The Four Pillars of Authority Marketing With Adam Witty

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. If this is your first time here, we are happy to have you. In this episode, we get to listen as Robert Scrub interviews Adam Witty. Now, Adam Witty is the CEO of Advantage Media Group, a company that helps professionals create, publish, and market their own book to grow their business. Now, Adam's written 5 different books, including a co-authored book with Dan Kennedy entitled Book the Business: How to Make Big Money with Your Book Without Even Selling a Single Copy. Now, for those of you who follow Dan for a while, you'll know Dan Kennedy puts out almost a book every single year, and sometimes that's the minimum. There's a reason for that. And in this episode, we get to listen to that reasoning from Robert Scrope and from Adam Witty as he explains how you can become an authority in your market. No matter what your market size may be. Now, as you may know, all of these podcast episodes are taken from the archive of Magnetic Marketing, which means we're pulling these audios from the past and giving them to you for free. And sometimes the quality isn't quite right. So as we listen to these, we are always looking to make sure that the quality is on point. This episode will be hard to hear at points. However, as we listen to it as a team, we deemed this so valuable that even though you may need to strain to hear every once in a while, the value it provides needs to be heard. Let's listen in.

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Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Why should anyone listen to a thing that you have to say? Much less, why is somebody going to pay for advice, whether you're coaching, publishing products, or giving seminars. The magic piece that transitions you from being, you know, just another crackpot with an opinion into an expert opinion setter is called authority marketing. Hi, I'm Robert Scrobb, President of the Information Marketing Association and author of the official get-rich guide to information marketing. Today's program is all about using this authority marketing to get attention, grow a strong customer base for your products, and build a long-standing business. My guest today is Adam Witty, the founder and CEO of Advantage Media Group, the business growth publisher. Advantage helps busy publishers, public professionals create, publish, and market their book to grow their business. Adam was named to the prestigious Inc. 30 Under 30 list of America's coolest entrepreneurs, Advantage has been named to the Inc. 500, 5,000 list and the South Carolina Best Places to Work for the last 3 years. Adam is the author of 5 books and appeared in the USA Today, Investor's Business Daily, Wall Street Journal, and on ABC and Fox. Adam is the founder and chairman of the Authority Marketing Institute, which is the place for the best information, teachings, and strategies on the topic. AMI hosts an annual Authority Marketing Summit, which we'll talk about a little bit later, and publishes the Authority Marketing Magazine. Well, welcome, Adam. So glad that you are able to join me today.

Robert, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to share with all your members the power of authority marketing and how they can use it to really hyper-grow their business and dominate their market.

That's awesome. A lot to cover today, including what authority marketing actually is and how it distinguishes from other type of marketing. Dan Kennedy's 4 reasons for authority marketing, the pillars of authority marketing, examples of authority marketing in business today, and how to implement it into your business for gain, fame, and fortune. So, I tell you, Adam, as we get started, why don't we kind of start with a big picture I know that you're a book publisher. Why in the world are we even talking about authority marketing? Wouldn't you rather be talking about how to author your own book?

Yeah, so Robert, thanks for that question. It's a good place to start because I started Advantage 10 years ago, and for the last 10 years, I've been talking about creating and publishing books. What I realized a couple of years ago, and what so many authors have told me is, look, to heck with selling books in bookstores. I want to use my book to build my authority position in my industry. I want to use my book to become the celebrity expert in my community. I want to use my book to be seen as the expert and the leader in my marketplace. And so at first, Robert, when I started Advantage 10 years ago, I really thought that I was in the book selling business. And what I realized over time— and I'm a slow learner, so it really did take time. What I realized is that I'm not in the book business. I'm really in the marketing business. I'm not just in the marketing business. I'm in the authority marketing business. If done well and done right, a book is actually a tremendous platform to build an authority marketing position for an individual and/or a business.

Hmm, that's pretty awesome. Now, like, how is, when you're talking about authority marketing, what is that, I guess, what's the distinction? How is it that you define this world of authority marketing versus just ordinary marketing, positioning, branding, the types of things that we talk about when we talk about brand positions?

