The Recognized Authority: the podcast that guides Invisible Experts on the journey to becoming a Recognized Authority in your field, so you can: 👉 increase your impact 👉 command higher fees 👉 work with better clients This podcast features interviews with successful consultants who are willing to share the ups and downs of their story to inspire and educate our listeners. We also interview marketing and sales experts who have a message or lesson that is relevant for a B2B professional services audience. We'll cover all aspects of business developement, sales, marketing and lead generation with advice, tips and in-depth analysis specifically aimed at independent consultants & specialized consulting firms. Topics include developing a unique point of view, how to create your product ladder, building your audience, how to make more time for your consulting business, building your podcast funnel, confessions of a million dollar consultant, the compound effect of content, you don’t need to be unique to stand out, earning and holding attention, don’t overthink your content, bland content and burnout, making video marketing easier, how to build a strategic narrative, how content can save your business, using case studies to build trust, why positioning is crucial to your business, and lots more. Previous guests include Alan Weiss, Marcus Sheridan, Mark Schaefer, David C. Baker, Ron Baker, Evelyn Starr, Michael Zipursky, Jonathan Stark, Geraldine Carter, Mike Clay, Sara Dunn, Louis Grenier, Anne Janzer, Philip Morgan, Rochelle Moulton, Norbert Schwarz, Heather Steele, Douglas Squirrel and many more. 👉 Learn more at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/podcast ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube Misspellings for searches: Alistair, Allister, Alister, Alasdair, Alisdair, Alister, MacDermott, The Recognised Authority. The correct versions are Alastair McDermott & The Recognized Authority 🤗
How to Differentiate Your Consulting Services with Austin L. Church
The consulting marketplace is very crowded. Standing out from the crowd is essential if you want to avoid being lumped in with other providers, being seen as a commodity. But how can you differentiate when you are offering similar services? In this episode, Austin L. Church and Alastair McDermott discuss how to position & package your offer in a different way so that you are differentiated from your competitors. They also discuss the most effective way you can build trust with an audience, why you should use your clients' language to frame the problem, and the correlation between your pricing and the clients that you attract. 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/differentiate-your-consulting-services 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Radical Authenticity with Gill Moakes
What does it mean to be radically authentic? In this episode, Gill Moakes and Alastair McDermott discuss how radical authenticity can help you stand out in business, how to figure out the captivating part of who you are, and how to share that with others. They also discuss how to be intentional about what you say and publish, how to make content creation easy for yourself, and how that can lead to business success. “Radical authenticity is an absolute non-negotiable if you want to be successful in business. It's the one thing that will always allow you to stand out. No one else can be you as long as you are being absolutely authentically true to yourself. When we share that, that's the captivating part of who we are.” – Gill Moakes on The Recognized Authority podcast “When it comes to growing a business, we consume so much conflicting advice that we almost become paralyzed. With this tsunami of advice that floods over us, we get so overwhelmed that we lose the ability to make decisions for ourselves. We want every single thing we choose to do in our business to be externally validated, or to be proven before we even try it.” -- Gill Moakes on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/radical-authenticity/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Creating Demand with Chris Walker
Demand generation is the new buzzword in marketing, challenging the status quo. But is demand generation really different, and is it superior to lead generation? In this episode, Chris Walker and Alastair McDermott discuss why demand generation is important, how it is fundamentally different from other approaches to marketing, and how you can implement demand generation even as an independent consultant. They also discuss the "dark social" and why attribution in marketing doesn't work, how to create content that gets you customers immediately, and how to use social comments to test content ideas. “As an independent consultant most of your customers are not thinking about whether or not they need you. How do you get into the space where you're under consideration and educating those people from not knowing that they even understand the problems or the opportunities are whether or not you exist, to then wanting to come and work with you? That's the difference that unlocks business growth.” – Chris Walker on The Recognized Authority podcast “Take that information and put it out on the internet for free. A lot of people think once the information is out there "no one's going to want to work with me" because they have the information. The funny thing is the information is a commodity, somebody's gonna give it to them - it's just whether or not it's going to be you.” -- Chris Walker on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/creating-demand/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Get Noticed Through Effective Communication with Jim James
