SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, niche, podcast, specialization, authority, alastair, clients, talk, selling, niching, put, recognized, expert, conversation, call, referrals, podcasting, find, years, market
SPEAKERS
David Newman, Alastair McDermott
David Newman 00:02
You know, who has the easiest time selling you know, who has the best time selling it? Oh as the most fun selling, I will tell you who The Recognized Authority. That’s who. So my very special guest, Mr. Alastair McDermott is here, I’m gonna read his official bio, and then I’m gonna tell you the real deal. So the official bio goes something like this. Alastair McDermott helps experts to become known as The Recognized Authority in your field. So you can command premium fees, work less hours, and never have to suffer a bad fit client again, he hosts no big surprise here, The Recognized Authority podcast and has written a number of practical guides to building authority. Alastair, welcome to the show.
Alastair McDermott 00:52
David, my pleasure. Thank you.
David Newman 00:53
So you are in reality, though, the the real scoop that I was mentioning there in the intro is you are like a trusted authority, swiss army knife. So you talk about online, you talked about offline, you talk about positioning, and packaging, and having contrarian views and content strategy and podcast strategy and all of these wonderful things. Tell us a little bit about how did you come to the work that you’re doing today? And what were some interesting pitstops along the way?
Alastair McDermott 01:27
Oh, yeah, well, I can tell you about my own journey to authority, as I call it. I made every mistake that you can make along the way. So I’ve been in business about 17 years now. And I was in web design, and search engine optimization. So selling SEO, and websites.
David Newman 01:46
I’m known as a website doctor at that point.
Alastair McDermott 01:46
That’s right, I still have that as a as a kind of like a secondary brand in the background, I still do, I still have some legacy clients and things. And actually, that pays for a lot of my experimentation with content creation, which is something that we can maybe talk about later.
David Newman 01:50
Sure.
Alastair McDermott 01:50
What I found was that what I was doing for my clients wasn’t working for me. And it was very frustrating. Because I was able to help my clients get results. And I was trying to figure out, like, what’s going on here? Why am I not able to do what I’m doing for them for myself. And I realized that the way that I needed to market myself was going to be completely different than the way that I was helping my local business clients to market themselves, because they had local business services. And whereas I was trying to position myself in a more global marketplace, as an expert. And I made a crucial mistake, which was I had absolutely zero specialization. I had no niching or niching down. And so I was everything to everybody. So at the time, I was selling website services, I was selling search engine optimization, I even dabbled in Google AdWords and things like that. And social, you know, and so it was literally everything for everybody. And when your position like that you’re not positioned?
David Newman 03:02
Yes, totally. Now, I know and where to jump around here, because there’s so much great stuff to talk about. You’re also a specialist in specialization. Now. And again, similar to parts of my backstory, the best way to learn something is to teach others. So tell us about the specialization podcast and tell us about the very serious emphasis that you put on specialization? Sure.
Alastair McDermott 03:30
So it goes back to something I mentioned earlier, the journey to authority. And that, I think that there’s a pattern that I’ve seen through a lot of different people. And it doesn’t apply to everybody, but applies to a lot of people who go through the same journey. And so most everybody starts out as a novice. So you know, we’ve all been there. And there’s nothing wrong with being a novice, we’re just not very experienced. And we go along the road, we get lots of experiences, and we learn different things. And at some point, we end up as being an expert of some kind. And at that point, typically, we’re invisible. So I think of this as an invisible expert, like in like you’re wearing the cloak of invisibility from Harry Potter. And so you’re really good at what you do. And you’re an expert in your field, but nobody knows about you. And then you see these people and they are recognized as an authority by by the marketplace. And you look at them, and you say, how do I get to there. And that’s where I think is the interesting part. So I think that a lot of people who are in that invisible expert role are generalists, and they have not yet niched down. And so in order to become a recognized authority in your field, you need to pay attention to those last three words in your fields. You have to actually pick a field pick a niche. And so you have to go through this process of specialization. And not everybody has to do that. In fact, the earlier you are in a market, the less you have to do that, because you’ve got less competition, but as the market matures more, you probably need to niche down harder and harder in order to get recognized and that process of specialization, I kind of see it like as this precarious mountain range that you need to find your way through.