Yeah, so I mean, look, there's certainly tie-ins and there's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of overlap, right? But let me start start with a technical definition of authority marketing. And then we'll build from there. Authority marketing is, by definition, the strategic process of systematically positioning a person or an organization as the leader and expert in their industry, community, or marketplace to command outsized influence over all competitors. There's a couple of key terms. The first is strategic process, which means it doesn't just randomly happen. It's a deliberate, thought-out plan that you execute over a period of time. The second thing to point out, systematic positioning. It's not random. It's not helter-skelter or happenstance. It's very deliberate, and there's a lot of different pieces to the authority marketing puzzle, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit. The last thing is, at the end of the day, competing in a marketplace, an industry, a community, it's all about the influence and sway that you have, that your business has amongst your prospects. And so if you can create an outsized level of influence over your competition, you will win hands down. If prospects trust you more than the other guys, you win the business. If prospects think you know more than the other guys, or your company is the expert over the other guys, you win the business. And so authority marketing is a very systematic, a very deliberate plan to position yourself and your company as the expert that people want to do business with. And it's all about really being a magnet that's attracting prospects to you versus having to forcefully sell yourself.

To people. Now, what is— let's talk about a few examples in the authority marketing world. I think maybe some famous folks that would be obvious as a kind of a frame of reference that folks listening would be aware of. Then let's talk about some other folks that maybe have used these authority marketing strategies within their own business world, so that even though they might not be famous from a pop culture standpoint, they, as you say, they are using this to attract customers to them versus having to continually sell themselves. Yes.

So let me start with a concept, and, and the concept is this, that a lot of people listening right now might say, you know what, I'm never going to be a celebrity that people around the world know. In fact, the idea of becoming a celebrity around the world that people know of, number one, it may not be attractive to you. Number two, even if it is attractive to you, it's probably daunting. And so I want you to think about being famous right where you live. I want you to think about being slightly famous. And I'm going to give you a story. We have an author, his name is Jim Ziglar, and he is a consultant to automobile dealers. And he said something to me, Robert, a really long time ago, and it stuck with me. It really even stuck with me before I even knew what this whole authority marketing thing really was. And here's what he said. He said, Adam, Outside of the car business, nobody knows who I am. But inside the car business, I'm a friggin' rock star. And the lesson from that, and the learning to take from that, is that being slightly famous means that you are famous to the people that can give you money. People that aren't your prospects, people that aren't in your industry, people that aren't in your marketplace or community, people that won't give you money— well, it doesn't matter if you're famous to them or not, because if you were famous, they couldn't give you money anyways, or they wouldn't give you money anyways. So, so this big idea is that you don't need to be a worldwide celebrity. You need to be famous. You need to be the authority in the industry, in the community, in the marketplace where you and your business live, because you need people who have the ability and willingness to give you money to see you as the authority. Everybody else that it really doesn't matter. So now let me answer your question. So let's talk about a couple of examples. So we'll talk about some well-known examples, and then we'll talk about some small-known examples, and then later in the call we can really kind of dive into it a whole lot more. But so a famous example would be Richard Branson. The Virgin companies. I mean, this guy is a publicity machine. He's got books, he's got TV, he's got lots of media. Let's take it down a step further, because you're probably thinking, well, I'm not gonna ever be Trump, I'm not gonna ever be Branson, give me an example that's closer to home. Well, don't worry, because we're gonna get real close to home in just a few minutes. But, Sue Zorman. Everybody knows who Suze Orman is. Suze Orman, 10 years ago, was a financial advisor, just like 160,000 other financial advisors. She was doing speaking. She was doing programs in her community. Then she self-published a book. She really promoted the book hard. The book was able to get her some media appearances on some national TV and radio. Radio shows. And the one thing that Suzy Orman had going for her— and she had a lot going for her, I don't mean to say just one thing— but she was actually really good on TV. She was good on TV, she was personable, she was a female, she had a very reassuring set of calmness to her. People just felt like she was speaking the truth and they could trust her. Okay, and so what she done— well, those little pieces of success that she had, she was smart enough to purposefully parlay that into more success. And so now Suze Orman isn't a financial advisor anymore. She's really a media personality who's now authored, I think, a dozen books. She's got a weekly television show on CNBC. She now does speaking tours all over the country. Okay, Dave Ramsey, exact same situation. Not, not a financial advisor, but Dave Ramsey was a very small micro authority in his community. Then he kind of became a name on the statewide level, and then he purposefully burst through the door to become a national celebrity. So those are some national examples. And again, Robert, in a few minutes we'll get down to the more local level.

And I think it's valuable to recognize that with, certainly like with Dave Ramsey, now he is, so he has so much business that's coming to him because of the positions and the expert positioning that he's come out with in the books, that now rather than him taking the business himself, He's got endorsed professionals all around the country that pay him so that he will endorse them. And so, like you say, all this business is now coming to him simply because he's authority, and he couldn't handle it all if he wanted to.

