SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, people, episode, guests, book, listening, authority, number, alan weiss, important, bit, season, spoken, research, metrics, specialization, written, tips, downloads, put
SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Voiceover
Alastair McDermott 00:00
Hello and welcome to episode 100 of The Recognized Authority. And it is absolutely crazy to think that we’re already at 100 because it only feels like a few weeks ago when I started. So this is a special episode to mark the end of season one of the show.
Voiceover 00:17
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott
Alastair McDermott 00:32
this episode, I want to share with you what I have learned from all of these people who have been speaking to. So I’ve been interviewing experts, people who are definitely authorities in their field from prolific bestselling authors to television personalities, to keynote speakers, veteran podcasters best selling authors who have written Alan Weiss, for example, has written 65 books, people like Mark Schaefer, David C. Baker, Rochelle Moulton, Jonathan Stark, all of those types of people, absolute authorities in their field. And I’ve spoken to them on air. But I’ve also had a lot of conversations off air in the pre and post chat with with them and with others, have also spoken with a lot of people who weren’t a guest on the podcast, but who I interviewed as part of research for a book that I’m writing about authority as well. And I’ll talk a little bit about that later on. So, in order to get this episode out on time, I’m going to do this as a solo episode. And I’m going to give you my top 10 tips on building authority. Based on all of those people’s input, I have a spreadsheet, because of course I have a spreadsheet, I have a spreadsheet for everything. But I have a spreadsheet with all of these different tips from different people that I’ve kind of been sorting and amalgamating and, and fed all of that in to create these top 10 tips for building authority. There’s a little bit of overlap between those tips, because they’re all kind of interrelated. But I will get to that a little bit later on in the episode. But first I want to talk a little bit about some of the meta stuff about the podcast itself. Maybe some of you who have been listening to the show for for quite a while. Maybe you want to hear a little bit about that. If you’re not, you can feel free to skip on and and just go straight into the tips there. They’re probably five or six minutes on from this end of season is a good time to kind of take a break, take a step back and look at what I’ve been doing and kind of see what’s most effective, what I enjoy doing what you the listener enjoy. And I would love to get your feedback. And so that’s the first thing I’m going to ask is I would really love to get your feedback in two ways. Number one is directly to me. I would love to get your thoughts and suggestions for the podcast, what you like what you don’t like, if there’s something you’d love to get included. If there’s a guest, you think that would be great to come on? Or just any other comments that you have on the show that you’d like to send to me directly? Can you send that to podcast at the recognized authority.com by email. So that’s podcast at the recognized authority.com. I will put this in the show notes as well. So you can copy and paste that. So I really would love to get your feedback directly. And then the other thing that I would really, really appreciate that if you’ve listened to more than a couple episodes, if you would leave a review. And if you go to the recognized authority.com/review. And we also have a short version of that, which is req.nz or ec.nz/review. If you visit that on your mobile device, it should list the apps that you actually use on your mobile device. So it’ll bring you to leave a rating and one of those. And those ratings really make a big difference in getting more listeners for the show. So I really would appreciate that. If you don’t mind doing that. And taking a few minutes to do that. Any kind of short view, just a sentence or two, say what you like about the podcast, something like that. With that out of the way. That’s the feedback. And just want to talk about some of the kind of the the more meta kind of looking at the podcast and how we think it’s going and just giving you some behind the scenes numbers, like a transparency report. Okay, first things first, let’s talk about the finances of the podcast. And so it costs about $170 per episode to produce and the finances of that are a little bit blurred because my assistant does a lot of the work. And so I’m paying for her to do other things as well. Plus, I do have an external editor and then what There are some other costs like hosting and things like that. But I’d say on average, we’re probably talking about 170 $175 per episode. And then on the flip side of that, how much has it brought in in revenue. So I think that the podcast at this point is directly responsible for around four times that. So it’s giving me a 4x return. And that is in sales of website services, because it has actually brought in some website clients. And then in terms of coaching clients, because I’ve been working with some people on specialization, I’ve had a coaching a cohort of people who are doing coaching services. That’s, that’s the revenue side of the equation. And I’m actually pretty happy with that. So yeah, it took a while to get going out was very slow, to get going. And so that’s something that I would encourage people who are doing any of this kind of content is, you know, just bear with it, stick, stick with it, and trust the process. And that’s, I think that patience is really, really super important for this type of authority, content marketing. And that’s something that I that I talked to people about as well. So that’s, that’s