How I Started My Authority Machine - And How You Can Too
How do you build a business that is not constantly struggling to find clients?
It's the million dollar question and I believe I have the answer.
Today’s article, and the next few posts, will be all about the different ways that you can build your Authority Machine so that you never have to look for clients again.
I talk about building an Authority Machine a lot because it’s the third phase of the three-pronged approach to building a No BS Agency.
Building an Authority Machine is key, because it's the phase where we create systems and a strategy so that we are constantly being seen by more people.
They are able to evaluate who we are, get to know us, get to love us, and then want to hire us and pay us money.
And all of that can happen without you actually being in the room.
So if you build an Authority Machine, you will have created an ecosystem and an environment where new people can come in every single day, and get to know you like a dear friend.
And yet it won't take up any more of your time.
And it's the only way that I've found where you can build a business that is sustainable, and that will actually bring in clients for the long term.
In today’s article, I wanted to start by just sharing a little bit about my own story with this.
Choosing to be an Authority Machine
If you met me recently, or came into my world in the last couple of years, you probably think that I love being in front of the camera.
‘Oh man, this woman has photos everywhere!’
There are videos of Pia Silva everywhere, I am on every podcast and if you Google ‘Pia Silva’ I come up on the first, second, third, fourth page - I own the SEO for my name.
It probably seems like I'm just a natural when it comes to being on stage and wanting to be seen, and you probably think I was always the person who wanted to be the lead in the play.
But you know, growing up, nothing could be farther from the truth.
So my first lesson here is that it’s not just how you build the authority train, but also that you need to figure out if you want to build an Authority Machine
You see, what you don’t know is that before 2016 there were almost no pictures of me online.
There were no videos of me. I was a silent participant on Facebook. I was a lurker on Facebook, because I was shy and I had stage fright.
Even though I grew up performing as a dancer, I always hated the performing part of it.
So I danced my whole life, and when you dance, you go to class and you do a lot of practice for recitals at the end of the semester.
I've done a lot of recitals, and I was also in a lot of musicals in high school as a dancer, but I hated when they gave me even a one word line.
I just hated anything that required me to stand out on stage. And when we would do those recitals, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I just couldn't wait to get it over with.
Fast forward to starting my own business. I started networking in the beginning to get clients and oh my goodness, how scary was that?
Going to networking events and having to stand up in front of a roomful of people and say who I was and my business - I would literally shake.
And you know how in networking groups, the idea is that you're sitting there listening to what everyone else is saying?
Well, I'm going to admit right now that I would spend the entire time before I had to get up just thinking about what I was going to say.
I was not listening to anyone, because I was just so concerned with my own little speech that I was going to give. I was terrified.
So how does somebody go from being terrified and not wanting to be seen or post photos of themselves?
I mean, I was never somebody who was sharing everything that was going on in my life on social media.
So how did I go from that to being the ‘Pia Silva’ that I am now, where there are hundreds of videos of me talking, and hundreds of podcast episodes of me being interviewed and photos and all of this stuff?
What had to happen to make that transformation?
It’s the same thing that you're going to need to do if you want to build a business that brings you more and better clients without you having to hustle for years to come.
The very first thing that I needed to do was that I needed to decide that I wanted to do this.
It was a very intentional decision, and I remember exactly when it happened.
It was a couple of months before I had finished writing my book - mid-2016.
I was starting to think about how I was going to market my book, and why I was even writing this book.
Well, it was part ‘bucket list’ and partly because I wanted to go through the self publishing process myself, so I could get to know it, and then maybe advise my clients on it a little bit better.
Most importantly, though, I wanted people to respect what I had to say and listen to me.
And I felt like writing a book was the best way to do that.
So if I wanted people to read my book, so that they listened to me and saw me as an authority on branding, then I was going to have to market it.
If I was going to market this book, I had to figure out what was the best way to market it so that as many people as possible would actually want to read it.
And that was when this whole decision was made.
What my Authority Machine looked like
I realised at that moment that I was going to have a much easier time marketing my book and getting people to read it, if I personally put myself out there.
This was also the time when I realised I'm going to need to have some sort of presence online.
So that is when I started my Instagram account, just for this book launch.
And then I said, I'm going to have to build an Instagram following as quickly as possible so that when I finally launch this book, in five or six months, I actually have people to launch it to.
So I decided I'm going to go all in on building this Instagram account and showing my face.
And that's when I called my dear friend, John D'Amato. He had been taking photos of an event that I was speaking at - I think I was on a panel.
He was the event photographer, and he took some pretty great photos of me on stage, which I really appreciated, because it's really hard to get good photos of people when they're speaking - everyone looks so awkward!
But since he got a couple of great shots of me, I remembered that, and they were really helpful.
So I said to him, ‘John, I think I need a bunch of photos, because I don't have any photos of myself, because I don't really like photos. I don't even want to take these photos because I don't like photos of myself. So what am I going to do?’
And he said, ‘Don't worry - I got you.’
And that is the first photo shoot that I ever did of myself for the purpose of building my authority.
