.162)
And the other supporting ones here are one of them that came up very often is is the advice to be authentic. So be yourself in your content and the content that you’re creating. And because people will see if you’re if you’re trying to be someone that you’re not, people will see that, you know, and it’s impossible to to put on a show for, you know, for 200 podcast episodes, for example, you know.
What I mean by that is it’s impossible not to be yourself and it makes it really difficult. It’s very emotionally draining. So just accept that you like in particularly if you’re doing something like podcasting video, you’re going to just have to be yourself. And so I see people try to put on a level of sometimes professionalism that doesn’t really fit them. And it looks like an ill fitting suit, you know.
Al McBride (26:00.174)
Exactly.
Al McBride (26:18.574)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (26:22.314)
And people who are consuming that content who are looking at it will feel the inauthenticity. You know, they’ll see that it’s not that it’s not really you. So I think that it’s really important to just accept, OK, I’m going to be who I am. And then people who like me are going to come and follow my stuff and listen to me or watch my stuff. And people who don’t like me are going to be put off by that. But that’s life, you know.
Al McBride (26:22.638)
Okay.
Al McBride (26:50.19)
That’s life.
Alastair McDermott (26:50.698)
Accept that and be authentic and you’ll attract more people.
Al McBride (26:55.598)
Absolutely. As I said, it’s just easier to be yourself. And the more differentiated you are, the more you stand out in the. Dare I say the word marketplace anyway. So that’s exactly what he wants. And it brings us neatly into the next section, which is all about that idea of what’s the mindset and what’s that? What are you bringing to it? So professional development and mindset.
Alastair McDermott (27:05.674)
Yeah.
Al McBride (27:18.67)
these numbers are a bit lower than some of the other sections maybe because you didn’t quite focus on it as much or didn’t quite come up rather than they don’t really believe in it but it’s it’s absolutely not that first of all to take action and just like you were saying earlier this is what you’re saying is like get started then you can improve while doing right
Alastair McDermott (27:24.682)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (27:31.082)
Yeah, yeah. I think this one.
Alastair McDermott (27:36.65)
Yeah. What happens is a lot of people say I’ll start when I’m ready. I’m not going to start until I’m ready. And the problem is either you never feel ready or it becomes something where, you know, you’re chasing this feeling of ready and you just don’t like you don’t ever get there. For me, it was with my podcast. I actually delayed creating my first podcast for seven years.
because I wasn’t ready. And actually I did have some major problems in my business that the podcast uncovered. And that was that was why it was delayed by at least I’d say two or three years. But I probably could have started at that point. But I didn’t feel ready and I was waiting, you know. So I think, you know, you just need to say, OK, the only like this, there’s only so much I can learn about learning to swim by reading a book. At some point, I’ve got to get into the water.
And so that’s what I’m saying here is you’ve got to take action and experiment. And I was talking to Chris Doe about this and one of like he’s got four million followers on YouTube or whatever and very, very smart guy. And he said, look, one of the great things about starting out and when you make mistakes, when you’re starting out is you have a small audience anyway. It’s only later on when you’ve got a larger audience that you you you want to have those reps under your belt. You want to have.
made the mistakes with the smaller audience so that when you have a bigger audience that you’re much better. So I think that’s why it’s really crucial. Yeah.
Al McBride (29:10.478)
get your learning curve in there. Yeah, with the smaller group. And also, as he said, that they probably like you more because you’re more it’s smaller scale that it’s more at that level. But what I love here is, you know, invest in high quality audio and video sounds obvious, but it just makes that the output itself that bit better. It makes that bit more professional. Even if you’re that little bit more casual or whatever, if you depending on how professional casual you want.
Alastair McDermott (29:36.938)
I’m going to repeat something that I’ve said quite a few times. So I was I was listening to the marketing book podcast with Douglas Burdette and I’m very lucky to have been one of his guests on that show. But I was I’ve been listening to that show for a long, long time. And I know that he has a whole process where when he has an author coming on, he gives them information about which equipment to choose. And he referenced a study.
