Networking And Building Authority - Which Comes First In Your Branding Agency?
It can be really hard to attract and close clients when you have no authority in the world - when people don't know who you are, and they don't know, like and trust you.
But building authority can take time.
So when is the best time to start the efforts of building authority?
And when should you just be focusing on the short-term marketing things like networking?
Keep reading, as I’ll break it all down for you.
The right time to start building authority
It’s absolutely true - being seen as an authority can make sales so much easier.
So you’d think it might be something that you think you should invest your time in as soon as possible.
But is there a ‘right time’ to spend that time and energy? And how do you know when that is?
Is there a right time when you should be focusing more on immediate sales on outreach efforts like networking and other things that are going to bring the sales in the door?
This has been a really hot topic inside our community in the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
The way to answer this question is by looking at where you are in your business right now, and what your priorities are.
You see, in the beginning, every business owner gets clients through who they know, unless you already have an audience of people who know what you do, and they like and trust you.
It makes sense, right? How else are you going to get clients except to connect with people and let them get to know you?
So if it’s important for somebody to know, like and trust you in order to make a sale, which of those do you think is most important?
It's kind of a trick question - although liking and trusting is important for the sale, if they don't know who you are, they can't like or trust you, can they?
So I would say being known is the most important part.
And if you are starting your business, and you aren't known by anyone, then your sole job, the only thing that you should be focusing your energy and time on is getting known by as many people as possible.
And in the beginning, the fastest way to get known and build trust with new people is to meet them one-on-one - meet them in person, meet them at an event and talk to them.
I can have a 20-minute conversation with someone and by the end, know what they do, and generally decide that I like them and probably even build enough trust that I might work with them.
Indeed, I have hired many people after a 20 minute conversation.
And this is why in the beginning, you're going to want to connect with people one-on- one - face-to-face, over Zoom or on a phone call.
That is the fastest way to go down the sales funnel from ‘I've never met you before or heard of you to you’ to ‘ You’re somebody that I might do business with, or I might refer to someone else to do business with.
That's why it is short-term marketing. It’s a way to get immediate clients.
And when you sell a high ticket service like branding, marketing or design, every client is worth so much.
And at any moment, you can go into a roomful of people, introduce yourself, and talk to a couple dozen people and walk out of there with a client. That is always possible.
That's why networking and outreach is the first thing you're going to do.
How to build an Authority Machine
Let’s go to the other extreme of having authority inside the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
I teach how to build an Authority Machine, and we do it in a very specific way.
You create a bunch of content on very specific topics that you are an expert in.
They have a very specific point of view, and are on brand for you.
They’re also out there in the world in many different formats - in blog form, in video, on a podcast, social media posts, as a guest on podcasts.
You might even share them in a speech to a roomful of people, on a webinar or as a guest on someone else's webinar.
There are so many ways that you can share your authority content - you could write a book about it! (Which is also another way to build authority).
I call this foundational content, and when you’ve created it, you can then put it into a machine, which I call the multiplying machine, that will take that content and put it out there in the world in all these different formats over and over and over again, without you being present.
That's the key - the machine does the marketing for you.
Yes, you have to create that foundational content. Of course!
It's building your authority and is going to be built on what you think, who you are, what you say, and what your point of view is.
So you build that content first, and once you do, and plug it into the machine, you won't have to show up anymore.
This information will be out there in the world for people to find and connect with, and they will get to know that you exist because it's out there.
If they interact with that content, and they like it, then they will also like you and what you have to say.
And if they really like it, they will start to trust you.
When you have this authority machine, your job is no longer going out and trying to meet people or get in front of people.
Your job is to respond to the inquiries that are coming into your email inbox - people who are raising their hand and saying, ‘Hey, I'm interested in working with you’, people who are going to your website and booking a call to speak with you, because they're interested in learning more about your services, people who are huge fans of you, and then tell their friends about you and do your marketing for you.
Notice that all of that doesn't require you to be anywhere.
That is the beauty of an Authority Machine.