Alastair McDermott 05:06
And it’s scary. And a lot of people say, hey, you know what, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to do the specialization thing, I’m going to stay in this position of being a generalist expert. And I’m not going to look for wider recognition, I’m just going to ruin my business based on referrals and networking and word of mouth. And you can be super successful doing that. But some people want to do this thing, which is inbound marketing. And I think that in order to do that, you do need to have the specialization piece.
David Newman 05:34
Well, I’m going to respectfully disagree and perhaps you’re being too kind, you’re too diplomatic that you can have a great business just based on word of mouth and referrals. i The furthest I’m willing to go is you can have an okay business, only relying on word of mouth and referrals. But you’re not in control of who your clients are, you’re not in control of what projects you get, you’re often not in control of the fees that you can charge. And it is a very reactive and passive way to run a business. And I would even go so far Alastair is saying if you’re just relying on referrals, and just relying on word of mouth, you’re really more of a freelancer than a business owner, if there’s no proactive strategy, if there’s no regular client getting mechanism, and of course, I know you know this, because you teach this but I want to, I want to kind of more vigorously debunk a word of mouth and referrals are enough. I think you and I both know, really in our heart of hearts, word of mouth, and referrals are not enough. And they can be very complacency inducing and very dangerous in that way. So can we take another stab at that, and perhaps be a little bit less kind and diplomatic this time? I’m
Alastair McDermott 06:55
a very diplomatic person, as you know. But yes, I mean, you use the word dangerous, and I completely agree with you. I personally, I see it as dangerous. But I do know and I have spoken with on my podcast, a couple of people who’ve made it very successful with that model. So I think specifically Douglas squirrel, who is very niche down and also provides a very valuable service. He has a million dollar business. But I think that people like him are the exception proves the rule kind of thing. Because most people won’t do that. I think that for most people relying on that referrals, networking is kind of staying on that hamster wheel, you know, you’re just doing enough to keep taking over and and it’s very difficult.
David Newman 07:38
Exactly right. So let’s walk people through because I know that with your clients and your coaching clients, specifically, you have a framework and a methodology to help them systematically make this decision where they’re not reading tea leaves, they’re not guessing they’re not throwing a dart on the dartboard.
David Newman 07:57
Talk about how do we make those decisions? about niching? down and then talk to us also about vertical specialization?
Alastair McDermott 08:06
Yeah, so. Okay, let’s talk about the, you know, the three main types of specialization. So and vertical is the scary one, I think. So horizontal specialization is where you specialize in a problem area. So I specialize in search engine optimization, for example. I don’t personally but let’s say that’s, that’s the, that’s the the positioning. vertical specialization is where you specialize in a niche and in an in an industry vertical. And so you say, I specialize in helping, for example, wedding planners, okay. And then you can have the crossover between those two, which is where you have vertical and horizontal, which is where you say, I specialize in, in SEO only for wedding planners. Yeah. And then that’s where you get this super niche.
Alastair McDermott 08:59
The other type of specialization you can choose as platform specialization. For example, when I started out, I specialized in the WordPress platform for websites. Now, when I did that, in 2006, that was pretty niche, because not a whole lot of people were doing it. You know, 15 years later, everybody is specialized in WordPress. And so it’s not a specialization. That’s what can happen with platforms as they as they develop. So that’s, that’s kind of like a negative of platform specialization.