Al McBride (29:41.038)
Mm.
Alastair McDermott (30:04.714)
that was about the quality of audio and video and the impact it had. And when I when I saw this, I said, OK, I’ve got to talk to that professor. So I went and I dug up who the professor was, Professor Norbert Schwartz from the University of Southern California. And I interviewed him about this and what he found in his study. It’s really interesting. I think it’s episode 34 of the podcast. But what he found was that if you have better audio and video quality, you appear more professional.
you appear smarter and it appears that your work is more important. And if you have poor or poorer audio or video, so your audio video isn’t as good, then you you appear less professional, less competent, less intelligent and your work is less important. So like which of those two things do you want? Do you want to sound more intelligent and more credible and like your work is important or do you want to sound less less so?
So I think this is just, you know, like this is table stakes for anybody who is an expert is just get some decent audio equipment, some decent video equipment, set up some good lights. I’ve created loads of resources about this. Actually, I’ve got a free book on Amazon that was published by Oak Tree Press. I have a video which shows I did side by side comparisons of different microphones and things. And I have a whole free guide on equipment to use.
So look, there’s loads of information out there, there’s loads of information from other people, including Douglas. And we spoke about this a bit, actually, we had a little bit of mini rant when I was on his podcast, we were talking about this. But I think this is just like, this is one of those things that you have entirely within your control. There’s a lot of stuff that’s outside of our control, but this is entirely within your control. So that’s why I think it’s crazy not to do this, you know?
Al McBride (31:48.91)
You also don’t need to spend thousands. I mean, there’s levels of this, isn’t there? I mean, just getting decent podcasting equipment, for example, very affordable to anyone, you know, it’s accessible.
Alastair McDermott (31:57.322)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on what your budget is, but there are there are, you know, there are high quality microphones at different price points. And I’ll put a link in the show notes to the resources because I have a ton of resources on this. I’ll put a link to those. But, you know, you can spend from as little as forty dollars and that will give you a vast, you know, a huge step up in quality. And you.
Al McBride (32:21.262)
Exactly. I mean, I’ve had this little beauty recommended by a mutual friend of ours who’s a voiceover artist and basically said, what does he use? And then what’s, you know, 80 % is good, 10 % of the price. And he recommended the audio technica to 80 or 2100. And it’s like $100, $120, something like that. And it’s fab. It’s it’s served me so well for a good few years now.
And that’s my point, you can get fancier stuff, three, $400, of course you can, but it can be $100 and you’re set. So other in the professional development mindset area, don’t be afraid to fail. We’ve kind of talked about that point from a different angle on investing in yourself, as we did with the point from a different angle on and develop a repeatable process, just like you were saying with being able to have that core thing and spin it into different directions.
Alastair McDermott (32:56.522)
Yeah.
Alastair McDermott (33:05.322)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (33:17.07)
So you get a much more magnitude effect of volume that you seem to have a huge amount of content. Yet it sprang from, as you said, that two hours a week, essentially, which is incredible. Again, incredible return on investment for your time in by just setting up that system effectively once and then just having your VA or using AI or you yourself using some of these tools, AI or otherwise, to just roll it out each week. So.
Alastair McDermott (33:17.482)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (33:25.994)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (33:44.398)
Is there anything else you want to just say about the professional development mindset area or shall we move on to the final category?
Alastair McDermott (33:47.946)
And I think the last one that’s mentioned there, be patient. I think that’s important. So building authority takes time and consistent effort to be patient and trust the process. Now, I think this is crucial because it’s one of these like this is the route that does not get you instant results. And that’s the that’s the thing that I dislike the most about the about the process of building authority. It does take a huge amount of time and.
Al McBride (33:51.598)
yes.