Yeah, yeah, so that's exactly right. So Dan Kennedy, who of course IMA members know, been very influential for me and an author of ours and a good friend. Dan Kennedy, who really has been using authority marketing for the better part of his 40-year professional career, Dan has what he calls kind of like the 4 reasons for authority marketing. With your permission, I'd love to share those 4 reasons because one of the reasons really supports the point you were just making with Dave Ramsey. Sure, let's go through those. So the first thing to know is that you want to become known, recognized, and respected as a true authority on a few kinds of expertise to a selected constituency within reason who have the willingness and ability to pay well for that expertise. So let me simplify that. You need to be famous right where you live. You need to be famous slightly, it's the Jim Ziglar quote, outside of the car business nobody knows who I am, but inside of the car business I'm a rock star. So if you are a dentist in Columbus, Ohio, and 99% of your patients live within a 25-mile radius of Columbus, Ohio, You don't need to be famous in California. You don't even need to be famous in Cincinnati. You do need to be the authority. You do need to be famous in Columbus.

Well, there's a client of mine, Dr. Darrell Dopp, who is a dentist in Aberdeen, South Dakota, which is a, you know, a very small town in the middle of Around Aberdeen is cornfield and hundreds of miles in each direction. And within Aberdeen, Dr. Opp has made himself famous with families by positioning himself as an expert, by giving back to the community. And so now people love him and want to see him. You know, kids actually look forward to going to the dentist because they want to see Dr. Opp. And so just like you're saying, he's slightly famous within his community, and people want to see him because he has made sure they know about him through the events that he puts on.

And to your point, Robert, it doesn't matter that he be famous in Minneapolis. Because people in Minneapolis can't give him money, or they're not likely to give him money.

Not for dentistry, for sure.

But people in Aberdeen, they have the ability to give him money, so being famous to them is what's important. Correct. So the second principle is be the go-to guy or gal for something of very high value. Be the go-to guy or gal everybody prefers if they can afford him or her. Okay, so Dr. Op, great example. You know, his dentistry services, he's interested in being famous to the people in Aberdeen who either have the money or the ability to pay for the best treatment. If, if, if you can't afford to spend money with him, or if you don't value your dental health, he doesn't care if you're famous to him or not because you're not going to give him money. And that's really the big idea, and this is what's so important for being slightly famous, is you could spend gobs of money being well-known, being recognized all around your industry, all around your state, all around your world, the world for that matter. But, but, but if those aren't people that can, can give you money, then you're spending money to be famous to them with no ability to recoup that investment that you've made to become famous in the first place.

Being famous isn't the point by itself. You also want to be famous and known, but because you're the go-to person for something that's very important to your customers.

Right, you know, it's marketing. It's authority marketing, and it's all about positioning yourself and your company as authority, as expert, as the leader, and monetizing that premier position to attract more customers, to have people coming to you rather than you having to go to them. The third piece to Dan Kennedy's 4 reasons for authority marketing, this one directly ties into what you were saying a few minutes ago, Robert, about Dave Ramsey. Be the guy or gal others of influence want to stand next to. Okay? So, by you making yourself and your business famous by being an authority in your marketplace, in your community or industry. Other people of notoriety want to associate with you, right?

Well, in Dr. Off's instance, he puts on an annual event and the local, there's two big hospitals in his community and one of them wanted to be a sponsor. So here is one of the largest employers in the community, and they want to sponsor, they want to put on and be together with Dr. Aup and the event that he's putting on. So it helped, it helped, you know, just exactly what you're saying that because of your reputation as being the go-to guy or gal and that because other, you know, the community knows you, other people of influence want to be with you too. The politicians want to hang out with you because people know who you are. And like you, and, you know, other experts within the community want to be there.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I'll give you a micro example. So I'm an entrepreneur in Charleston, South Carolina, which is a relatively small city in comparison. And this year we have an election for a new mayor. And 4 of the 6 major candidates have personally reached out to me to request a meeting. Wow. The reason is Adam is a young entrepreneur that has a very fast-growing company that's headquartered downtown. Adam has been featured as one of Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30. Adam's company has been on the Inc. 500, 5,000 list for the last 3 years, Adam has created a reputation and a brand for himself and Advantage that's pretty cool. And so politicians want to associate themselves with that, and they want my support.