Alastair McDermott 09:28
The example that I gave you of SEO for wedding planners, that’s my friend Sara Dunn, she she has actually documented her specialization journey. And that’s what she, she found as her ideal niche eventually, after picking the wrong thing. First, and this is what’s interesting about specializations when I see it as it’s kind of like a journey that’s almost fraught with peril, which is why I envisage it as mountain range. There’s a lot of fears involved in niching down the fear of picking the wrong thing. Fear of getting bored, I’m going to be bored if I’m working in this tiny niche that by the way rarely happens. Because when you dig into it, it’s really interesting. Typically every niche, the more you dig in gets more interesting. If you pick the wrong thing you do like what Sara did, or some of the other people have had on my podcast, where they’ve just gone back. And if you treat it like a test campaign, you say, Okay, I’m gonna test this niche as a campaign for 60 days, 90 days, maybe six months, see how it goes. And you know what, if it doesn’t work, we can go back and do something else. Sarah actually picked working with, I think Tropos first, or chiropractors, I can’t remember was one of those. And she found that, that that didn’t work for her. So she turned around, and she was, did some more work, tried to talk to a lot of people. And she started working with people in the wedding industry, and suddenly discovered, hey, this is really interesting. And the reason she came to that whole niching down thing was because she talks about this on my podcast, she was building a website for a client. And the client turned around to her and said, actually, you know what, my niece is doing a web design course at night in community college. And so we’re actually going to get her to do it instead. And Sarah realized that her positioning was so weak, that with her 10 years of experience, she was beaten out for a project by somebody who had done and like course, for 12 weeks, you know, and that’s the problem with that kind of weak positioning. Whereas when you have this deep specialization, you’ve got almost no competition.
David Newman 11:30
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Or at least you’re you’re very top of the list of competitors. And people feel a little bit of hesitation or fear or doubt if they hire somebody other than you.
Alastair McDermott 11:45
Yeah, I think that it’s, there’s something that comes from being the the specialist in an area. And you I mean, when you do get into it, and you become a specialist in an area, and you write about that area, you live in that area, in that niche for years, you do get these much deeper insights, this pattern matching, like, I never would have had this kind of understanding of authority marketing, inbound marketing, if I had stayed as a generalist, kind of web design for everybody. If I had never moved out of that niche, you know, my business would probably be ticking over. But I certainly wouldn’t have the ability to choose who I work with, or, you know, command premium fees or any of those things.
David Newman 12:25
Yes, for sure. Let’s dig a little bit deeper into this testing phase. And I love when you said about choosing this, choose a vertical and consider it like a test for 60 days, 90 days, six months. I’m guessing that this is not just a thought experiment, where you sit in your office and you’re like chiropractors, chiropractors, chiropractors, that you’re actually in conversation with people, you’re out there, you’re having networking conversations, you’re having some sales conversations, talk about how do you encourage your clients to proactively reach out, generate conversations, make some sales and truly test the market? Not just think about testing the market?