Al McBride (34:06.734)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (34:17.386)
you’re going to go through this process. But what I’ll say is all of the things that happen along the way are really useful. So, for example, you’re going to get better at writing content, at creating, you know, at creating video and audio. If you go down that route, you’re going to get better at doing that. And that’s going to be like that’s going to stand here. That’s going to be really useful skill to have. But it’s a bit like going to the gym. You’re not going like if you go seven days.
and in a week at the end of that week you’re not going to be you know have change your life but if you go you know once or twice a week for a year for two years that can be life -changing and and so that’s what we’re talking about here is what we’re talking about you know this this is measured in months and years not days and weeks and it’s the thing i like the least about building authority but i think that it is something that is really worthwhile in doing because
Al McBride (34:58.99)
Thanks, Ron.
Alastair McDermott (35:14.122)
all of the stuff that you learn along the way, the relationships that you build. So for example, I chose to do podcasting as the primary method. So I’ve spoken to all these people. Rochelle Moulton, for example, wrote the foreword for my book. And that only came because I had her on the podcast because I had Jonathan Stark on the podcast. I’ve spoken to Alan Weiss, who is the million dollar consultant. He never would have given me the time of day if I didn’t have a podcast to invite him on to. I’ve spoken with people like Bob Berg.
Al McBride (35:42.126)
Just to put to pose you a second there. That’s such a great point that I was often missed here is that if you try and reach out to someone on LinkedIn, particularly who’s crazy busy or niche, you know, domain famous or something like this where they’re getting a lot of people asking them for things. And this is something that’s largely overlooked. If you have a podcast or maybe you’re interviewing them for a book, for example, it’s a totally different.
Alastair McDermott (35:43.754)
You know, all these, all these, yeah.
Al McBride (36:11.31)
situation you’re offering incense to give them value you’re saying hey can I have a pl… would you like a platform in which I let you say what you want to say and get your differentiated views across to an audience both to your own and to mine rather than hey can I have a chat which most people high net worth go hey can I try and pick your brain for free instead of paying you right or hey can I try and sell you stuff out of your busy schedule?
Whereas it’s an actual value at right. This is the key thing. So it builds those relationships. It builds that initial rapport for potential future interactions, whether it’s network, whether it’s referrals, whether whatever it is. I know you’re not you’re not pro referrals, but my point is the same as that. It opens all these doors to all these possibilities because you’re starting in a in an actual win win rather than saying, hey, you know, can you give me free time, please?
is basically what you’re normally asking.
Alastair McDermott (37:11.722)
I think it’s the best LinkedIn connection message you can send is, would you like to be on my podcast? Or I’d like to have you on my podcast.
Al McBride (37:17.966)
Yeah, you seem interesting. I really like your stuff. Maybe we’d be a good fit. Maybe you’d be a good fit. Would you like to be in my podcast? Everything? Yeah. Hmm. So let’s crack on to the next. This is huge. This is eighty seven. Eighty seven different speakers said this.
Alastair McDermott (37:37.386)
Yeah, so it’s come up in at least 87 distinct episodes. So focus on value. So focus on…
Al McBride (37:42.062)
That’s focus on value. This is in the section of value and impact. So go for a chat, talk to us about it.
Alastair McDermott (37:46.858)
Yeah. So provide genuine value to your audience. And so this is, you know, like this is saying, if you, this is like karma, you know, you, you give value and this will build trust and attract people who are your ideal clients. And so this is just about, you know, like creating, creating good content and putting it out into the world. So trying to provide genuine value.
Al McBride (38:13.262)
Yeah, but just from what we’re saying, from the earlier point works exactly in this as well, that you’re approaching not going give me things for free. You’re saying, you give me value, I’ll give you value. I’m giving you value, you give me value. It’s value, value. Right? So it’s the same point.
Alastair McDermott (38:29.258)
Yeah. So I think this, I think this comes back to Chialdini’s principle of reciprocation in his book, Influence, which is kind of one of the top marketing psychology books or sales psychology books you can read. Reciprocation. If you give somebody value in the content that you’re creating and putting out and they find genuine value in that, they’re going to want to talk to you.
