Where are you starting the race to Authority Status?

I work with solo founders building lean practices around themselves, Authority Entrepreneurs whose ideas, judgement, and thinking are the product. Mostly coaches and consultants who want the Authority Entrepreneur status I’ve so often talked about in this newsletter.

As well as who they are, there is a shared desire amongst them.

They all crave businesses that are personally and creatively fulfilling, well-suited to their strengths, values and capacity, and that pay them well in return. I personally seek that very same outcome, too.

But even if they’re heading to the same destination, they all move towards it from very different starting points.

Here are the five distinct starting points I’ve identified that clients come to me, before our work together.

Have a read and let me know which starting block you are at. Reply with a number 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 (or perhaps a blend). In return, you’ll be first in line for a (free) diagnostic tool I’m building, designed to help you plot your journey much more clearly.

Which one are you?

1. The Reluctant Generalist

You’re credible, experienced and already getting work and referrals because you’re a reliable pair of hands, and your depth of experience reveals itself at every turn in client proposals and delivery in equal measure.

Along the way, your practice has stayed broad. Somewhat shapeless. If it were a colour, it might be “grey”, not because it’s boring, but because it’s malleable. You can easily say yes to opportunities that get sent your way.

But in not wanting to narrow, to name a lane, or to fully commit to what you want to be known for lies a very subtle cost of:

• Inability to grow or compound in any one direction

• A Body of Work that feels scattered and, in turn, leads to random work 

• A revenue or growth trajectory that plateaus instead of deepens

You know that on the other side of the scary decision to narrow, likely lies better opportunities that will breathe new life into your practice. That you might finally be able to grow, produce better assets, and bring others in more cleanly.

2. The Resetting Expert

You’re experienced and love your work - you identify very strongly with who you are in your practice and the work you do.

Except, something has been off for a while now. You’re no longer who you once were. An identity shift has taken you into new directions on a personal level, but now your business no longer reflects who you have become. Perhaps the market has moved on too, and the work you once did has lost some edge.

This evolution is natural, exciting, and encouraged. 

But when you haven’t yet defined what comes next, there are many ways you’re held back:

• You’re attracting clients that don’t quite fit anymore

• You’re hesitating to fully show up because it doesn’t feel true

• You struggle to make big decisions (or small ones for that matter) because you haven’t reoriented to what comes next 

You know you can’t keep growing a business that no longer feels like yours and are ready for a reset to align on what the next iteration should be.

3. The Impatient Builder

You’re newer to working for yourself. Like a baby, your business age might still be counted in months. But your growth ambitions run deep.

So whilst you’re capable, confident, and executing quickly (and people have taken notice of your entrance into this market, perhaps thanks to a powerful brand or previous reputation from corporate), you soon realise, you don’t actually know what you don’t know. You’re trying on business strategies for size that don’t quite fit, because they were built for those with years behind them, or large audiences to rely on. You feel behind when you only just started. Guessing only gets you so far without a solid foundation to build from.

And the costs include:

• Investing time and money, but not always in the right places

• Busy work that isn’t translating into a reliable stream of clients yet

• Reactive decisions (offers, pricing, content), you wonder how long they will last because the business feels a bit unstructured, already

You wonder if there is in fact a clear, simple path you could follow. To be shown which potholes to avoid. You realise you’d sooner spend your precious time doing the right things in the right order, not just more busywork to feel productive.

4. The Best Kept Secret

You’ve got clients. You’re nearly fully booked, in fact. And thanks to the volume of experience you’ve had, you have a huge amount of context about what your clients need and how you can best serve them.

But no one except your clients know about it. You don’t really have a visible, external presence that demonstrates this work to the extent that it could. Perhaps because you’ve been receiving referrals or getting work through associate platforms, you don’t actually have that much time to go and create all those assets. But you’re realising that you want to be known more widely. That having more people know about you is an insurance policy for your business, and will allow you to control your own pipeline more.

So until you do that you:

• Rely solely on word of mouth or associate platforms, but feel your prices are capped, and you have no leverage. You couldn’t run a group programme, for example

• Feel frustrated when you see other experts online claiming expertise that feels like yours, perhaps with less nuance or substance than you have, except there’s no trail of digital evidence to point back to you

• You feel that growth will burn you out. But you’re tired of having to start from scratch with each new client engagement, and crave a clear channel from which to communicate your brilliance

You realise that with a bit of deliberate space and planning, you could raise your profile, raise your prices, and do less, but more aligned work, after all.

5. The Expansive Builder

You’re a force. A world builder. People love your work, and you’re likely already very visible, with a Body of Work to show for it (podcasts, LinkedIn posts, Substacks… you name it, you’ve tried it!).

In the efforts taken to get where you are today and grow that digital footprint, you’ve realised that your efforts are, in fact, not compounding. You’ve created a bit of a beast, and it’s not exactly simple. Different platforms, offers, programmes and price points.

You want a business that feels simpler and more scalable, but you’re in no way ready to lose the depth of what you’ve created. Your mission is too important to let go of any of its parts.

But in holding on to it all, you:

• Leave money on the table, because you’re ‘everywhere’, your processes aren’t optimised. You are leaking opportunities as you can’t hold it all properly

• Have a calendar chock full of invites, clients, experiences, creating content time blocks… but your bank account in no way reflects how busy you are

• People LOVE your vibe but can’t fully articulate what you do, exactly, which frustrates you, but you realise you can’t always keep up either even though you’re the one in the driving seat.

You have started to realise that letting go of some things, and truly choosing a centre of gravity for your business is the next most important step on your journey. But this has to be handled carefully so your depth and track record gets protected.

Which of the five do you see yourself in?

Hit reply, and you’ll be first in line for a free tool that will help you chart your path forward from here.

Thanks as always for reading today.

If you are feeling the pull to grow a business that reflects your current level of thinking and capability, to move forward with certainty, and stop the second-guessing, this is exactly what The Ask coaching is here to help you do. If you’re curious about 1-1 support, you can apply for coaching here. Or if it’s a group programme like Authority Club or Authority Letters that’s caught your eye, sign up to this waitlist for upcoming dates.

Until next time,

Ellen