Now, there can be a little bit of upkeep in an Authority Machine. But it is so minor and so high level and has so much impact, you're going to want to do it.
Let me give you an example.
When I have friends or colleagues or people who have big stages reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, would you like to come speak on my stage to a roomful of your ideal clients?’
I say yes, and that requires me to show up and do something.
But the impact is tremendous. I get to speak to a roomful of people that I didn't even have to invite there.
That is the kind of stuff that you do once you have an Authority Machine.
And that is basically your main job in marketing at that point.
So there’s the two ends of the spectrum - where you have no authority in the world, you’re networking, and connecting with people one-on-one, and then you have this Authority Machine that's going to do all the heavy lifting for you, and you get to just sit back and filter through all of your leads and decide who you want to work with.
Bridging the gap between networking and authority
So how do we bridge that gap?
And how do we get from all one-on-one outreach to basically having a machine that does the work for you?
First, I like to think about the inverse relationship of networking and outreach to authority.
Picture a rectangle, draw it in your mind, or on paper.
Then draw a diagonal line from the top left corner to the bottom right corner, so you now have two triangles.
And on the left side, write ‘Outreach’ in the triangle, and on the right side, write ‘Authority.’
Now, when you look at this triangle, it’s a perfect representation of where your time can and should be spent.
The left side is where you are when you first start your business. As you can see, you have zero authority.
And so all of your time needs to be spent networking or doing outreach, connecting with people one-on-one.
Why?
Because your sole job is to get known by as many people as possible. Nobody knows you right now, and they can't buy from you if they don't know you exist.
As we go along that line, the bisecting line, you can see that as you build authority, you'll have to do less and less outreach.
But at the very beginning, at that beginning part of that triangle, you still have to do a ton of outreach.
Because even if you've built a little bit of authority, or you've created some content, maybe you have a small blog, maybe you have a couple 100 people following you on Instagram, that's great, but it’s not going to do the heavy lifting for you yet.
You still need to invest time into building your network and making sure that you are constantly in front of new people.
So what I recommend is doing the outreach consistently as you bring in clients.
Sales can solve a lot of problems here, so what you need to do is create momentum in your business.
We want to bring in sales through our connections. Every client you work with is a potential referral source in the future.
The first year that my husband and business partner, Steve and I did our BrandUps and we started at $3,000 for each One-Day Intensive with a client.
We were doing Intensives left and right, sometimes we were doing a few a week.
Imagine just how many clients we were working with?
Over a couple of months, we would have easily worked with dozens of clients in that time.
Do you see the momentum that that built for us?
Those clients all created more clients for us, because every time we launched another website, or another brand for somebody, they're now showing it to all their friends, people are inevitably asking them who helped them with it, and they're sharing our model.
And then those people either are potential clients as well, or are telling other people.
So working with clients, as many clients as possible, is also going to help you with that outreach, because it's going to get you in front of more people, and it's going to get you seen and known.
Once you get this momentum going, you're going to be pretty busy.
This is when you start raising our prices, and decreasing the number of clients that you spend your time with.
And this is when you start to create space in your calendar to then start to invest in authority building.
Authority building is a long-term marketing strategy. Why? Because it doesn't produce clients at first.
I promise you, no matter what anyone may tell you, if you write a blog post today, it's not going to get you a client tonight.
OK - you never know - sometimes it happens here and there.
But you can't rely on a blog post to feed you clients into the future.
You're going to need a critical mass of this content.
So because of that, while you’re building your authority foundation, and while you're building this Authority Machine, you'll need to keep doing the outreach to make sure that you still have a steady stream of clients coming in.
What I see a lot of people do - and don’t make this mistake - is that they do a lot of outreach, they get a bunch of clients, they get super busy and then they fall off the outreach completely.
When they do have a bit of time, they say ‘OK, I've got some money saved up, I'm ready, I can't wait to have that Authority Machine. So let's just go for it.’