Alastair McDermott 13:13
Yeah, this it’s an interesting one, because I’m, I’m naturally an introvert. And so outbound is not for me. And even outreach is I find difficult. But you do even for the introverted among us, we do have to do some outbound at some point, some kind of outreach. And I’m not talking about spammy messages, or phone calls or cold calls or things like that. But reaching out and saying, Hey, can I have a conversation with you, I would just like to have a conversation with you, where I’m doing some research about the market. Now, I found this to be particularly successful, where I decided I was going to write a book. And so first of all, I had the intention, right, I’m intending to write a book about this. And then I sent out an email to my list. And I also put it out on LinkedIn in different places. I said, I’m looking for, I’m looking for people to give me 17 minutes for science, where I want to get on a call, I want to interview you just about your market, and just talk to you. And the result will be that I’m just going to use our conversation as research for a book that I tend to write. And the reason that worked, and this worked really well. I got something like a 60% open rate. And I think I had about 47 out of 200 people said yes, so it was like crazy high numbers. Now, I already did have a good relationship with most of the people on that list. But still, those are those are good numbers. And the reason why it worked is because it’s a very soft offer. You’re you’re saying, I’m like I’m not going to sell you anything. I just want to get a call and talk to you about your industry. Now some of those people did actually turn into clients because they said hey, you know, I really like what you’re doing here. But for most people, I just talked to them and validated my ideas about the market. So I said, I want you to tell me about the problems that you’re facing, so that I understood the problems that they’re facing, plus the language that they’re using to describe those problems. Because that language that they use is what we feed back into our marketing material. And that’s really crucial, because that’s what you can put on your sales page. That’s, you know, when you’re writing your sales, copy all of that feeds back in, I also have permission. By the way, with all of these people, I ask them explicitly, Can I record the call. And nowadays, I did this a few years ago, before we had all these cool AI tools that we could use to summarize and transcribe and all these kinds of things. But you know, all of that information, you can use those calls, all of that can help you to validate your market, understand your clients problems, your potential clients problems, see is this really, truly a valuable problem that I can solve for these people, and you want it to be a valuable problem, you know, you want them to have as Perry Marshall would say, a bleeding neck, you want them to have something that they care about, and want to solve urgently. Because if it’s not an urgent, bleeding neck type problem for them, then there’s going to be less urgency in them wanting to work with you. So you’re kind of validating all of those ideas on the call. And you’re just asking them, you know, like, talking about, like, what’s keeping you up at night? About this? Can you tell me more about this problem? Can you describe it? What’s the impact of it? And so those validation calls? The goal of those is to figure out, Is this a valid market for me to work in?
David Newman 16:22
Now? Are you also asking them about? Have they paid someone to solve this problem before? What did they like about that experience? What did they not? Like? Are you talking about specific types of services and programs that might be valuable to them? So I totally I totally get and agree with focus most of that research call on them, their problems, their team, their company, their goals, their heartaches, challenges, gaps, etc. But at what point? Do we sort of do some market validation on our offer? Or on our pricing? Or have they hired someone? You know, have they invested at all in solving this problem before? Or did it just like to hear themselves? Talk?
Alastair McDermott 17:12
Yes. So yes, to all of that. So first of all, with the calls that I did, and when when I was doing this for myself, I was very specific. I said, okay, at the 17 Minute, Mark, I said, Look, I’d love to continue this call and continue talk. But I did say I would only take 17 minutes of your time. And the reason I picked 17 was there was an interesting number, which increased the open rate in the in the email. But and a lot of people I’d say probably 70 80% of people said, Yeah, sure, we’ll you know, I’ve got it, I’ve got an hour blocked, booked up, or I’ve got half an hour. And then we would continue to have the conversation and dig into potential, like, have like, and what I found was usually the biggest, the biggest competitor for the service that I was thinking about offering was inertia was no action. And like, I think that for many, many people in our space export service providers, our biggest competitor is our client, is our potential client doing nothing, rather than actually working with somebody else. And but yeah, so looking at that, looking at what the value is, and getting into the value conversation, the value conversation I found is particularly difficult. You know, and it takes a lot of expertise. When I did these calls personally, for myself, I wasn’t really experienced enough to dig into that value conversation properly. I probably do a much better job of that now. But I think that there’s almost no downside to getting on a call with a potential client in your area or somebody in your niche. There’s almost no downside to getting into that call and spending 3060 minutes talking to them and digging into some of the things that you talked about there.
David Newman 18:48
For sure, for sure. So but it does take a little bit of bravery. Correct.
Alastair McDermott 18:54
So getting on the calls. Well, if particularly if you’re an introvert, reaching out and saying, Hey, I’d like to talk to all of these random people. Yeah, that’s, that’s hard. And then the whole process of niching down is is very scary, though. Like specialization as a as a topic is something that is just fraught with peril or so it seems. Yeah. And so you have to you have to go for it. What I found is that having some guidance really helps. So having like a peer group, a business coach, a mastermind, just having some support, and someone because it’s very hard to empty Baker says it’s very difficult to read or it’s impossible to read the label from inside the jar.