Getting noticed by the right people - for the right reason - is what marketing is all about. But getting noticed isn't easy when there's an entire internet competing for attention. So how do we do it? In this episode, Jim James and Alastair McDermott discuss why and how to get noticed, the practical elements of PR, and what are the elements of viral content. They also discuss how to curate a book from podcast interviews, why listening first is such an important part of the process, and how to get in alignment with your audience. “I think that one of the qualities of an authority is they stand out, and conformity rarely helps anybody to stand out. You have to be willing to take a little bit of risk, do something that shows that you're passionate about the subject.” – Jim James on The Recognized Authority podcast “Many people start talking about themselves before listening to what other people are interested in. It's the social equivalent of going to a party and not even asking someone else's name but just saying "Hi, my name is Jim, let me tell you about me".” -- Jim on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/get-noticed-through-effective-communication/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Content Creation: Work Smarter Not Harder with Jaclyn Schiff
Creating and publishing content is essential to getting visibility and building authority. But content creation can be hugely time consuming, from writing initial outlines and drafts to actually writing long form content, or recording, re-recording and editing! Is there a way to work smarter, not harder? In this episode, Jaclyn Schiff and Alastair McDermott discuss content transformation: why and how to repurpose your content in a way that saves time and energy, and frees you up to create more content, work on client projects, or simply take some time away from the office! They discuss the fundamental differences between various content formats, why it's important to reorder a conversation, and how to use content curation to create high quality aggregate content. “You're doing it for business purposes: to build brand awareness and to market yourself. That means thinking how do I position this, what can people benefit and learn from, how do I position it so that it will grab their attention?” – Jaclyn Schiff on The Recognized Authority podcast “Fundamentally we want to do more with our content because our audience, the people we're trying to reach, they are never in just one place.” -- Jaclyn Schiff on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/content-creation-work-smarter-not-harder/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Developing Your Point of View with Alastair McDermott
Point of view is something that can distinguish you from the crowd. It’s important, perhaps even essential, in building your authority and personal brand. It’s also one of those concepts in marketing that is frustratingly hard to define: it seems to incorporate perspective, tone, voice, positioning, branding, and – above all – opinions. In this episode, Alastair McDermott takes a practical approach to developing a point of view, and talks about how you can use it to distinguish yourself from your competition, stand out from the crowd, and build your personal brand. 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode - including the Point of View worksheet that you can copy and edit for yourself - in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/point-of-view/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
How to Grow a Newsletter with Dylan Redekop
If you've done any research on marketing your consulting business, you'll almost certainly have come across the advice to start an email newsletter or list. It's a relationship with your audience that you own directly, without the interposition of a third party platform. You'll often hear the phrase "don't build on rented ground" in relation to social platforms, and email is an answer to that. The mantra for many marketers is "build a list!" In this episode, Dylan Redekop and Alastair McDermott discuss how to grow an email newsletter, the different types of incentives we can offer subscribers to join the list, and why giving away value for free is crucial. They also discuss how to create a nurture sequence to welcome and prep new subscribers, how to use email courses, quizzes & challenges to increase signups, and why the welcome email is so important. “When people sign up to our newsletters it's important for us to keep in mind that the inbox is a very personal space, and so when we are invited there we need to be really considerate of that. We need to make sure that we're sending something that is worth sending and they will get value in receiving.” – Dylan Redekop on The Recognized Authority podcast “When something like Elon Musk buying Twitter happens, it'd make me a little bit nervous if that was my only source of engaging with my audience. But since I have grown an email list, I've taken those people and I've brought them into my own ecosystem where I can communicate with them, regardless of the platform I'm using.” -- Dylan Redekop on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/how-to-grow-a-newsletter/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Performing at the Highest Level with Joe Jacobi