the finances side of the equation. So now let’s talk about some other metrics. So in terms of diversity, there’s a couple of things that I’ve tried to do with the podcast, I don’t want it to be end up being a manual, I don’t want it to end up being all pale, male and stale. Because I probably bring enough of that to the table. So. So let’s see how I did with that. So when I look at the numbers, in terms of my guests, 41% of my guests have been women. So I was really trying to make sure that that would be actually bang on the 50%. And I did manage to achieve that. So I’m a little bit disappointed that I did manage to achieve that with with this season. And I have found that it is a little bit harder to get get women as guests on the show. And I actually talked a little bit about this on a couple of the episodes. But yeah, so that’s that’s going to be my goal is to try and get that number back up to 5050. On there some other things then with diversity, you know, we think about, you know, things like religion, that’s certainly not something that I ask any of my guests in an intake form, I never will. And so I have no idea about the diversity of guests in terms of religion. And then in terms of race. Again, this is something I don’t specifically ask guests, and I don’t want to ask yes. So the best that I can do is look at the photos of all of the guests that I’ve had on. And I think this is one where I’m dropping the ball a little bit. And I would like to do a bit better. So in terms of the kind of like the diversity box, and how do I feel like I’m reading myself, I’m probably going to give myself maybe a five out of 10. I need to do better. It’s not completely terrible. But yeah, I would like to be to be a bit better on that count. So that’s just one of the kind of the metrics that I’m looking at and thinking about in terms of the podcast itself. So another metric is the number of reviews, I’m doing particularly poor on this, and it is something again, I would ask you as a listener to do. And I’m going to be asking and trying to try to encourage and incentivize more. At the moment, I’ve got about 16 reviews, which is pretty terrible for a podcast, with 100 episodes. So I need to do a lot better on this score. So the big metric that people are interested in, is downloads. So what does this actually look like? So this is really interesting, because there’s so many different ways that you can look at these numbers. So if I look at the medium, it’s very different from the average. And if I look at the podcast episode with the most downloads, it’s very different from the next few down. So let’s let’s go through some of the numbers. So some of the highest downloads are the oldest episodes. And particularly, I’m just looking through my metrics here. Jonathan Starks episode, which is episode two, that has super high download numbers. One of the most recent episodes has on its own over 8000 downloads, and that’s just for that one episode. Overall, on average, I don’t know if this actually this is probably more of a medium median. And the median is and I haven’t got this in the spreadsheet. So I’m just looking at the numbers and kind of eyeballing it. It’s a round 600, I would say the average is probably skewing much higher than that because of some of those ones that are spiking up more. And so I’d say the average number of listens per episode is probably around that 800 mark, in and around. So some of the episodes like, for example, the most recent episode, which is episode number 99, as I record this, that was six days ago, that has 412 downloads. And that’s just just giving you some some rough averages and numbers. Over the last 30 days, we have nearly 5000 downloads. Some people think those are amazingly good. Some people think that they’re terrible. The way that I think about it is, if I was sitting in front of an audience having a chat with a guest, or if I was standing at a podium, and I was looking down at a room full of people, would I be happy if that room had 500 people in it? Would I be happy if people came along to me speaking at an event once a week, where there were 500 people or 400 people or 1000 people or whatever that number is? And to be honest, I think that’s amazing. I think it’s brilliant. So I’m really happy with that. I probably care less about the analytics than other people might. I don’t look at the analytics very often as well. It’s not it’s not something like I really like check out I don’t check it week to week, I don’t even check it once a month, sometimes. I know I probably shouldn’t listen to my last episode 99. With Adam, you’ll, you’ll hear me talking to him a little bit about that. I do care that the numbers are kind of trending up and that people liked the podcast because I wanted to make a podcast that’s useful. Obviously, I wanted to bring in revenue. And I’m enjoying doing it, which is, I think the most important thing. One of the things that has been possibly a little bit distracting, but also helpful for me thinking about what I’m doing next with the podcast is that I have just finished writing a book called 33 ways not to screw up your business podcast, which is part of a series and I actually met the the publisher is published in a hybrid model. So it’s, it’s not quite commercially published. And it’s not quite self published. It’s kind of a mix of the two. But I met the publisher, Melissa Wilson, through one of my other guests on the show and Gen Xer. And so this podcast is kind of woven into the book in some ways. And it’s obviously a book about podcasting. And yeah, so I’ve been been writing that and just getting ready that ready to publish. And it’s pretty much ready to go. I will be putting a pre order link in the podcast show notes for this episode. And I would love to get your feedback on the book. I just want to give you a taster of what some people have said about the book, because