Al McBride (38:37.166)
Mmm.
Big shout.
Alastair McDermott (38:56.97)
they’re going to want to listen to you. They’re going to want to sign up for your email list. They see the clear value that that you have. And by the way, this is one of those stand out. This is one of those major ones has come up time after time after time. So it’s come up in at least 87 episodes that that this is super important. So the whole like if you’re thinking about this, like what the conversation that we’re having here, we’re talking about creating content on a consistent basis.
in order to develop your reputation and build your authority in a specific niche. And in there, you’re going to start off by creating content. And it mightn’t be so great at the start, but you’re going to get better and better and better. But you’re always focused on giving value to people in the content. And that’s super important. And like that’s one of the things, you know, that like one of the reasons why I’m quite picky about the people, like I’ve…
170 odd episodes of this podcast, but I’m actually really picky about the guests who I have on to the point that I don’t even read the emails that come in that are pitching guests to me. So I’ve never taken a guest from one of those people pitching guests to me. I have a filter set up on my email. So every email and this, by the way, might be interesting for people who are trying to guest on podcasts. I don’t, I just filter all of those away so I don’t ever even see them. And so.
That’s because I’m genuinely trying to provide value to the listener. That is super important to me. And it’s something I always say to all of my podcast guests. The most important thing here is that we provide value to the person who’s listening to this. And that’s why at the start of all of my episodes, when I’m talking to guests, I don’t go into their backstory. I almost never. And I think I’ve done it once or twice maybe because it’s been really relevant to the episode. But for the most part, on all of those episodes,
we go straight into the topic. And that’s because I want to focus on value and I genuinely want to give value to the people who are listening to this. And so, and I think that bleeds through when people see that in your content, I think that they appreciate that and that builds trust and that attracts people. So that’s why I think that’s really important. Everything else in here, by the way, is kind of in support of that. Like having a call to action, that’s just, you know, like you want to tell people, here’s the next step.
Al McBride (41:18.222)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (41:24.778)
That’s just giving them the next step to follow. Focusing on outcomes, that’s focusing on the outcomes again, that’s focusing on value. So what are the outcomes and transformations that people care about? And then.
Al McBride (41:27.182)
Exactly.
Al McBride (41:36.334)
Just a quick sentence, a quick thought on that, going back to the focusing on value. People often still fall into this trap where they talk about something when in actual terms it’s a feature rather than clarifying the value of that feature. So here’s my perspective. It’s like, and thinking that’s obvious, but it’s when you’re primed in your mindset thinking, well, what’s the value for the listener? What’s the value for the audience? Then it’s like, that means that…
Alastair McDermott (41:47.658)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (42:02.574)
you avoid this trap or that means you have this huge benefit that you’re able to apply in this sort of way. And when you have that thinking, it is much more obvious to the audience the value that you’re bringing.
Alastair McDermott (42:13.866)
Yeah, yeah, it’s answering the question. So what? Which is which is kind of irritating. But if you if you ask the question, so what, you know, three times in a row after after talking about what you’re doing, that will help you to clarify what you’re doing. It’ll help you to figure out why that’s important. Like what is why is this truly important to the person who is listening to me? And that that will that will really help, you know, help your.
Al McBride (42:14.798)
rather than being assumed. Exactly.
Al McBride (42:30.542)
Definitely.
Alastair McDermott (42:42.474)
It’ll help your sales conversations, it’ll help your marketing copy on your website, it’ll help your content that you’re creating. Because when you’re always thinking in terms of, so what, why is this important? Then, you know, that…
Al McBride (42:54.222)
Exactly. So what does that get me? Says your audience. Yeah, you need to be answering that.
