How to Rise as a Paid Authority | 13 Minutes to Elevate Your Business

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out onto the world. Now, I often get asked by people, I want to make money in my industry, I want to be the authority, I want to be the most recognized person. How can I attract that dollars to my business and be the highest paid expert in my industry? If that's you, then you're going to enjoy this video. So let's start with tip number 1, which is get good. A lot of people are trying to become the authority in their industry before they're even really good at it, and so you need to apply an insane amount of work to actually become one of the best. In your field. And so the people who have the highest profile are not always the best at what they're doing, but they are good, right? And so if I look at my YouTube career as an example, I've made 6,000 videos, right? Somebody told me earlier today that you're such a natural talent as he was watching me record. Like, I'm not a natural talent. I just practiced over and over and over and over and over again and eventually got really good. And so I still have my path. I still have to get better. But in your industry, if you want to be the highest paid authority, you have to be really good at what you're doing. You don't have to necessarily be the most talented, but you have to be among the most talented. If you are a D-level player or a C-level player or a B-level player, you're not going to be the highest paid in the industry. So you have to put in the reps. This is the boring part. You have to be so good that they can't ignore you. Tip number 2 is get recognized for being good. So just because you're really good, it doesn't mean you're going to get paid the most. And so part of that is building up a brand, building up authority. And getting recognized and winning different kinds of awards. And so as an example, in my career, I've been listed by Inc. magazine and Forbes magazine as the top speakers for leadership and social media and a whole bunch of different things. That doesn't actually really resonate for me. I don't really care about those awards, but other people do. Other people look at that, and when they're looking at, we wanna have a speaker to talk to us about social media, who are they gonna look for? Well, look, hey, Forbes made this list of the top 40 social media speakers right now. and they go through that list, right? And if I'm on that list, I get more money. I get the calls. I get to charge more, right? And so adding more of those awards, looking for what you might be able to apply for, any kind of awards, and also just being on the radar of the people. So understand, to reverse engineer those lists, it's often just one person making a decision. There's somebody who wrote that list. And so getting to know that person, helping them out, follow them on Twitter, respond to their tweets, Add context to their stories. If they're writing about something else, can you provide your opinion? You want to be a known quantity to that person so that the next time they're making a list, they're going to put you on it. A lot of it is still just a human emotional connection. There's no easy way to make a list like that. It's not just dollars and cents. It's not just an easy— easily quantifiable thing. So because it's so human-dependent, the more you get to know that human who's making the list, the better chance you have of getting on it. Getting recognized and then getting paid more. Tip number 3 is create where your audience is. If you want to really get the big dollars in your industry, you have to know where the people in your industry are hanging out. And so we're going to be creating content that might be on LinkedIn. If you're selling the business, I might be on Facebook, it might be on YouTube, it might be on Twitter. You want to be able to be creating content and be where your customers are so you don't have to be great on all the platforms, especially if you're just getting started in this. I think that's where people blow their brains out too much. They try to do everything, and then as a result, they do everything but in a really, really mediocre way. And so you're not going to get attention for that. Pick the one method where your ideal clients are spending the most time. Pick that one method, pick that one social media channel, and then be great there. If your ideal clients are on LinkedIn, as an example, and they're there multiple times every day, and all they see is your messages and your great content, and you spend a lot of time making the best LinkedIn content available using the expert knowledge that you have, 'cause back to tip number 1, you're really good at what you do, then you're gonna keep popping up over and over and over again in their feed. You're gonna be a known quantity to them, and when they're looking at hiring somebody to consult, to speak, to do a gig with, you're gonna be top of mind, and they're gonna wanna pay a premium to you because they know you, they recognize you. To them, you are a brand name, even though to the rest of the world, you may not be, but to them you are because you really hyperfocused on being where your customers are. Tip number 4 is be prolific. And what I mean by this is you need to create lots of content in your space. So once you've identified the platform that you want to be an expert on, if it's LinkedIn or Twitter or YouTube, be the person that is creating the most valuable content consistently, and you're going to stand out more. So for me, it's YouTube, right? I spend lots of time on YouTube. It's a great combination of my skills, what I'm great at, what I love doing, and where my audience is. And so yes, I'm on the other platforms and I'm building my team and I'm creating more content around those, but it's nothing in comparison to what I'm doing on YouTube where I'm making 3 videos every single day. We've done over 6,000 on the channel. Not all of them are public, and it really builds up my brand. Like, if you are in the entrepreneur space and you spend any time on YouTube, you've come across one of my videos. You just have. You may not recognize my name, you may not have subscribed to my channel, but it's really hard to have spent any time on YouTube and be interested in entrepreneur, personal development kind of stuff and not have come across one of my videos. And so that's what you need to do in your industry. You pick the platform, you know where you want to be great at, you know what your message is, you're really good at delivering a message, and now you need to be prolific. You're not posting once a week, you're posting at least daily. At least daily should be your bare bones minimum. For what is being put out there. Now, you don't have to create every day. I find that really taxing. What I do is on a day like this, I'm making 68 different videos to create for you guys, and so we batch it. So I'm here on a Wednesday afternoon, I'm making all the videos for 68 videos for my channel, and then that gets cut up and spliced and diced over the next month, right? And so