I have some some feedback from some beta readers and people like that. So Jonathan Stark, who’s one of my guests on here. He’s also a podcasting host. And he said he’s been podcasting for over a decade, and still learn some new things from the book. He says it’s clear, concise, and perfect for anybody new to podcasting. And that’s from Jonathan, who’s somebody I really kind of admire in the world of podcasting. I have my own podcasting coach, who on the podcast last week, he also read the book. And he said that this is a foolproof plan to help you get set up and running with your business podcast, which is great, really nice thing for him to say. Also, another podcast host, who’s also been a guest on the show is Joe Castle Bona. And he said it’s the first book he’s read, that really treats podcasting as a business, not as a hobby. So if you’re looking to build a revenue stream for your podcast, you need this book. So thank you to all of those people. And then the other thing I’m really excited to say is that Rochelle Moulton, who is somebody who I admire, she’s written a book about authority. And she’s actually written the foreword for this book as well. And I won’t quote quote her, she’s she said a lot in the foreword, thankfully, very complimentary. And I’m really honored to have her write the foreword for the book. So the book is going to be available for pre order by the end of this week. So that is, if you’re listening to Episode 100, on Monday, it’ll probably be by Friday of this week. So around the start of December, and I will be putting a link in the show notes. So that’s it about the book. I just wanted to let you know that it is. It’s imminent, and it’s going to be available soon. Okay, so let’s talk about authority and building authority. And I’m really excited to share what I’ve learned with you. And like I said earlier, I have I’ve spoken with so many people about this, I don’t know if it’s in the hundreds plural, because I don’t know if I’ve spoken with more than 200 people about this. But I certainly have spoken with probably upwards of 150 people, not all of those have been on this podcast. I also did some research, you interviews that I did with people while I was developing concepts for a book about authority, and doing research for that. And then these kinds of small scale interviews, small scale research. But I do have a top 10 list of top 10 ways to build authority, or top 10 tips for building authority. Now, one thing I want to say is, this is coming from data. So this is coming, I have a spreadsheet with a lot of different quotes from a lot of different conversations, many of them from the podcast, but also some of those from those private conversations that I don’t have permission to share. But what I did with those was I took the quotes, and then I kind of put them into subcategories of what’s the overall message here. And then what I did was I sorted that by frequency. So how many people are saying the same thing? And what are the ideas that are coming up over and over again. And so I do have, I have 10 ideas here that have come from that, I’m gonna go through them in reverse order with the most popular last. So let me start backwards here with the top the top 10. So here is number 10. And that is about patience. So be patient when you’re building authority. And that has come from quite a few people, the concept of you have to trust the process. That’s something I mentioned already, even on this episode, that it is it building authority, something that you just have to give time to. And I think that there is such an analogy of going to the gym, you are just not going to see results in a week or two weeks or even a month, you need to put in the time. And so that’s something that I found with this podcast as well. But the payoffs can be spectacular, and even life changing. If you can have that patience, again, so long as you’re doing things in the right way from the start. So that is patients. The next number tip number nine is to be passionate about whatever it is, that is your topic of expertise. And having that passion and actually giving a damn about what you’re talking about. People can tell, people can tell. And they will feel that enthusiasm, that passion. The other thing is, if you have that passion, that will help to drive you on in the low periods, when it’s tough, if you actually care about what you’re doing, having that passion will drive you on. And I think that is super important to have as well. Number eight, is to be authentic. And there’s actually been several episodes of the podcast that have addressed this point. And so it’s about being honest and true. And I believe that there are some studies that don’t have them to hand. But I believe there are some studies that show that people are able to tell when they’re listening to you, whether you’re telling the truth or not. And that, that it’s easy to tell if somebody’s lying effectively. That is easy yourself, somebody’s lying, if you are listening to their audio. And so that’s amazing. Like you can tell more of somebody is lying on audio than on video, for example. And because you’re listening more intently, and that’s, that’s really interesting. So I think it’s super important to be authentic when you’re podcasting if you’re doing audio podcasts. But in general, I think just being authentic, it makes life easier. It also makes it easier for you to stand out. And that’s something that that comes up later on in this list. But I think that Sam, that’s really important. So that is at number eight. So number seven, is to be consistent. And so being consistent is giving the people who are I think there’s two things to this. First off, if you’re being consistent, you’re probably doing something over a long term. So it’s kind of built in that you’re you’re being patient, because that consistency gives that but also the consistency