Alastair McDermott (42:57.514)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the way the other thing and the way I think about this is everybody is listening to we FM. So everybody on this call, everybody at this webinar, everybody at this talk, everybody listening to this podcast, everybody watching this video, wherever they’re consuming something or looking at your website, they’re listening to we FM. We FM is what’s in it for me. So they’re looking at or listening to you are looking at your words.
thinking in their mind what’s in it for me from this. And so they’re processing because ultimately like that’s the way we think. That’s the way, you know, probably goes back to our reptilian brain or something. But we’re always thinking about, you know, how does this apply to me and my situation? And so we need to address that in the content that we’re creating. We need to address it specifically.
Al McBride (43:38.766)
Hmm.
Al McBride (43:48.558)
Is there anything else you’d like to discuss there? Should we go into the overview now, just to talk about maybe some of the…
Alastair McDermott (43:53.802)
I just want to mention that the the last very last point that I have on here and it’s got a little bit less than some of the other ones, but it is something that comes up over and over again is raise your prices. You probably can double your prices right now. Probably can. And it’s it’s one piece of advice that I hear over and over from people who are involved in pricing. And it will. So what it’ll do is it’ll automatically it’ll automatically lose your worst customers.
Al McBride (43:58.926)
Mmm.
Alastair McDermott (44:23.05)
the kind of the people are providing the least value to you and you’re probably providing the least value to them because you’re not charging them enough to do to do you know as to give as good a service as you could and what will happen is you’ll have more free time to work on working with your better clients and So raising raising your prices almost never about bad thing and most people who are listening this can probably double their prices right now so and that’s something that I’ve heard from
A lot of people who are, you know, people like Jonathan Stark and people just who else? Yeah, so like I’ve got a list of the episodes there. I can’t I can’t remember all the people specifically, but I’ve heard this over and over again from people who are involved in pricing. It’s just something that you can do. So I think you should do that is look at your prices and seriously consider raising them. And, you know, there’s the old phrase of, you know,
Al McBride (44:57.55)
Christo is a big fan of that too, yeah, look, everybody is.
Alastair McDermott (45:18.634)
You know if I double my price, I’ll lose half my clients. my god, you know, yeah, absolutely. That’s great so that’s exactly what we want we get we get more time back because Because people ask me, you know, how do you have time to create content? Well, you have to make the time to create content So this is one of those ways of making that time. So, okay Let’s let’s move to we’re just gonna talk about like what are the top five pieces of Advice that come up over and over again. So let’s start from five and go to one. Yeah
Al McBride (45:24.846)
Can you work half the time or double down with the better clients?
Al McBride (45:47.342)
Yeah, so this came up 65 speakers to specialize in niche down, which we touched on earlier.
Alastair McDermott (45:54.698)
Yeah. And this is something like I really believe in. You cannot be you can’t be an expert in everything. And I think until like for people who are generally out there, I think that the you know, the fears around specialization and I created a whole podcast about this called the specialization podcast. But the fears around specialization are, you know, I’m going to be bored. What if I pick the wrong thing?
you know, are there enough clients out there? If you niche down properly, there’s almost certainly enough clients. You almost certainly won’t get bored. The more you dig into a topic, you know, it gets really interesting. It gets more interesting the kind of the deeper you go. And like you’re almost certainly not going to be bored. And if you pick the wrong thing, that’s OK. Just pick something else. You know, test it and see. And if it’s not working for you, then change. And I’ve spoken to quite a few people who’ve done that.
Sarah Dunn, for example, is in one of the first episodes of the podcast and she niche down into something that that wasn’t working for her. And so she just changed. So I think she was originally doing Google AdWords for chiropractors and she figured out that she didn’t like doing doing Google ads and she didn’t like working with that market. And so she ended up specializing in search engine optimization for wedding planners.
And now she’s the top person in the world in that niche. And she loves who she works with. And, you know, it’s very like you can see how specific that is. But like it’s still it’s still a huge market, you know. So that’s just one example. So I think I think specializing niching down. Absolutely. I think it’s super important.