And it's easy to discount, oh well, politicians, what does that matter? That, you know, because they're not going to give you money, they're not they just want your vote or they want you to contribute to their campaign, but what that's a symptom of or a sign of, that other people of influence are attracted to you and that you are well respected within the community. And what that, you know, directly, that's going to help you get the new permit you need in order to renovate your building. 'Cause if, you know, the mayor's there, they certainly want you to stay in downtown Charleston versus going out to a suburb because that's what you gotta do in order to grow. And so it makes your life easier from that standpoint. So it's a very practical purpose. And it's illustrative that if you're in a niche or you're, you know, and you're trying to grow your standing within a niche, Well, the mayor of the niche is the industry association, and they will come and want you to be on their program. They'll want you to, uh, to be part of what they're doing. So what this does is, is help attract the right people to you, uh, that are going to bring the deals and even more notoriety. It kind of grows upon itself.

Well, you know, our, our friend Robert Dan Kennedy, He's spoken at events for Craig Proctor. He's spoken at events for Ben Glass. He's spoken at events for you. He's speaking at our Authority Marketing Summit this fall. He's speaking for Dustin Burleson next spring, who's the guru in orthodontics. We're all gurus. We're all authorities to our herd. What are we doing? We're bringing Dan Kennedy in to not only speak to our herd, but on top of that, our authority is rubbing off on him to some degree because of the sway we have with our herd, but his authority of being on the Peter Lo Success Tour for 9 consecutive years, of authoring 23 books, of influencing directly over a million business owners across America, his authority runs, rubs off on us too. And so again, that's where it all goes back to being the person that other people want to stand next to and other people want to associate with.

So what is the fourth pillar?

So number 4, and this one is actually classic Dan Kennedy, is leverage authority for autonomy. Dan is classic for the whole notion of living life on your own terms. And the application here is that if you are an authority in your marketplace, in your community, in your industry, people are coming to you versus you going to them. And when people are coming to you, when your phone's ringing versus you having to make cold calls to others, it puts you in a position of power. And that's not power to use for negative purposes, but it's power that is leverage that can be used to only do the things that you want to do, only do the business deals on the terms in which you're willing to accept them, only be be willing to work when you want to work or with whom you want to work. And so the more of an authority figure you are in your industry marketplace community, the more negotiating power that you have. The higher fees that you can command without people balking or comparing you to others. And that's at the end of the day what it's all about. I mean, the reason we're entrepreneurs There's many reasons, but one of them is the autonomy that entrepreneurship brings. If you leverage authority marketing properly, it can really increase the level of autonomy that you and your company have.

I think anybody, any of us who've owned a business have done a deal. They took a client or you made a sale or what have you. Because they needed the money, because it was a deal that gave them the cash flow.

Robert, it would be the clap.

To keep on going. Whereas this allows you to, to get the deals that, that, that you really want, that are the best fit for you and your skills, that are the high margin deals that, that aren't just about you, because you don't have to worry about where the next sale comes from because the clients are coming to you and puts you in a position of being able to pick and choose who you want to work with and on what terms so that, uh, it really gives you that autonomy, uh, that Dan is talking about.

Yeah, you nailed it on the head, right? Every single person on this call has taken a client that they really didn't want but they needed to take because they needed the money. At some point in our career. And when you have autonomy, when you're seen as the authority, you only take on what you want to take without question.

Now I think those, just to kind of recap, the 4 pillars again are becoming known, respected as a true authority for the expertise that you have for the specific constituency, whether it's a, industry that's spread across the country or within a group of potential customers within a community. Number 2 is become the go-to guy or gal for something of high value. Be the guy or gal others of influence want to stand next to, and then leverage your authority for autonomy. So let's, Adam, let's talk about some examples of folks that have done this on, you know, I know we talked about Branson and Ormond. Let's talk about some folks that are, that have done this kind of on a local level that, you know, somebody who's, you know, within a niche or an industry or within a community that they could really relate to.

Yeah, okay. So, so let's start with a doctor. The doctor's name is Steven Hotzi. And his medical clinic is in Houston, Texas. And Dr. Hotzi specializes in hormones, bioidentical hormones, hypothyroidism, primarily kind of hormone issues, and his target market are females in their 40s and 50s. And the one thing I'll tell you about Dr. Hotzi, it wasn't always this way. Originally, he just had a normal medical practice that accepted insurance. Over the last 10 years, following a deliberate authority marketing system, he has built his practice where he is a cash-only practice. And so, so when it comes to medicine, or when it comes to dentists, and they tell you they're cash-only, well, how is it that they can be cash-only? The reason is there's enough people that highly value what they do and think that they're the best at it, that they will gladly pay cash rather than filing insurance. And now I have health insurance, but, but I have a concierge doctor that I have to pay out of pocket to, even though I have insurance. And so that's what authority marketing can do. So, so Dr. Stephen Hotsy, the first thing that he did this was 9 years ago, he wrote a book, okay? And his book was titled Hormones, Health, and Happiness. So he knew what his target market was, he titled the book around that, so he wrote a book. And here's what he did that was the game changer, okay? He got Suzanne Somers, who is very big in natural medicine, natural health, who's very big on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. He got Suzanne Somers to not only write a chapter that he could put in his book, but she liked the book so much she promoted it and endorsed it. Wow. So here's a guy, Steve Hotze, who at the time isn't really an authority, and what's he doing? He's finding an authority who's Suzanne Somers, who's famous, and he's standing next to her.