if you're really good at what you do, you should be able to get in front of the camera and talk about it, you should be able to sit down and write about it and batch it. Spend an entire day, whether that's once a week, once a month, whatever your schedule can kind of bear, and then you're creating content for that entire week or for that entire month. But you need to be prolific, posting at least one piece of content on the preferred platform every single day, with the goal honestly to get to at least twice a day. That may not be happening right now, but that should be your goal ongoing. Tip number 5 is speak. You want to be speaking at events where your customers are hanging out. It's so, so, so critical and important when you are speaking at events. Whoever the speaker is, that person has authority. Why are you going to this event? You're there to learn from the experts. Even if you're speaking for free, like the event may not pay you to go and speak. Sometimes they pay you to go, sometimes they pay for your flight and hotel, but the speaking fee is free. Sometimes they won't pay for anything. But you just being up on stage adds more credibility, and the people in the audience look to you as the expert. They don't know if you've been paid to be there. They don't know how much you've been paid, or if they're comping your hotel or travel costs or not. All they know is there's this person up on stage who has this authority position, who then— again, back to tip number 1, be good— you have a really valuable message that moves and inspires them to want to change something in their life or in their business. You have a shot, and now you're a known quantity, and you're in a position of authority. They're going to want to work with you to help them solve a problem. And so the more you can speak at events and get your name out there in that authoritative way as well, it really helps. Tip number 6 is overdeliver like crazy. One of my favorite marketing strategies is through word of mouth, and you need word of mouth to happen as an entrepreneur to get your business going because you're not taking out Super Bowl commercials. You can't afford to do that. And so what you want to do is have your customers talking about you for you. One, you want them to come back to you because you provided such a great service that they're not hiring you just for one thing, but they want to hire you again and again and again and again and again. But two, they're in your industry. They know other people in your industry. And if you provide such a great service, such a great product, that they can't help but talk about you, then your name starts to spread in the industry. And again, it's not you talking about you, it's somebody else talking about you. And so it's much more likely to again lift that level of authority for you, get contacts coming in, and you can charge your price to eventually be the highest paid in your industry. So you really need to overdeliver like crazy. Look at what you have been hired to do and then think, how can I double that, triple that, 5x that? It may not even cost you a lot of extra money. Money or time to do it, but it's the perceived value, right? I remember for my first client, my first corporate gig, I was paid $300 or $500 to write a single blog post, and I was up with 10 or 20 other people who were also paid the same amount, and I just went crazy on my blog post. They wanted 300 words, I gave them 1,000 or 1,500, and I added a video, and I promoted it, and I shared it to my list, and I got attention and awareness for that blog post. And out of all the people that they hired for the first draft, I was the only one that they brought back to work with continuously. Because what did everybody else do? They gave the 300 words of content, they gave what the client asked for, they did the job requirement. But because I went so far over and above, then they came back to me and wanted to hire me and work with me more and more and more and more, not everybody else. And so you want to take that same approach. Whatever the specs are, whatever they're asking asking you for, you have to do at least— that's a bare-bones minimum. Like, that's unacceptable. What they ask you for is unacceptable. You have to go way, way, way above to win that client and then to increase your prices. And tip number 7 is sell annual deals. I really hate doing one-off deals. If you want to be the highest paid authority in your industry, what I always try to do is if somebody comes to me with a one-off deal, like, hey, 'Hey, we'd love to have you speak at one event,' or 'Hey, we'd love to have you make one video for our channel,' or 'Hey, we'd love to do one kind of collaboration with you,' my default is I try to turn that into an annual deal. So if you want to make one video with me, like, you know what, to actually get the benefit, if you want my audience to care about you, then we need to make this an ongoing thing. You're not going to get as much value out of one video because that video will be gone and then there won't be the follow-up. Where somebody hears the message consistently over a period of time, they're much more likely to take the action that you want them to take. And so I always try to move somebody from a one-off video to at least an annual deal. If I look at Sage as an example, you guys may have seen my videos with Stephen Kelly, he's the CEO of Sage, multi-billion dollar company. We signed a 3-year deal. So it started off as, hey, maybe Stephen can come on your channel, maybe we can do an interview, you know, he loves entrepreneurs, we'd I'd love to have him on. And first of all, your mission has to be aligned. I only work with Stephen because he actually does care about entrepreneurs because I actually do use Sage Software in my business. It's not just a money-making thing. I really believe in what he's trying to do. And then we turned that into a multi-year deal. It's a 3-year deal that I signed with them where I'm helping them get exposure and bringing value to the audience. And as you guys tune in, pay attention, watch the show, you learn more about Sage, you learn more about Stephen Kelly, and the next time you're looking for an accounting software package, you're going to at least give Sage a shot. And so by transitioning your customers to being a one-off deal, to think, how can I provide more value that this is at least an annual deal, if not a 2 or 3 year deal, it can really start increasing the amount of money you make because you have established yourself as the expert in providing insane value to your clients. So those are my 7 tips on how to be the highest paid authority in your industry. I would love to know from you which tip resonated the most with you. What work do you have to do to get better? Is there an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Please share your thoughts down in the comments below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon. Raise your standard. Apple at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated. Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.