allows people to work, whatever it is that you are creating, into their life into their processes, whatever they’re doing. So I’ve tried to be really consistent with this podcast coming out early on Monday mornings. And so I know that there are people like Joe Jacoby out there listening. So hey, Joe, thanks for listening. I know that I will get a message from you, Joe. Almost every Monday, definitely the Monday’s that you really enjoyed the episode. So I know I know that that that you’ve You’ve made it part of your routine to listen to on a Monday morning. And so that consistency is people will actually make your content part of their of their routine. And that’s what that consistency will do. And then the other thing is the consistency builds in the just the patience, because it kind of has to if you’re doing something consistently over time, it’s regular, it the time is the time band thing is built into it. So, to recap, those, be patient, be passionate, be authentic, be consistent. The next one is to build a platform, for example, like a podcast. Now, podcasting was one that in particular came up on this on this show. And in part because I’ve spoken to podcasters, but in reality is because it’s a really great way to build authority. And you’ll see that from a lot of people who are, are well known authorities have podcasts. In fact, it goes very well it kind of dovetails very well with having a book and speaking at events. So you will see people who have as their platform, they will have some sort of, they’ll have some sort of keynote speech, they will have a book or several books available, and they’ll have a podcast. So that platform does not have to be specifically a podcast, it could also be a YouTube channel, it could be just social media, Instagram, you know, something like that. But having a platform where you can actually put your content out into the world. So that’s important. And the other thing here is that you’re building the platform. So you’re deliberately setting out to create a kind of a body of work. So we’ll get into that concept a little bit more. So that is number six. So number five, is do research. So this is a by doing research on your ideal clients on the problems, learning more, it doesn’t have to be a huge, massive research project. It can simply be small scale research. And my friend Philip Morgan talks a lot about that. And he’s written about it. He’s got blog, blog posts, and podcast episodes about this. So I would encourage you to check out what he’s done. also listen to the episodes with David C. Baker. And I’ve got a an episode coming out with Lee Fredrickson from hinge marketing, that will be coming out after the hiatus and at the start a season two. But all of those people are big fans, and espouse the concept of doing research. And so that is number five. Number four, is directly related, which is to develop unique IP. So for example, your own framework, your own system of some kind, so that unique IP is something that will allow you to stand out. Because it’s unique to you. It’s something that you can trademark. So, and this is super important that you have something where you can say yeah, here is my thinking on this. And the new show, you’re showing your depth of thinking, you’re showing that you’ve done research, you’re showing that you have a system or a framework around it. And you’ve got this unique thing that that makes you stand apart. It also helps in marketing, it’s really important. And again, this dovetails back to the doing research. So that is at number four, you knew that this was on the list. Number three is to have a niche. Actually, I’ve written this as have niche positioning, and clear messaging. And that’s really important. So this is about specialization. So having a niche position of some kind. I really like vertical specialization for reasons that I’ve gone into before on this podcast. And you can also check out the specialization podcast, go to specialization podcast.com Or just put specialization podcast in your podcast search, you’ll find that I talk a lot about why I think that vertical specialization is superior. And just as a sneak peek, one of the reasons why vertical specialization is superior is because your clients congregate in the same places. The other part of this is the clear messaging and the messaging. It’s much easier to have that clear messaging once you do have that niche position because your messaging it goes from trying to address everybody to becoming something that is quite specific. And so that makes things a lot easier. So that is number three. Number two is to have a strong polarizing point of view. And this is one, like the perfect example for me is Alan Weiss. And I had Alan Weiss on the podcast. And I actually asked him about this specifically. And his answer is fascinating. So check out the Alan Weiss episode. But I’ve had quite a few people on talking about point of view. And I’ve even talked about how to actually develop your point of view on the podcast. And it’s really important to have that strong, even polarizing point of view. Because what it’s going to do is it’s going to, it’s going to bring in people who are your ideal clients who see things the way that you do, and it’s going to push away the people who don’t, and it’s going to give you a very, it’s going to help you to stand out, because you’re not going to fall into the sea of sameness, which is a great phrase from one of my guests. And so you want to stand out like that’s what we want to do in marketing is we want to stand out in some way. So having that strong polarizing point of view, is really crucial. And like I said, I’ll put it in the shownotes, a link to where I actually talk about how to actually develop your own point of view, because this is something that you need to work on. Some people, it’ll come naturally, some people will need to actually think about