Al McBride (47:31.054)
Definitely.
Al McBride (47:37.646)
And so the next one with 87 joint, joint forth, we could even talk about them together, could we? On focusing on value and equal to it was understanding your ideal client. We talked about the focusing on the value there at length a minute ago and understanding your ideal client. We also talked, is there any other further thoughts that you want to express on that?
Alastair McDermott (47:46.762)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Alastair McDermott (48:05.162)
I think it comes up in another section, but just on understanding your ideal client, doing research, so actually doing like a survey or something like that can be a really useful way of gathering information and it can also be useful in building a list. It can be useful in a lot of different ways in building relationships as well. But doing some small scale research, my business coach Philip Morgan encouraged me to do that.
Al McBride (48:29.454)
big time.
Alastair McDermott (48:34.506)
And it was, it was really helpful. So, yeah, I would.
Al McBride (48:37.742)
I have to have to agree. I mean, before I did my program, my book, the whole lot, I asked a whole lot of my current and prospective clients. And you will know a lot of us. But what’s particularly interesting I found is the hierarchy for an awful lot of people of what they deemed important very much changed in my view. That was enlightening as were the fears when you get into what they actually fear. That was a huge IO.
Alastair McDermott (48:57.066)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (49:07.022)
because one of my client bases, a quick example, creative entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs who work in creative industries. And one of their huge, they had two huge fears that kept coming up. One, dialing in mediocre work. That was a huge fear, which I loved and admired them for that one. And the second was that they’d have to let good people go if they made a mess of projects or a mess of client work. If there was a downturn, they’d have to let good people go. So very humane.
Alastair McDermott (49:32.074)
Wow, right.
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (49:36.27)
both of them, and admirable, you know? But those were insights I didn’t have before, and then when I’m talking to people in those areas, I can touch on those points. It’s very important.
Alastair McDermott (49:45.098)
And now that will make a connection with them because they know that you truly understand what they care about and what’s going on in their head. Yeah.
Al McBride (49:51.278)
Absolutely.
I can even reference it where people have said, yeah, no, that is kind of a thing. So they, you know, even though they might say it immediately when you say this is something that came up in my conversations, you know, being that blatant about it, they can literally go, yeah, no, definitely. As you said, so it builds that relationship. It’s one of the questions I would suggest that. It’s one of the areas where when you’re doing it, are you are you building a bridge to that person?
or are you actually going further and further apart? Because when you’re saying things that don’t matter to them, they’re going, this person doesn’t get me. this person doesn’t get me. If you’re saying things that are, they’re going, yeah, we’re on the same page, we’re on the same wavelength, all of those sort of metaphors. And it’s a lot easier to move ahead and trust. So if they trust you, you say something else, they’re like, yeah, this person gets me, this person gets me. When you then say something that’s slightly different or a request of them, they’re far more likely because of that.
Alastair McDermott (50:25.258)
Mm -hmm.
Al McBride (50:50.574)
built up rapport, built up trust, even if it’s just one directional, that they’ll say, yeah, I’ll take that step. I’ll book that call. It’s only a small call, but I’ll book that thing or I’ll get that freebie or whatever the next step is. So hugely important stuff.
Alastair McDermott (51:07.594)
Yeah, yeah. And like the reason why we’re in professional services is to help people and, you know, and to create value for ourselves by helping other people, by creating value for them. Like that’s, that’s why we’re doing this. So I think it’s super important to understand the people that we’re working with. So yeah. Okay. Next one. These are the top two and these are the top two pieces of information of advice that come up consistently, consistently.
Al McBride (51:21.39)
That’s how we do it.
Al McBride (51:25.486)
So, yeah, the last…
Al McBride (51:31.918)
Mmm.