David Newman 19:37
Right? Absolutely. Now, we talked about a couple of different kinds of services, website design, SEO, etc. And in the world of professional services. There’s a wide variety of things that have a very concrete outcome. So you hire a lawyer, the lawyer, the law firm is going to give you an agreement, a contract something if you hire a website design company, they’re gonna give you a website, if you hire an engineering firm, the engineering firm is going to give you a blueprint or a building plan. Consulting is different consulting. And when we have purely advisory services, where we’re not handing you a website, we’re not handing you a legal document, we’re basically handing you advice on an ongoing basis. Tell us a little bit about why is it harder to sell purely advisory type consulting services?
Alastair McDermott 20:33
Oh, yeah, I mean, what we’re selling is intangible invisible, your clients can pick it up and look at the bills quality or knock on it. Like, for example, I have a book here, I’m really happy with the build quality of the book. When I when I knock on it, I can feel this is solid, it feels really good. Don’t get that with with services, we also have this thing where when you’re working with somebody as a service, it’s an engagement, we’re going to be working with somebody closely, we’re going to be working on we call consulting engagements, you know, it’s a relationship, it’s not a transaction, we’re not going in and buying a bar chocolate, and then leaving the store, we’re going to be working with somebody for three months, six months, nine months. And it’s also potentially on something very expensive, and very important. And so all of these feedback, and then we have the other thing that happens in consulting, which can be a bit irritating, to be honest, which is sometimes our clients don’t want to talk about the fact that we worked with them. And they want to, they want to hide that. And so we can’t even use them in testimonials. And particularly around marketing that can happen around other kinds of services depends on what you’re selling. And we’re selling this complex offering. And so all of these feedback to make what we’re doing, I think, one of the most difficult things to sell, because there’s this massive requirement for trust, much more requirement for trust than in almost any other kind of thing that we’re selling. And so we have to build that trust in some other way. And that’s where I find that it gets really interesting because you look at different ways to build trust. And building authority is one of those great ways. The other is getting a word of mouth referral, a warm referral from somebody. And that’s why that works really well, that because what’s what’s happening is you’re getting that relationship based trust based referral. And so what we’re doing when we’re building authority, is we’re saying, Well, if we’re not going to if we want to scale up past, what relationships will allow us to do with this one to one level, and we want to do it on a bigger scale, how do we scale that word of mouth referral? Well, we become recognized, and that’s where the recognition in authority comes from. And so that’s why I find this really fascinating, because what we’re doing is we’re kind of scaling on that trust. I
David Newman 22:42
love that so much since we’re talking about authority. And I know that we will also want to talk about podcasting, because podcasting is one of your superpowers. But before we leave the topic of authority, talk about your authority and maturity model and what that is and how it works.