that. And so that’s number two. And number one is be seen by publishing and sharing your knowledge. So sharing your knowledge, this is the concept. So sharing your knowledge, one way of avoiding saying that is publishing. So you’re publishing or sharing your knowledge on a consistent basis. And when we think about this is you are developing a body of work, you’re creating a body of work that is out there 24 7365, and it is representing you and your thinking to the world. And when people do searches, they come across it, they might do that search in a podcast app, or on Google or on YouTube. And they find some of this content for you. And so you are seeing your found through this. And so that is how your, how you get your ideas in front of people. Now, if you’re getting your ideas in front of people, you have to have ideas. So you have to have done your research and have some sort of unique IP, and some sort of point of view. So you can see how all these things tie together. But that is my list of top 10 tips for building your authority based on all the research that I’ve done, and all of the podcast guests that I’ve been so honored to have on this podcast. So we’re gonna run through those again, with you, be patient, be passionate, be authentic, be consistent, build a platform, do research, develop unique IP, have a niche positioning and clear messaging, have a polarizing point of view, and be seen by sharing your knowledge on a consistent basis. So that’s it, those are my tips that come from all of the people who have contributed by coming on this show. And yeah, I think that if you put all of those into play, you are definitely going to build your authority is nothing will stop you put all of those pieces together. And that’s what I’m gonna be focusing on for season two of the podcast is, it’s going to be helping people to do that. I’m going to continue to have guests on, but I’m going to have more solo shows as well. And those show solo shows like this one, they will be focusing on certain pieces of the puzzle, I’ll be taking something and breaking it down, I hope to do some series like mini series of the podcasts, maybe three or four episodes on one topic. And we’ll be focusing on the different aspects of that. I’m also going to be doing more of the interviews live. So I’m going to be doing live stream. So I will be putting on my social media, I will be putting out what the shedule will be one, I’ve got one coming. And I hope to have already got some guests who’ve agreed to do it that way. I’m really looking forward to that. There are a few kind of logistic things, because the workflow is going to change for the podcast because of that. But those episodes will also be being recorded on YouTube. And so they will all be available on YouTube because there’ll be live stream there. They’ll also be live streamed on LinkedIn. So that’s the plan for season two. There’s going to be more mini series of solo episodes and then there’s going to be more livestream video because I think that the video component is super important because video shares better on social media And it’s the way that the social networks are pushing us. And so I want to have more videos available. Because I’ve got some, I’ve got a pretty good video setup. And I want to take advantage of that, too. So that’s, that’s it for season one of the podcast, thank you so much for listening. If you’ve listened to every episode, I would love to buy you a beer. That’s all I can say about that. But if you have listened to, if you’ve listened to three, four, or 510 episodes, thank you so much for doing that. I really appreciate you listening. And I really appreciate and respect your time. And so thank you for for doing me the honor of spending time listening to me. And I hope it has been useful for you in thinking about your business and your authority. And I hope that you have been able to take some of the things that we’ve talked about and implement them. And that’s the thing that’s really important. When I’m thinking about, you know, anything that I learned for myself, and I would suggest that anything that you learn for yourself, the knowledge is, it’s there’s only so much value in knowledge that is not implemented. It’s nice to know it. But it’s only when we actually implement when we take the ideas and actually turn them into some sort of action. That’s when knowledge is really valuable. So I would encourage you to take the ideas that you get from this podcast and from any others that you listen to and any YouTube and and just make sure that you you do take in information, but then you actually act on it. And I think that’s that’s really important that action part. So I will be back in season two of the podcast, which will be in about, I’d say three or four weeks, I’m not going to give you a specific date right now. I will put it in the show notes of this episode when I have the date. But I’d say probably probably around that we need to I want to take a break for a few weeks, just to recharge my batteries. And I think that may be coming up to Christmas is a bad time to restart. So we’ll probably be just after Christmas, maybe just before the new year, something like that. And yeah, we’ll be starting back up with the podcast a little bit too much what I’m doing with the podcast to stop so I will be continuing. Don’t forget that the book will be available very soon. So please check the show notes in the episode, and you’ll see a link to that as well. And I hope to have you back in season two. So thank you again. Please leave a review if you liked this season of the podcast if you liked this episode if you found this useful, and see you in the next one.
Voiceover 32:45
Thanks for listening to The Recognized Authority with Alistair Mackenzie. Subscribe today and don’t miss an episode. Find out more at the recognized authority.com
Episode 100 of The Recognized Authority