In this episode, I speak with Olympic gold medalist Joe Jacobi about performance in sport and business. This conversation takes a slightly different road from other episodes, as we talk about the relationship between success and identity, why energy is crucial for performance & capacity, and the importance of connecting with nature. We also go a little tactical, discussing how to why course correction is crucial to performance, and how a coaching intervention won an Olympic gold medal. “I've been on a start line of the Olympic Games where I've seen athletes who were so confident they believed in what they were doing, and they didn't have a good race. I've also seen athletes lacking confidence that went on to win a medal.” – Joe Jacobi on The Recognized Authority podcast “If I told you a course correction would actually get you a gold medal at the Olympic Games, most people would say "You're crazy, that doesn't make sense! That's not the story of LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan - just gritty and resilient and being better and stronger. That's not how sport works." I'm here to tell you it can work like that.” -- Joe Jacobi on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/performing-at-the-highest-level/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Building Authority with Podcasting with Megan Dougherty
Creating and publishing content is a cornerstone of the authority building process. Audio podcasts are one of the options we have to do just that, and there are many choices we can make around podcasting that will impact on how much it helps us build authority. In this episode, Megan Dougherty and Alastair McDermott discuss how to plan your podcast strategically in order to build your authority, how you can use podcasts for research, and how guesting on other people's podcasts fits into your authority building mix. They also discuss why starting your podcast with a short run initial season is a good idea, the dynamics of conversational interviews, and how to grow your podcast audience. “I think the networking and that relationship cultivation element of podcasting can't be overstated. "Hey, will you be on my podcast?" is this really natural opener to a relationship and you get so many touch points in the process to make a good impression, and so many reasons in the future to follow up again.” -- Megan Dougherty on The Recognized Authority podcast “According to the data, yes, your podcast should be on YouTube. A shocking number of people listen to podcasts on YouTube, they just put the videos on plays in the background, they listen to it while they're going about their day.” -- Megan Dougherty on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/building-authority-with-podcasting/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Stress-free Consulting Proposals with Reuben Schwartz
Proposals are an essential part of winning business, but writing a consulting proposal is often a hugely time-consuming and frustrating process. In this episode, Reuben Schwartz and Alastair McDermott discuss how to create a stress-free consulting proposal, what elements are essential in the proposal document, and why presenting the proposal is such an important part of the sales process. They also discuss how you should think about proposals (and why proposals are not brochures), how to use options and pricing curves, and where you can find proposal templates and resources. “If you do the proposal right it doesn't feel like a necessary evil, which is what it used to feel like to me. It's kind of fun, almost like getting warmed up for the game. It's not something that you have to loath or be stressed out about.” -- Reuben Swartz on The Recognized Authority podcast “When I started out, I was excited but also terrified and stressed out about how I supposed to write the proposal. I've subsequently learned that it happens to a lot of people, because I don't think we equip folks with the right way of thinking about proposals, and it turns it into this unnecessarily stressful event.” -- Reuben Swartz on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/stress-free-consulting-proposals/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Write a Book in 30 Days with Steve Gordon
Books have long been associated with authority and thought leadership. "He wrote the book on it", "She wrote the book on it" - that's how we describe a true expert in a field. "Consultant, author and speaker" is the byline for many thought leaders, and even the word "author" is the major part of authority. But writing a good, valuable, and useful book is a difficult, time-consuming process. Or is it? In this episode, Steve Gordon and Alastair McDermott discuss why a book is the gold standard of authority building, why outlines are so crucial, and how to write your book in 30 days. They also discuss the mistakes most authors make when writing, how to use a book as a referral tool, and how a podcast can help create strategic relationships. “I had to write several more books to figure out what I was doing that allowed me to write them so fast. We started refining that process, and now our clients are getting them done in about 90 days. That's about 30 days of dedicated writing, 30 days of getting it ready to publish and publishing it, and 30 days of promotion and launch.” -- Steve Gordon on The Recognized Authority podcast “As an expert who does really complicated and intangible things for your clients, a book is a great way to let them sample ahead of time. They experience what it would be like to work with you, because they're interacting with your thinking.” -- Steve Gordon on The Recognized Authority podcast 👑 Learn more about the Authority Labs mastermind group programme: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 👑 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/write-a-book-in-30-days/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Bonus Episode: Becoming a Recognized Authority - Alastair McDermott with Tamara Howard