And we spent all day together. I changed my clothes about 15 times and we changed locations a bunch of times. We used my office, we went outside, we were in the hallway, in the basement, on the landing, on the street…
We went everywhere, because I wanted lots of different photos.
I imagined that I would need a lot of great high quality photos if I was going to build this perception of me online.
And if I was going to show myself and who I was, even though I hated showing my face, even though I wasn't comfortable being in front of the camera or being seen, I had a greater purpose.
I needed to get this book in front of people, and I needed to get them interested in reading it.
That gave me that first spark of motivation to do this photoshoot.
And to just get over myself and say, ‘You know what, I'm going to make this happen because I have a bigger reason for it to happen.’
We do the shoot, a couple of months pass and it becomes time to figure out what we're going to do with the cover of the book.
And this is something I spoke about in my TED Talk. (If you haven't seen it yet, Google it.)
This was another big moment for me in deciding what kind of brand I was going to be.
My husband and business partner, Steve, designed the book cover.
He pulled one of the photo shoot photos and I think it was the last photo of the day.
At that point, I was delirious!
I was feeling goofy and silly when John took that photo and Steve put it on the cover and said ‘This looks awesome.’
Other people told us that I shouldn't put my photo on the cover, because it didn't look like the other kinds of authoritative books that were out there.
They use Malcolm Gladwell as an example. All these books had just words and maybe a little drawing.
This one woman in particular, in PR, said ‘You shouldn’t put your photo on it, you want your book to be presented in a certain category.’
But I had to ignore her because I thought, ‘What is the purpose of this book?’
The purpose is to build my authority. It's so that people see me as an expert.
So what is the best way for me to connect with people so that they don't just read this book and hopefully love it, but they read this book and love it and connect it with me and see me as the originator of these ideas?
And I decided the best way to do that was to have my face big and bold on this cover, so that anytime somebody had it lying around or on their bookshelf, or they even just saw it, they instantly recognised me.
I went against professional advice and put my face on the cover and I did everything I could for the next few months to build my following.
I built my following on Instagram to 10,000 people in a couple of months, which you can’t do any more, but I did it then.
And I prepared for the book launch.
And when I launched the book, I was able to get it into the hands of at least a few 100 people.
And then I just continued to market it, and within a month or two, I was contacted by producers at AMC, and asked if I wanted to do a pilot with the rapper 50 Cent, who was pitching them a show about entrepreneurs and helping early stage entrepreneurs, and I was going to be the branding expert!
Now I share that because first of all, that was so cool, and so fun.
It made me a little scared at first.
But after I talked to them a bit, I realised that it wasn't a reality show where I was going to compete, but I was actually being brought on as the expert - that made me feel a lot better.
And then actually filming that pilot over a couple of days in New York City with 50 Cent was just such a fun experience.
And it made me feel like ‘Oh, I could really do this.’
Sadly, the show didn't get picked up, but it made me realise how I got that opportunity.
I had put just a few months of energy into being seen everywhere.
I had all these professional photos of myself out there, I looked the part, I had this book and it had a brand.
I was on all these podcasts and I was marketing the crap out of myself for those couple of months.
And that was enough to get the eye and attention of this producer.
Just imagine that. It was so little time.
It was a lot of effort, but it didn't take that long.
And to me what really made that happen was the intention behind it.
I said, ‘Yes, I'm ready to turn on the faucet.’
I was ready to go from no name, being scared, not wanting to be seen, to ‘All right, I guess I'm going to build this authority brand!’
I'm going to build a ‘Pia Silva’ brand.
And I'm going to make her someone that people see, listen to and respect. That was a very conscious decision.
Tackling my insecurities head on for the bigger picture
Was it easy? No, it was incredibly challenging.
It brought up all my insecurities over and over and over again.
At the same time, I was still running some Facebook ads for my previous bootcamp program.
And I started using these professional photos in the ads, I would get these haters commenting on these ads that had my face on them.
It is so hard not to take that stuff personally.
But what made it bearable and tolerable was that I was also getting professional coaching at the time.
And I was surrounding myself with other entrepreneurs who were doing similar things.
I’d feel hurt and insecure and sometimes just wanted to take all of this stuff down.
I thought ‘Who am I to put all these photos of myself up?’ or ‘Gosh, I hope people that I grew up with don't think I'm vain.’
These are all thoughts that I had, and anytime I had those thoughts, I would tell my colleagues or my coaches, and they would help remind me why I was doing all of this.
And I would remind myself that it’s because I have something really important to share.
I really want to help people succeed. And it's really hard to help people when they don't believe you, or they don't respect your opinion, or they don't have any reason to trust what you say.
I needed them to trust me so I could show them the way.
If I have to get over myself and get over my insecurities in order to do that, well, I guess it's worth it to me.
So that’s the story of how I started my authority brand.
Over the next few articles, I'm going to share in more detail what it looks like to actually build that brand over time, what kinds of things I did that helped catapult this and make this go faster, and what things I wish I had done that I am now teaching my students.
Look, there is definitely a faster way to do it. And now that I've gone through the entire process, I know that if I went back and did it again, I could do it in a fraction of the time. And those are some of the strategies that I'm going to be talking about over the next few weeks.
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 way to building an Authority Machine and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!