Al McBride (51:35.502)
eighty nine and ninety this is huge build authority and create content system
Alastair McDermott (51:37.418)
Yeah. So and again, the numbers that we’re talking about here, the numbers that we’re talking about here are the number of episodes that this has come up as advice in. And so we’re talking about, you know, over well over 50 percent of all episodes of this podcast. The guest has spoken about the importance of of doing this. And so in this case, it’s building authority and creating content consistently. And I think that those two go together because.
Al McBride (51:47.566)
Mm -hmm.
Alastair McDermott (52:07.242)
you’re building authority by creating content consistently. And we’ve spoken about this almost ad nauseum, but I just want to reemphasize how important this is. Like this, this is the, like, this is, you know, this is the crux of the whole thing. We’re building authority because you want to establish yourself as the go -to person in your niche. And what that’s going to do is that’s going to allow you to never have to work with a bad fit client.
Al McBride (52:24.142)
Definitely.
Alastair McDermott (52:35.562)
It’s going to allow you to have more free time. It’s going to allow you to increase your prices, which frees up more of your time. And it’s going to also allow you to do things like it allows you to do sales and marketing in different way, which is what I’m really interested in. Because for me, marketing is about getting on a call with somebody like Al here and having a conversation and then repackaging that up as a podcast. And, you know, that’s my sales and marketing. And I really love that because.
Al McBride (53:00.942)
Definitely.
Alastair McDermott (53:05.482)
I’m an introvert and I don’t really like the networking aspect of, you know, because the alternative here to building authority is to go and do lots of networking and have a referral based business, which like has its place and has its value. But I think for me, this is the next step up is to build authority and have people coming inbound to you. So you don’t have to go out and do all that networking.
Al McBride (53:28.206)
That’s a key point is that warmth of the inbound because they’re not just inbound. They’re inbound and they’re inbound so that they like you. They’re inbounds. Even to a small degree that you can build on, but they’re half sold or they’re a quarter way sold. Not to use that terminology. The point is they’re far more than you approaching them, which most networking events basically it’s people.
Alastair McDermott (53:38.122)
Yeah, they feel like they already know you.
Al McBride (53:56.75)
chatting to people and everyone’s hoping to sell something. Nobody’s going there to buy anything. In person or virtually. This is the other way around. People approaching you, which is what everybody dreams of at networking events. This is how you’re actually doing that at scale.
Alastair McDermott (54:01.258)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Alastair McDermott (54:10.794)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and so you’re putting valuable, useful information out into the world. People are encountering that in some way and they’re saying, I’ve got to work with this person. This is the person who can solve our problem. Let’s bring them in, get them involved. That’s what we want to do here.
Al McBride (54:33.966)
Very good.
Alastair McDermott (54:35.146)
I think that is a wrap for this episode. Is there anything else that you think we should talk about here?
Al McBride (54:38.638)
I think so. No, I think we covered all the bases for this one.
Alastair McDermott (54:43.978)
Awesome. So the top five piece of advice, create content consistently, build authority, understand your ideal client, focus on value and specialize in niche them. Those are the top five insights from over well over 150. I think it’s 162 episodes that I processed for this. And those are from, you know, all of these super smart people. This isn’t all just from me. This is from.
Al McBride (54:56.238)
It’s been a pleasure.
Alastair McDermott (55:10.57)
some of like bestselling authors, thought leaders, all of these really, really great people. And this is kind of the distillation of all of that. That’s why I think this is important. The whole spreadsheet is going to be available in the show notes. You can you can download and read through that. And I’ve pulled out a couple of things. There’s a list of all of the episodes, the episode numbers that it’s referred to. And I have some information in the show notes on how you can actually find and listen to every one of those episodes individually. So.
I think this is a great starting point. If you want to learn how to build authority and you want to build authority and you want to know what’s important about that, this is a great place to start with this.
Al McBride (55:51.47)
Great stuff. Thank you so much.
Alastair McDermott (55:52.458)
that’s a wrap. Thanks. Thanks for coming on chat with me about this.
Al McBride (55:56.174)
Thanks for having me. It’s been fascinating. Cheers.