And using the book as the way of building that relationship and conversation.

Right, so now Suzanne Somers' fame is kind of rubbing off on Dr. Hotzi, which is exactly what he wants. So he does the book, he launches the book. Now, what does he do? He invests the money to hire a publicist, and he starts getting radio and television shows to have him on to talk about hypothyroidism, hormones, etc. Now, he wasn't on the Today Show, he wasn't on Oprah, but he was on Good Day Houston, he was on Good Morning Texas, he was on KLATV which is the NBC station in Houston. He was on the ABC station, the Fox station, the CBS station in Houston. He was profiled in the Houston Chronicle. He was on 24 different radio stations in either Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio. Okay, now why does that matter? Because most of his patients at the time were either in Houston or the outer area within a 100-mile radius of Houston. So he concentrated all of his publicity there because he wanted to be famous to those people. He didn't care about being famous to people in New Orleans. So then he does the media. The next thing that he does is he starts doing speaking. Now here's the thing, he wasn't getting paid $5,000 or $10,000 to speak. He was speaking initially for free, and it was primarily to medical groups in the state of Texas. In fact, here's what he would do. He would go in, he would speak, and he would simply ask them to buy a copy of his book for everybody in the audience at cost.

Okay, cost.

So he's making no money. And, and you're saying, well, why in the world would anybody do that? Because every time he spoke, he sent out a press release. Dr. Hotzi has been invited to speak at this event. There would be pictures of him speaking on the stage that are put on his website. Okay, now every single person where he speaks has a copy of his book that's going to be sitting, sitting on their, you know, nightstand or their coffee table in their living room. —could be potential referral source for him. That could be referrals. So it was a very deliberate plan of action. The other thing that he did is he created a Ritz-Carlton-like experience at his office. And he initially wrote articles about it. And he submitted the articles to trade journals and newspapers in Texas. A couple of them bit and actually wrote a story about the experience the patients received for business magazines and business newspapers. And so all of these little things were, you know, a systematic, a deliberate step to slowly but surely raise his profile. It didn't happen overnight, but over the last 10 years, he's built a medical practice that is all cash. That has patients that come from— get ready for this, Robert— 22 different states. And I can tell you that his medical practice does roughly 13 times in annual revenue what the normal practice does, and he's only got 2 doctors.

Well, and he's not taking insurance, so he's able to charge what he wants rather than what some insurance company decides he's gonna get.

So it's amazing. Here's one more thing that he did that I love. He's in Houston. Houston is a hub for Southwest Airlines. He started buying full-page magazine ads in Southwest Airlines magazine, which is called Spirit. Mm-hmm. And so what happens is most people in Houston fly Southwest, so, so it creates celebrity and fame for him. Oh, wait a minute, you're the guy that's in the Spirit magazine. I've seen you, I know you, right? And all of the cities that directly connect between Houston and that city, that's where most of his patients are coming from that are out of state.

Well, awesome. I think it's— this authority marketing is something that— it's something that's talked about a lot,, but having it all boiled down in one place and being able to see all the moving parts together, I think is very, very useful and something that the Authority Marketing Institute is certainly an important contributor for. And all about, you know, of course, Dan Kennedy's 4 reasons are to become known, become the go-to guy. Guy or gal, be the person that others of influence want to stand next to, all so that you can leverage the authority for autonomy. Adam, thank you so much for being my guest today for the Best Practice Information Marketing call.

Well, Robert, I appreciate that, and I will just say this, that, that authority marketing done properly is one of the most effective things that you can do for yourself and your business. Over the life of your career, and it's something that if strategically done can pay significant dividends for a really long time. Enlightened entrepreneurs realize this and they take advantage of it, so to speak. My hope is that everybody listening to the call will not only be enlightened, but will deliberately use authority marketing to grow their own businesses. And position themselves as the expert and leader.

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