Alastair McDermott 23:01
Yeah, so when I was when I was going through all of my kind of validation calls, and I did a lot of validation calls. So I originally the way I did this research, I originally surveyed over 1000 consultants, independent consultants, and at small firms up to size 50. through LinkedIn, I sent them series of surveys, I got 1000 was over 1000 responses. And the information that gave me back was invaluable in helping me to kind of build a picture of, of kind of the whole marketing in that space. Really interesting. Simple things like some people don’t even like to use the word marketing. They they call it business development instead or bizdev. Some people call it BD, you know, little things like that, that are kind of these foibles of a particular industry that you only get when you start to dig in. And that’s where the the niching down thing comes in. But yeah, so as I did these calls, sorry, I did the I did the research. And then I did the calls on the back of that. So that was when I built up some of my list. And then I started to do these calls. And then I started the podcast. And I also did some of these validation calls at the end of my podcast, when the great things about doing the podcast is you get to speak to the person before and after. And in the green room. That’s where you can have a really great conversation, particularly with somebody very experienced. And so use those as well. I said, Hey, can I take a minute, David to talk to you about I’m just doing some research, I’m just putting together a model, I just wanna get some feedback on that. And so I would do that I would run my, my framework, my model by them. And so what I created was I created a framework, I wanted to get a picture of how does this authority building thing work? And what does that look like if you’re at different stages of authority? And so that’s where I came up with these different stages of the novice, the invisible expert, the specialist, and The Recognized Authority. And, you know, it’s more of a spectrum than a point by point so you know, you can be somewhere along each of those lines. Right, well, those are kind of the kind of the highlights. Got it. And then I was looking RST, what does it take to get from each one of those to the next? And you know, and that’s where this model comes in, you know, what’s what is what do we take to take this step. And so with with the novice to act to invisible expert, you need to get experienced and just try lots of different things, you know. And for some people, that road will be short for other people, it’d be much more longer and more winding. To get from invisible expert to specialists, you just need to niche down, you need to choose your niche. And sometimes you have to go through that process as an iterative thing a couple of times before you find your ideal niche. And then to get to the next step, to go from specialist to recognized authority, you need to publish, you need to demonstrate your knowledge in public. And you need to build a body of work. And so for that, the way I see it is, we create this authority platform for ourselves. In on that authority platform, or in that authority platform, we have this body of work, which is all these individual components. So in my body of work, this podcast episode we’re doing right now is going to be one of those tiny, tiny building blocks, amongst many, a book that I’ve written is going to be there at my own podcast is going to be there, we’ve got all of these different components that make up our body of work. And so our authority platform is created by these. And we can choose how to build that we can decide, I’m going to start a podcast, or I’m going to write a book, or I’m going to do it through YouTube, or I’m going to do it through LinkedIn. Or you know, MySpace, which may be a bad idea, you know, or clubhouse So, or Twitter, you know, so we can choose which components we’re going to use. And there’s pros and cons of choosing all of those different parts. It’s kind of sub sub components of our authority platform.
David Newman 26:47
By the way, folks, don’t worry, you have not entered a time machine. It is the year 2024. Alastair is not saying you should go and open up a MySpace account. So let’s talk about podcasting. Because podcasting is one of your superpowers, not just podcast host thing, but podcast guests thing. Talk about how you develop this deep expertise on both sides of the podcasting equation. And then let’s talk a little bit about a podcast guesting strategy and what people might want to know about that. And then also, obviously, a podcast hosting strategy. So but let’s start with guessing please.
Alastair McDermott 27:28
Okay, so one of the things and this comes back to so I think podcasts are a superpower or a super connector. And there’s so many good things that come from podcasting. And the other thing that’s really interesting with podcasting is you can roll it as you like, you can customize it and do it how you want, you can do only solo episodes, if you want. You can do only interviews, if you want, you can do a mix, you can do hybrid inside one episode, or you can have, you know, you can basically do anything that you want with podcasts. And it’s your own media, so you have total control over it. So one of the things that I find super interesting is the forcing function of podcasting is you’re making a tacit agreement, if if your podcast is put out in a regular basis, that you’re going to put it out on a regular basis. So my podcast goes out every Monday morning at 6:01am. And it has done for the last 150 episodes. And that’s, you know, so you, you’re forced into this consistency. When content