And what inevitably happens, as they start building the Authority Machine, they invest a bunch of time into it, and their pipeline dries up, sales start falling off, and then ‘Oh, shit, where are my next sales coming from? I don't have any leads, I don't have anything I can rely on. I've created a bunch of content, but it's not doing anything for me yet. My machine is not completely built, so now I'm in panic mode, so I have to stop the authority machine, and I have to go back to the outreach, except I lost all that momentum.’
So now, branding agency owners feel like they have to start from scratch.
Of course, you’re never really starting from scratch but it's going to feel like that.
If you’re biking, starting from not moving is harder than if you're coasting and you want to speed up a little bit.
I see this cycle all the time.
And it happens because people start going full force into authority building before they're ready, before they have a steady stream of income and clients that they can rely on.
And so my advice is to go back to this rectangle with these two triangles in it and I want you to always remember what it says.
I want you to remember that, as you build your Authority Machine, you must continue the outreach until you hit a critical mass of authority, where it starts to bring in those clients for you.
Only when that Authority Machine is feeding you clients in a consistent way that you can rely on should you stop the outreach completely.
Now, do you need to do this outreach at the same clip in the beginning of your business as you do 6 or 12 months later?
Absolutely not.
I have clients inside No BS Agency Mastery who only do outreach to one or two people a week at this point, because they have enough clients coming in, they're building their Authority Machine and it's starting to take off, but they know that continuing to stay in front of some of their best contacts is a great way to keep their pipeline hot, and keep new people coming in the door.
Do not make the mistake of stopping one action to do the other.
Create a gradual evolution, until you get to a place where you know your authority machine is bringing in those clients and then you can stop the outreach completely.
Staying consistent
Look, staying consistent with this stuff is really challenging.
It's why most people struggle to get clients because staying consistent is one of the hardest parts of business.
We always think about it as a race as something that we need to do and then it's done. We think we need to get to that next marker and then it's finished.
But actually, when it comes to sales and marketing, it's a slow burn.
Sales and marketing are something you are always doing when you're in business and if you don’t know what you're doing every single day to make sure that you are being seen by hot leads, then that is the number one place to focus.
If you don't have a plan, and you're relying on other people to send you referrals, then you're basically putting your livelihood and the income that is there to support yourself, your family, all of that in the hands of other people, and relying on them to remember you.
I don't know about you, but if that was me, I would be really stressed out.
So the moral of the story is to stay consistent, know what your plan is, and how you're going to evolve from networking and outreach to the Authority Machine, and how you're going to do it sooner rather than later.
Because this whole thing can happen within a couple of months if you play your cards right!
But you’ve gotta be ready to show up consistently and do the work.
And what I’ve found after coaching hundreds of people through this process, is that staying consistent and showing up is one of the hardest parts.
And it’s also one of the most important things that you could do.
And to stack the odds in your favour, have a community of people around you, supporting you, doing the same thing, making sure that you show up and holding you accountable.
OK - so that's a really high level overview of what it looks like to market your business today, tomorrow and in the future, and how you can evolve your marketing so that you are no longer a significant part of it.
But that's what I could fit into this blog post. If you want to dig into this conversation more, want access to a group of people that are doing similar work, and access to me and all my resources on exactly how to do this in the most effective way so that you actually get results - this is what we're doing every single day inside the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
For the last few years, I have been training one to two person branding agencies on the exact actions that they need to take to scale their businesses to $30,000 to $50,000 months without employees.
And if that sounds interesting to you, if you're working to grow your agency in a different way, if you're interested in scaling your revenue and your profit without growing a huge team, and you want the framework and the roadmap to get there, go to nobsagencies.com/apply, to find out more about the programme and apply, risk-free to talk to someone on my team to make sure that this Program is a right fit for you.
Here’s what you need to get…
Before you can build an Authority Machine, you have to decide to be an authority machine.
You’ll also have to be prepared to deal with your insecurities of being in front of people, even if you’re the most confident person on the planet.
But if you have a bigger intention for why you want to get out there in the first place, it’ll really be worth it.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your networking and authority building, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!