Bonus Episode: Becoming a Recognized Authority - Alastair McDermott with Tamara Howard To celebrate reaching 70 episodes, I have a special bonus episode for you! I was recently on Tamara Howard's podcast The Better Way to Strategic Marketing where we had a conversation about authority and specialization. Tamara is a super interviewer, and she has graciously allowed me to "re-pod" that interview, so here is the episode in full! 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode and links to Tamara's podcast, website and social profiles in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/bonus-becoming-a-recognized-authority 👈👈 ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
How to Be a Key Person of Influence with Chris Do
A key person of influence is someone who is able to separate themselves from the market, to command the lion's share of attention, and is able to charge a price premium. They are one of the few names mentioned whenever it's connected to a particular subject. In this episode, Chris Do and Alastair McDermott discuss how you can become a key person of influence, why sharing the "secret sauce" is so important, and why it's better not to have a viral hit too early. They also discuss how to create a hundred-day content strategy, the two types of YouTube channel you can create, and why you should specialize externally but generalize internally. “Is there a benefit to sharing your work? If we don't share, if we don't write, if we don't produce content, how else will people discover you?” -- Chris Do on The Recognized Authority podcast “When you have a viral hit and you've barely started to make content, you're still finding your voice. And a lot of people are showing up to see you still in that learning phase. To me, it's better that you practice in relative anonymity. It'll give you more confidence, you'll find your voice, and you'll find the thing that you want to do.” -- Chris Do on The Recognized Authority podcast 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/be-a-key-person-of-influence/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Sell Expertise, Not Your Hands with Kevin C. Whelan
We often start out working on execution, implementing projects for clients after they've decided on strategy. Our former guest David C. Baker talks about this as "working with your hands". But we can have more impact, be more profitable, and enjoy our work more if we can shift back a step to the strategy phase, selling our expertise rather than the output of our "hands". In this episode, Kevin C. Whelan and Alastair McDermott discuss why and how to make the shift out of selling implementation, a different approach to working with subcontractors & clients, and why Kevin sees being a fiduciary as crucial to his business. They also discuss the pros and cons of using affiliate links, how to establish credibility in a niche, and how to think about choosing a different business model. “Optimizing for trust is the biggest thing. It's easy to do when you're not financially incentivized by where they spend their money.” -- Kevin Whelan on The Recognized Authority podcast “Your one to one work creates your methodology. Once you have it defined, you can then start to split off pieces of it and sell those independently of your one to one engagement as products, memberships and subscription products.” -- Kevin Whelan on The Recognized Authority podcast 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/sell-expertise-not-your-hands/ 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube
Specialization Case Study with ReeJade Richmond
Even just contemplating niching down your business can feel absolutely terrifying. That's why I think it's so important to hear from people who have done it successfully, and learn about the massive rewards that they are seeing. In this bonus episode, ReeJade Richmond and Alastair McDermott discuss how ReeJade niched down her consulting business to focus specifically on memberships, how she saw results incredibly quickly, and the huge rewards that have come from the tighter focus. A massive thank you to ReeJade for allowing me to record our Zoom conversation, and giving permission to publish it. If you are interested in niching down and specializing your business, reach out and connect, I'm happy to get on a call with no obligations and let's see if I can be of help! We're also starting a mastermind group in the next few weeks, so if you'd like to get some peer support and feedback on your journey, you can learn more about that here: https://therecognizedauthority.com/group 🗒️ Show Notes 🗒️ Access all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes here: 👉👉 https://therecognizedauthority.com/specialization-case-study-reejade 👈👈 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ✉️ Subscribe to the email list at TheRecognizedAuthority.com 🎙️ Record a question or voice message for the show at TheRecognizedAuthority.com/question ⭐ Like what you heard? Please help share the podcast by leaving a rating & review 🤗 Connect with Alastair and The Recognized Authority: ➡️ LinkedIn ➡️ Twitter ➡️ YouTube