creation, this is what we need to do as as experts, we need to demonstrate our expertise and share our knowledge and public. That’s, that’s what authority building is, that’s what becoming known as a thought leader is. And in order to do that, we need to create content. But content is always important, but never urgent. And so this is just like going to the gym, going to the gym is never urgent. But if you don’t go to the gym for six months, you’re gonna know all about it. If you do go to the gym, if you go, you know, seven times in one week, and then don’t go for a year, that’s not going to help you much either, we need to go to the gym, you know, 123 times a week, every week, you do that for a year, that’s gonna be life changing. And so, consecration I kind of see in the same way, it’s something that is always important but never urgent. So it’s never going to be in the kind of like the, the something’s on fire or the phone is ringing or the baby screaming, it’s never going to be in that quadrant. Because of that people. People don’t do content creation, because it’s, you know, I’ve got to do some client work. I’ve got to do some pipeline work right now. And so I’m going to leave it on the lung finger, and then it gets pushed back and put back and put back. And that’s why I think the forcing function of podcasting is really interesting because it first of all, it gets us into that kind of content creation mode. Then we have something like for example, the two of us are on video here. Because we recorded on video, that means that now we have an asset that can be taken and turned into online videos. So now we have the URL is no podcasts, we’ve got the audio for this, we’ve got the video for this can go on YouTube, we can also jump it up and make it into little shorts to go on a bunch of different social media as well, we can also take the transcript, we can use that. And so we’ve we’ve got this, we’re feeding the content machine, we’re creating a lot of high quality content. And we’re creating content that will resonate with different audiences and can be used in different different places. So that’s one part of this kind of advantage of podcasting. Then the other part is the relationships. So hey, everybody, I’m talking with David Newman here, like this guy is the guy he’s written do with selling deal marketing, he’s, it’s a real honor and pleasure for me to be here. And I mean that in a very genuine way. And, you know, I wouldn’t get to have a conversation with you. If I didn’t have a podcast. That’s, you know, that’s life. I, I’ve had conversations with Alan Weiss, Bob Berg, all of these really, really cool admired people, Christo, he’s just hitting 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube, Christo gave me an hour of his time, because I have a podcast, you know, I wouldn’t have got an hour to speak with Christo otherwise. So we’ve got that really cool thing of networking. And then we have the green room where you get to build a relationship with somebody afterwards. And that’s where you get to say, hey, maybe we can help each other in some way. Maybe I can help you promote something, you can help me promote something. Maybe there’s ways for us to introduce each other to somebody who we want to talk to, I see that you had such and such as a guest on your podcast, which would be would you be able to introduce them to me, I’d love to have in my mind, all of those little conversations that you can have, that you would not have if you didn’t have a podcast. So that’s why I’m like I’m very bullish on podcasts, as you could say. Awesome.
David Newman 31:42
Tremendous, very, very fun. Well, as we’re landing the plane here, Alastair, I’m gonna ask you two final questions. The final final question is Where can people get connected to you and get some cool resources and downloads? But before we get to that, if folks were to take one overarching idea about being a recognized authority, what do you hope that one core takeaway idea would be?
Alastair McDermott 32:08
I think that you have to niche down and then share your, in your knowledge, demonstrate your knowledge in about that niche. And so it’s, it’s highly interconnected, that part, it’s got to be in that niche area. And then you’ve got to start just, you know, exercising that creative muscle and start putting out your content. And by the way, it might not be great at the start, but that’s okay. There’s there’s a learning process to that as well. You will find that just like getting in the swimming pool, you know, you get better as you the more the more reps you do the more Lancey do, but at some point, you have to get into the water to learn how to swim.
David Newman 32:44
You got to put in the wraps. Absolutely. Well, I know folks who want to connect with you, your programs, your books, your content. Tell us where can we send people to get more Alastair McDermott brilliance?
Alastair McDermott 32:57
Sure. Well, if you go to the recognized authority.com, and my podcast is called The Recognized Authority. So if you’re in podcast app, you can you can just check that out. But I will have a free copy of my book for all of David’s fans if you go to the recognized authority.com/do it
David Newman 33:17
awesome and all of those links are going to be in the show notes directly under this episode at the selling show.com. Alastair McDermott, you are a rock star we are. You’re my brother from another mother, I agree with 1,000% of everything that you shared here and absolutely brilliant. And thank you for the great work that you’re doing with your clients and fans as well.
Alastair McDermott 33:43
Oh, likewise. Thank you, David. I really do. I’m honored to be on your show.
