Authority needs a centre of gravity

Authority needs a centre of gravity because without one, your ideas drift.

They might live across posts, client documents, workshop slides and half-formed threads online or in your head. Your people get to encounter fragments of your expertise, but not the whole shape of it.

And when the shape isn’t clear, recognition doesn’t happen consistently; a pattern I see repeating across many smart, capable founders building independent businesses.

They are visible, great with clients, thoughtful, and smart.

They get inbound opportunities but they arrive sporadically rather than predictably. And it’s not due to a lack of talent, confidence, or results but to a lack of leverage.

If you sell judgment, pattern recognition, or strategic perspective as a coach or consultant, then showing up with fragmented posts, ideas, and perspectives will flatten authority.

Short-form platforms, news cycles, trending reels and popular culture have trained us to prioritise novelty and excitement for attention. In 2022, I was the walking embodiment of this: travelling to a new country every few months, running multiple offers, programmes, events, and positioning statements, and my social media presence reflected this variety.

I received compliments for my ideas, but they didn’t truly add up to anything substantial. A hodgepodge of offers and messages made sense individually, but didn’t stack together.

Without a true centre of gravity, business wasn’t compounding, revenue was inconsistent, and referrals were few and far between. It was my lowest revenue year to date.

It wasn’t until 2023, when the turning point came after I spent time on one substantial, deliberate, piece of long-form writing that truly grounded everything.

This was a ‘weighty’ piece of work (more than a weekly email or blog post), more like a comprehensive playbook that articulated thinking I was doing with clients in their sessions. Laid out in full, for strangers to read.

Specifically, this guide articulated my central thesis and mapped directly to one (new) signature offer. This work required real thinking, back-and-forth editing, and, importantly, my own conviction.

That piece of writing went on to generate over $100k in sales revenue and bring new people into my world by the hundreds, even without any ad spend. Because it took off, people were reading it, digesting it, and truly understanding what my business coaching and mentoring methodologies looked like in practice.

More than just bringing me the money, this piece changed something structural for my business — clients arrived at discovery calls already aligned. My sales cycles shortened, and my confidence stabilised.

All because my thinking had become legible.

What you could describe me doing then was creating a Hero Piece.

A Hero Piece is the one substantial long-form written asset that demonstrates how you think without you being present in the room.

Your Hero Piece gives your business a centre of gravity that grows recognition, trust, and over time, inbound demand that compounds.

It might feel boring, but true authority arrives when you repeat your one central message clearly, a message (aka One Big Idea), and you let everything else in your world orbit around it (your offers, your short form content, your newsletters, your community classes).

It’s like the paperweight that finally grounds your scattered thinking and perspectives and gives it a home that sustains.

That’s the work we’ll do inside Build One Idea That Attracts Better Clients, a live (free) workshop next Thursday.

In the 45 mins together, I’ll guide you to:

• Define your One Big Idea aka the organising principle your work already revolves around, but putting clear language to it
• Identify the red thread across your services, content and results you create
• Outline the long-form Hero Piece that can do this kind of heavy lifting for you

Long-form writing is more than another content tactic for you to deploy; it’s a way of thinking and creating coherence for your ideas that ultimately, grows your practice.

For Authority Entrepreneurs, a commitment to long-form writing is often the shift that turns visibility into leverage.

So if you’ve been visible but not fully understood… and if your expertise is stronger than your positioning currently communicates… this is likely the work you’ve been postponing.

We’re eight days away and you can join us here:

Shall we together build something that lasts?

Ellen